Screw the Doom & Gloom - LW Still Rulez In My Arsenal, and Will for Years to Come

[erikals]

Hair however..can´t use Lightwave,

without going into detail, version, scene info, just had a hair crash in Blender.
and sometimes Blender means business... it won't crash just Blender, nope, it will totally freeze the PC, forcing a shut down.

certainly one of its less sexy sides.

[TheLexx]

without going into detail, version, scene info, just had a hair crash in Blender.
and sometimes Blender means business... it won't crash just Blender, nope, it will totally freeze the PC, forcing a shut down.

certainly one of its less sexy sides.

I haven't done a side by side, but I believe all the other major 3D softwares are more spec-heavy than Lightwave now, so maybe that was a factor. I thought Blender was supposed to be fully indpendent from the OS, theoretically capable of running from a portable usb stick, so I'm surprised it froze the whole machine.

[prometheus]

without going into detail, version, scene info, just had a hair crash in Blender.
and sometimes Blender means business... it won't crash just Blender, nope, it will totally freeze the PC, forcing a shut down.

certainly one of its less sexy sides.

What version?
Stay away from 2.90-29.1
2.81 feels more stable, the nice hair principle with melanin is in there as well.

what action did you when it freezed?

And for the record, the times Lightwave has freezed the pc for me, is even worse, meaning can´t even acess task manager to shut down.

The system in blender also have a built in crash function when you need to go to bed..if you are late as now Myself, I have hacked that.

[Tim Parsons]

Try subsurfacing, as I mentioned..
Subsurface the renderer I used is ..
Faster to render
Less noise, tried increase subsurface samples A lot, and refracion A lot and a lot of camera samples, not solving it
better subsurface realism

This was comparing the two principled materials in both renders.

maybe I just didn´t approach it with the right subsurface materials, principle shading subsurface is just too horrible in noise reduction, and leakin hotspots..I dind´t have to worry with that....I didn´t even have to use noise filtering in the other renderer.
then again..I need to get a lensflare addon for that renderer, lightwave´s lensflares are old as hell..could be improved, but at the same time they are quite nice and handy..so I could have polished the image to be a bit more stunning I think with that.

And of course...I sorely lack all the procedurals we have in Lightwave, for the other software..all I get is links to nodal mess constructed fractals, with 50 or hundreds of nodes combined to get a result I want to manage within one or two fractal textures only.

The dp fractals are so nice, though sometimes crashy.

Hair however..can´t use Lightwave, one of the things they need to rethink, or implement GPU to solve and better aliasing...but who knows what will happen, only vizrt and probably some former developers.

Interiors? unless a fetus has crawled up on a table, you don´t have to worry Tim or marge simpson jumping in on the couch to display all the blue hair.

No problems with SSS or hair. Lamp shades were always a pain prior to LW2018, now they are a piece of cake. Hair also was worthless, now it works perfectly for me. Samples attached. LW is such a multifaceted tool but everybody pigeon holes it into needing to be this triple A movie making application. But it is excellent and more than enough for some tasks.

Hair example:


SSS examples:

[erikals]

what action did you when it freezed?
f12

And for the record, the times Lightwave has freezed the pc for me, is even worse, meaning can´t even access task manager to shut down.
i've been lucky perhaps with 11.62

The system in blender also have a built in crash function when you need to go to bed..if you are late as now Myself, I have hacked that.
i need to hack that right now... way too late... and importante stuff in the morning....

[prometheus]

No problems with SSS or hair. Lamp shades were always a pain prior to LW2018, now they are a piece of cake. Hair also was worthless, now it works perfectly for me. Samples attached. LW is such a multifaceted tool but everybody pigeon holes it into needing to be this triple A movie making application. But it is excellent and more than enough for some tasks.

Hair example:


SSS examples:

I love some of the principle shading in lightwave, experimenting a bit right now with amber and jade and subsurface.

but hair you say, you provide finished results..which says nothing about the render speed, and that is what I mostly refered to as being impossible to work with, it takes what it feels like 10 times longer for my viewport to update in lightwave with cpu, vs
the gpu in blender, and the cpu in blender is still faster than lightwaves.

