Everybody Thought This 3D Software is Dead!!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ธ.ค. 2023
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Couple of things you forgot to mention. Lightwave started as videoscape 3D years before the Toaster. Same guys, Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson. Lightwave was also used for Character animation mainly the M&M's though the 90's and 2000's. During that time, Lightwave was part of two very significant revolutions in CGI, one was the poly based subdivision surfaces and image based HDRI lighting. These were copied to almost every other application. When you mentioned Avatar, the entire first film was made in Lightwave for the Mocap process. They called is VAD or virtual art department, where they used Lightwave to see the characters and sets on the mocap stage in Realtime. Often now called virtual Production, Lightwave did this first.
That's the way it is.
I used this software years ago... It was my first 3d software I had ever used. Glad to see it back
I learned Lightwave 8, then 9, back in highschool. I learned the, by then, outdated GMAX for a couple months beforehand thus technically making it the first 3D software I had ever touched but Lightwave is where I first cut my teeth. I managed to snag a boxed copy from someone a couple years back so I can go back and play with it on a vastly more beefy computer than what I had in highschool whenever I am feeling nostalgic.
A dual Opteron 285 with 12GB of RAM and a Quadro FX 4600 on XPx64 vs a 3GHZ dual core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a who knows what 128MB videocard. The performance difference is incalculable, even if it is still all relics.
Same here, it was small enough to run on my old PC :D I still use it as I know it the best.
This brings back memories. I used to experiment as a kid in Lightwave as I was fascinated by the world of 3D. It's been a while since I heard of it again. I hope it makes a big comeback. Competition is good for the consumer and industry as a whole. They should target open source school of thought.
Same here, for a few years i used ti play with It, great piece of software Indeed. But of i had to spend some time on 3d graphics now, i would use Blender.
very hard playground now with Blender having almost all other competitors on their toes
@@ninjaman58 Especially once the Blender team realised they needed to seriously update with version 2 or 3 (I think it was 2.5). Made a lot of old Blender diehards unhappy but it made the software easier and more attractive to people who were ready to convert across.
I love lightwave, if I need to get something modelled fast and accurately, lightwave is my go to program.
I do hope they manage to revive the old lady.
The biggest reason for the downfall of Lightwave was Newtek itself rather than anything outside the company like Autodesk.
It all started with the core development team leaving to start up Modo.
Newtek slowed down with innovative development, constantly changed strategic direction and did not read where the industry was heading.
bingo!
I can't believe that this video exists without the mention of Luxology and Modo. Modo killed Lightwave, not Maya.
I was there.. in that era.. it was Modo and lack of leadership in Lightwave.
Ok so sense you mentioned Modo. I wonder if (Brad Pebbler) went back to Lightwave to bring it up to speed. Funny thing I started out using Lightwave and could not get it down. Afterwards I found Modo and I was off and running creatively. Brad I think sold Modo to Foundry and from there Brad vanished. It would be interesting if Brad Surfaced again rebooting Lightwave.
@@Lync1111 Just checked LinkedIN and it has this: Director at Apple, volunteer at Heirs To Our Ocean. Left The Foundry in 2016 straight to Apple.
With Blender and Unreal Engine available now, it'll be almost impossible for Lightwave to gain the dominance they once had.
Agree...Unless they come up with some insane, boundary shattering element or programmatic aspect that steams it ahead of Maya, Max and Blender--for instance, if they were able to team up with some group (or hires) to beat the Big-3 to the punch via, say, the AI-generating side of things (i.e., AI generated auto rigging, etc)--then they will forever be in the "bush league"...It's too bad, because it has a terrific history and it's a fine piece of software....Good luck to them
I can't crack Blender UI. It's so unintuitive, I'm seriously considering spending money this year - as a hobbyist - on something like Lightwave, since it still offers permanent license.
I'm still running LW 2011. Old timers like me might upgrade.
Yes!!!! I'll buy it, since I was so hood at it. My learning curve won't be as hard. Long live lightwave!!!
Not to mention the astronomical price err, I mean subscription. Naw, I'll stick to free and the sad part is I used to love lightwave.
lightwave will forever be in my heart as the tool that w has the clearest way of modeling for me, and some of the tools in it, even though they have been there for years, are still unique. Unfortunately, the years when it wasn't developed for one reason or another just feel off, and tools like uv unwrap and smooth groups appeared there relatively recently, at least a decade too late. I don't know if I'll ever decide to buy lightwave, but I'll certainly watch its development and keep my fingers crossed that they succeed.
LightWave has always been successful. btw Many LightWavers are not part of the "VFX Industry" and do not value it.
