Annoyed by Lightwave 2018

[Rayek]

Maybe the old renderer will be added as an option in the render settings at some point?

They can't, it seems. Too many architectural changes, it was said - which is a crying shame, in my opinion. It complicates the transition for veterans, and limits the flexibility of Lightwave as an all-purpose render tool. The old render engine is still quite outstanding for a lot of work, in particular for animation. The path tracer: not so much at this point. In a year or two it will have improved, hopefully.

The older render engine kept me bound to Lightwave for a long time. The new path tracer, while it has potential, is unfinished and simply can't compete with what is currently available. The old render engine has unique advantages which sets it apart from all the path tracers in the market. LW 2018 lost that advantage - just one more in a long list of path tracers. And one without a GPU option, which is BAD. No other way stating this.

The lack of GPU support is a mistake. Not sure if NT devs will be able to remedy this - programmers are hard to find for GPU render coding, and harder to hold on to. Aside from this, the render engine code must be rewritten from scratch for GPU rendering, so I don't see this happen - might in a year or four, but probably never. And established path tracers have been adding or are in the process of adding simultaneous hybrid GPU/CPU rendering.

LW 2018's new path tracer lacks a number of features, is still unfinished, and the lack of GPU support make it a somewhat lackluster proposition. At this point I still feel the 'old' Lightwave render engine stands out more as a competitive render engine for production work.

I still don't understand the need for NT to re-invent the wheel. Cycles or ProRender could have been integrated instead. But hey, time will tell.

[Dodgy]

Unfortunately, we have a lot of things broken or simply changed ..removed.
Volumetric lights as they act now with gloal scattering is nice, but optional effect volumetric lights per light and sprites is something I still wanted to have, extremely fast and easy to set up volumetric gas nebs in 2015, simply not as fast and smooth to do now.

You do know you can set up different textures in nodes for each light? The Volumetric Scattering colour is just like a multiplier, and set to white the colours of the individual lights come through..

[Dodgy]

Same scene with a yellow Scattering Colour.

[JamesCurtis]

Could this be used for animated textures using an amimation file like an mp4 or image sequence?

[prometheus]

You do know you can set up different textures in nodes for each light? The Volumetric Scattering colour is just like a multiplier, and set to white the colours of the individual lights come through..

Yes I do , which I pointed out to jweide on my first reply in the thread regarding this as well, though my comment in This very thread was a bit poorly formulated, and shouldn´t be read as I wished the new volumetric lights was controllable that way, they are to some degree but not fully if you read the thread, what I ment that I wanted additional lights ..as they were in old lightwave with sprite options as well, just because the new volumetrics despite it´s texturing options...can not compete with the speed and easy of use when setting up lasers or nebula gas backdrops.

So I simply think we need to Get back on track on some unique features that enhanced Lightwave before ...such as very fast volumetric lights in sprite mode for instance, it´s totally thrown out of the picture, and ergo one of the features that made lightwave great.

http://forums.newtek.com/showthread....g-etc-anymore-!

[prometheus]

Could this be used for animated textures using an amimation file like an mp4 or image sequence?

Can´t imagine why it not should be possible, but loading an mp4 file, wouldn´t recommend that, png seqences must still work I think, so simply use that, procedural textures like ripple and some other are animateable, so shouldn´t be a problem there either.

[jbrookes]

They can't, it seems. Too many architectural changes, it was said - which is a crying shame, in my opinion. It complicates the transition for veterans, and limits the flexibility of Lightwave as an all-purpose render tool. The old render engine is still quite outstanding for a lot of work, in particular for animation. The path tracer: not so much at this point. In a year or two it will have improved, hopefully.

The older render engine kept me bound to Lightwave for a long time. The new path tracer, while it has potential, is unfinished and simply can't compete with what is currently available. The old render engine has unique advantages which sets it apart from all the path tracers in the market. LW 2018 lost that advantage - just one more in a long list of path tracers. And one without a GPU option, which is BAD. No other way stating this.

The lack of GPU support is a mistake. Not sure if NT devs will be able to remedy this - programmers are hard to find for GPU render coding, and harder to hold on to. Aside from this, the render engine code must be rewritten from scratch for GPU rendering, so I don't see this happen - might in a year or four, but probably never. And established path tracers have been adding or are in the process of adding simultaneous hybrid GPU/CPU rendering.

LW 2018's new path tracer lacks a number of features, is still unfinished, and the lack of GPU support make it a somewhat lackluster proposition. At this point I still feel the 'old' Lightwave render engine stands out more as a competitive render engine for production work.

I still don't understand the need for NT to re-invent the wheel. Cycles or ProRender could have been integrated instead. But hey, time will tell.

So true. I couldn't have said it better.

[prometheus]

So true. I couldn't have said it better.

Compared to using blender cycles and path tracing, I feel more comfortable with blender Path tracer nowadays, and it seems faster as well, especially when using GPU
That is a i7-6700 3.40 Ghz
32gb ram, ssd disk
and gtx 1080 GPU

Needs a lot of polishing, I get the impression it simple wasn´t ready for release, but forced to be released due to the long wait and silence it seems.

