1001 ways to use LW and Blender together

...Aaand another new release! Blender 3.4 is out only 3 months after the last release. With this one we have a whopping 4(!) new Blender releases in 2022! And each one with a really nice range of new and improved features.

To be honest, I have difficulty keeping up with this pace of releases. ;-)


The latest release adds a (my favourite) story boarding tool, CPU path guiding in Cycles for faster CPU rendering with less noise, new sculpt and paint masking tools (automatic cavity masking!), all sorts of new geometry nodes goodness, and...

New UV editing tools! Finally... Some very nice additions there: UV sculpt relax tool, and a whole bunch of UV quality of life improvements.

And a continued focus on performance improvements across the board. Too much to list here.

Full list of new things:
yeah..I heard about that CPU path guiding, making it more efficient/faster, currently not available for the GPU though, but they have plans for it I believe.
Agains´t all odds, if Lightwave continues with some development, they now have a Dummy guide for that I reckon.
 
yeah..I heard about that CPU path guiding, making it more efficient/faster, currently not available for the GPU though, but they have plans for it I believe.
Yes, path guiding for GPU is slated for the 3.5 release.

The devs are finally implementing UV'ing improvements across the board. It took them a while to plan a strategy to modernize those and texture painting. I read it turned out to be much more complex than any of them had anticipated, but with all the pre-planning and a dev strategy in place we should be seeing a lot of improvements in the upcoming releases.

I still think that it is amazing that anyone can access such high-level 3d tools for free. It is still refreshing to see each new release and get Christmas vibes 🎄
 
I still think that it is amazing that anyone can access such high-level 3d tools for free. It is still refreshing to see each new release and get Christmas vibes 🎄
It is..really amazing..but if you do have some impact over there at some blender forums, I don´t go there often now, I may in some future when I have fixed some stuff though, would you be so kind to push for the Rman textures :D, I did suggest for the JangaFX team to look in to adding better fractals..and more than their single noise they have now.
They did find it interesting it seems, but where it finally lands who knows, then again..if it´s too much of an effort to push for that, I will do the work later.

I did try contact and tired to persuade Denis to look in to versions for the Blender platform, but nada, maybe he just wasn´t interested to do that, no answer.
To justify these latest post to work within the context of 1001 ways to use Lw and blender together, would be interesting and see what kind of features helps out export to Lightwave, or features that can be used with success with Lightwave.

Usdz export came in some recent versions, allowing us to export pretty much everything volumetric in blender to Lightwave..if needed that is, the opposite can´t be done from Lightwave anyway.
the workflow of mesh to volume is by far faster and easier to set up in blender, and with tools like curves as generator of the volumetrics when you apply it through geometry nodes or a remesh modifier, then sending to Lighwave with Usdz save, using either textures for volume displace, or the actual texture for volume density distributions, doing a simple mesh to volume in Lightwave is by far more tedious and messy.
 
Last edited:
...Aaand another new release! Blender 3.4 is out only 3 months after the last release. With this one we have a whopping 4(!) new Blender releases in 2022! And each one with a really nice range of new and improved features.

To be honest, I have difficulty keeping up with this pace of releases. ;-)


The latest release adds a (my favourite) story boarding tool, CPU path guiding in Cycles for faster CPU rendering with less noise, new sculpt and paint masking tools (automatic cavity masking!), all sorts of new geometry nodes goodness, and...

New UV editing tools! Finally... Some very nice additions there: UV sculpt relax tool, and a whole bunch of UV quality of life improvements.

And a continued focus on performance improvements across the board. Too much to list here.

Full list of new things:

CPU path guiding - Nice!

santa-4-trn.gif
 
...Surprisingly enough, most of it was rendered via Eevee, with only the outside shots done with Cycles...
Eevee has come a long way but I suspect there was a wise choice in having so much flickering flame/explosion light to cover inconsistencies between frames. That's a useful tip in LightWave or any other app as well.

The keyframing on the human character is well done but could be more believable as performance capture.

And of course, this video is a great promotion to join Blender Studio. Imagine that, NewTek/Vizrt...there are many ways to generate recurring revenue! :)
 
Smoke Braids?