Lightwave was more damaged by Modo, than Maya or 3DS Max. Modo was actually created by some Lightwave devs who had ideas, but the company didn't want to hear them. So they made Modo.
And then, Modo turned out to be a somewhat mixed bag, started out great, but then they went in very wrong directions.
But yeah....more options is always great. I only opened lightwave three or four times in my life, but seemed a well structured app.
Was hard for me to get my mind around the fact they have two separate apps
"Lightwave was more damaged by Modo..." > Nope. ;)
I had been doing pipeline at a post house doing Alley McBeal (The Dancing baby) and we were a lightwave shop. I remember Kinetix wined and dined us as they wrapped a lot of their advertising around the baby only to find out it was being done in Lightwave on that show. I remember the meeting with the reps and our animators were brutal. Does it have X? We can't match the film frame to the original footage. I just remember the tone and it wasn't great. We went on as it was a production and can't really stop to lean new software and build a new pipeline. Months later there was a 3d Studio update that had every one of the features the animators listed. That was the point when I knew they were VERY serious. Note: The first appearance of the dancing baby was outsourced to Blur Studio. At the time we were rigging the stuff but didn't have time to get the first one. I remember people bouncing around ideas of who to contact and everybody was like "Well, I don't know anybody using 3d Studio except for Blur studio...." (Disclosure: I also had worked for Newtek though the 90s.)
ally mcbeal, brilliant show. :)
I was a LIghtwave user for over 20 years. It was a great program. I'm interested to see if they can bring it back to life.
"It was a great program." > I'll correct it for you. It's a great piece of software. :)
@@LightwaveGuru You say potato and I say potato...
You all act like it's dead. Still a awesome package and can render photo realistic animations better than blender, also supports 999 processors. Imagine it one a thread Ripper!!!
@@indianabukidboyszutowicz3191 WORD!
@@indianabukidboyszutowicz3191 Not saying it was dead, but honestly I used that program (err..sorry LW Guru, "software") for decades and was used to hearing about it regularly in production circles, and then at one point, it went REALLY quiet. I'd like to see it come to the forefront again.
I've trained my hands on shortcuts after ICQ in Lightwave... but NewTek missed a huge leap of faith when lost its core members to whom formed Modo. Then both become kinda ghosts. With new technologies emerged, even kings lose their crowns to new ones - especially Blender now. IDK but it would be fun to see LW in the competition back again.
modo is kind of modern lightwave for me. I'm very nostalgic for lightwave, but it iwill be extremly hard to sell it now. It is known to 40+ yo users who switched to other software long time ago. I wish it good luck anyway.
I used to work in an animation studio ( in New Zealand ) - specialising in character animation - that used LightWave exclusively back in the day. Multiple licences for a team of 3D animators, modelers, texture artists, et cetera - making TV shows and commercials. The reason that wasn't mentioned in this video, was price. LightWave was cheap relative to the competition. I think Maya was over 3X the price of LightWave back then. ( This was before the subscription business model becoming the norm. ) Once the competition dropped the price ( which coincided with it getting taught more in schools ) the writing was on the wall for LightWave.
Used this on my Amiga "back in the day"... Together with "Imagine" and "Real3D"... Those were the days... when rendering a couple of mirror balls took days :)
Add more days if you need to record in beta tapes frame by frame. Rewind... roll... 1 frame insert. Then start rendering next frame :D - been there.
I keep using Lightwave after all these years simply because it's still the best modeler, a darn fast photo real renderer with excellent motion blur abilities and because it's so stable and controllable. I like that unlike Maya, I work for things to look better and not for them not to break or crash. I'm glad it's back. Already bought an upgrade and I'm anxious to give try the new stuff!
Sooo stable!!! I think lightwave crashed once in the 5 years i used it and that was just cause i asked it to do something, looking back, was just ridiculous.
Show me some vids where it's shows their modeling capabilities. From what I've seen it's lightyears behind competition
@@inkman002 I have no doubt the new team will continue to program amazing stuff. I just hope they are good marketers as they are coders. Those are two different skills, and LW has always suffered from less than stellar marketing.
What am I? your daddy?
@@orphydiancg7759
@@orphydiancg7759 I tried MODO and went back to Lightwave. In my Studio we use both Blender and LW. I think sometimes one outshines the other, but I've seen Blender catching up with all the other 3D software for a while and now there's real stuff we can use it for. LW is production proven though, so I use it whenever Maya is not mandatory.
