KeenanCrane
07-21-2004, 04:23 PM
A few questions about LW8 - sorry if I missed answers to these elsewhere:
-how is global illumination being done? Has it changed significantly from older versions? If I remember correctly previous versions used a combination of radiosity and Monte Carlo path tracing. Does 8 use photon mapping, ambient occlusion, or anything else anywhere?
-can 8 use vertex/fragment programs to preview shader appearance?
-I see that you can bake lighting, etc., into image maps - can you bake geometry detail into normal maps?
-what's people's experience w/ modeler performance? In older LW versions it seemed like models were being drawn in immediate mode (comparing to a standalone app which draws them using display lists - of course, the modeler does much much more :) )
(and perhaps most importantly)
-I'd like to upgrade my copy of LW, but I've completely lost track of the box, serial #, etc. (last version I bought was 6.5). Would NewTek have me in a customer database somewhere? Has anyone upgraded this way? I'm a student, so I guess repurchasing the whole thing wouldn't be terrible if I had to.
Thanks :)
Keenan
-how is global illumination being done? Has it changed significantly from older versions? If I remember correctly previous versions used a combination of radiosity and Monte Carlo path tracing. Does 8 use photon mapping, ambient occlusion, or anything else anywhere?
-can 8 use vertex/fragment programs to preview shader appearance?
-I see that you can bake lighting, etc., into image maps - can you bake geometry detail into normal maps?
-what's people's experience w/ modeler performance? In older LW versions it seemed like models were being drawn in immediate mode (comparing to a standalone app which draws them using display lists - of course, the modeler does much much more :) )
(and perhaps most importantly)
-I'd like to upgrade my copy of LW, but I've completely lost track of the box, serial #, etc. (last version I bought was 6.5). Would NewTek have me in a customer database somewhere? Has anyone upgraded this way? I'm a student, so I guess repurchasing the whole thing wouldn't be terrible if I had to.
Thanks :)
Keenan