A comparison on Lightwaves opengl viewport speed

[Remi]

Maybe i'm an idiot but I thought that depended on your Gcard. Anyhuu....Lightwave kicks butt....I too used max and switched due to work and haven't even wanted to look back....TME:buttrock: :shrug:

[Ewan Lee]

That's a good question! Anyone wants to make a sample scene (same polycount & texture) for Maya, LW, Max and XSI? Let's see some numbers!
:thumbsup:

[CTRL+X]

I started on MAX been using it since 95' 96' but I know what you are saying about OGL and how sluggish MAX can be. then I started using LW 5.6 here and there and have increased my usage of LW over MAX to the point where I dread having to use MAX, ( But I am forced to use because of it (and VIZ's) tight intergration with Autocad).

In a non-technical explanation, LW screams compared to MAX's slow bloated resource hog of an app that it is.

But I work in Wireframe 90% of the time too, so my opinion is only worth as much.

[lildragon]

Originally posted by Remi
Maybe i'm an idiot but I thought that depended on your Gcard. Anyhuu....Lightwave kicks butt....I too used max and switched due to work and haven't even wanted to look back....TME:buttrock: :shrug:

It does but I'm speaking in general, ok say for instance I have a geforce 3 ti(200)

Just in general... I didn't think much users here had $2000 cards in their boxes ;)

salud

[oracle]

Originally posted by lildragon
Just in general... I didn't think much users here had $2000 cards in their boxes ;)
I do :bounce:

On the contrary I'd think most people here have high-end cards. I'll be getting a GeForceFX when they're available :airguitar

P.S. I can't comment on other app's OGL capabilities 'cos I only use LW.

[Per-Anders]

there's a very easy way to find out. get the free versions of all of these softs and check them out. in my experience lightwave seems to be about the same as maya in terms of ogl speeds, but has better polymodelling tools and workflow straight out of the box. aren't there any hard and fast figures on the web about redraw speed?

isn't this really a question for the technical forum?

[minus]

I am amazed at Lightwave's OpenGL ability.... A lot of it's ability also depends on the workflo of Lightwave. -- That is... if you are modeling.. you are only in modeler.... and you are only modeling / displaying one thing. -- That said... most of the things I model I can zoom in and out and rotate at what feels like 60 frames per second. -- I have had some highly subdivided objects that can be much slower..but having that much geometry is not needed with Lightwave with it's ability to have Layout render sub'd's. Anyway...even when you take uber-crazy models into Layout it suprises me that in layout...things are even smoother then they are in modeler... I run a Geforce 3 (original)....btw.

My roommate is hardcore Maya and my Lightwave is much faster then his right now in OpenGL... (and obviously in rendering)... but he is building a new machine and getting the mid-range Wildcat so that may change in a bit... :surprised but I'm excited to see how it turns out for him.

Would be great having you around these parts Lil... I know from your artwork that you make errr.... great art.. :surprised

[dvornik]

Check yon dabuda's videos. They are created on athlon900 with 256ddr and a geforce2/ 32mb. I think this fact speaks for itself. Here (http://www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/modeling/head/index.html). I couln't believe how significant the OGL performance difference is. And I have a 750 XGL.

[lildragon]

minus/dvornik just what I needed to know thx :thumbsup:

mdme_sadie that's what I did but the only app I didn't try was LW, hence my reason to post a LW question in the LW forum ;)

salud

[Kaiser_Sose]

Originally posted by lildragon
minus/dvornik just what I needed to know thx :thumbsup:

I think he is going to switch :bounce: :applause:

[Remi]

Hey lil didn't I see you on the cover of Time?....HEHE

And if you're doing anything graphical....I highly recommend spending the money on a good Gcard. It'll save you time which in the long run equals money......Not only that....it's just alot more fun being able to work at your pace not the cpu's pace.....


Remember.....LIGHTWAVE ROCKS>>>>>:buttrock: :airguitar


:applause: :bounce: :eek:

[Bytehawk]

i tried max a few times (several versions in demo form)
and have to say that the speed of the opengl in max is so slow I couldn't see myself continuing to work with it. And I keep looking out for every new version to check the speed thing.

