Email Message from Vizrt about Lightwave 3d

[Lee Groves]

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Just received an email from vizrt..
Very excited after reading it.
Does this mean Lightwave3D has a future?
I do hope so.


Lee Groves

Edit. I received the email on the 4th of April!.

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LightWave 3D Update​	View this email online​
​
Dear LightWave Community, LightWave 3D is a proven, Emmy award-winning modelling, animation and render program, with a legion of followers and dedicated users such as yourselves. At Vizrt Group we have been looking for a home that offers the commitment and the enthusiasm it deserves. With over 30 years in the animation and FX industry, Andrew Bishop and his team have now stepped forward to acquire LightWave 3D under the name LightWave Digital. Some of you may know Andrew from his VFX work and bringing LightWave 3D to UK and European market alongside handling distribution in the UK. We did not make this decision lightly. The desire has always been to ensure LightWave 3D has a future with a team that has a strong desire to breathe new life into the technology, bring more value to users, and usher in the next generation of 3D graphics for film, animation, and VFX. We are certain under this ownership; Andrew and his team will deliver this and more. As our transaction with Andrew and his team finalizes, more information will be shared. For now, the new team can be contacted through this Discord channel here.

 

[shrox]

Lets hope Andrew and team make it the best.

 

[DaxDanner]

Finger crossed! Hope for LW's rebirth

 

[Opticon]

Excuse my ignorance and confusion but will Andrew Bishop be acquiring LightWave from Vizart or will Vizrt still be the parent company of LightWave? I only found out about this from an email recieved today, April 4th, regarding the acquisition by Andrew Bishop. I didn't even know that Vizart acquired LW in 2019.

The question is: should I pay for the upgrade to LW 2020 (from LW9) or should I wait until after April 27th? I can't afford the $595 upgrade price at this time, but would be happy to pay a discounted price.

 

[Dodgy]

Excuse my ignorance and confusion but will Andrew Bishop be acquiring LightWave from Vizart or will Vizrt still be the parent company of LightWave? I only found out about this from an email recieved today, April 4th, regarding the acquisition by Andrew Bishop. I didn't even know that Vizart acquired LW in 2019.

The question is: should I pay for the upgrade to LW 2020 (from LW9) or should I wait until after April 27th? I can't afford the $595 upgrade price at this time, but would be happy to pay a discounted price.

Lightwave will be owned by a new company, completely separate from VizRT called the Lightwave Group (I think) run by Andrew Bishop, so it is completely new.

 

[Shabazzy]

Lightwave will be owned by a new company, completely separate from VizRT called the Lightwave Group (I think) run by Andrew Bishop, so it is completely new.

Andy has said it will be called LightWave Digital.

 

[Shabazzy]

The question is: should I pay for the upgrade to LW 2020 (from LW9) or should I wait until after April 27th? I can't afford the $595 upgrade price at this time, but would be happy to pay a discounted price.

This is a big question.

Mainly because the changes between the two versions are so great.

If you have never used any of the releases after version 9 you are going to be in for a surprise.

The tools available from LW 10 through 2015 are very different and more powerful and flexible. The sampling engine is different too.

LW 2018 through 2020 also added a brand new rendering engine that produces a very different look (in a good way) to the what you're used to. The downside is that you must learn how it works in order to get great results and learning how this new engine works has proven difficult for many simply because in the past you never really needed to understand how LightWave's rendering system worked. It just did.

With 2018 - 2020 you do.

Fortunately there are users like me who are more than happy to guide you and explain how it all works in simple terms. So you are not alone in figuring it out.

Then there's the question of timing. Whether to upgrade now or later. To be honest, at this point I think it really boils down to who you wish to give your money to.

VizRT? Or LightWave Digital?

And whether you can afford to wait or not?

After the takeover, who knows when LightWave will be available to buy? I don't know if there will be a seamless transition to payment processing or if there will be some kind of interruption while they set up new merchant accounts.

In any case, if you haven't done so already, I would probably advise you to download a trial of 2020 just to see how different it is to v9 and pick the minds of those of us in the forums who have more experience with it to get the answers to your inevitable questions.

 

[Tim Parsons]

Excuse my ignorance and confusion but will Andrew Bishop be acquiring LightWave from Vizart or will Vizrt still be the parent company of LightWave? I only found out about this from an email recieved today, April 4th, regarding the acquisition by Andrew Bishop. I didn't even know that Vizart acquired LW in 2019.

The question is: should I pay for the upgrade to LW 2020 (from LW9) or should I wait until after April 27th? I can't afford the $595 upgrade price at this time, but would be happy to pay a discounted price.

Wait for sure. Don't give any money to Vizrt. Plus the new owners might have a welcome back to LW sale. I hope.

 

[shrox]

This is a big question.

Mainly because the changes between the two versions are so great.

