Any recent info/rumors on LW 2021/22 ?

sami

sami

Active member
I'm not regularly on the FB or Discord, but has anyone heard any thing or is there any way to ask Vizrt if there's any hope of a LW 2021/22?

Not meaning to start a complaint thread here, just wanna know if there's any talk or if there's any chance we can hear a response from Vizrt on whether anything is in the works and roughly when that might be.
 
prometheus

prometheus

REBORN
No..I haven´t heard anything, and if anyone else really knew, it should have leaked out I would say.
No..there isn´t any chance you can hear anything about it from Vizrt, their policy is to not talk about their development, not even so for just confirming something is in development or not.

There is nothing more than the old statements vizrt did after aquiring Newtek...which you probably have seen before?

Q: Are we de-listing LightWave 3D?
A: No, we continue to sell and support LW3D and related add-ons (see lightwave3d.com for more details).


Q: Will development continue on this product?
A: We have just released LightWave 3D 2020, which has been well received by the market and our immediate focus is on supporting the adoption of this latest version. As a company (and like most companies) we do not talk about our development and future plans for our products.


Q: Will we still support our customers/channels that own LightWave 3D?
A: Yes, we know that LW3D is integral to many of our customer’s creative work-flows.


Q: What is on the road-map for this product?
A: At the Vizrt Group we do not share future looking product road-maps. That said, it should be clear that 3D technology is incredibly important and relevant to us and our customer base.
Click to expand...

blog.lightwave3d.com

LightWave Statement

blog.lightwave3d.com blog.lightwave3d.com
 
OFF

OFF

pass:sword
Of course, you can sit on lw2020 for a long time, especially if you use octane render, but when all competitors acquire a usd scene format, lightwave will be far beyond the current standard, which most large studios will switch to. and in order to include usd in the list of supported functions, as I understand it, the development team will have to thoroughly go through the sdk of lw. and this takes a lot of time, especially when the old team is almost all fired.
 
gdkeast

gdkeast

Member
We seem to be in a holding pattern not unlike 2016-2017. It is just a shame that Vizrt can't seem to bring itself to let the software go to someone else who sees a future for it. If I had the funds, I'd acquire it myself.
 
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Mastoy

Mastoy

Member
I sent a few days ago an email to Newtek, asking (politely) for news. I mentionned that the blog hadn't been updated for almost a year.
I got the same BS answer as everyone else :



They didn't even bother to remove the link to the blog.
 
erikals

erikals

 

two positive things >

- they actually bug-fixed LW2020 recently. i didn't think that would ever happen.
- there were talks of a possible sale 6 months ago or so. told by a bird.
birdie.png


the negative things > see user comments above.

 
slacer

slacer

Active member
Try to find new youtube videos or posts in other media about [any 3d Application] vs Lightwave and you will see, LW is invisible now.
The "no news until published" policy hurts this product in the industry. Lack of communication and marketing can kill the best product.
 
prometheus

prometheus

REBORN
slacer said:
Try to find new youtube videos or posts in other media about [any 3d Application] vs Lightwave and you will see, LW is invisible now.
The "no news until published" policy hurts this product in the industry. Lack of communication and marketing can kill the best product.
Click to expand...
With a high probability, it will.
 
raymondtrace

raymondtrace

Founding member
With most of us being registered to this forum for nearly 2 decades, should we know better? LightWave is dead after each release, with never a promise of another. History has sufficiently taught this specific market not to look forward. NewTek has not employed any outbound marketing in the past 5 years.
 
T

Tim Parsons

Well-known member
I'm not holding my breath. I use LW2020 everyday at work and make some neat things at home as well and like using it. I love the render engine and the modeling is still pretty decent even after many years of not much dev on it. But I've also been mucking about with Blender a little and like it too. I really think LW is dead though. For real this time. :)
 
OFF

OFF

pass:sword
it is not the lightwave that is dead, but the creative enthusiasm of the company's owners for its development.
lightwave can still be made competitive and attractive to users - it would be the will of the Newtek / Vizrt management.
 
Rayek

Rayek

Well-known member
At least for the Mac platform the resources it would take to keep LightWave running alone are probably prohibitive: LW is entirely OpenGL-based, and it would have to be rewritten to use Metal or Vulcan since Apple is dropping OpenGL. AND it needs to be recompiled for the next gen CPUs. A pretty big undertaking, and this is just to keep LW running on Mac as-is - no new features. It would not be worth it from an economical standpoint, I think - even for a company with said creative enthusiasm. Just not enough users to make this a viable undertaking.

Even the Photoshop devs have thrown in the towel as far as the OpenGL 3D features are concerned: those are now officially discontinued. Too much of an effort is required, and they have Substance Designer/Painter to replace most of that functionality anyway.

On the Mac platform LightWave is a forgone conclusion, as far as I can tell.
 
sami

sami

Active member
Rayek said:
At least for the Mac platform the resources it would take to keep LightWave running alone are probably prohibitive: LW is entirely OpenGL-based, and it would have to be rewritten to use Metal or Vulcan since Apple is dropping OpenGL. AND it needs to be recompiled for the next gen CPUs. A pretty big undertaking, and this is just to keep LW running on Mac as-is - no new features. It would not be worth it from an economical standpoint, I think - even for a company with said creative enthusiasm. Just not enough users to make this a viable undertaking.

Even the Photoshop devs have thrown in the towel as far as the OpenGL 3D features are concerned: those are now officially discontinued. Too much of an effort is required, and they have Substance Designer/Painter to replace most of that functionality anyway.

On the Mac platform LightWave is a forgone conclusion, as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...
Isn't 3DCoat 2021 still OpenGL?
 
slacer

slacer

Active member
There are OpenGL wrapper libraries like Mesa available and this could push to LW for Mac for the next MacOS Update without needing to strip OpenGL from this software. I don’t know the current state of Mesa for M1 Macs, but there was an announcement in March this year.
 
jaxtone

jaxtone

Creative Director
A total mess when trying to download my products from NEWTEK website. A total mess when trying to get in touch with them. That company does not care anymore and I am getting pissed. How hard can it be for them to answer their own contact forms they´ve put up on NEWTEKS website? Very hard and very craving or just not in their interest anylonger?

Can´t write more by now since I am about to explode when expressing so negative feelings about NEWTEK that the moderation here would crack!
 
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