Why not make some braids with fiberfx in layout, polygonize, save as obj, open in blender 2.79b
convert the mesh to curves, apply a force for those curves, set shape to curve, negativ force values, voila, smoke flow along the braided curves...

Now try that smoke flow strictly in Lightwave.

Lightwave braid.jpg

Blender smoke braids.jpg
 
OD copy and paste in blender 3.4 alpha..
Well..it works for me in 3.3.2
but it seems to not install properly with my 3.4 alpha, so I am just wondering if some of you have it working? or if it fails to install for you as well?

Could be that I have messed up the installation also.
 
OD copy and paste in blender 3.4 alpha..
Well..it works for me in 3.3.2
but it seems to not install properly with my 3.4 alpha, so I am just wondering if some of you have it working? or if it fails to install for you as well?

Could be that I have messed up the installation also.
I'm using it in 3.4.1 Stable.
 
I'm using it in 3.4.1 Stable.

May I ask for where your installement lies, the path?
Mine goes to..
C:\Program\blender-3.4.0-alpha+master.638bf05a23e1-windows.amd64-release\3.4\scripts\addons

it fails to install, says sourcefiles is in the addon search path and specifies the exact same path as above.

While my installation path for the blender 3.3.1 is in principle the same, except for being in the blender 3.3.1 folder instead..and that one works.
C:\Program\blender-3.3.2-candidate+v33.9f5a2d87881f-windows.amd64-release\3.3\scripts\addons

And sometimes it copies it to users/appdata/roaming, and then I ge a double install..where I need to remove one of them, either the plugin in the user roaming data, or the path I originally placed it in.

I hate blender plugin installements, never had so much issues with plugins as with blender compared to the Lightwave platform, and what versions to use as well.
Easier to manage with lightwave as well in my opinion.
 
Last edited:
May I ask for where your installement lies, the path?
Mine goes to..
C:\Program\blender-3.4.0-alpha+master.638bf05a23e1-windows.amd64-release\3.4\scripts\addons

it fails to install, says sourcefiles is in the addon search path and specifies the exact same path as above.

While my installation path for the blender 3.3.1 is in principle the same, except for being in the blender 3.3.1 folder instead..and that one works.
C:\Program\blender-3.3.2-candidate+v33.9f5a2d87881f-windows.amd64-release\3.3\scripts\addons

And sometimes it copies it to users/appdata/roaming, and then I ge a double install..where I need to remove one of them, either the plugin in the user roaming data, or the path I originally placed it in.

I hate blender plugin installements, never had so much issues with plugins as with blender compared to the Lightwave platform, and what versions to use as well.
Easier to manage with lightwave as well in my opinion.
I have no idea how the Blender installs/ addons work or where they go. I use Blender Launcher to manage my Blender installs. Blender Launcher
It looks like the OD Copy/Paste addons are in users folder apparently.
Addons.jpg
 
I have no idea how the Blender installs/ addons work or where they go. I use Blender Launcher to manage my Blender installs. Blender Launcher
It looks like the OD Copy/Paste addons are in users folder apparently.

Thanks Tim,

But as I mentioned before, I also had it in that path, not working.

However, while still having the plugin in the main path I originally placed them, but having it disabled for a while, shutting down and restarting blender a couple of times, then I was taking the chance again by testing to enabling it,and what do you know..suddenly it popped up in the right place..it´s so utterly weird.

So it now works in blender 3.4.0 alpha as it should
 
it is for blender, you use blender with lightwave.
Had no idea 😁
and I also suspect ..you do not necessarely use blender with lightwave.

Not goin to say a word more :) apart from the below.

I would be happy though if it was a Lightwave theme instead, it would make so much sense to post that theme in here instead of the XSI theme for blender:p
Which theme I don´t like by the way.
 
Had no idea 😁
and I also suspect ..you do not necessarely use blender with lightwave.

Not goin to say a word more :) apart from the below.

I would be happy though if it was a Lightwave theme instead, it would make so much sense to post that theme in here instead of the XSI theme for blender:p
Which theme I don´t like by the way.
I use it when I have to.

Not found a LW theme yet but if I do before the end of the month, I will post it.
 
Back
Top