I was a Lightwave user back in the day. Interesting to see it making a come back. I also used to use Lightscape for volumetric light rendering. Looked pretty good for architecture back then. :)
Lightwave was also used for the previews of the original Jurassic Park (1993? ). The final render was generated using Silicon Graphics but the previews use Lightwave: the bones feature was introduced to do these kind of animations
I stopped using lightwave in 2012 due to it being unstable and crashing. I think before lightwave core things were much more stable and didn't crash as much. Depending on how the software develops, I may go back to it, as of right now I'm using cinema 4D, unity, and blender
I have loved this software for many years and at the same time I ended up hating it due to the number of bugs that accumulated over time. In addition to the fact that it is a software divided into 2 and that they have to be synchronized between a Hub, just because each one is developed in a different language from the other... Honestly, what made Lightwave able to stand up at times has been because the immensity of plugins that you can get. But tbh, I highly doubt that it will rise up and be able to compete in the market when it has Blender, which is far above it and is also free. Nowadays it would take a miracle and I think it won't last too long unless what it brings is something super innovative and of course at a very low cost than usual.
I had Lightwave 6 I think, like 13 years ago or something like that, I bought the license, but never upgraded it. I gave the software and dongle away about two years ago. Don’t even have a computer that can run it now. But it’s nice to see it came back. It was the cheapest back then.
Interesting no mention of Modo
the only way out for them is to find an edge.
in my mind , houdini still has best vfx with embergen coming fast behind.
maya has an incredible character animation focused set of workflows and tools.
max has unrivaled archviz. zbrush owns sculpting .
Of course you can do much more with all these packages and user's skill is more important but each software has an edge . What is Lightwave's edge ? If you have no edge then you can make the price and licensing the edge. And for that Blender is unbeatable.
At it's peak, Lw edge was mainly easy destructive classic modelling and great rendering within the app,
But after some years this wasn't enough, since the other big apps had their edges as you say; they also were bigger and had a more modern structure and code. Especially Maya.
Autodesk connected Maya, and Max with other rendering engines like Mental ray, V ray, Arnold and so Lw fell behind because it wasnt top notch in the rendering field anymore, as even if it srill is a nice solution and can be connected to Octane which is even better
Also, Lw is two modules; one for modelling and one for animation rendering and fx, and this feels very old compared to other softwares workflow and structure, since thay are all full integrated into one module with shared tools. Plus rigging and character animation in Lw even if possible is not as good as it should be.
Lets add to all this stuff, the poor management by Newtek and that's why Lw fell behind.
Now maybe the new team can make it good again.
Dont get me wrong, as a former Lw user, it's cool to see Lw around again, but this job IMO will require alot of time, especially if Lw will be integrated sometime in the future,(which i'd consider vital for Lw) while the other packages, Blender included, are NOW way ahead in alot of areas and will improve in the meantime.
Also let's add to the list apps like C4D and Houdini which are very capable apps...
I just don't see what they could offer to professionals over what is currently available or entrenched in pipelines, and if not free, then it can't pry people away from Blender. Competition is good, so more power to them, and all that jazz. However, it looks like a tough road.
Excellent historical summary. Many young 3d artists have never heard of the software, so it's nice it's getting some publicity.
I dont know how Lightwave is supposed to compete with all the competitor softwares. Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, ZBrush, etc. have all established themselves and it is going to be a hell of a job for Lightwave to do to be nearly competitive with those for the customers and userbase.
Price. If it’s reasonable people will support it and the software in turn will hopefully continue to grow. Modo is now in a boat where they didn’t listen to their community and their community got sick of waiting and search alternative software theft filled their needs. It may be to late for modo as they have garnered a reputation for poor community management and communication. They killed off software after people bought it. They didn’t listen to their community for features instead catered to a very low market of design and shoes. The community wanted more real time features and as the years went on the software became more intensive with them lying about them optimizing and increasing frames but each year their community told them otherwise. They haven’t touched certain aspects of their software in years, haven’t made any real attempt for people to create 3rd party plugins to skyrocket their development funding. If lightwave follows the same footsteps it won’t last very long.
Unlimited render nodes with the native renderer?
Currently my work pays 20k just for our render farm licenses of Arnold... LW is free on these same nodes.
he is here since 30 years.
Agreed but I am glad it's back.
The new owners of Moho seem to be injecting new life into Moho and really supporting it. Maybe these guys will do the same (better?) For light wave.
I've used LW professionally since 2002 and still do today.
As always, it's a pleasure to watch and listen to your videos full of background stories and news...can't wait for the next one
I met Tim Jenson at a NewTek party once. He was super nice. I mentioned that I had the version with the PDF manual. He took down my info and sent me the big paper manual. Just after chatting with him for a few minutes.
