Time to retire Lightwave 3D from my toolkit.

[Paul_Boland]

Hi Folks.

After a few months of debating the topic at hand, I have decided it's time for me to retire Lightwave 3D from my toolkit. As a 3D hobbyist, I've used Lightwave for sixteen years, doing artwork, animations, and even game development. But as a paying customer, Newtek have failed me for sixteen years in one area...Sliders. After debating the situation for the past few months, I've come to the conclusion that for my 3D hobby and creativity to survive, I need to find a new 3D package to move into.

I wish Newtek, Lightwave 3D, and all the users and fans all the best, it's been a fun community to be part of, and I'll still be around to some degree, Lightwave 2015 is still installed on my PC, but I have a whole new adventure ahead of me now as I go exploring the 3D landscape and look for my next 3D port to dock at.

And Newtek, fix Lightwave's Sliders. They've been broken for sixteen years and you've lost a customer (me) because of it.

Thanks for everything, it's been fun!!

[tyrot]

i will watch full video later but thanks for your time for making that video .. i hope someone in NT is watching..

[Sensei]

And Newtek, fix Lightwave's Sliders. They've been broken for sixteen years and you've lost a customer (me) because of it.

If you came to 3rd party developer and say "do this and this for me and I am paying this XXX (less than upgrade to the newer LW version)" it would be done within couple days or weeks, instead of wasting 16 years for corporation to do what you want....

[prometheus]

So back to true space again

been there ..done that one too though, but I am not going there again.

Yes, I feel the pain about the UI workflow..I said this many times as well..in the phrase "TAKE BACK THE WORKFLOW" and just what you say about nodal required access which has become a convuluted trademark sort of thingy.
Unlike you perhaps..I have no big issues of understanding nodes and how to use them, it´s just that I feel the strong philosophy of setting things up fast with direct access was what Lighwave had as a strength..and that has been running in fullpace downhill for some areas, there are many many places they need to take this back by exposing texture mapping back to the pbr materials, exposing back the hypertextures to the volumetrics, exposing back direct morph and texture displacements..rather than listed items with the need for double click.

Same with shape items, if you want to displace it, you also have to jump in to a completely different place, the surface editor, and the pbr material double click, when it should have been a simple text button within the shape items..which would open up the surface panel with the options to displace.

The care for the User experience have lost a guiding hand from someone in charge.

Like I said, I mean, I can mix many different nodes and achieve good particle fireshading results..which requires understanding a bit about the nodes for the black body shading to work..but it´s just tedious to set up..and then you look at how for instance dynamite was working, or even tfd for instance with black body ramps..they were included in the panel ui, you just set your temperature and it worked..much faster workflow.

They could do the same for the principle volume, the primitive volume that is, there could be a black body value in the main tab..just like blender does it, blender has it exposed both in the material editor direcly to change controls, or when you enter the node material..and it is there directly as well in the node material, all connected and exposed to the main material panel...in lightwave it´s not available either in the volume main editor, nor in the node editor node main node, you have to add the black body node seperately.

I am not going to update this time around, will not retire with lightwave ..not yet though, but focus will defenitely shift now to something else, cause I think they are heading in the wrong direction with the workflow, and any modeling tools in Layout can only be speculated about, and not CPU in sight..these are the holy 3 things for me..which I promised myself, if nothing happens on those areas..I will have to try something else this time.

At least you can still do modeling work, unless you plan to sell the license? that could be an idea to bring in extra cash perhaps as well.

[tischbein3]

If you came to 3rd party developer and say "do this and this for me and I am paying this XXX (less than upgrade to the newer LW version)" it would be done within couple days or weeks, instead of wasting 16 years for corporation to do what you want....

Not only that, but I'm pretty sure there was actually a version out there wich did exactly this. (Can't find it anymore but I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon one when I updated my slider some a few years ago I stumbled upon it)
But yeah, that kind is done in less than a week especially since the slider plugin code is part of the sdk.

[Nicolas Jordan]

Hey Paul, regarding nodes. Do you know that you can use standard surfacing in the surface editor in LW 2018 just like older versions? You never have to touch nodes if you don't want to. You likely won't get away from nodes no matter what 3D software your using these days. Some other programs actually rely on them even more heavily than Lightwave does.

[Tim Parsons]

You likely won't get away from nodes no matter what 3D software your using these days. Some other programs actually rely on them even more heavily than Lightwave does.

And he mentions Houdini as possibility - Oh my!

[gar26lw]

i think blender or maya would be the better option

[Paul_Boland]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. Yes, I am very well aware that I will have to wrap my head around nodes no matter where I end up in the 3D landscape. Unfortunately for me, they just don't make any sense. But the biggest push for me was the Slider controls and the state they are in, and the fact I've been asking and Asking and ASKING for them to be updated and then was told no plans to do it . The search is underway and yep, Houdini may not be for me after playing around with it today! LOL!! Thanks again, I wish you all well and the best for the future.

[erikals]

i've bigger reasons to leave than you i believe...

http://forums.newtek.com/archive/index.php/t-139159


still here, still staying... all apps have their flaws... find ways, enjoy the ride.      

[prometheus]

My advice..go for blender.

It may take some time to get acustomed to the UI and workflow, but just check Chris Jones and his character rigs, and check all you can on rigging, bendy bones etc.

