Lightwave 6.0

Lightwave benefits from a vibrant user community and broad industry user base in the US and Europe, if less so in Australia. Learning from the practical needs of its users is part of what makes Newtek one of the more innovative companies in the field.

Version 6.0 is a significant upgrade with a bunch of new features giving even high end rivals like Maya and SoftImage a run for their money. Lightwave has actually set the lead in some areas where nurbs are giving way to 'subdivision surfaces' (formerly labelled 'metanurbs' in Lightwave) combining the simplicity of polygon modelling with the animatable flexibility and geometry economy of nurbs. Lightwave's subdivision surfaces now support different point weights so the strength of any force applied to a model can be varied by painting on a 'weight map' useful for defining varying points of flexibility,drag and so on to a 3D model.

Lighwave continues appropriating third party plugins into the base package with each incarnation. Hypervoxels, Lightwave's particle-based organic form and texturing system, is now fully functional as is Particle Storm and Motion Designer. Hypervoxel textures look fabulous and are perhaps a precursor to Maya's Paint Effects in that they offer resolution independent natural volumetric forms like rocks and fire without polygon structures. Particle emitters are now parentable to moving objects, though limited in their collision physics.

The new renderer boasts caustics and radiosity to simulate complex real world lighting effects caused by glass refractions and light bouncing off objects. If your computer is up to it you'll even get these live in preview mode.

A long overdue feature now in 6.0 is UV surface mapping for precise application of image texture wraps. A new modellling format has been introduced allowing for multi-layered objects with multiple pivot points, morph targets and bones all defined within a single model file. There is also a symmetry modelling mode handy for character creation.

Expressions are available for procedurally driving animation and all animated items in
a scene can be referenced, link, or drive one another. This also allows surfaces to be modified based on various input parameters or even linked to motions or any other envelope in the scene.

Lightwave's main drawback is poor stability, at least in the Mac version, with similar reports from some PC users. It is if anything more likely to crash than version 5.6. Another problem is documentation. The promotional material loudly trumpets the new Motion Designer plugin, giving you cloth, hair and other soft body simulations with the ability to add gravity, wind and so on, yet fails to document it in the manuals at all - and this feature is anything but intuitive to use. Particle Storm suffers similarly though docs are available on the web. There is a further general decline of the user manual since version 4. The addition of 'cuteness' to the version 5 manual has been sensibly abandoned in 6.0 but sadly so has Lightwave's handy reference manual. 6.0's manuals aren't bad but they share a problem common to many softwares, lousy indexing. Major features simply aren't to be found in the index or contents pages.

That said Lightwave 6.0 still makes an already wonderful tool a little more wonderful. With its expanded feature set and capacity to produce such beautiful output, Lightwave currently stands for the price as one of the best value 3D packages on the market.

David Nerlich