I've continually used it throughout the years, it's always been installed on my system. Sure, it started lacking features that other software had, so it fell behind, but I didn't need them. I had my Lightwave workflows down and it did what I want. It wasn't the only software I used but it is my goto. I also use Rhino (which I like a lot) and occasionally Blender (for certain tasks) but I never gelled with Blender. As an aside, Lightwave from back in it's Toaster days is the original inspiration behind my username. 🙂
Wow, didn't expect to see a video with this title. Lightwave was the first 3D software I started using regularly back in the late 90s after previously using Caligari truSpace. I didn't ultimately continue pursuing 3D modeling and stuff at the time because I just lacked knowledge of how to do that for real, but I made some neat stuff back then and had lots of fun screwing around.
Lightwave, good grief thats a nostalgia trip. I learned this software to model in art collage for animation when I was maybe 20 ? That was 18 years ago and I already felt bamboozeled because the animation industry wasn't using LW. I really still have the thought that this teacher was effectively screwing over its students on purpose (our 3D teacher absolutely hated competition)
Still, I'm interested to see where this is heading.
Lightwave 3D and 3D Studio 4 is what got me out of law and into the computer software industry, going from games, to education software, to a pretty damn fun career in software development that moved me across the world. Thanks Lightwave! I miss you.
I learned 3d through lightwave back in the day. The package always struggled with tutorial support and was a buggy mess. I see a 0% chance of this program ever seeing success again with Blender being a free alternative. I also find it interesting when Blender purged a lot of system it borrowed from lightwave around 2.8, it's popularity surged and it started to become more mainstream.
Also, Blender is now developed at breathtaking speeds by an ever larger community of amateurs (and more importantly) professionals.
LOL :)
Lightwave is where it all started for me. I hope they do succeed.
Lightwave hold a special place im my heart ! Switched to LW 6 from Max back in 2002 because it was ahead of its time for anything Rendering quality ! The first introducing HDR environment and fast global illumination ! Modeler was amazing too .
Interesting to learn about this software, especially being a Star Trek fan. It's nice to find out what software created some of the effects from one of my favourite franchises. It's unfortunate that it ended up sinking as low as it did. Probably gonna stick with Blender though since it's free and does what I need it to do. But if Lightwave does become improved and accessible, I may check it out in the future.
We should stop always saying Ohh i stick with blender because its free... NO!! , Blender is AWESOME and WAY AHEAD in many areas compared to the competition. Sorry i just get annoyed by the words because its free... Free has nothing to do with it by now with all its features.
@@RicardoSantos-cu2rs blender stinks, the UI is all over the place and it's hard to use
@@x0j You are Free to NOT use it and Dislike it,But dont come here pretending its an abomination. Go pay Thousands of dollars for Autodesk instead,blender would still be good with a pricetag. But i will say this every programm have shortcomming and Real Users stick with it because they believe in the programm but its a process. Blender will eventually get there but it aint going to please everybody just like Max,Maya,Zbrush dosnt please everybody. your Hell is Someone elses heaven. So spare me the childish comments about UI,Zbrush is worse regarding UI and its industry standard.
2 Significant early 2000s projects really helped keep Lightwave afloat & competitive (Newtek advertised the hell out of #1):
1. Titanic - nearly every CG shot of the boat, harbor, iceberg, etc. were modeled and animated in LW. If memory serves, I think these shots were rendered/finalized in Mental Ray.
2. Doom 3 - all of the characters and creatures were modeled in Zbrush, then transferred to LW, and the finalized models and normal maps (to use directly in the game engine) came directly from LW.
My friend had given nothing but compiments over Toaster, I wasn't aware of what he was talking about. Some time later I picked up Lightwave animation software, I just found out they were from the same company. What I was able to create, considering the limitations Mac G3 laptop had was still exceptional. It had seemed Newtek was only providing hardware after the loss of interest with LW. Looking forward with this new effort.
They need an edge, perhaps If they offer the software not as a subscription package ( which we are all fed up with) but as an actual purchase, as the old days, I think they'd have a better chance.
It still comes as perpetual license.
I heard the split of programmers to Modo was also a factor in Lightwave's downfall. It was a difference of opinion between the programmers and management on the direction of Lightwave's development.
I had a long loyalty to Lightwave as someone who's first home computer was an Amiga and the opportunity to work with Lightwave on a Video Toaster in Highschool. Later on it was my first choice in my career of rendering and video graphics. But the stagnation in the software eventually led me to switch to Blender and really don't think I can go back.
Then Peebler ruined Modo and they had to sell to the Foundry.
@@davemauriello8088 Actually modo was going along pretty well UNTIL it was sold to The Foundry
Best think in LW for me is that you can run modeler standalone, to sculpt/model outside of the scene in a proper dedicated UI. Also one of the early 3d softwares that allowed to make calculation inside the input fields with different scales (e.g, type 10cm - 7mm inside a numeric field and get the proper value).
