Polygon Modeling

[kstone]

Hopefully I get can get an unbiased answer on this.. although I realize it's not the ideal forum for that. :-)

I'm a part of a small group of vollunteers working on an on-going 3D simulation project. Our programmer wants to move from the 3DS file format to LWO (LightWave 3D). But our 3D artists use 3D Studio Max. The models we create are strictly polygon-based, nothing is spline-based. So what we need to know is if we will be able to accomplish the same level of polygon modeling and texturing in LightWave 3D as we currently do in 3D Studio Max.

Specifically the features we use in Max are:

- Convert a primative into an editable mesh.
- Add/Edit/Delete verticies, lines, faces and polygons.
- Create poly mesh from spline shape.
- Weld/Break verticies.
- Boolean modeling.
- Edit smoothing groups.
- Edit normal vectors.
- UVW texturmapping/projection maps.
- UV Unwrap texturemapping.

Will LightWave 3D work for us?

Thanks,
Kevin Stone
kevin@asiostudio.com

[duderender]

yes. lw can do all that.

that's all available in modeler, the texturing will be best done in layout for render testing. but you can generate the uv map in modeler.

[kstone]

Can LightWave 3D do texture burning as well?

[duderender]

sure can. it's called "baking" and you can apply it to an image or an object.

[kstone]

That's good to know. Thanks for your help!

- Kevin

[WizCraker]

Goto http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/developer/75lwsdk/docs/index.html it has some info on the File Formats. It is not the cleanest documentation but it tries to get the point across.