As for surfacing, you will most likely need to learn the nodes anyway there too, but the node editor (shader editor) is more easier to navigate in in my opinion (middle mouse to move and scroll to zoom) lightwaves navigation in nodes I really hate...
Would be nice if it could be changed.

and for the shader node editor, you can zoom in much more than lightwave which stops at a too early level, the nodes are also directly exposed to the right in the material menu, and when you add a texture in color channel of the principled shader (left mouse click on the little dot to the right next to the value sliders, then you get a menu from where you can add the image texture) and when done you will see that the shader editor has added an image node already connected to the color input in the shader editor, as whith Lightwave´s principle material, you would have to double click the surface or click on edit node graph, then search or locate the image node..add it to the node editor then connect it...so many more steps.

Blenders nodes can also be muted, Lightwaves cant, and you can simply drag and place a node in between connection, like an contrast/brightness node and put it in between the image and the output node, and it will reroute itself automaticly, while in Lightwave you have to disconnect the node, and feed the image node to the brightness node, then take the brightness node and feed that to the output node.
Colors of the nodes or window in the nodes can be changed in preferences and you will see it take effect directly while you change your color values, and you do not have to reboot.

A workaround in lightwave would be to start with a standard material, add the texture with the "t" button and in the layer list select an image, then you could right click on the standard surface material and choose convert to principled shader, in such case you would get the image node already set up and connected in the node editor graph, but as a color layer image, not the image node.

With blender you would have a faster renderer in most cases, and especially for hair, and for the main core it will cost you nothing, you got sculpting, built in fluids fire and smoke, and liquid fluids, dynamic forces that works with all dynamic engines, a compositing engine, tracker, a realtime engine.. and much much more.

If you got a good Nvidia cuda based graphics card, you should learn to use that for rendering..and switch device for that when you need it, there is limitations also of course for how much it can deal with in terms of memory.

There are of course things in Lightwave that you will miss, personally it is the layout stage I am more comfortable with in Lightwave, so much easier to structure scene elements and move and handle motion paths I think, and you got a better viewport control with selectable layouts, which blender doesn´t have in the same way..that one may disturb you.

And I lack all of the wonderful procedurals Lightwave has, cause blenders are poor on that side.
A different state of modeling where you need to learn to know when to be in object or edit mode for modeling, while in lightwave it is more straightforward and faster for some things(not all) and you got all text saying properly what it does in modeler ..and more direct accessable tools in the menu bars I think, while you sort of relies more on shortcuts and drop down lists in blender modeling.

[Nicolas Jordan]

i've bigger reasons to leave than you i believe...

http://forums.newtek.com/archive/index.php/t-139159


still here, still staying... all apps have their flaws... find ways, enjoy the ride.      

Yes this is very true. I have used many of them over the years but always find myself coming back to Lightwave in spite of it's flaws and weaknesses. It also has many strengths as well.

[Tim Parsons]

Yes this is very true. I have used many of them over the years but always find myself coming back to Lightwave in spite of it's flaws and weaknesses. It also has many strengths as well.

I can't seem to leave LW either. Partly because the company I work for has many users and everybody knows how to use it and they wouldn't want to learn anything new. I personally got into Modo at 103 and kept upgrading thru 601 and finally gave up on that due to the Shader Tree and constant crashing. Still use it occasionally for a few things, but I bet I use it less than 4 hrs per year. I did convince my company to get one license of Modo 601 along with both their plugins to go to and from Autodesk Inventor thru Modo to Lightwave, which really is fantastic. (So it's an expensive conversion package - but it's the best I've ever used and we have used or tried many.) So, yeah LW is flawed, but it gets the job done.

I like Modo because it has a lot similarities to LW, but I downloaded the trial when 13 came out and while the modeling is easy to get into and very good, it is so bloated with so much crap that would take years to figure out and it still has the Shader Tree. Although I think you can use nodes now. I'll just stick with LW.

P.S. I do screw around with Blender every now and then. Can't do anything in that either, but I can see the power.

[Nicolas Jordan]

I can't seem to leave LW either. Partly because the company I work for has many users and everybody knows how to use it and they wouldn't want to learn anything new. I personally got into Modo at 103 and kept upgrading thru 601 and finally gave up on that due to the Shader Tree and constant crashing. Still use it occasionally for a few things, but I bet I use it less than 4 hrs per year. I did convince my company to get one license of Modo 601 along with both their plugins to go to and from Autodesk Inventor thru Modo to Lightwave, which really is fantastic. (So it's an expensive conversion package - but it's the best I've ever used and we have used or tried many.) So, yeah LW is flawed, but it gets the job done.

I like Modo because it has a lot similarities to LW, but I downloaded the trial when 13 came out and while the modeling is easy to get into and very good, it is so bloated with so much crap that would take years to figure out and it still has the Shader Tree. Although I think you can use nodes now. I'll just stick with LW.

P.S. I do screw around with Blender every now and then. Can't do anything in that either, but I can see the power.

That sounds very similar to my experience and choices. I also own Modo. I got in at 201 and own 401, 501, 601, 701 and the last version I bought was 801. I absolutely hate the shader tree. I see the power in it but it is such a beast to manage in large scenes. I used 601 & 701 in production for a couple years for rendering and still modeled with LWCAD in modeler. I eventually just couldn't stand the shader tree any longer among a few other things I didn't like about it and started rendering in Lightwave again. There were also many things I like about Modo but the bad outweighed the good. I also play around with Blender a bit for fun especially since 2.8 came out.

[gar26lw]

i think it would be worth you trying out blender. do a search on here for louis’s rabbit video that i posted. that should give an idea of what it’s like.