Good to hear Lightwave is not dead. I think this release is like a nice new starting point, but afterwards they have to do a great job of updating it in time, because there's a lot to catch up compared to other DCC apps like Maya or Cinema. Blender also is a huge contender and it's free. But Lw has always had a good philosophy of a speedy workflow even for single general users. So, that philosophy could even be a winner one as time passes. Let's see what the new owners bring in the near future !
You most often not judge it like that. If some tools in Lightwave offers a workflow to already established pipelines, studios..it adds to the general cost of not breaking it and start learning blender, and such. You can not spit out the same quality fire and smoke fluids as you can with TurbulenceFD, that´s one example.
Wait... hold up! People still use Lightwave? I remember playing around with it back in the early 2000s. Didn't know they were still going. Seems like most 3D applications are following certain standards. Think I should check out this new one.
Following standards has basically become a necessity at this point. Even Blender is getting in on that action with USD so I might actually be able to convert my Maya scenes to USD and finally dump it for FOSS.
I still use it for work related projects and for hobby as well. The physical render in LW2020 has been tremendous for me, and there's also a free version of Octane if you want to use GPU.
Yes, it´s a little impressive of what they have done with so little time owning it, and most things seem to be in the right direction, compared to the latest release which I didn´t even download a demo on, this time I will. Yes, TFD is a good addition, if they can maintain development on it, it is simulating faster than blender, since blender doesn´t use GPU, better quality in the solver which yields better render quality as well: It has a better thermal convection function, which blender do no thave. It can use like over 80 Lightwave noise fractals for fluid emission density, (blender only 8 or so) so you could have all kinds of nice fractal textures, even let particles drop on surface and spawn the actual fluid emission, or use animated text, or a marker pen fractal textures or just the more noise based textures. The textures can also be stacked on top of eachother to allow for variations in fluid opacity so you can get different levels of rising smoke or cloud raising levels. There are some downsides to it though, previously it was unstable, and it can not use any other force than it´s own built in Wind force, which means you can not use bullet wind dynamics, or the legacy wind dynamics that works for the particle system. So we have a lot of different dynamics systems not talking to eachother, in blenders case..most stuff seem to work in unison..so that is the positive for blenders part, but then again..if it´s so slow to simulate, not updating properly when moving stuff, and not giving the same quality...it´s not gonna work for professional work, with TFD despite the forces not working in unison, it may not be necessary all the time, but it delivers. Chronosculpt will be inside of Lightwave, not sure if that is there already, but that is the plan, I got chronosculpt for free after the core debacle, as a compensation, but I think it needs to be inside of lightwave which I also said from the start when they released Chronosculpt, at that time they said, no Chronosculpt will not be a part of lightwave..so I am glad a new company now is taking user ideas more seriously. Using Chronosculpt for animating morphs ..is easier than the corresponding blender morph shapes. What they have to fix now..that is to put up a demo trial, and fix their new forum, which is not ready to be public in it´s current state.
I don't think anyone uses Blender for sims, Houdini is the right choice for. Everyone including the Blender devs are aware that the smoke sims and other FX parts of Blender are subpart and abandoned and they'll eventually change and rebuilt everything with geonodes in future but it's a slow process as Houdini has over 25 years of development to be where it is now where Blender only has had this pace of development for less than 5 years now.
@@xanzuls With many movies being very VFX fire, smoke and explosion heavy... this is the place is where blender fails severely, if it can´t do fluids properly. Same with Modo I think. Lightwave on the other hand, TFD isn´t as capable as houdini when it comes to complexity in the fluids, but it´s reasonably fast and delivers good quality, this can´t be said about blenders fluid fire and smoke solution. So if you would to choose a tool for lower budget production ..a movie/tv series that needs these vfx, would you choose blender over lightwave for it? Each one of them would be one of the cheapest solutions, one of them would deliver better quality I think in the output. O no..blender has been around with fluids since at least 2014-2016, we are reaching 2023 now. TFD has been around as a fluid simulation tool for over 12 years, but unfortunately..haven´t made any significant steps in development, it stagnated, and pretty much abonded development for lightwave, and instead focused as a fluid solution on cinema4D, and now jascha is working on a standalone version. Mantaflow replaced the older blender fluids, I didn´t like that, it doesn´t updates, slow as hell to simulate, unreliable results and quality marginally better than the older system, but it´s just do poor to be usable professionally, hobbywise you may get something semidecent perhaps. All this in reference to it´s fire and smoke fluid. There are a couple of things that blender fluids does better, it has particle advection, TFD has none, it can use all blenders forces winds etc, while TFD can not use the Lightwave legacy forces, nor bullet forces, it has it´s onw forces, so we have like 3 different ..in fact 4 different force system if we include the force vectors in the VDB gas solver, and none of these 4 systems works together. Blender fluids can show fire and smoke shader in open GL at once, TFD do not do that. But apart from that, TFD simulates with GPU much faster, it provides better control for noise advection, standard noise fractals, and a better solver within the grid providing smoother quality in the renderer, so if one can override the other stuff, you will at least get the job done fast, and with a decently good renderer. The VDB gas solver was a quich fix to try and deliver a fluid solution natively, maybe they intended to work more on it, but it is just to slow and tedious to setup as it is now, that TFD is a better solution when something has to be delivered. Not sure if the Lightwave team is just gonna let the Native VDB gas solver sit there unsolved, and instead focus on TurbulenceFD, one of them needs to be in focus and improved though.
