Will Lightwave ever support DirectX?

[tvtom]

I'm working with a group of programmers at a local college on an XNA project and am finding out how poorly DStorm's DirectX plugin works. I suppose you get what you pay for.

Is Newtek planning on supporting DirectX in the near future?

Is there and plugin (even one that cost $$) that will export lwo or lws to DirectX?

Thanks for the info.

-Tom

[walfridson]

not a answer to your questions but have you tried the 9.6 fbx?

[tvtom]

Thank you so much for your response.

I'm still using 9.3 and I do have an fbx exporter (plug-in) and it does work. I notice that it creates one uv for an entire mesh though... I think, because when I look at it in Filmbox (I know, I'm old school) it has one single uv (called "uv") pointing at all the uv textures. So it doesn't quite work properly. Now this might be an issue with Filmbox (I don't have Motionbuilder to test it) or it might be something the exporter does. Do you know of a way to test it or should I upgrade to 9.6 (does 9.6 have better fbx support)?

The programmer guys have not quite gotten there heads around the fbx file format yet but I could push them in that direction.

[zippitt]

Did you ever find a solution to this?

We are working on a project also using XNA, however its looking like I may have to import the model into 3DSMAX, and then export as directx.

Of course I want to avoid the software cost and the learning curve trying to animate and texture in 3DS.

[Costanel]

Go to flay.com and search for DirectX there at the plugin page.
You will find several, hopefully one that works for you.

You can also mail the creator of the Dstorm plugin, perhaps he has some solves for you?
I've used the plugin, and had no problems.

[tvtom]

No solutions yet. No plugins on Flay are available that export scenes from LW. Maybe the new version of LW (Core) will support DirectX.

They ended up switching the entire pipeline to Maya. :(

[zippitt]

That is a shame, did they ever look into polytrans? Not sure what to think of that especially with that cost.

More and more it looks like we will be sticking to FBX from 3DS MAX :(

[H.M. Stryx]

Our studio faces a similar situation, with Polytrans versus the DStorm plugin and identical drop in support from early Modo (101) of DX file formats for FBX. We found Bodypaint by Maxon provided the tools, projection painting, and export formats we needed to achieve our work in Beyond War. However, we have another client asking the same question for their in-house pipeline. Polytrans seems to be ignoring the DX 10/11 advances (animation, frames, etc) in their treatment of the old .x, and being a bit of a purist I'm against touching the managed code of XNA (I hate black box COM objects).

If the situation progresses we will research a viable exporter for the C++ SDK for CORE in conjunction with our Modo 401 investigation. I have heard of a cheaper exporter for $59.99 on the market, but have not yet put faith in anything that focuses on game format decoding (reverse engineering) of other software proprietary formats for use on our closed networks.

The lack of binary output in DStorm is enough to get my attention. Once Windows 7 deploys I can see what our upchannel has to say in the initial months to support DX11 w. NVidia multi-head displays. It's silly to think something like this is actually holding back DirectX deployment over OpenGL or that WINE emulates DX10 already while XP is forbidden from applying the technology. Something's got to give.

[jbaysingar]

I know it doesn't help your situation now, but I'm currently working on a C# class that reads .lwo files directly (silly NewTek, and their big-endian integers -- I'm guessing a backward-compatibility holdover from the Amiga days). Anyway... I'll be sure to post something here if I ever get it finished.

[StereoMike]

What problems do you have with the d-strorm exporter? I use 1.3.3 in combination with exporting it from lw 9.31 (1.3.3. seems to be broken with 9.6., so you have to save the scene as 9.2 and use a build prior to 9.5 for export)

mike

[zippitt]

SteroMike helped me at least with .x which worked.

Even easier yet, I have found at least for XNA, to export right out of 9.6 using FBX.

The problem of course was trying to find out what the animations names where which is why I messed around with DX studio.

