What tools does LW need to make it the ultimate game development tool?

[Roger Eberhart]

Copy Max 5's uvmapping tools (which were mostly copied from Maya).
Add edge tools (Wings3d and Max 5 are good examples).
Edge turning should be built-in, not a plug-in or lscript.
Faster OpenGL.
I think a lot of problems would be solved by combining layout and modeler (luxigons, skelegons, whatevergons, should be gone, the only reason they're necessary is because of the two app approach).
Support for baking a complex model onto a lower poly mesh (like Doom 3)

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[UserDelta]

honestly, i think max's gaming power is due to warez kids. id say its where it started. some 14 year olds are out there playing quake and wants to make some mods, he goes online and finds that all his 14 year old friends are making it in max cause they all have it. then they find out that they like to do this kinda stuff, grow up and work with max making games. i guess if lw had some free game versions that they kept advertising on game sites it could have the same effects :) over time. god knows you can create low poly models in lw with your eyes closed if you want.
but thats just honest opinion. i respect disagreement.

[Roger Eberhart]

Actually, the reason Lightwave never caught on in the gaming industry was because they didn't have UVmapping until fairly recently. Also, Max has better low-poly modeling tools (ie. Max is geared towards working with tris).

I've been working in the gaming industry for six years. A lot of the artists I work with are in their late twenties. I'm 31. There wasn't even Doom when I was 14, much less GMax.

Lightwave didn't catch on in the games market because they didn't have the tools that market needed. They were too busy going after the broadcast and movie markets. Blaming it on warez kiddies is wishful thinking.

[UserDelta]

Roger Eberhart: early 20's to late 20s.i was exaggerated with 14 year olds. more like 16, 17 year olds who are now in their 20s.
and i wouldnt agree that max had/has better low-poly tools, but i agree with the UVmapping tools and marketing. i used max in highschool,
im in my 20s now, i think im more in that age group :)
but you're in the industry. hey... we have our points. i dont say its just because of warez but i think its a big part of it. i think its a fact that YOUNGER kids(gamers) learn max cause they can get it.

edit: well maybe it does have better tools but i dont think that makes it a better low poly modeller is more what i mean, but thats just more opinions

oh and dont say like you "know" the reasons.

[Roger Eberhart]

I learned Max because the company I wanted to work for used it. Actually, it wasn't Max back then. It was 3DS r4 and it ran in DOS.

But I think Max is slipping as the dominant player in the industry. I'm seeing more companies switch to Maya lately. There are a few reasons for this. One is price. Discreet is killing themselves by not lowering their price. The second is the talent pool. Most of the kids coming out of school are learning Maya. (I only wish they taught that kind of stuff when I was in college). The third is MEL. Maya is incredibly easy to modify to your needs.

So, I think if Newtek wanted to take over the gaming industry they would have to beat Maya in terms of price, performance, and adaptability. Discreet is also going to need a major overhaul to stay competitive.

[JVitale]

Speaking of LW and games, whatever happened to something NewTek introduced called GameTek?...

[Nurb'd]

I use Maya at work and LW at home.

I have to disagree with the whole wares thing. Max has been around a very long time. It set out and stayed a pc powerhouse. The scripting early on with Max was used extensivly. Alias Studio and Alias Power Animator and later Maya had no eyes on gaming. That is a recent thing. Lightwave was focused on TV and frankly did not have the tools Max did/does for gaming. That left Max to take command in gaming. They smartly bought the best used plugins up and included them. The gaming report I saw was 92% of registered gaming houses used Max in 2002 as the primary application. I can not say if it is true but even if it is close.... :surprised Behind the scenes they would activly pursue gaming houses and show them "why" using Max was better. They had no one to compete with except Lightwave who had their own market to cater to. There is A LOT more to games then just "low poly" modeling and getting it done fast.

I have read interview after interview where the game company praised using Max's character animation. Now I have read a lot of negtavity about it so only one can be true. :shrug:

I think currently most houses are just used to Max. They know it, they know how to code around it, and it is a comfort factor. You can get very high quality cut scenes and it has solid poly tools. Though the speed of working in it was enough to make me spurn it. It bogs down to easy for me so I moved on.