@@xanzuls So...what to do if blender can not be used for sims? sounds severe unless blender is aimed towards anime, manga or just everything else that just don´t have the need for fire and explosions shots. Get houdini, which kind of defeats the "cheap" strengths of an open source tool. Get embergen, same there maybe..though I myself in fact bougth embergen some time ago. I may record some comparisons when I get hold of the latest Lightwave demo if TFD works decently long within the discovery edition, so one can compare the simulation speed and some other functions with blenders fluids. Now..this is all about fluids, there are of course so many other areas where lightwave fails severly, rendering of hair, rendering of multiple volume bounce scattering in volume items ..which simply isn´t possible, and you can´t use octane to override that either, only vdb´s.
@@PrometheusPhamarus Do they pay you to shill for them? There's more to 3D than just pissing around with smoke and fluids..why not 'create' a film with it, anyone can toss around with the tools all day long....
@@SpacialKatana Pay to shill for who´m, I have no idea of what company, what tool you refer to.?? "There´s more to 3D than just pissing around with smoke and fluids" ?? I had not idea, I thought that was the only thing you could do in 3D. "why not make a film with it" yeah..sure, give me a good script and a proper reason to why ..I will consider it, otherwise my plans aren´t yours to decide or plan. To make it easier for you, I am not payed by any 3D vendor, software developer to do or say anything about their tools. You have no idea about what "there´s more to 3D tools than pissing around with smoke and fluids" incorporates in relation to what I do.
I worked with Lightwave around 2000 and I remember it was painfully slow (on an Apple G3) and came with a USB security key which was a pain. Seems like they haven't updated and stayed competitive with other programs. I didn't think it was still around. Seems like the price has come down despite 20 years of inflation. Still to high for me to reconsider learning it again.
😁 so you base your conclusions from 20 years ago? and failed to have been updated since 20 years ago, that there is no more USB dongle serial. And you say it seems like they haven´t updated since then, or to be competitive based on what? And you didnt think it was still around because of what? Seems you need to do a little research on Lightwave before commenting on it.
In 2020 there was no USB keys and the Layout application had some pretty impressive viewport performance that still today leave some others behind, Chronosculpt is crazy fast with giant meshes
I like LightWave but the answer would have to be no, Blender is free and even if it has some pretty weird crap UI and the worst scene navigation ever made it would be a better choice I think, LightWave's biggest problem is the ancient modeler application and it look like it will not get any major update, I don't know how much in terms of bug fixes they have done but LW 2018 was chrashing a little here and there, too much to be comfortable, I wish them all the best but without some major changes to the modeler or integrating it in layout I do not see it going that far, it has some very nice IK support and tools hidden, behind the... conservative UI ;) the layout viewport performance is great and the renderer is very nice if you can accept it is CPU. Chronosculpt is an amazing tool though, I use it still today.
Neither nor. Are you a beginner? Then use Plasticity as a surface modeler or Rocket as a polygon modeler. Don't waste your money on Lightwave and don't waste your time on blender!
I've admired the software and it's community from afar, but if LW:Modeler had the option to be sold separately, and for a good price, then I'd become a user.
@@Nebulous6 Modo is no longer a dedicated modeller, and it's price has long since increased accordingly as it now features a full animation and rigging feature set. If LW:Modeler were to become an optional separate purchase, it would be a dedicated modelling package like Silo, from Nevercenter.
@@stevenray8737 One thing I've been telling people is to tell the new owners to sell a non-support version of LightWave 2015 for around $150.00 (LW 2015 is technically LW v 12 and the last of the original LightWave series). They're aware of this as a possibility and just need enough people to remind them.
Great news! But why? Out of all legacy tools, lightwave’s existence is hardest to justify. They don’t offer anything unique, user base is 5 artists who stuck in early 2k, clunky ui, no out of the box pipeline support of any kind, not sure about render engine (on 2020 release they say they have award winning render engine baked in, but in 2023 release they have bundled octane plugin? Again not sure because there’s no actual documentation), windows only, 1k for license. I never thought that I’ll ever say that, but if you really want to have terrible ui from decade ago, workflow that feels ancient, be locked to windows, and pay a lot by modern standards better use 3d max. At least it’s bundled with Arnold, has pretty good support, great documentation, and giant community of artists.
You can´t count, 5 artists? Really. But other than that, all the other things are up for discussion for those who want´s to, I don´t with someone who can´t count. clunky UI, in my opinion it does most things right, and less distracting than blenders UI, it´s better organized, structured, and in fact..you can organize your buttons, tools plugins anywhere you want on the side or top menus..which you can´t do in blender. I get more frustrated having to resize windows, collapse menus, bad icons and such in blender, the color change of UI is however great, where Lightwave sucks. Quad views are adjustable and can be maximized, by one button click on respective viewport, not possible in blender unless you set up specific windows dedicated to work a certain way. zxy coordinates in blender is what governs camera or light nagivation, while we have itmore easy and understandable in Lightwave pitch, bank, heading controls, you do not have to know the coordinate system for working with it efficiently, same goes with other 3D tools that have adapted pitch, bank and heading for those important scene tools. I would work anytime in Lightwave layout to do scene setups rather than blender, if it werent´f for the poor render speed, and for the poor vdb rendering features, and speed in rendering and in openGL handling of VDBs. They are adressing the render speed by now providing octane, but I am not sure that will be enough, octane can not access all lightwave fractals.