Now talking about the version I have ..wich is 2019.5

Apart from that, you show fibers..not hair, the new principle hair shader with melanin is very nice to work with, unfortunately I can not compare that towards the newest hair material in 2020, but in 2019..it´s not as good as the blender hair material in my
opinion.

What you need to do is compare hair render speed in blender and lightwave in the first place, it´s also a tweak thing..if you do not mind the longer rendertimes, it means you can go for a coffe and wait for lightwave to render, I can´t do that if you aim
to tweak the hair shading, it needs to iterate fast enough in the viewport...in my case it doesn´t, not in the same leage as how fast it goes in blender unfortunately.

My system is a mid range gaming system Asus Rog G20B 3.2 GHz CPU and nvida GPU GTX 480, so it performs better with most GPU rendering task such as hair,

[prometheus]

what action did you when it freezed?
f12

And for the record, the times Lightwave has freezed the pc for me, is even worse, meaning can´t even access task manager to shut down.
i've been lucky perhaps with 11.62

The system in blender also have a built in crash function when you need to go to bed..if you are late as now Myself, I have hacked that.
i need to hack that right now... way too late... and importante stuff in the morning....

Can be something related to GPU perhaps?
memory issues perhaps if you use GPU and final rendering if you have a huge number of hairstrands, you could use GPU for viewport only in such case and switch to cpu for final rendering to avoid that, but you loose out on the renderspeed for final images.
What´s your system now..didn´t you plan to upgrade?
Mine I described above, will record viewport iteration later to show on youtube.

I hate working with the material panel in blender though..prefer Lightwaves panels, principle materials are similar with some exceptions, and you have built in presets much better done in Lightwave.

The first stuff I would need would be GPU faster rendering in Lightwave..including the hair and aa solving.
The the GI multiple volume bounce scattering for volumetrics.
Then really enhanced fluid system.
And the modelling tools
And the Ui
That order sort of, but where is the devs and the trust in that it is possible ..buhu.

Structure wise from installing plugins, to navigating in layout, to surfacing to fractals, setting up a stage, focused model tasks..Lightwave rocks, these are the areas that frustrates me in blender.

[prometheus]

No problems with SSS or hair. L

yah..forgot to say, you can´t show hair like that..it´s not hair

I love all your interior renders anyway..they are great, but not the best showcase sample for "hair"

[Tim Parsons]

but hair you say, you provide finished results..which says nothing about the render speed, and that is what I mostly refered to as being impossible to work with, it takes what it feels like 10 times longer for my viewport to update in lightwave with cpu, vs
the gpu in blender, and the cpu in blender is still faster than lightwaves.

Now talking about the version I have ..wich is 2019.5

Apart from that, you show fibers..not hair, the new principle hair shader with melanin is very nice to work with, unfortunately I can not compare that towards the newest hair material in 2020, but in 2019..it´s not as good as the blender hair material in my
opinion.

What you need to do is compare hair render speed in blender and lightwave in the first place, it´s also a tweak thing..if you do not mind the longer rendertimes, it means you can go for a coffe and wait for lightwave to render, I can´t do that if you aim
to tweak the hair shading, it needs to iterate fast enough in the viewport...in my case it doesn´t, not in the same leage as how fast it goes in blender unfortunately.

Well exactly my point. It works for me and maybe others. If you need hair on a character well then yes, maybe another solution is better. I need fuzz on rope balls. So if the LW renderer works for me -for what I do - why would I go to Blender for rendering. Everybody complained about material compatibility from LW2015 to 2018 and now to go to Blender for rendering - talk about a pain. Why would I put myself through that. But I suppose if LW ever quits running on my box I might just have to and if it comes to that so be it. Evee and Cycles are amazing, but so is LW and VPR.

[prometheus]

Well exactly my point. It works for me and maybe others. If you need hair on a character well then yes, maybe another solution is better. I need fuzz on rope balls. So if the LW renderer works for me -for what I do - why would I go to Blender for rendering. Everybody complained about material compatibility from LW2015 to 2018 and now to go to Blender for rendering - talk about a pain. Why would I put myself through that. But I suppose if LW ever quits running on my box I might just have to and if it comes to that so be it. Evee and Cycles are amazing, but so is LW and VPR.