Oh man that is a trip back in time for sure! I had an Amiga 1000 with a toaster and lightwave back in the day! Good times!
Before maya, power animator was extremely expensive, and Lightwave was part of the "big 3 for NT back then. It was them m&m tv ads got me confident to LW but lack of youtube tutorials back then. You kids today are lucky, youtube and blender are so accessible and vast.
it didn't really go like that. autodesk consolidating the dcc progs wasn't the thing that caused the decline.
- maya's intro was huuuge. it took a few years but it ended up becoming the go to CHARACTER ANIMATION TOOL - taking the crown from softimage (which was used in jurassic park even). character anim was the PRESTIGE feature that lw was never great at and its inability to compete here was a big factor.
- schools taught maya because it became industry standard. not because autodesk shoved it down school's throats.
- lw has two separate programs - modeler and layout(which is where you animated and rendered). the fact that it wasn't a unified program was a long source of issues and you simply couldn't do certain things well (or at all) because of that schism. that was a big cause of decline as the rest of the industry just found it weird.
- layout had extremely limited undo functionality in layout. in a lot of contexts, that was just unacceptable - especially when maya's (and virtually every other major program's) undos were limited only by memory.
- basically, lw was primitive. but it didn't leverage its primitiveness to make it totally kick ass where it might have. so like modeler didn't have the complexities of animation or rendering to contend with... so it could have leveraged that lack of overhead to make its modeler the best out there pushing way more polys than anybody else way faster. but it never really did anything like that. it was just a straight trade off of lower complexity for lower overall usability/capability.
- hastings and fergusun left newtek to go make MODO. their leaving was probably the real beginning of the end. I always got the sense that their behind the scenes staffing and leadership jockeying was a bit of a clusterfuck and that probably contributed to the original devs leaving and the decline.
- maya basically ended up dominating the industry. it is the standard. especially in vfx. max had a stronghold in games and archvis and softimage/xsi was killed off. houdini found its niche in vfx. even c4d found a niche for motion graphics. but lw, whose niche was basically tv got pushed off by maya which ended up being cheap enough to move into the tv space.
- fact that wintel computers ended up getting way faster and WAAAAAAAAY cheaper than sgi or alpha boxes helped lw initially but as maya's price came down, ended up hurting it in the end. at least before lw's presence on faster than wintel alpha boxes gave it an edge. but that went away.
- a capable blender popping up that could compete not only with lw feature for feature but with maya is kind of the last nail. how do you compete with free? and not just free but GREAT. and in many many ways... BETTER.
my hope was that like ton did with blender, lw would get open sourced. THAT would light a fire under it like crazy and attract interest all over the cgi world and bring back virtually anyone who's ever had anything to do with lw.
imo, I still think that's the only real way lw will have a secure future.
failing that, if they can just pick ONE THING and become BEST IN CLASS BAR NONE at it.... that might give it a fighting chance. I vote for poly modeling.
After so many years, Blender still doesn't do lens flares. Lightwave's lens flares are the cleanest of all applications.
And LW3d was the first 3d package that introduced lens flare.
And let's not forget sheen, which was recently introduced to Blender some weeks ago, where in LW it was available since LW2018-19 or so (I forget exactly which introduced it) so that's a few years ago. Blender just introduced sheen. 3dsmax hasn't even updated the lens flare. When I need a fast way to add lens flare, I go with it.
@@ProvVFX I did not know this, thank u, if I am not wrong it was also the first package that allowed HDRI to be used to render the scene.
@@farhadsaddigh7361 I haven't researched that, but I'd not be surprised if it did, since LW was a pioneer in a lot of 3D tech. :)
A former CGI pro, i worked a lot on this software...only memories, a real pleasure to be able to surpass oneself. at the time we didn't have much computing power, but lightwave managed very well and where others didn't do anything anymore
I read the LightWave 4.0 user manuals completely with real pleasure because they talked not only about 3D but also about the cinema and television professions. Thanks to the cow!
I used Lightwave professionally in the early 2000's. As soon as Cycles render was available in Blender, I moved to Blender for personal work and for video game work.
I think Blender getting better and better and slowly overtaking LW features, led to the demise of Lightwave more than Autodesk products.
I was on the Newtek forums at the time and LW users were wondering why they were paying money for LW features when opensource Blender was overtaking LW functionality.