@@PrometheusPhamarus I didn’t say a word about blender, and not sure which count you’re talking about. It’s all subjective, especially when we’re talking about artistic tools. If that’s what you use to create cool stuff, good for you. No need to be offended by someone expressing their opinion. As for blender, I suggest actually learning it, and you’ll see that everything you mentioned as an advantage is there, you just need to put some effort to actually learn it. Plus the workflow philosophy is very very different (blender is all about shortcuts, you hardly ever use the ui once you get comfortable with it). As for lightwave, I’m pretty opened for trying new things and always excited when there’s a new tool. Just for now I find it overpriced for what it is at the moment. In 2023 I expect a little bit more from tool that costs 1k, and has a pretty lengthy history. Plus I don’t see it fit In any niche. Their marketing materials suggest vfx, but for vfx and or animation you need to have great Linux support, great pipeline support and very robust render engine. Unreal bridge suggests aim towards gaming community, but it’s overpriced for that matter. Mograph people sit exclusively on cinema4d, and sometimes Houdini. So I just don’t see it fit anywhere as it is right now. It’s not a bad tool, it’s just not better than any other established tool, and not remarkable in something specific.
@@ayneSFilms I didn´t say you did, in regards to blender, never mentioned anything about that.. that wasn´t the point, the point is that I claim you assert false things, there are not a user base of "5 artist" stuck in the early 2k, that is just nonsense, there are far more than that. The UI is more customizable when it comes to organize your tools, you can not as I am aware of rip out, pick any menu, tool, plugin and put it in your own menu in the UI direcly, when you go to edit menu, you just drag and drop whatever command you have in to the menu you want, you re-organize the top menu by dragging and dropping them, you can not do that in blender. What is bad with Lightwave UI, is the color adjustment, you have to close and restart, that is bad, but the very structure, no icon screwing around, no vertical text on the labels, no normal person reads with their head twisted, or text in a vertical direction, unless japanese, chinese perhaps. Otherwise the Lightwave UI is less distractive when it comes to what you are working on in the viewports, blender is full of colors, icons, text ..which is just distractive for me. This depends on what work theme you are in though, if you work with sculpting, that will not be the case, if you work with scene setup for cameras and actions, it is distractive. Lightwave has proper quad views for layout for instance, if you want to setup and move things in a scene around, I prefer it...the viewports can be scaled, maximized with a button and restored blenders quad view can not, it is fixed, unless you set up windows individually and mess with that, but it´s just tedious. Camera icon is horrible in blender, I can not see what is up and down sometimes, they should learn from lightwave there, and also..make the same color, blender´s black wireframe camera you have to go in and edit, by default a bad choice, but that can be overriden, I just don´t get their default color design state, but a proper camera icon is needed. Also, xyz axis to tell where the camera should be heading, or have it´s pitch? it´s bad, lightwave has heading, pitch, and bank..you don´t have to second guess the rotation for lights or cameras. Also, Lightwave has in my opinion a more focused access workflow, when you select camera, hit p, you get it´s properties, you do not have to scroll in any menu to find the camera. Lightwave has a fixed work area, camera, light, object buttons, always at the same place, which makes it instinctively much fluent to access, and you hit "p" for properies and you are instantly getting the values for the camera, while in blender you have to select the camera, then look for an icon that represents it, then click it and find the values, then scrolling a lot as well. This said, Blender is Awesome in many ways, and it´s free...but I rather work in a workspace environment like Lightwave´s if I could have some of the blender features. As for the new stuff, the fluid solution they now added, will probably provide a much better fluid solution than blender has, so if you need to create explosions with a professional look, Turbulence FD might be a better choice than cramming out fluid explosions from blender, it simulates much faster than blender, and voxel quality is better in my opinion. Rendering of the fluids will now be doable with octane also being shipped with Lightwave. The fractal set is horrible in blender, and you can not even use the cloud fractal for density in any volume item, the set consists of like 10 fractal noises, and exclude number 10 which would be the cloud fractal if you could use it in that channel. Now compare 10 fractal textures against lightwaves 80, you would need to buy other textures for blender, and mostly they originate from the same base function textures, just a mess of nodes to provide new fractals. I do not need to learn blender that much to be able to judge it "I suggest actually learning it, and you’ll see that everything you mentioned as an advantage is there, you just need to put some effort to actually learn it" ( I know it fairly decent) Blenders all about shortcuts? that is what the problem is..this means you put more strain on your brain trying to memorize which shortcuts, you shouldn´t have to do that.. and if you work with many other 3D tools, you will only be messing things up, it´s just folly to have shortcut as incitaments to that is how you should learn it. why did they ship it with icons, text, menus in the first place, a shortcut dummy would be enough in such case.