I finally found out what the lightwave animation names are well as how to splice multiple animations in a single FBX which I bet are similar in .X.

If anyone ever cares, Lightwave stores FBX animations names as "Default LW Animation"

So far our animations are working perferctly, but things are still in the beginning stages and I am sure I will hit some roadblocks as things progress.

[StereoMike]

Make sure to check out the Unity Windows trial which got released today!

[StormRising]

March 20, 2011. This is how to export Direct X animation from Lightwave 3D 10-8.5

I use LW 9.6 for exporting models in direct x format. But when it comes to animation. The current direct x plug-in does not cut it. At least not like it use to in LW version 8.5. So this is how to get both models and animated models exported from your latest version of Lighwave into Direct X (.x) file format. :) Cheers and God bless.

Summary:
Save your LW10 or LW9.6 scenes as LW6.0 scenes. Then open those 6.0 scenes with LW8.5 and export the directx animation file from with-in LW8.5.

Step-by-step process:

Step 1: Install LW 8.5 32x (you'll see why later)

Step 2: Download Dstorm Direct X plug-in here:
(http://www.dstorm.co.jp/dsproducts/lw9/FreePlugins/Object_IO/DirectX_Export.html)

Step 3: Apply the direct x plug-in to the LW 8.5 32x by selecting utilities, "add plugins".

Step 4: Open the LW scene you wish to export model animation from in whatever version of Lightwave you like 9.6 or 10, 32x or 64x.

Step 5: Use the file, export, save 6.0 scene option to save out your scene. Make sure to name the scene something like "scene_v6" to avoid overwriting your original scene file.

Step 6: Start Lightwave 8.5 32x and open the scene saved in v6.0 format.

Step 7. Now export the scene using the direct x plug-in. With the options shown here:
(http://www.3impact.com/3Impact_Engine/hulk7123/lwtips.htm)

This process is currently working for exporting rotation, scale, position, bone, and mesh animation created in LW10 64x, and LW9.6 64x using ikbooster, etc. Thank Newtek for the export scene 6.0 feature. And remember there is always a backdoor.

[Afalk]

You could also export your animated FBX file from LW and using Ultimate Unwrap convert it to .X -- I believe that it supports animations as well.

[tvtom]

I've switched to Maya... ages ago now. It's sad because I really like Lightwave. It's just becoming so antiquated. I purchased LW10... but have used it very little. It's really the same old hat and they gave me manuals from LW9... wtf.

Besides, I can run Maya natively from my Ubuntu machine which is a giant plus for them.

[Gillissie]

You could also export your animated FBX file from LW and using Ultimate Unwrap convert it to .X -- I believe that it supports animations as well.

Yes, this is probably the easiest route. UU3D is a great program for converting formats. You can load LWS files directly into UU3D instead of exporting as FBX first. Of course, the scene needs to be very basic since UU3D doesn't recognize every feature of LW, but you're really only concerned animation of a single model at a time.

[kopperdrake]

What about static models? We've a client asking if we can provide just the models in .x format - which would be the best route from LW to a simple UV mapped .x model, no scene data needed.

Thanks for any help!

[GandB]

When I was using TrueSpace for .X media awhile back (for use in FPSCreator), I made it in TS, imported the TS into UU3D, mapped it and exported as a .X. I had no issues with it (as far as straight static entities). I suspect the same is true for LW; just make sure the object is triangulated BEFORE importing it into UU3D. It also helps to assign groups to your object, if it's complex; before mapping.

[Afalk]

There are workarounds for every suite out there, but w/Lightwave, I am always delighted to see them. I love Lightwave, and those work-arounds mean at the very core of everything we do in 3D we can still use the best tool available, i.e., Lightwave. LW still offers the best all-around 3D solution I have ever found in 10+ years. So if I can use a work around to bring LW's strengths to bare on something I will gladly do so.

[Lamont]

There used to be a working DirectX export for LW in v6. Since then, not a peep.