People have attempted this before. The problem is that all the old users have now migrated and bought into other pipelines. They all have to now moved back and they won't unless the new team prove that they are doing a good job and are back in for the long haul. That could take YEARS. Good luck!
one thing i like about blender is that, even if the company/foundation behind the software goes bankrupt, we would still have the source code avaliable, tons of people already downloaded it to contribute , we dont really NEED the blender foundation to update the software, they just make things easier but if they go down we can fork it and maintain updates for the fork, or even before they go down people can fork and move it in different directions like the "go engine" who is focused on Non Photo Realistic art (example: anime), the Armory game engine, the UPBGE game engine.
We dont need to reinvent the whell!
Hallen Hastings (the main developer of lightwave) did VideoScape 3D before, another Commodore AMIGA software. It was the base to develop later Lightwave.
Lightwave is Pre Historic on the way it does things nowadays. Kudos for someone trying to revamp it but until I see it its Mission Impossible. It will probably take a decade or more to be on pair with whats current now and by then things have evolved at fast pace from present time.
LW was my first 3D program and from there I passed to Softimage fully in 2004 (with Messiah for Rigging and Animation for a short while). Back then LW was already very outdated regarding Modeling and its Rigging abilities were atrocious.
One aspect of early Lightwave people forget is you could run it on a render farm for free. Autodesk charged quite a bit for the render node licenses. One way Lightwave wave could make a comeback is with easier integration with Unreal. Not just assets but the ability to move cameras, animation data, VBD files, a specific shader that matches Unreal, ability to easily tweak models etc. It also needs to be easier for third party developers to make plugins and sell them. One gripe about Blender is it's open source so when you write a plugin you have to upload your source code also. That's a huge turn off for some developers.
Lightwave was the software that got me into 3d in 2000 and I will always have a fondness for it. I also have a lot of respect for Andrew Bishop having worked with him at Darkside. I'm very happy to see LW resurrected and look forward to seeing the direction it's headed but it will be a daunting task to get users to return from the diaspora.
Amazing how much was completed with that software. Saw some telltale Lightwave animation in that Star Trek when the shuttle kind of 'eased in' to position take a shot. Reminded me of the old tutorial on VHS. Those were the coolest videos.
back in the 2000s i tried it out but it was sooooo weirdly messed up in interface i would never go back to it. thought it died out
i learned lightwave when i was 15 .. now Im using Blender.. very similar UI .. what a nostalgia trip.
Some of the developers left NewTek and helped create Blender, that's why ui is similar.
Great video 👍
We used Lightwave at Virtuality in the early 90’s for the first gen immersive VR games. Was intuitive, powerful and fun to use.
autodesk is also known fir offering discounts to studios as long as they keep quiet about the other software they use like LightWave and 3D-Coat.
One thing i did note over the years is that the Japanese animation industry really cut their 3D teeth on Lightwave 3D more than any other program. Just about anything CGi was done in Lightwave. I think a lot of Anime fans in the West came to Lightwave on this knowledge and this may well be a boon for Lightwave 3D going forward. That and the program is not terribly expensive (only about [$800]) or a subscription.
The fact that Babylon 5 still looks amazing, even on our modern big screens, is a real testimate to how bad ass lightwave was when it was a thing. I just rewatched it and it held up waaaay better than I expected, since the last time I watched it it wasn't even in reruns yet.
I think the only way to bring back to life this software would be by making it to open source and get funded by donors similar to what blender is doing. I know some people out there are not 100% happy with blender and having a good open source alternative to Blender would make some of those people to support financially this alternative software to blender.
I don't know. Even if they open source it there is no guarantee that a community will gather around it. Lightwave burned a lot of bridges imo while Blender has been slowly building itself into a tool that can slot into existing pipelines.
@@apoclypse I agree, that's why in my opinion the only way lightwave could have a future is by scraping some unhappy blender users or companies who are not happy with the actual management of Blender. Otherwise fighting for a piece of commercial market will be destined to fail for sure
@@SamFX
I don´t think trying to steal blender users is what will make lightwave prosper.
It has other advantage to it´s workflow, it´s previous production proven capabilities that can be built on, and it foremost may need to attract former lightwave users, and attract new users who do not wish to use blender, those using purely blender also has one major incitament for never buying any software.
With TFD now built in, they will strengthen the capability to spit out fire and smoke dynamics, with siginificantly more power than blenders fluids has for speed in simulation, and quality in the end renderings.
It´s gonna take years and even more years if it aims to be competitive as a full 3D package, but it can do a lot today, and even more so tommorrow, if they can maintain a decent user base, I can see that some folks are indeed interested and buys the license still every know and then, how many there was that jumped on to the shared stock offerings..I don´t know.
-Procedural geometry now in layout, but they are going to have to push that a lot further to include actual modeling operations as they are in modeler.