@@orphydiancg7759 Currently I do not think so, they have their upgrade pricing, but no indie as I am aware of, we may suggest that and see how they respond, though I think they need to evaluate the sales of the first release before they go on with that in such case. Pricing was ( no more)£ 450.00 for 2020 users. Now for pre-2020 users it is £ 550.00 New licens £ 795.00 I first need a trial demo and try it for like 30 days during christmas if they can have that demo trial ready, and after that testing it in discovery mode. They also need to get the software in to schools, or individuals attending to a certain school. They have an education license which is free, valid for 12 months, but can be renewed ( without extra cost I assume) It is a none commercial license that doesn´t cost, but you have to verify the school, an administrative fee is charged though... Administrative Fee: While the license itself is free, there is a nominal £30 administrative fee to process your application.
For me it seams strange that you have previously badmouthed Modo, and now you're prizing Lightwave! I was a LW user long time ago, but switched to Modo because the active LW software devs are went to Newtek and Modo was a natural successor to it! LW is lagging so much behind the 3d world right now, even Blender is a lightyears ahead!
@@ferencszabo3504 That is nonsense, there is no bad news, blender is great in my opinion..if you were upset by my critics, you have to read it properly, but you do not know how much i have praised blender for some stuff, and vice versa for lightwave..no tool is immune from being bad severly in some areas....so I have no idea of why you have the urge to tell someone there is bad news? I am not here to play a silly knight of the 3D software battle game, each tool has it´s shortcomings, blender has quite a few, Lightwave has quite a few as well. For your notice since you seem to not understand where I come from, I am using blender more and more, and will not buy this lightwave version until some other releases I think. It is also personal, if you are astonished how good blender is, there are those who can´t stand it.
All the fundamentals are covered without the need for any programming. Are you into some exotic stuff? I used LW in a production studio back in 1998 and, even then, it had everything we needed to get the job done for film and television work.
still too expensive and I'm too spoiled with blender... I have had lightwave since version 2.0 in the video toaster and the last one I purchased was LW3D 2019... in USD this upgrade would cost me $700+ and compared to what's out there doesn't seem cost effective to me when old versions to upgrade were $399 when newtek owned it. As of right now even After Effects has a 3D capabilities, with integrated Cinema 4D lite, and you add to that Blender which is FREE... c'mon is a no brainer not to spend when you don't have to.
The interface has a button for everything. So no keyboard shortcuts needed. Each button even has the name of the tool written right on it instead of a cryptic icon.
@@Nebulous6 Ok, I see. But reading all the time large Button texts? Colorfull icons are faster at work and take less space. Like Solidworks, Rhino, C4D, Rocket, Alias, ... The grey interface - everything looks the same and it takes long to find.
@@cr4723 Generally, I prefer text buttons since there's no translation from hieroglyphics required. However, if the picture icons have a tool-tip when you hover over it, then I'm okay with colorful symbols. I use both LightWave and Blender and am equally comfortable with both. And I used Max, Rhino, and Maya back in the day. In LightWave, it's easy enough to just place all the items in the [More] drop downs on the interface directly. For any 3D app, it's really just a matter of getting used to them as they're all packed full of stuff.
@jakestilgard4145 Actually, it would be v.12 since 2015 was the first version to be released after version 11. Great idea though. I'm sure lots of people would snap it up for that price and then get hooked on LW.
Love Lightwave! Wonderful tool! So happy it is being developed again!
Lightwave3D ROCKS! ;)
Good to hear Lightwave is not dead. I think this release is like a nice new starting point, but afterwards they have to do a great job of updating it in time, because there's a lot to catch up compared to other DCC apps like Maya or Cinema. Blender also is a huge contender and it's free. But Lw has always had a good philosophy of a speedy workflow even for single general users. So, that philosophy could even be a winner one as time passes. Let's see what the new owners bring in the near future !
Wow! I thought this was dead years ago! Thanks for keeping me up to date! 👏👏👏
Used to work with Lightwave years ago...
then BLENDER showed up.
Would Lightwave get back its fame?
Only time will tell.
Thanks for the review and info.
Wow. Not dead yet. Good news.
It got bought by a New Company
@@smilesprouniverse Lets hope it gets better attention. NewTek dropped the ball badly.
One of the biggest improvements is Octane Render is included standard, but not mentioned as a major feature on the website.
That's because Octane will require a commercial license in the next version.
Well yes, but a version that's a few years behind all the other versions of Octane. Which is why it became free.
tbh i dont see what lightwave offers for 800$ versus blender w. plugins
You most often not judge it like that.
If some tools in Lightwave offers a workflow to already established pipelines, studios..it adds to the general cost of not breaking it and start learning blender, and such.
You can not spit out the same quality fire and smoke fluids as you can with TurbulenceFD, that´s one example.
a UI that won't drive you crazy.
Though not a Lightwave user I must say that it is good. I hope it will add some more competition between major applications. Maybe...
New Blender frenemy
Yeahh juuuhuuu Yiiihhhaaa. Yiiipppiiiiiii !!!
