Lightwave Question (pre-sales)

[RGSerge]

Hi, I sent an email last week to Newtek customer support with no response yet. Well, I need a fast response as the business is costing things out.

Anyhow, I am part of a design team setting up a games design and development studio. We will be developing games for PC and maybe consoles in the future.

I have spoken with the graphics designers about what software should be used and we came up with a list of possible software applications for graphics (3D and 2D).

We came up with, Photoshop, Lightwave, 3D Studio, Bryce, Maya, Poser and a few others such as Cinema 4D.

We like the look of Lightwave above all of the above (exclusing Adobe Photoshop, as that will be used anyway). BUT we have some queries, as we may be buying about three or four licenses we dont want to end up with the wrong application for the job.

Our questions are:

1. How does Lightwave perform in comparisson to its competition from a games design perspective, i.e. pre-rendered scenes, FMV creation and Character creation.

2. Is Lightwaves output compliant with Direct-X and is it viable for Lightwaves wireframes to import into Direct Draw.

3. The graphics designers have no experience with Lightwave, but have used other 3D applications such as Bryce and Poser, how would the transition be for them and are there any good training resources on the web. I have seen your own tutorials but I feel something from a games design perspective to be more beneficial.

4. How do the licenes for Lightwave take form?
i.e. do you buy one application then pay a fee for extra licenes i.e. 5 licences for x amount of $$$

I think thats all our questions for now.

[dblanky]

Well all i know is poser and bryce are completly different from lightwave! Switching may not be easy but once you get started with lightwave the rest is pretty easy to pick up. thats from my experiences though.

[ren_at_home]

did you check out these tutorials?

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/games/quick_terrain/index.html

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/surface/baking/index.html

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/surface/character_UV/index.html

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/modeling/UT2003/index.html

For games (poly modeling) I think you will find Lightwave to be
very powerful.

As mentioned above Poser and Bryce are on a completely different planet when compared to Lightwave.
There are tools to get Poser data into Lightwave but if you get into character design then I doubt you will want to do that unless
you are rendering facades.

Lightwave uses a hardware key. One key per workstation.
You may want to contact NewTek ahead of purchase to see if
they do a bulk discount.

Even with only one seat of Lightwave you can install the network
rendering software on all the PCs/Macs you have access too.
The hardware key is only needed on the machine that you actually
edit your models/scenes on.

[RGSerge]

Thanks for the responses, sadly Newtek dont seem to like me, either that or they are busy (no reply yet) :D

The network installation is an idea but then (legally) only one of the graphics designers can use it at any one time, which could cause us hinderances.

I checked the tutorial links, they could very well be useful.


One question unanswered is if LW's .lwo's can be imported by direct-x.

[Dodgy]

There is a direct -x 8 exporter plugin for free. You'll find LW is very well supported in terms of free plugins, check www.flay.com for details.

I work in games and use LW mostly,so you'll find it does pretty much all you want to do, creating light maps/vertex colouring, skinned animation etc.

[grundgedanke]

maybe they are busy now. i had a presale question 2 weeks ago and the answer took about 4 days. but it was to late because in those 4 days i ordered my copy :-) so since last friday i am a proud lw community member...

[Bytehawk]

the extensive plugin support and community has already been mentioned.

Also remember, buy LW[7.5] now and get LW[8] as well. and LW[8.1] and LW[8.2] and LW[8.3]and LW[8.5]and LW[8.5b] ....
not a lot of companys are so good to their customers as Newtek, their customers even organise partys for them without being asked...

[RGSerge]

I still need to know what payment terms are available?

And still no response from customer services, lol

Common guys... your destroying my faith in you ;)

[TyVole]

It sometimes takes them weeks to answer e-mail. You should call them.

The same goes for contacting technical support.

[Maimo]

Yep calling them is the way to go, They are really acomodateing and stick to theire word. I've never had to wait more then 24 hours for sales calls and got through to tech sup in 10 mins.

Also the Eyeon (DXF+) Techstaff is really cool as well, i had a problem with something, and he helped me with some extra cool tweeks just incase, fixed me up in minuites.

Im really liking that i got the Bundle Deal! you should check it out, im not sure if its what you need for game devbut it would be great for cinamatics.

[Lalin]

I am definitely getting into real-time 3d graphics, and for the price and capabilities, LW was my choice, plus the DFX+ bundle is an opportunity rarely seen.

I would ask newtek on what type of support will LW8 have towards real-time graphics (i.e. .x files)

That is something (exporting models with animation to .x files) I got by with a little help from free plug-ins.

Hope this helps;)