Lightwave 11.5 is out

[escher]

I thought I'd throw a shout-out to Lightwave 11.5. Lightwave has always been aimed at the one-man-band setup (which means it's very well-suited to indie films where one person wears many hats).

They nearly killed it with the whole CORE fiasco and for a time it looked like Lightwave was going to fade into irrelevancy, but they've turned it around and v11.5 is finally getting a lot of the modern touches it so desperately needed.

For those of you who just never got anywhere with Blender (like myself) but need a solid 3D package that's cheaper than Maya or Houdini, you might want give Lightwave a look. It also comes with one of the best built-in renderers there is -- fast and beautiful and far easier to learn than Mental Ray and the like. I was up and running with full GI on day 1. It also comes with a library of real-world lens and camera models so if you need to exactly match lens distortion you won't have to try to do it manually.

(I'm a bit of a fanatic as it's the only 3D program that really clicked with me. I never got anywhere with 3DSMax, and Maya is a complex swiss-army-bus that can be a bit of a minefield for 3D newbies. Also, Lightwave is extremely tablet-friendly, and I highly recommend a tablet + mouse/trackball combo when using it.)

 

[Joshua Lloyd]

They must be your sponsor

 

[escher]

Nah, I just like to plug good software. They also have an incredibly helpful user community -- one of the deciding factors when I was shopping around for a 3D program after getting completely fed up with Blender.

Granted, I'm not actually any good at 3D modelling (the landscapes were done in Vue, the rest is all Lightwave), but I'm not too shabby with surfacing and lighting, and Lightwave has been the only program I actually made any kind of modelling progress in, ever.

I also immediately took to its nodal material system like a fish to water. My very first material, and I hadn't even read the documentation yet:

 

[wheatgrinder]

wow, quite an endorsement. Ill have to give it a go!

 

[escher]

They finally added instancing and also upgraded their formerly-primitive rigging system to something that looks very, very happy.

Also, if you can afford it, I highly recommend getting the LWCAD add-on, especially if you're going to be doing buildings of any kind. (It also comes with some modeling tools that are very handy in the general case and not just for architecture.)

If you've used other 3D programs, you might be put off a bit by the separation between modelling and layout. I've grown to actually prefer this, so if that irks you, give it some time.