AMAZING!!
Plot twist: Autodesk buys it, then kill it.
... And then hunts down the original founders and takes them out too 🤔
Autodesk would never want it.
Plot Twist. Softimage and Lightwave do a midnight ninja raid and exterminate their Autodesk slave masters.
bro are you inspirational tuts ??
Wait... hold up! People still use Lightwave? I remember playing around with it back in the early 2000s. Didn't know they were still going. Seems like most 3D applications are following certain standards. Think I should check out this new one.
Following standards has basically become a necessity at this point.
Even Blender is getting in on that action with USD so I might actually be able to convert my Maya scenes to USD and finally dump it for FOSS.
I still use it for work related projects and for hobby as well. The physical render in LW2020 has been tremendous for me, and there's also a free version of Octane if you want to use GPU.
Now bring Clarisse back
Yes, it´s a little impressive of what they have done with so little time owning it, and most things seem to be in the right direction, compared to the latest release which I didn´t even download a demo on, this time I will.
Yes, TFD is a good addition, if they can maintain development on it, it is simulating faster than blender, since blender doesn´t use GPU, better quality in the solver which yields better render quality as well:
It has a better thermal convection function, which blender do no thave.
It can use like over 80 Lightwave noise fractals for fluid emission density, (blender only 8 or so) so you could have all kinds of nice fractal textures, even let particles drop on surface and spawn the actual fluid emission, or use animated text, or a marker pen fractal textures or just the more noise based textures.
The textures can also be stacked on top of eachother to allow for variations in fluid opacity so you can get different levels of rising smoke or cloud raising levels.
There are some downsides to it though, previously it was unstable, and it can not use any other force than it´s own built in Wind force, which means you can not use bullet wind dynamics, or the legacy wind dynamics that works for the particle system.
So we have a lot of different dynamics systems not talking to eachother, in blenders case..most stuff seem to work in unison..so that is the positive for blenders part, but then again..if it´s so slow to simulate, not updating properly when moving stuff, and not giving the same quality...it´s not gonna work for professional work, with TFD despite the forces not working in unison, it may not be necessary all the time, but it delivers.
Chronosculpt will be inside of Lightwave, not sure if that is there already, but that is the plan, I got chronosculpt for free after the core debacle, as a compensation, but I think it needs to be inside of lightwave which I also said from the start when they released Chronosculpt, at that time they said, no Chronosculpt will not be a part of lightwave..so I am glad a new company now is taking user ideas more seriously.
Using Chronosculpt for animating morphs ..is easier than the corresponding blender morph shapes.
What they have to fix now..that is to put up a demo trial, and fix their new forum, which is not ready to be public in it´s current state.
I don't think anyone uses Blender for sims, Houdini is the right choice for. Everyone including the Blender devs are aware that the smoke sims and other FX parts of Blender are subpart and abandoned and they'll eventually change and rebuilt everything with geonodes in future but it's a slow process as Houdini has over 25 years of development to be where it is now where Blender only has had this pace of development for less than 5 years now.
@@xanzuls
With many movies being very VFX fire, smoke and explosion heavy... this is the place is where blender fails severely, if it can´t do fluids properly.
Same with Modo I think.
Lightwave on the other hand, TFD isn´t as capable as houdini when it comes to complexity in the fluids, but it´s reasonably fast and delivers good quality, this can´t be said about blenders fluid fire and smoke solution.
So if you would to choose a tool for lower budget production ..a movie/tv series that needs these vfx, would you choose blender over lightwave for it?
Each one of them would be one of the cheapest solutions, one of them would deliver better quality I think in the output.
O no..blender has been around with fluids since at least 2014-2016, we are reaching 2023 now.
TFD has been around as a fluid simulation tool for over 12 years, but unfortunately..haven´t made any significant steps in development, it stagnated, and pretty much abonded development for lightwave, and instead focused as a fluid solution on cinema4D, and now jascha is working on a standalone version.
Mantaflow replaced the older blender fluids, I didn´t like that, it doesn´t updates, slow as hell to simulate, unreliable results and quality marginally better than the older system, but it´s just do poor to be usable professionally, hobbywise you may get something semidecent perhaps.
All this in reference to it´s fire and smoke fluid.
There are a couple of things that blender fluids does better, it has particle advection, TFD has none, it can use all blenders forces winds etc, while TFD can not use the Lightwave legacy forces, nor bullet forces, it has it´s onw forces, so we have like 3 different ..in fact 4 different force system if we include the force vectors in the VDB gas solver, and none of these 4 systems works together.
Blender fluids can show fire and smoke shader in open GL at once, TFD do not do that.
But apart from that, TFD simulates with GPU much faster, it provides better control for noise advection, standard noise fractals, and a better solver within the grid providing smoother quality in the renderer, so if one can override the other stuff, you will at least get the job done fast, and with a decently good renderer.
The VDB gas solver was a quich fix to try and deliver a fluid solution natively, maybe they intended to work more on it, but it is just to slow and tedious to setup as it is now, that TFD is a better solution when something has to be delivered.
Not sure if the Lightwave team is just gonna let the Native VDB gas solver sit there unsolved, and instead focus on TurbulenceFD, one of them needs to be in focus and improved though.