I do think Lightwave has a rough road to go in games. Maya is on a hot streak. At 1,999 for complete they are really sayiing "bring it on" to Discreet. You do see more and more current games getting made with Maya. Let's not stretch it though.. Max still owns the market. Yet with refusing to lower the price... dumb dumb... they have the ego so we will see I guess

Lightwave is a great product. The LW raytracer would have no bearing on games and was one reason Max never tried to make theirs good till V.5. That hurts! It was a big reason I bought LW. They would need to court the game houses and find out what they want and then add it. Let's face it.. unless you make games.. we do not know what they really need.

[vorlon]

Perhaps NewTek should fund and create their own independent, nonprofit-based game company to demonstrate how LW can be used to make all kinds of games.

Of course, easiler said than done! :eek: :wavey:

[tpe]

We use lightwave for game content production, the things i miss are the lack of UV seam stitching, and recently as we have dropped 3d explorer the ability to automatically load textures as they are edited.

Otherwise it has all but one thing.

A method of having something linked to a poly or vertex, so as something in one layer could follow the motion of a bit of a mesh in another layer.
This would make it much easier to export motions for guns or other bits that have to be added in game, as it seems to be easier to get identity, positional and rotation information from the layer or object than surfaces. This problem is most apparent when mesh deformation is used to provide moion, another method for identifying and exporting the location and rotation of points of a model that is not boned would also solve the problem though.

tpe

[Sil3]

Export to Wild Tangent would be sweet music to my hears right now, since i´m "forced" to work with Character Studio in one of my jobs :(

Sil3

[Meshbuilder]

Lightwave needs better support for different game engines.
Smothing on edges, not on surfaces..
Show alfa transparency and other "game" OpenGL features.. Like blending with textures..

I don´t think Newtek can do so much to get better support for game engines when the company that write the 3D engine also write the exporter for it, not Newtek..
But you guys can do something. Start mailing Criterian, NDL amd other 3D game engine companys.. And ask them to support the Lighwave platform.. And if they say no, ask them why and then tell Newtek this..

But Lighwave´s OpenGL engine needs to work more like a 3D game engine. Maybe you could have a plugin you can load and then you have your own window that shows transparency, alfa blending and texture blending and vertexcolor and all the features you have in a game engine..

Also smothing on edge is a really great feature I think only Maya has but it helpes alot when working with lowpoly..


I don´t think this will make Lighwave "the ultimate game development tool" but it will help a lot..

[Tudor]

The problem is not the animation, modeling or texturing (apart from the UV tiling missing).. The GUI is not the important thing here. It is what is under the hood. As it is now it is easier to get Maya to meet the coders needs that it is to get LW to do the same..

For example: In Maya you can select a 2-bone IK solver that is quite nice for games.. How do you replace LWs IK with a 2 bone IK solver? In Maya it is very easy to add custom attributes to an object without being a coder. How do you do that in LW?

On the other hand LW is good for games just because it is simple.. THe scene format is dead easy to interpret aswell as being effective. Layout is already almost a perfect level editor as all objects in essence are reference objects.

[CIM]

Originally posted by tpe
We use lightwave for game content production, the things i miss are the lack of UV seam stitching, and recently as we have dropped 3d explorer the ability to automatically load textures as they are edited.
tpe

My SewUV script lets you stitch UV's. I'm not sure if this is what you mean. :hmm:

http://vwdesign.hypermart.net/Downloads/

[DaveW]

I've done some game development work and my biggest frustration was the poor opengl support and not reloading textures as they are updated; in fact with 7.x LW locks any images it has in memory, even if the image is no longer being used. It makes texturing objects a real pain in the ass. And as others have said, it seems like programmers have a harder time getting what they need from LW to export to game engines, but since I'm not a programmer I don't know the details.

About the UV tiling, do you mean you want the background image in the UV viewport to tile? Because the UV's will tile if you set the image map to repeat in the surface editor.

[Tudor]

What I am asking for when requesting UV tiling is a bit different from that..

Say I make a UVmap.. I set one texture to repeat 0.1 times on U and V. The texture is huge and lowres on the object..
I set another texture to use the same UV map, but repeat 20 times on U and V.. The texture is repeted 20 times across the UVmap.
Basically like scaling the entire UV map in modeler, but animatable.. Same would be great for position and rotation.. Right now, how do I make water follow a curved path? Don't say bones, this has to work with minimum overhead in a game engine..