-GPU Native engine, they probably need to get that as well, even if they now ship the octane plugin, or they would need octane to work properly with All lightwave fractals, currently it doesnt, so you can´t use it´s volume item system properly.
-Undo system, they gonna need to overhaul that as well.
-UI fixing ..easier color changes and improve module windows, but maintain the main UI look and philosophy.
-Model Scultping tool, or in layout with all it´s bells and whistles, Lightwave already have a morph animation sculpt tool, and VFX dynamics animation tool with metamorphic, and now also Chronosculpt, those are better tools actually than blenders blendshapes to adjust facial animation, adjust cloth animation, or bullet fracture simulations.
-VDB performance and lack of multiple volume bounce scattering, this can only be handled as for shading, with octane, the native engine is useless, and for performance they need to enhance display of VDB in openGL, and they need to fix the horrible lag when orbiting around VDB´s, or rotating it.
- The hair system needs perhaps a complete rewrite, it renders utterly slow to solve AA, and it´s not a stable tool, and it lacks behind severly in grooming.
If they get those things right, it may start to be competitive for real.
They have already fixed the major issue for any company, that was to not discuss their development as Newtek/vizrt did, now they do discuss that, and that is a good thing for a customer satisfaction and company trust, if they do it well.
My stomach digesting a stomach. That is a terrifying thought.
Wait I commented this on the VFX video so sorry, I thought I was commenting on "How to make Tripe" by GoldenGully, what happened TH-cam?!
It's fantastic to hear that Lightwave is back in the industry again, thank you for covering this!
Thanks for clarifying, i feel better now. @@fluffsquirrel
@@matthiasmartin1975 This is probably sarcastic but either way glad to hear Matthias!
I loved Lightwave, but hated Newtek. Absolute fools. I wish this new group well.
I hope they can. Especially with jobs on the line. Plus the price point is a no brainer as an indie
800 dollars?!
@@TheNjordy It is more like almost $1k since the price of 795 is in British Pounds and we are currently in a severe inflation in the west world and the $ is not as strong as the British Pound.
@@TheNjordy yes.
I think they've priced it too high personally. They need to at least lower the upgrade cost to lure all the old users back into the fold. I think
@@jasonhurdlow6607 I think it's insane. The price. Maybe as a nostalgia for oldies, ok. But 800?! With Blender for free. What can it do Blender can't with much better updates yearly. I love shitting on Blender and BF, but that's beyond insane
The reason I stopped using Lightwave was Newtek refused to release a Linux version. They had renderers for Linux and even an in-house version of the full Lightwave running on Linux, but they just refused to release and support a native Linux version. With the existence of Blender now, if these new people want Lightwave to make a comeback, they better not have the same attitude about Linux. Even if they do go properly cross-platform, it's going to be a really hard to pull people back to LW now that Blender has gotten so good.
If only Tomas could finish EIAS 10 and release it, even if only for Mac.
Electric Image may also come back one day.
Hope the same for Strata CX, a new version with decent viewport FPS.
If they will want money for it then it has nowhere to go. Why would anyone change to it?
I've been using LW since my Amiga. I've just started learning Blender. As much as I like LW I just don't see it competing even with Blender in so many ways. It's taken a lot for me to consider jumping ship, although it will take even longer for me to fully transition! I will still keep a close eye on any progress.
It would need some features that no one has, is not enough with trying to get up feature parity with other softwares.
Things that get into my mind that could work: maybe having real-time team working, like Google docs did but for 3d, other thing they could do is base the entire software around usd format, that way as many studios are migrating to using usd, they could become the default layout software in 3d productions, and then people could start noticing that it also has good modeling/animation/rendering features
I remember lightwave from the days of the Amiga.
Definitely wouldn't say Lightwave dominated but it was held in the same regard as Maya, 3d Studio Max and Softimage.
I have not used LW that much recently but I upgraded just for support - and of course to get a T-shirt and a mug. 😁
I started with Raydream studio back in the early 90's, but Lightwave was my bread and butter 3d software from 96 to 2007...until I started using Softimage, which Autodesk captured and killed eventually.
What does it have that Blender doesn't have?
I remember in high school, wishing I could afford a pc that could run this software. I sure hope it makes a triumphant return!
Lightwave and 3D Studio were my first 3D software back when my computer had a whopping 200 mhz cpu. I could render but took ages.
Lightwave is like The Metal.
No one can destroy it.
Perpetual license of substance painter on steam costs same as a one month subscription of modo. Let that sink in.
No mention of how the developers left newtek to create modo.