@@xanzuls So...what to do if blender can not be used for sims? sounds severe unless blender is aimed towards anime, manga or just everything else that just don´t have the need for fire and explosions shots.
Get houdini, which kind of defeats the "cheap" strengths of an open source tool.
Get embergen, same there maybe..though I myself in fact bougth embergen some time ago.
I may record some comparisons when I get hold of the latest Lightwave demo if TFD works decently long within the discovery edition, so one can compare the simulation speed and some other functions with blenders fluids.
Now..this is all about fluids, there are of course so many other areas where lightwave fails severly, rendering of hair, rendering of multiple volume bounce scattering in volume items ..which simply isn´t possible, and you can´t use octane to override that either, only vdb´s.
@@PrometheusPhamarus Do they pay you to shill for them? There's more to 3D than just pissing around with smoke and fluids..why not 'create' a film with it, anyone can toss around with the tools all day long....
@@SpacialKatana
Pay to shill for who´m, I have no idea of what company, what tool you refer to.??
"There´s more to 3D than just pissing around with smoke and fluids" ?? I had not idea, I thought that was the only thing you could do in 3D.
"why not make a film with it" yeah..sure, give me a good script and a proper reason to why ..I will consider it, otherwise my plans aren´t yours to decide or plan.
To make it easier for you, I am not payed by any 3D vendor, software developer to do or say anything about their tools.
You have no idea about what "there´s more to 3D tools than pissing around with smoke and fluids" incorporates in relation to what I do.
I worked with Lightwave around 2000 and I remember it was painfully slow (on an Apple G3) and came with a USB security key which was a pain. Seems like they haven't updated and stayed competitive with other programs. I didn't think it was still around. Seems like the price has come down despite 20 years of inflation. Still to high for me to reconsider learning it again.
😁 so you base your conclusions from 20 years ago?
and failed to have been updated since 20 years ago, that there is no more USB dongle serial.
And you say it seems like they haven´t updated since then, or to be competitive based on what?
And you didnt think it was still around because of what?
Seems you need to do a little research on Lightwave before commenting on it.
In 2020 there was no USB keys and the Layout application had some pretty impressive viewport performance that still today leave some others behind, Chronosculpt is crazy fast with giant meshes
Compared to the competition at that time, LightWave was smokin' fast on the Mac G3. There were even magazine reviews that stated such.
Cool
Is it okay to learn this software as a beginner 😮?
I like LightWave but the answer would have to be no, Blender is free and even if it has some pretty weird crap UI and the worst scene navigation ever made it would be a better choice I think, LightWave's biggest problem is the ancient modeler application and it look like it will not get any major update, I don't know how much in terms of bug fixes they have done but LW 2018 was chrashing a little here and there, too much to be comfortable, I wish them all the best but without some major changes to the modeler or integrating it in layout I do not see it going that far, it has some very nice IK support and tools hidden, behind the... conservative UI ;) the layout viewport performance is great and the renderer is very nice if you can accept it is CPU. Chronosculpt is an amazing tool though, I use it still today.
Start with Blender and stick with it, you do not need this old piece of s....t
@@rustandmagic alright got you. 🙏
@@shluhenfurer ok Sir 👍,
Neither nor. Are you a beginner? Then use Plasticity as a surface modeler or Rocket as a polygon modeler. Don't waste your money on Lightwave and don't waste your time on blender!
I've admired the software and it's community from afar, but if LW:Modeler had the option to be sold separately, and for a good price, then I'd become a user.
I can fully emphasize this! But only with toolbars.
That would be Modo.
@@Nebulous6 Modo is no longer a dedicated modeller, and it's price has long since increased accordingly as it now features a full animation and rigging feature set. If LW:Modeler were to become an optional separate purchase, it would be a dedicated modelling package like Silo, from Nevercenter.
@@stevenray8737 One thing I've been telling people is to tell the new owners to sell a non-support version of LightWave 2015 for around $150.00 (LW 2015 is technically LW v 12 and the last of the original LightWave series). They're aware of this as a possibility and just need enough people to remind them.
Great news! But why? Out of all legacy tools, lightwave’s existence is hardest to justify. They don’t offer anything unique, user base is 5 artists who stuck in early 2k, clunky ui, no out of the box pipeline support of any kind, not sure about render engine (on 2020 release they say they have award winning render engine baked in, but in 2023 release they have bundled octane plugin? Again not sure because there’s no actual documentation), windows only, 1k for license. I never thought that I’ll ever say that, but if you really want to have terrible ui from decade ago, workflow that feels ancient, be locked to windows, and pay a lot by modern standards better use 3d max. At least it’s bundled with Arnold, has pretty good support, great documentation, and giant community of artists.
You can´t count, 5 artists?
Really.
But other than that, all the other things are up for discussion for those who want´s to, I don´t with someone who can´t count.
clunky UI, in my opinion it does most things right, and less distracting than blenders UI, it´s better organized, structured, and in fact..you can organize your buttons, tools plugins anywhere you want on the side or top menus..which you can´t do in blender.