If you have never used any of the releases after version 9 you are going to be in for a surprise.

The tools available from LW 10 through 2015 are very different and more powerful and flexible. The sampling engine is different too.

LW 2018 through 2020 also added a brand new rendering engine that produces a very different look (in a good way) to the what you're used to. The downside is that you must learn how it works in order to get great results and learning how this new engine works has proven difficult for many simply because in the past you never really needed to understand how LightWave's rendering system worked. It just did.

With 2018 - 2020 you do.

Fortunately there are users like me who are more than happy to guide you and explain how it all works in simple terms. So you are not alone in figuring it out.

Then there's the question of timing. Whether to upgrade now or later. To be honest, at this point I think it really boils down to who you wish to give your money to.

VizRT? Or LightWave Digital?

And whether you can afford to wait or not?

After the takeover, who knows when LightWave will be available to buy? I don't know if there will be a seamless transition to payment processing or if there will be some kind of interruption while they set up new merchant accounts.

In any case, if you haven't done so already, I would probably advise you to download a trial of 2020 just to see how different it is to v9 and pick the minds of those of us in the forums who have more experience with it to get the answers to your inevitable questions.

Did the firefly artifact issue get sorted out?

 

[Shabazzy]

Did the firefly artifact issue get sorted out?

Honestly, I don't know because I have never had that issue.

In my experience, whenever I've had noise or what others would probably call fireflies (I'm not sure if they were or not because from what I've read from those who've experienced the problem, it seemed that this was a problem caused by a software bug and couldn't be fixed by simply changing the settings), I've always been able to get rid of them by increasing the appropriate samples. And this is in both 2019 and 2020.

So I'm unsure if the problem still exists or not and I'm not sure how to check.

 

[prometheus]

Fireflies issues..
Sampling adjustment only goes so far, surface adjustment and fixing can be made.
Liberty3D has some video tutorials of that, or experiment the hard way yourself.

 

[lwanmtr]

Lightwave Digital has a long road ahead in bringing LW up to modern standards in rendering and modeling....lets hope they can pull it off.

 

[quakebox]

Lightwave Digital has a long road ahead in bringing LW up to modern standards in rendering and modeling....lets hope they can pull it off.

No doubt they also need funding let's hope they get enough funds.

 

[Snosrap]

Did the firefly artifact issue get sorted out?

Hasn't been a problem for me with LW2020. LW2018 had all sorts of out of the blue fireflys for no apparent reason, but that has - for me anyway - been completely resolved in 2020. I love the shading and rendering system in LW2020, it's just so darn slow!

 

[gdkeast]

This is fantastic news. I have always maintained the position that LW cannot be killed because at the end of the day it is lines of code we are licensed to own and have access to on our computers. What we do with that code is completely up to each individual user. LW is the program that opened the world of 3D to me and I stayed with it simply because it was what I knew, I was very comfortable with the interface, and it was infinitely customizable. And there was always so much more to learn. Over time, it was hard to ignore the chatter about LW being dead and many users seemed to really have a love/hate relationship with not only the program, but NT itself. I never really felt that way, but did think Vizrt did not do a good job of communicating. To say that there is no roadmap or they don't share roadmaps seems a little disingenuous to say the least. Any way, this is good news and I am glad to see that the program is in the hands of someone who knows the program well and has used it with great success. That almost seems to be the way it should be. LW needs a lot of TLC right now and I just hope everyone remains patient as develop resumes.

 

[Shabazzy]

This is fantastic news. I have always maintained the position that LW cannot be killed because at the end of the day it is lines of code we are licensed to own and have access to on our computers. What we do with that code is completely up to each individual user. LW is the program that opened the world of 3D to me and I stayed with it simply because it was what I knew, I was very comfortable with the interface, and it was infinitely customizable. And there was always so much more to learn. Over time, it was hard to ignore the chatter about LW being dead and many users seemed to really have a love/hate relationship with not only the program, but NT itself. I never really felt that way, but did think Vizrt did not do a good job of communicating. To say that there is no roadmap or they don't share roadmaps seems a little disingenuous to say the least. Any way, this is good news and I am glad to see that the program is in the hands of someone who knows the program well and has used it with great success. That almost seems to be the way it should be. LW needs a lot of TLC right now and I just hope everyone remains patient as develop resumes.

 

[prometheus]

Hasn't been a problem for me with LW2020. LW2018 had all sorts of out of the blue fireflys for no apparent reason, but that has - for me anyway - been completely resolved in 2020. I love the shading and rendering system in LW2020, it's just so darn slow!

I believe the GI system was rewritten from 2019 and 2020, and solved this as a consequence.
Slow..a possible trade off for that.

Noise within volumetrics is often a problem in most render systems, also apparent in blender, this happens with high anisotrophy settings, takes a huge amount of render time to solve, unless using de-noiser.