But something that worries my quite a lot, that is the Change of workflow philosophy, going more and more nodal, I see nothing wrong with "Optional" nodal control for full power, but it should kill the lightwave philosophy of not getting in the way for the artist or the speed workflow..which I feel they kind of have broken with requiring nodes for simple textures in volumetrics, both on volumetric primitives, volumetric lights.

Dont´get me wrong about the new volumetric lights, I like them very much for what they can do in some circumstances, but the removal of volumetric sprite lights is very sad, and the way we could enable texture and have full focus on that texture layer system with adding, unchecking, blending, reorder texture effects directly in the volumetric light sprite..and with unparalleled speed compared to only volumetrics now.

This is a direction I feared would happen and seem to have manifested itself with the new change, not the direction I wished.
There is positives for me as well with this new release, refering to more realistic lighting and materials so you can get easier what you need in that regards..but I really am suspecious of how the workflow is handled, it´s gonna be very hard to decide if this is what I wanted and..what need I will have it for, and if the cost can motivate it nowadays with blender gaining momentum.

The image above..don´t think I could get close in neither quality or speed with lightwave 2018 if I would try that image.

[Paul_Boland]

Lightwave 2018’s new engine renders decades of past work, and scenes, problematic to use. Load them in and lights and surfaces are different. Having to try and rework old scenes to match their previous looks is a nightmare. And the new render engine is slower because you have to increase render passes to try and get clear clean renders, never had that problem with old Lightwave.

And the node editor interface has taken over a lot of areas, from texturing to lighting. So many inputs, so many outputs, I’m lost!!

Lightwave 2018 has hindered workflow in a big way. It’s a shame because for an upgrade, it feels like a downgrade.

[samurai_x]

Lightwave 2018’s new engine renders decades of past work, and scenes, problematic to use. Load them in and lights and surfaces are different. Having to try and rework old scenes to match their previous looks is a nightmare. And the new render engine is slower because you have to increase render passes to try and get clear clean renders, never had that problem with old Lightwave.

And the node editor interface has taken over a lot of areas, from texturing to lighting. So many inputs, so many outputs, I’m lost!!

Lightwave 2018 has hindered workflow in a big way. It’s a shame because for an upgrade, it feels like a downgrade.

Yeah it would have been better if they added a gpu renderer with lightwave 2015 renderer still intact for this latest version of lw.
Best of both world having a fast gpu renderer and bonus of backward compatibility.
Totally wrong direction imho.

[tyrot]

They can't, it seems. Too many architectural changes, it was said - which is a crying shame, in my opinion. It complicates the transition for veterans, and limits the flexibility of Lightwave as an all-purpose render tool. The old render engine is still quite outstanding for a lot of work, in particular for animation. The path tracer: not so much at this point. In a year or two it will have improved, hopefully.

The older render engine kept me bound to Lightwave for a long time. The new path tracer, while it has potential, is unfinished and simply can't compete with what is currently available. The old render engine has unique advantages which sets it apart from all the path tracers in the market. LW 2018 lost that advantage - just one more in a long list of path tracers. And one without a GPU option, which is BAD. No other way stating this.

The lack of GPU support is a mistake. Not sure if NT devs will be able to remedy this - programmers are hard to find for GPU render coding, and harder to hold on to. Aside from this, the render engine code must be rewritten from scratch for GPU rendering, so I don't see this happen - might in a year or four, but probably never. And established path tracers have been adding or are in the process of adding simultaneous hybrid GPU/CPU rendering.

LW 2018's new path tracer lacks a number of features, is still unfinished, and the lack of GPU support make it a somewhat lackluster proposition. At this point I still feel the 'old' Lightwave render engine stands out more as a competitive render engine for production work.

I still don't understand the need for NT to re-invent the wheel. Cycles or ProRender could have been integrated instead. But hey, time will tell.

dude you have just nailed it..

[Snosrap]

Lightwave 2018’s new engine renders decades of past work, and scenes, problematic to use. Load them in and lights and surfaces are different. Having to try and rework old scenes to match their previous looks is a nightmare. And the new render engine is slower because you have to increase render passes to try and get clear clean renders, never had that problem with old Lightwave.

And the node editor interface has taken over a lot of areas, from texturing to lighting. So many inputs, so many outputs, I’m lost!!

Lightwave 2018 has hindered workflow in a big way. It’s a shame because for an upgrade, it feels like a downgrade.

Don't load old scenes. The new render engine and shading is way more powerful (yes it seems a tad slower and there can be some fireflies) but man is it gorgeous.

[Marander]

Don't load old scenes. The new render engine and shading is way more powerful (yes it seems a tad slower and there can be some fireflies) but man is it gorgeous.

It's below average. Considering all factors (speed, quality, capability etc) it's the weakest of all render engines I have. So far I've not seen a single 2018 render that stands out or cannot be done better. Besides noise and fireflies, conductors seems the worst part in my opinion.

[gar26lw]

It's below average. Considering all factors (speed, quality, capability etc) it's the weakest of all render engines I have. So far I've not seen a single 2018 render that stands out or cannot be done better. Besides noise and fireflies, conductors seems the worst part in my opinion.

which one is the best?

[samurai_x]

I'm guessing since he's a cinema4d user, redshift, vray, octane are obviously faster than lw 2018 renderer. The only advantage with lw is that you get 999 render nodes. So buy 999 computers with lw.