Hi,
I do not know anything about lightwave. I used Maya for years, which is a fine application at all, but I am totally disappointed from the support and can not authorize it on the mac. Now I am searching for a good alternative! The most important things for me at the moment are modelling rendering animation and particles and special fx for smoke, fire…
What do you think? Would lightwave be a good choice?
Good choice compared to what? In other words, is it your only choice or are you looking at other apps as well?
9.6 is the latest release (soon to be public release) and it’s very very solid. LightWave is a great piece of software at a price point you can’t beat. As far as support and development…this last cycle of v9 has shown me how much NewTek (the developers) care about their application and users (both PC and Mac). I too enjoy character animation and though LW isn’t on par (from what I understand) as Maya (I’m just getting in to CA in Maya), it is still solid and something the developers have & are addressing. I’m just getting in to VFX and have just purchsed Tim Dunn’s courseware from Kurv Studios which is fantastic. Like any software, there are pros and cons, but what Tim shows you can do with LW on a VFX end is pretty impressive.
Don’t know about Maya modeling tools, but LW is pretty weak in this area compared to other modeling packages - I’m used to it and I never used another package (just played with demos), so I can’t really compare, but I can tell Modeler (which is one of the two apps of the package) hasn’t much evolved in years (no history stack, no advanced UV tools - fortunately free plugins exists - and no painting/sculpting tools). I guess someone coming from Maya may think it’s a tool of the past (which is true, LW has been around from quite a long time), but it’s still very capable if you add some plugins (many are free !)
I think you should try the demo and see for yourself (unfortunately only 9.5 is available as a demo at the mo, 9.6 is much more stable - I mean the most stable LW ever) - There are some free tutorials available at NewTek, be sure to watch those related to what you’re interested in learning.
Hmm…
If you have access to Maya, LW can certanly become a neat companion to Maya when it comes to rendering. There are other aspects of LW that, imo, are very strong, but more on a fundamental level (as an example I can mention the vertex map implementation). There are also certain types of effects work that LW is really good at, especially concerning shading in the form of Hypervoxels. Very good for both fire and smoke, but alas, it requires experience.
There have been some advancements with LWs rigging capabilities that makes it much better in terms of ease of use and functionality. However, if you come from Maya, you may not find these things impressive at all. With that said, experienced users who also use Maya on daily basis certanly see some benefits of rigging and animating certain types of meshes in LW (vertex map implementation being one of the reasons).
Modeling in LW is very different from Maya and Modeler leaves alot to be desired… however, I constantly see very good work comming out of LW, so, limitations aside; being able to approach things with a creative mind regarding the toolset seems to overcome the limitations in most cases.
With all this said, everything related to dynamics and hypervoxels are yet to be updated. There are a bunch of limitations that require alot of experience to tackle, and sometimes LW has an odd workflow if comming from another app, but overall, LightWave is a really good package, and even better when thinking about how much it cost. 
Oh… and, there are at least one very interresting developement going on from a third party developer regarding dynamics (hardbody, softbody, cloth and particles). Without saying or promising anything, but from what I’ve seen, it’s looking extremely promising.
Since you allready own Maya, adding PointOven to the mix will certanly make it easy to move data between LW and Maya (and a couple of other applications as well).
Bottomline; LW is a great package with alot of value.
Personally, I’ve always found modeller to be one of the easiest and most user friendly 3d modellers around. It lacks some precision tools compared to some other packages but the ability to quickly select, move, rotate, scale, bevel etc. is something that I’ve yet to find elsewhere…I found Max really tedious to use, just moving a point would take several actions.
It depends how you’re used to working, LWCAD is a great add-on for precision stuff but everything is there if you need it.
For modelling I bought Modo which I think is a nice package. And it could be a good solution on the side of lightwave, couldn’t it?
Absolutely, made by the original LW guys and has a lot of the usability plus some very useful additions…How LW should be.
Right now I feel Lightwave is probably the best value for your money besides Blender out of any 3D program out there. It can do lots of stuff very well and the few things it can’t do you can turn to Blender and export/import stuff.
I disagree that LightWave is a poor modeler. Sure it’s old now, and you will need to pad it out with plugins to fill the gaps (which most are free).
But it is still very capable, just needs taking to the next level.
Agree totally! I have modo as well and it is really nice, but I still model 90% in LW Modeler. It’s really, really fast for me. I’ll use modo for some sculpting and edge beveling. LW just works.
Cheers
Snosrap
Don’t get me wrong guys, I’m happy with Modeler ! I just thought someone coming from a different app (Maya in this occurrence) would think it lacks a whole lot of features Maya has
Well… Modeling… It’s decent but dated. I use Silo for modeling and UVs but go into Lightwave’s modeler when the model is done to add weightmaps and/or morphs. If you need architectural stuff look closely at LWCad3.
Rendering is good. Nice quality to the renderer. I do not know how it stacks up against the industry standards such as MentalRay. Lightwave renders have a nice quality to them and 9.6 has many speed improvements. Plus the node-based surfacing is great.
Animation is… Well it’s gotten much better but it’s not 100% THERE yet. The new IK tools in 9.5 are sweet. It still needs a few more things upgraded in the area of character animation. At this point I’d say it’s quite usable.
Lightwave’s particle system is nice but if you want smoke and special effects you will want to study it closely before making your decision. The actual particle system… the part that generates the particles and animates them is pretty cool. Has some nice features. It does NOT have viscosity so nice looking liquids are out. Of course you can always get RealFlow to compliment it.
As far as smoke goes… It’s a mixed bag. If you need puffy smoke… Like from explosions, you’re set. If you need thin whispy smoke it’s not there yet. You might need a more sophisticated program such as FumeFX.
I’ve seen some people make really nice fire with Lightwave but you can’t do it right out of the box. Look at this video on YouTube. Nice fire eh? The author said it took alot of work to get that look. You don’t get nice fire by simply turning on HyperVoxels and rendering.
i use maya, and maya is slower.
there are different reasons, but trust me, lw is faster for misc reasons.
maya has some features lw doesn’t have, but lw has features maya doesn’t have.
all in all lw wins, and the ones that says otherwise are ppl who really hasn’t use lw for a long time.
one of the common complaint i heard was ppl that couldn’t grasp the y rotation in lw perspective view. but, it is always gonna be like that. their loss though
Carm, i never saw anyone try, but from what i know you can do even more realistic flames by attaching fire movieclips to HV sprites, like they did on Lord of the Rings,…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsAO3M_nFJY
(they also used fire clips when rendering Ironman in LW afaik)
as far as Ironman, i just noticed some of the flames were done in scanline,…
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=695325#post695325
…tried to find a HD trailer of LOTR Balrog but no luck,… no screengrabs either, strange,…
shoot, I’m hijacking this I guess,
but since I’m on a roll,
http://www.vimeo.com/2906529
looks like FumeFX, quite good I’d say,…
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