Once you get used to blazing speeds, it's hard to take a step back.

[yog]

I've can only LW and MAX on the same machine, but the difference was noticable.

I currently only have a GF-II 32Mb MX card on that machine :(
I tried the same 250k poly object in both apps. In LW I was getting what I consider to be 2/3 realtime rotate, panning and zooming (actual modelling tools all performed realtime), but in MAX it was a case of move the mouse to rotate the POV and wait 15/20 seconds for the rotate to finish.

Not very scientific, but the difference was VERY noticable.

I believe that the current issue of 3D World magazine has the LW-7.5 demo on the cover. It is exactly the same as the version used to upgrade LW-7.0 (except for some saving restrictions), so you can easily get a direct comparrision on your own machine.

[red_oddity]

Can't say i've had too much trouble running Max (4.0), it ran pretty smooth, but i also can't say i have done really heavy work in there (unlike i did in LW (7.5), and it runs pretty OK, i won't say stellar, but that's probab ly of the heavy duty workload it got on screen)
Maya (4.0) basically choked on anything i threw in there (but that could be because i'm not too fluent at Mayan :shrug: and don't know where the magic optimise buttons are ;) )

btw, running GeForce4 Ti4600 on AGP 4x bus (Detonator 30.xx)

[cremegg]

I use those dreaded Apple Macintosh machines so I'm not sure how much weight my views hold ;).

I've been using Lightwave 3D for a year or so and before that Inspire 3D (LightWave Lite) for about 3 or 4 years and I've always loved the OpenGL 'muscle'.

:thumbsup:

A colleague of mine commented that Maya 3.5 on the Mac had horribly sluggish OpenGL when compared to LW. I never got the chance to try that for myself but have recently had a play with Maya 4.5. I personally thought the OpenGL was fine and comparable to LW although I've only had the oppurtunity to do some basic modeling with Maya and therefore have not tested the OpenGL with more heavyweight texturing.

I remember doing a project with a few high res image maps in LightWave and I have to say that even with the texture resolution set to 256 or 512 I was bloody impressed with the speed that I could throw things around the scene. Partical OpenGL can be sluggish as hell on the first playback of an animation in OpenGL, but becomes pretty nifty after that.

No idea how much this is all limited by the 'hardware' though.

GeForce 3, AGP 4x

[E_Moelzer]

Hello
I have used LW and MAX and even sent Objects between them, so I can probably comment on OpenGL- speed as well.
To me LW seems to be a lot faster and LW offers a lot of quick ways to make OpenGL redraw even faster (faster highlights etc).
Max was a hell compared to this speedwise. This gets even worse as one happens to have the whole scene displayed while modeling (OK one can hide things, but still the whole scene is in memory and this also causes MAX to slow down). MAX always seemed to be bloated to me, like they simply stuck everything into it without paying attention to speed (both redraw and workflow- wise).
To be fair one has to admit that MAXs OpenGL is a bit more powerfull and can show you more than LWs OpenGL. But I would treat this any time for workflow...
I am so happy I can use LW again and dont have to use MAX anymore...
Only my personal oppinion...
CU
Elmar

[dark_lotus]

well guess what the only other software i have used is max 3, and lightwave is quite faster.


I must say that the transition between max and lw is quite smooth (cause I did it).


Well good luck in finding you new application!:thumbsup:

[Chewey]

I use a pretty slow older Intergraph machine (pII 400mhz 1 gig ram) with a first generation nvidia card. Consequently my concern is maximizing the speed of my workflow by avoiding textured views until absolutely necessary. Wireframes and lo res substitute objects rule while animating.

I tend to gravitate to using Lightwave first, Maya 2nd and Max only when I have to due to it's sluggish redraws compared to the other 2 aps.

[swampthing]

I've run all four apps on the same machine to test exactly what is being talked about here as it was important to me as well. That and i love playing with computer hardware so it was fun just to test it.

Anyhow it'd rank them from fastest to slowest:

XSI

Maya
Lightwave











Max

Max is just sick, i cannot understand how anyone can work in that app and not want to shoot themselves after a day of it. Not only is it slow but it's unstable. I just can't comprehend why anyone would willingly use it. Maya was definately faster than lightwave on the same model. With a VERY high poly model lightwave would start to chug a bit on the viewports, whereas Maya didn't seem to even be bothered by the same mesh. Lightwave is leaps and bounds over max though, but the top three are so close that I'd say you couldn't go wrong performance wise with any of them.