People considered lightwave as dead but in reality certainly not a forerunner in the industry, it was still being used by many users and many studios. I myself continued using it for over 7 feature films. why? becuase it was easy fast, and combined with Octane renderer... fun. only people who know nothing about film making and production battle over application use. Most studios dont even use off the shelf applications. Most use proprietary applications. in house tools. which are then flanked by such known applications like maya or c4d . or dedicated tools like zbrush. at the end of the day, its about whats needed to get the job done, to interact with other studios in a uniform pipeline IF required. Lightwave was always good for smaller studios, and indie projects. at the end of the day, its about what the story needs. The tools and techniques are universal to all applications. They all pretty much do the same thing. the bigger question is.. how they intergrate with larger pipelines.
Lightwave was released in the good old days when you could buy software and not have to pay a subscription each month like alot of software is today. Although I didn't have LightWave, I did have Imagine and Morph Plus on the Amiga which were great software for the time.
It took you to tell us this, you are everywhere!
Lightwave was my first steps into 3D, but unfortunately I never touched again when Modo came in and then C4D
say didn't lightwave also take big hit when their core dev team left and created luxology modo ? or is my memory playing tricks on me
yeah well good luck with that madness. I had to jump ship after they left us loyal LWusers out to dry and am so happy with blender now - it is literally twice the program - I'd never go back
Of course I knew Ligthtwave was used on Babylon 5 but I had no idea it was also used on Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. I wonder why B5 wasn't able to make their graphics look as realistic... maybe Star Trek was using LW on SGIs instead of Amigas so they just had more rendering power?
What killed LW was tragically stubborn and ignorant management, who didn't realize the whole thing needed to evolve. The core talent developers couldn't take it anymore and left to create Modo.
I actually have a video toaster in my project room, one of these days I'll got through it and revive it.
Funny , I had the toaster the features and capabilities were somewhat like Qantel corps systems
I did enjoy the Lightwave UI. Hope it adds something innovative and puts tools where they need to be in order to function well. That's what killed it in the first place.
I own lightwave but I have such a hard to using it for one factor and that is you have to work in layers in the moddler like photoshop which makes no sense to me coming from blender and maya like there is no object mode if you create an object in the same layer as another is one object now tough outta luck selecting it a as a object no you now have to select it faces. I want to like lightwave but this fundmental thing is stopping me. I cant find anything online if they are going to change this but this is the main factor for me to get the updated version if they change the selection setting to me more like blender or maya able to select whole objects and abanon this layer stuff
Ahead of its time, it's lens flare was famous, I hope it climbs back on top! Funny thing, I still use Imagine3D for real production work every now and then :)))
🤯
What does God need with Lightwave3D? 11:28 , yeah. That's me. :)
One key event you didn't mention was when Allen and Stuart left Newtek and founded Luxology, which produced the competitor Modo (which I worked on for a few months).
Also, I think Blender in many ways has caused more issues for competitors than the likes of MAX, Maya, etc... as it heavily sways the hobbyist market at which LW did so well. Honestly, Blender has done more to hurt the 3D graphics market than just about any thing IMO. You can't compete with "free", so innovation and competition has suffered severely.
I still think even without updates that LW is still one of the best one-man-band options available, and its modeling for hard surfaces is faster and better than anything out there.
I hope the new owner group can revitalize it and boost adoption, but I think they need to bring the pricing down to do that.
LW has so much catching up to do, it's not even funny.
I would love to see it happening tho. I wish the team good luck.
Wow! I still have a version of LW sitting in a box in the corner. Maybe 9? Maybe if their upgrades weren't so much people would have stuck with it.
I started 3d journey in uni with 3ds max, then they introduced lightwave, I'm surprised you didn't mention modo fiasco, when that happened they cancelled the classes that would use lw and used modo instead... I wish it was maya or something else :(
Not having a trial version to download is going to make selling this program to new users very difficult. They only seem to be interested in selling product to new and existing license holders.
It had a lot of good stuff under the hood, what let it down was the crappy user interface (no interactive feedback, I liked the text buttons), too many crashes, almost non existing undo and an ancient modeler application, layout had a great viewport performance, great IK engine, both the old and the new renderer was fantastic even though no GPU support.
Lightwave was never the program I wanted to learn. Back in the 2ks it was better then Cinema4d, but basically something for the tv. I loved Maya, then XSI. But Autodesk broke my heart, also I moved professionally. That when I moved to Blender for personal stuff, never looked back. That’s why I’m betting on the Godot right now. It’s good to become gradually good at something, before it gets overblown but also really good.
I actually got to watch someone use the Video Toaster
and Lightwave was a possibility.
Using it for Babylon 5 is unsurprising,
but I didn't realize it saw use with Star Trek, beyond fan film battles.
Nice. 🙂