I get more frustrated having to resize windows, collapse menus, bad icons and such in blender, the color change of UI is however great, where Lightwave sucks.
Quad views are adjustable and can be maximized, by one button click on respective viewport, not possible in blender unless you set up specific windows dedicated to work a certain way.
zxy coordinates in blender is what governs camera or light nagivation, while we have itmore easy and understandable in Lightwave pitch, bank, heading controls, you do not have to know the coordinate system for working with it efficiently, same goes with other 3D tools that have adapted pitch, bank and heading for those important scene tools.
I would work anytime in Lightwave layout to do scene setups rather than blender, if it werent´f for the poor render speed, and for the poor vdb rendering features, and speed in rendering and in openGL handling of VDBs.
They are adressing the render speed by now providing octane, but I am not sure that will be enough, octane can not access all lightwave fractals.
@@PrometheusPhamarus I didn’t say a word about blender, and not sure which count you’re talking about. It’s all subjective, especially when we’re talking about artistic tools. If that’s what you use to create cool stuff, good for you. No need to be offended by someone expressing their opinion. As for blender, I suggest actually learning it, and you’ll see that everything you mentioned as an advantage is there, you just need to put some effort to actually learn it. Plus the workflow philosophy is very very different (blender is all about shortcuts, you hardly ever use the ui once you get comfortable with it). As for lightwave, I’m pretty opened for trying new things and always excited when there’s a new tool. Just for now I find it overpriced for what it is at the moment. In 2023 I expect a little bit more from tool that costs 1k, and has a pretty lengthy history. Plus I don’t see it fit In any niche. Their marketing materials suggest vfx, but for vfx and or animation you need to have great Linux support, great pipeline support and very robust render engine. Unreal bridge suggests aim towards gaming community, but it’s overpriced for that matter. Mograph people sit exclusively on cinema4d, and sometimes Houdini. So I just don’t see it fit anywhere as it is right now. It’s not a bad tool, it’s just not better than any other established tool, and not remarkable in something specific.
Do they have something to compete with Indie licenses of Max. Maya, Houdini?
@@ayneSFilms
I didn´t say you did, in regards to blender, never mentioned anything about that.. that wasn´t the point, the point is that I claim you assert false things, there are not a user base of "5 artist" stuck in the early 2k, that is just nonsense, there are far more than that.
The UI is more customizable when it comes to organize your tools, you can not as I am aware of rip out, pick any menu, tool, plugin and put it in your own menu in the UI direcly, when you go to edit menu, you just drag and drop whatever command you have in to the menu you want, you re-organize the top menu by dragging and dropping them, you can not do that in blender.
What is bad with Lightwave UI, is the color adjustment, you have to close and restart, that is bad, but the very structure, no icon screwing around, no vertical text on the labels, no normal person reads with their head twisted, or text in a vertical direction, unless japanese, chinese perhaps.
Otherwise the Lightwave UI is less distractive when it comes to what you are working on in the viewports, blender is full of colors, icons, text ..which is just distractive for me.
This depends on what work theme you are in though, if you work with sculpting, that will not be the case, if you work with scene setup for cameras and actions, it is distractive.
Lightwave has proper quad views for layout for instance, if you want to setup and move things in a scene around, I prefer it...the viewports can be scaled, maximized with a button and restored blenders quad view can not, it is fixed, unless you set up windows individually and mess with that, but it´s just tedious.
Camera icon is horrible in blender, I can not see what is up and down sometimes, they should learn from lightwave there, and also..make the same color, blender´s black wireframe camera you have to go in and edit, by default a bad choice, but that can be overriden, I just don´t get their default color design state, but a proper camera icon is needed.
Also, xyz axis to tell where the camera should be heading, or have it´s pitch? it´s bad, lightwave has heading, pitch, and bank..you don´t have to second guess the rotation for lights or cameras.
Also, Lightwave has in my opinion a more focused access workflow, when you select camera, hit p, you get it´s properties, you do not have to scroll in any menu to find the camera. Lightwave has a fixed work area, camera, light, object buttons, always at the same place, which makes it instinctively much fluent to access, and you hit "p" for properies and you are instantly getting the values for the camera, while in blender you have to select the camera, then look for an icon that represents it, then click it and find the values, then scrolling a lot as well.
This said, Blender is Awesome in many ways, and it´s free...but I rather work in a workspace environment like Lightwave´s if I could have some of the blender features.
As for the new stuff, the fluid solution they now added, will probably provide a much better fluid solution than blender has, so if you need to create explosions with a professional look, Turbulence FD might be a better choice than cramming out fluid explosions from blender, it simulates much faster than blender, and voxel quality is better in my opinion.
Rendering of the fluids will now be doable with octane also being shipped with Lightwave.
The fractal set is horrible in blender, and you can not even use the cloud fractal for density in any volume item, the set consists of like 10 fractal noises, and exclude number 10 which would be the cloud fractal if you could use it in that channel.
Now compare 10 fractal textures against lightwaves 80, you would need to buy other textures for blender, and mostly they originate from the same base function textures, just a mess of nodes to provide new fractals.