[aYs]

i also use a gf 3 ti 200 (athlon 1400) and lightwave

the spped sometimes really differs

when i switch to a fullscreen perspective view in modeler (1280x960) it get about 5 fps while displaying a car with 100.000 polys (trinagles), textures, transparency and erverything in one layer

normally i have to split up the car in order to export it
then i have about 50-60 layers and only 1fps or even less

in layout i get about 10-15 fps with textures, reflections, transparency turned on and 50-60 layers/objects

strange, isn't it

but it's ok
normally i don't have 100.000 polys at once while modeling so it's pretty fast

cheerio

[dvornik]

Some words in defence of max. Until version 5 max OGL wasn't all that bad, especially with maxtreme drivers. It's poly toolset is very flexible and easy to use. It gives you several viable options of using the interface (personally I hate relying on keyboard shortcuts). LW could benefit from interface imrovements such as customisable marking menues or other form of contextual menues, bevel/extrude gizmo, other gizmos like soft selection adjustment and rotate. One more word in defence of max - Bobo.

But yeah, I don't know what discreet was thinking making max 5 that slow. Plus, LW ability to work directly on sudivided mesh gives it a huge advantage.

[RuiFeliciano]

There's LW's Modeler and there's LW's Layout. Loading a 100k polygon in modeler and trying to rotate it on the perpective viewport is a (bad) joke. It's sluggish to say the least (heck, it seems LW's 5.6 has faster OpenGL than LW's 7.5!).
Loading that same 100k object in MAX and rotating it in the perpective viewport is much faster than doing it in LW's layout.
Rotating the same object in layout is much snapier than in Modeler. Also in Layout there's some settings like Bounding Box Threshold that really help to manipulate the most demanding object in realtime as long as you don't have to do it with pinpoint accuraccy (such as trying to land a 250k polys roof on top of a house).

[wlau]

Swampthing,

I'd hardly consider Max to be slow and unstable. I use both constantly, and both are stable as a rock. Then again, the same stuff is said by almost every user whose supposedly had this crash or that crash and they automaticaly deem it as unstable - most of the time it's just their own machines themselves.

Leaps and bounds ahead of Max? Nope. Both programs have their pros\cons and I think the way you've made your statement will mislead people.

Anyways, this is not an app war or anything, but I just don't think Max deserves such hacks =P

[Freak]

Hmmmm...

My machine manipulates a 100K Poly Object in Layout or Modeler
without any problems..... 250K Poly would be pushing it.....

Maya's OGL is quite fast, but it's renders are usually slower
as is XSI2

LW 7.0 was really bad for OGL speed.......
LW 7.5 boosted it by around 20 > 50% (on my machine)

And Rui.......
Lightwave 5.6 OGL is faster than any of the others.......
Lightwave 6.0, 6.5, 7.0,7.5 all use a complete OGL interface...

Lightwave 5.6 only used OGL viewports......

Later versions of LW also support many more OGL functions
OGL 1.4 (Reflections etc....)

Where as 5.6 was only using 1.1 (i think)

I'm guessing LW8.0 will again be slower....... (as they add more
realtime OGL effects)

The good news is...... Software is deigned to have a life cycle....

When it's first released, it should be slow.......
But hardware should catch up over it's life cycle.

[Brett H.]

Another consideration is whether you use independent rotation & zoom in your viewports. This increases speed when more than one viewport is open (only redrawing the current viewport on zoom/rotation).

Max requires a pretty serious amount of RAM to run effectively, IMO. But, you can set a surface with a high specular, which helps visualize the contours of the model. One of the few things I miss about Max. (That, and the lighting control in OGL while modelling).

Brett

[Puffin]

I'm actually suprised no one has brought up DirectX driver performance in Max especially with release 5 and a GF4 TI type card. The redraw is much much faster then the OpenGL driver and in my experience beats LW hands down.

Another one to look at is C4D which runs like a champ with OpenGL acceleration.

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