[SplineGod]

Ive used Lightwave for game development before. The programmes loved the file format. Lightwave objects use the IFF format which Electronic Arts invented. Its an easy format to deal with. UV mapping in Lightwave is great. Lightwave needs conversion tools to import/export popular file formats and data needed by programmers. I think Lightwave is a far better low polygon modeler then max. The tools are simple to get to and the workflow is fast.
Lightwaves biggest problem really is a lack of proper tools and proper marketing to game companies. Programmers can go anywhere and find code fragments for Max and Maya...what about Lightwave?
Lets say tomorrow that Lightwave magically had everything Max or Maya has and then some. You have to physically go to Game Companies. Its the bean counters who make the software buying decisions. First thing theyre going to do is come back with a list of things the programmers want. The next thing is going to be how to retrain and retool (artists dont like to have to learn the new app). The nice thing is cost.
What do you do when a game company becomes seriously interested in Lightwave instead of Max or Maya then next thing you do Discreet or A/W comes in and offers very cheap or no cost upgrades?
Those companies have deep and longstanding RELATIONSHIPS with those companies. It takes YEARS to set up and maintain such relationships. This means that if you plan to market to game companies that youre going to have to be ready to stick it out for a long time. This means you need well defined marketing plans. You need to target strategic companies and do ANYTHING to get Lightwave in there. Give them free copies to evaluate and kiss butt for long periods. Then, when you get a hit title or two created with Lightwave you noise it all over the place.
This means that you make sure that when you take Lightwave in to a company that it WILL meet or exceed their needs. It has to be SO good that they are willing to take the time to work it into their workflow and train/hire new people. You have to have better customer support then the other entrenched guys. You need a dedicated sales group to JUST all on game companies who are knowledgeable about the market.
How do you do all this without ignoring or alienating the market where you have been traditionally strong in (Video, TV, Film)?
I would focus on smaller game companies who are more flexible and cost conscious. I would give them freebies in exchange for helping to develop tools. I would take the time to put together a real game bundle that has what a game company would need. I would put together an educated sales force and then cut them loose once everyone is in place. I would also have some very long term goals in mind instead of quarterly profits.

[Kaiser_Sose]

But Larry, LW has allready been used to make some of the more popular games from SS to UT so the problem has to be deeper than that

JoeW, in the animationmaster forum had some things to say yesterday why his game company is no longer going to use 3DSMax

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Kaiser_Sose
But Larry, LW has allready been used to make some of the more popular games from SS to UT so the problem has to be deeper than that

JoeW, in the animationmaster forum had some things to say yesterday why his game company is no longer going to use 3DSMax
Its a drop in the proverbial bucket. You also have companies that were exclusively Lightwave no longer using it except by one or two die hard artists. Ion Storm is one of those they were an all LW house and now there are maybe 4 artists that use it. Most places that are using Lightwave for game development most likely are doing so because there are LW enthusiasts working there and not because of an organized and directed marketing effort. I remember an instance where I was interviewing for what is now Acclaim in Salt Lake City. They loved my work and I ended up at lunch with the bean counters. They asked what I used and I said Lightwave. They had never heard of it but were impressed with the output and especially with the price compared to Max or Maya. They asked "Why arent we using Lightwave if its cheaper and its that good?". The answer came from some of the Lead programmers : No tools, and no relationship with Newtek.
Im not in any way blaming Newtek or complaining. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to fight an uphill battle with a powerful and well entrenched enemy. The bottom line is that you can go about it one of two ways:
Snif around the periphery of the game market and get a few placements here and there or carefully plan and execute your attack with the idea that youre in for the long haul. Id rather see Newtek take their time and do it right rather then sniffing around.
Do it professionally.

[Nurb'd]

I think for anybody seriously wondering about this topic they should read

http://www.cgchannel.com/news/showfeature.jsp?newsid=950

I found it pretty informative on why they chose 3dsMax as a game company

I would love to see LW become more game friendly so maybe we can learn something from it

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Nurb'd
I think for anybody seriously wondering about this topic they should read

http://www.cgchannel.com/news/showfeature.jsp?newsid=950

I found it pretty informative on why they chose 3dsMax as a game company

I would love to see LW become more game friendly so maybe we can learn something from it
I read that article. Everything they mentioned can be done with Lightwave for a lot less money. The article was more hype then informative,

[Amphiblien]

Originally posted by SplineGod
I remember an instance where I was interviewing for what is now Acclaim in Salt Lake City.