I do not need to learn blender that much to be able to judge it "I suggest actually learning it, and you’ll see that everything you mentioned as an advantage is there, you just need to put some effort to actually learn it" ( I know it fairly decent)
Blenders all about shortcuts? that is what the problem is..this means you put more strain on your brain trying to memorize which shortcuts, you shouldn´t have to do that.. and if you work with many other 3D tools, you will only be messing things up, it´s just folly to have shortcut as incitaments to that is how you should learn it. why did they ship it with icons, text, menus in the first place, a shortcut dummy would be enough in such case.
@@orphydiancg7759
Currently I do not think so, they have their upgrade pricing, but no indie as I am aware of, we may suggest that and see how they respond, though I think they need to evaluate the sales of the first release before they go on with that in such case.
Pricing was ( no more)£ 450.00 for 2020 users.
Now for pre-2020 users it is £ 550.00
New licens £ 795.00
I first need a trial demo and try it for like 30 days during christmas if they can have that demo trial ready, and after that testing it in discovery mode.
They also need to get the software in to schools, or individuals attending to a certain school.
They have an education license which is free, valid for 12 months, but can be renewed ( without extra cost I assume)
It is a none commercial license that doesn´t cost, but you have to verify the school, an administrative fee is charged though...
Administrative Fee: While the license itself is free, there is a nominal £30 administrative fee to process your application.
For me it seams strange that you have previously badmouthed Modo, and now you're prizing Lightwave! I was a LW user long time ago, but switched to Modo because the active LW software devs are went to Newtek and Modo was a natural successor to it! LW is lagging so much behind the 3d world right now, even Blender is a lightyears ahead!
lightyears ahead?
Nonsense.
@@PrometheusPhamarus Sorry to be the bringer of the bad news! 😁 I'm astonished how good Blender is!
@@ferencszabo3504
That is nonsense, there is no bad news, blender is great in my opinion..if you were upset by my critics, you have to read it properly, but you do not know how much i have praised blender for some stuff, and vice versa for lightwave..no tool is immune from being bad severly in some areas....so I have no idea of why you have the urge to tell someone there is bad news?
I am not here to play a silly knight of the 3D software battle game, each tool has it´s shortcomings, blender has quite a few, Lightwave has quite a few as well.
For your notice since you seem to not understand where I come from, I am using blender more and more, and will not buy this lightwave version until some other releases I think.
It is also personal, if you are astonished how good blender is, there are those who can´t stand it.
@@ferencszabo3504
And still, lightyears ahead is with a reality check, not possible.
@@PrometheusPhamarus please tell me where LW shines compared to Blender!
Innovative... well not really. Just 10 years of catch up to go and they'll only be 10 years behind.
look up the price. boom! lol
so.... they bought some plug ins fuckadoodledo...
that was my only problem with lightwave, to do cool stuff, you needed to program it in python, or buy a plugin
it was very tiresome
All the fundamentals are covered without the need for any programming. Are you into some exotic stuff? I used LW in a production studio back in 1998 and, even then, it had everything we needed to get the job done for film and television work.
still too expensive and I'm too spoiled with blender... I have had lightwave since version 2.0 in the video toaster and the last one I purchased was LW3D 2019... in USD this upgrade would cost me $700+ and compared to what's out there doesn't seem cost effective to me when old versions to upgrade were $399 when newtek owned it. As of right now even After Effects has a 3D capabilities, with integrated Cinema 4D lite, and you add to that Blender which is FREE... c'mon is a no brainer not to spend when you don't have to.
Where are the toolbars? Do I have to learn shortcuts like in that crappy Blender?
The interface has a button for everything. So no keyboard shortcuts needed. Each button even has the name of the tool written right on it instead of a cryptic icon.
@@Nebulous6 Ok, I see. But reading all the time large Button texts? Colorfull icons are faster at work and take less space. Like Solidworks, Rhino, C4D, Rocket, Alias, ... The grey interface - everything looks the same and it takes long to find.
@@cr4723 Generally, I prefer text buttons since there's no translation from hieroglyphics required. However, if the picture icons have a tool-tip when you hover over it, then I'm okay with colorful symbols. I use both LightWave and Blender and am equally comfortable with both. And I used Max, Rhino, and Maya back in the day. In LightWave, it's easy enough to just place all the items in the [More] drop downs on the interface directly. For any 3D app, it's really just a matter of getting used to them as they're all packed full of stuff.
No educational license? No indie license? This seems even more overpriced than C4D
Educational licenses are free. And there will be a 30 day demo released soon
A student would be a fool to be learning LightWave anyway, especially if they want a job in the industry.
Cinema 4d is subscription only and LW is a perpetual license . So on the mid therm this means its way cheaper and you own it.
Lightwave has wasted his time and is now of little interest. even 3DS Max and Maya loosing positions from year to year..
Yep, Houdini and Blender rule now, FTW
@@KN-sc4up Blendwhat?
Where are the AI functions? Or is this software from the last century?
I am sorry but it is not free??? Is that a joke? Who needs this old s....t now? Too late. I think it will not take too long when it is closed forever.
@jakestilgard4145 Actually, it would be v.12 since 2015 was the first version to be released after version 11. Great idea though. I'm sure lots of people would snap it up for that price and then get hooked on LW.