Ditto

The discussion is turning out like which team you prefer the best, barcelona with messi, or barcelona with messi...in the sense that we use what works for us and we are all fine with that.

Why would I render hair in lightwave when I can get better results in material, and faster and better groom tools in blender.
So I can just agree with what you say, whatever works for you or for me.

so the discussion you and I have around this has not much of value..Unless, You find yourself wanting to do more than what you do specificly for certain tasks, and perhaps in my case that is more open for experimentation, while what you do seem to be more specific already layed out, and not engaging in all kinds of stuff.
If it was another case, it means all the issues we have in each program..has value when knowing how to deal with them ..or what technique behind it works best etc.

Some minor issues with pbr and anisotrophic for instance, in blender it works right out of the bat, in lightwave you either have to ensure the Uv map is connected or enter nodes,add a projection node, and connect to anisotropy or you get those uggly artifacts..that works directly without that need in blender.

The Light sets however I feel is quite limiting in blender, prefer the light types in lightwave and how to set it all up as well.

[Marander]

Double post

[Marander]

what action did you when it freezed?

And for the record, the times Lightwave has freezed the pc for me, is even worse, meaning can´t even acess task manager to shut down.

That should not happen at all.

I cannot recall ever having any 3D software freezing the OS on any of my machines.

Actually yes, many years ago when trying to run Houdini on a Surface Pro LOL.

Note that I also use Blender 2.9x Alpha and Beta versions and I'm beta tester for other commercial software but never had an OS freeze or crash. I never install software from unknown sources or demo versions but upgrade my applications on a regular basis.

Maybe too few RAM? Or does it happen when using GPU acceleration? Old hardware? SSD or HD with bad sectors?

I would check the Windows Event Log for issues.

I use Win10 with at least 64 GB memory on all desktop machines and GeForce 2070/2080 cards with up-to-date drivers.

Can't remember ever having a blue screen or freeze on one of my 3 current workstations (2x Ryzen 9 + 1x Core i7) and 2 laptops (2x Dell XPS Core i7) using Win10 with various graphic and music applications, virtual machines and more. And sometimes I let them run and render for days.

On a previous Core i7 machine I used to have that with a specific set of GSkill(?) RAM in some situations. After replacing the RAM with a set of Corsair (I now use Corsair for all my builds) it never occured again and my son uses that machine now without any issues.

[Tim Parsons]

Why would I render hair in lightwave when I can get better results in material, and faster and better groom tools in blender.
So I can just agree with what you say, whatever works for you or for me.

Yes that's exactly right. For whatever reason the community generally thinks in the eyes of studios working on the next blockbuster and then compares the tools used there to LW. LW doesn't do some of that type of stuff very well, so yes, if you want to do that type of thing use something that can get it done.

so the discussion you and I have around this has not much of value..Unless, You find yourself wanting to do more than what you do specificly for certain tasks, and perhaps in my case that is more open for experimentation, while what you do seem to be more specific already layed out, and not engaging in all kinds of stuff.
If it was another case, it means all the issues we have in each program..has value when knowing how to deal with them ..or what technique behind it works best etc.

Yep - exactly. I've discovered the cloth sculpting tools in Blender - amazing! - and cloth inflation dynamics which is great for pillows etc.

Some minor issues with pbr and anisotrophic for instance, in blender it works right out of the bat, in lightwave you either have to ensure the Uv map is connected or enter nodes,add a projection node, and connect to anisotropy or you get those uggly artifacts..that works directly without that need in blender.

Minor for sure, but also adds that extra level of control.

My first attempt at making pillows in Blender. LW render.

[raymondtrace]

...I thought Blender was supposed to be fully indpendent from the OS, theoretically capable of running from a portable usb stick, so I'm surprised it froze the whole machine.

Being a portable-capable app (just like LW) does not separate the program from the OS (or the hardware resources shared by the OS).

The wonderful thing about these complex 3D apps is that we may not know if they've truly wrecked the RAM (a full system crash) or if they've only wrecked the display/video...making us perceive a non-responsive system.

[Marander]

Being a portable-capable app (just like LW) does not separate the program from the OS (or the hardware resources shared by the OS).

Huh? Never heard of that. Portable just means it doesn't require persistent files or a registry, that has no impact how the app allocates memory and the like.