Larry,
Are you talking about the interview you had at Kodiak? Kodiak came from what was once Sculptured, then Acclaim. By the way, they are all gone away now. (Fortunately, I jumped ship before that happened)

Intially, we used Maya at Kodiak because of pressure from EA.
Eventually, the choice to stay with Maya is very simple. It's MEL scripting and the Api. MEL gives Maya the Huge advantage in production. Not only can programmers tap in, but also artists.

Several of us artists use a lot of MEL here to automate tasks and pipelines. LW's scripting interface could use a huge overhaul in my opinion to compete with Maya in a game production environment.

Aside from that, I still use other tools for content creation. I just bring it into Maya.

BS

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Amphiblien
Larry,
Are you talking about the interview you had at Kodiak? Kodiak came from what was once Sculptured, then Acclaim. By the way, they are all gone away now. (Fortunately, I jumped ship before that happened)

Intially, we used Maya at Kodiak because of pressure from EA.
Eventually, the choice to stay with Maya is very simple. It's MEL scripting and the Api. MEL gives Maya the Huge advantage in production. Not only can programmers tap in, but also artists.

Several of us artists use a lot of MEL here to automate tasks and pipelines. LW's scripting interface could use a huge overhaul in my opinion to compete with Maya in a game production environment.

Aside from that, I still use other tools for content creation. I just bring it into Maya.

BS
That was the one! :)
Lightwave needs to be given tools that will allow it to not only fit in seamlessly into an already established production pipeline but also allow people to do it beter, faster, cheaper. This is a long term proposition. Yes, lots of places doing game work have seats of Lightwave here and there and most probably use it for modeling.

[Nurb'd]

Originally posted by SplineGod
I read that article. Everything they mentioned can be done with Lightwave for a lot less money. The article was more hype then informative,

I buy that like I buy pigs can fly. It that was the case people would move just to save the money. I know what a long time user/teacher you are but give me a break. I guess companies just like to spend almost twice the price.

:rolleyes:

[UserDelta]

nasa spends millions to invent a pen that will write in space.
other countries... well they realized there are pencils.

not saying its any better or worse, but point being not all companies know any better.
im sure there are some guys spending money on xsi to make flying logos too :)

[Nurb'd]

Yeah I have to agree UserDelta

I think that is where every user has to decide what they want to do and the pick a software that can do it

but comparing Max who made it a goal to make a gaming 3d app really to LW is not really honest. Max falls short on other stuff but in gaming it has what it takes and I would wager even some of the more $ companies are lacking in a few things or you would see Blizzard and others using them

[E_Moelzer]

I have used MAX and I have used LW for gamedeveloping.
LWs polygon- modeling- tools are excelent. You just dont have to try to take over your MAX- workflow to LW (Oh my where are my edges?) I have never needed edgeds, not did we need Edge- based smoothin in our game- engine that was capable of reading complete LW- scenes (one had to follow to some rules though) as whole levels, Including lighting, animation etc. Even without UV- maps(in 5.6- times) we were able to do a car- racing- simulation that looked better than NFS at the time (one just needs to know the tricks and do some programming and gone is the need for UV- mapping). Anyway meanwhile LW has developed and has great tools for game- dev. The only things that are lacking are more support for common formats (MDL i.e) and a better OpenGl- preview (which would be handy for normal animation too).
Anyway with propper programming one can take a LW- model and convert it to work with any engine. BTW, most of the modeling of set- items for Doom3 was done with LW. Not to forget about Serious Sam and UT.
So who said noone uses LW for gamedev? BTW the edge- smoothing of MAX is nothing but internally unwelding the points, AFAIK. Oh and someone said that LP- modeling in MAX was so great because of it being tris only. I dont understand why?
1. A well done game- engine is capable of trippling meshes itself.
2. I can still go and tripple the mesh myself for more control over edge- flow after I have finished the basic modeling. This does not take that much time and one has to flip the edges by hand in MAX too.
Reloading textures? Where is the problem? Replace image in the image- editor? Sorry dont get the point here...
The only argument I have read here, that I think is really a missing feature is the UV- animation (UV- tiling as it was called).
This would prove to e cool for the normal anaimtion- tasks too.
Otherwise, we have used LW successfully to make at least one (though custom - made) game. The customer was pleased we got good money for 4 months(!) of work. It was a team of four: one artist (me), two programmers (one 3d, one audio), one soundFX- man. (BTW this was at the end of 1999, LW 5.6).
Who has been able to do that with MAX?
CU
Elmar

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