What can't you create?
- Thread starter gdkeast
- Start date
I'm not here to diss LW, but I think it is Modeler which tends to get both barrels from critics. When hrgiger used to post here, he made a video of his Modeler grievances, though I can't find it now (c'mon Steve do an encore 
). Some users will need ZBrush type modelling, or GPU rendering for speed, or whatever. Indeed, since you are a more positive user, it would be worth hearing where you feel LW could improve...
). Some users will need ZBrush type modelling, or GPU rendering for speed, or whatever. Indeed, since you are a more positive user, it would be worth hearing where you feel LW could improve...
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prometheus
OFF TOPIC
For me there´s always been a limit to how vast some effects can be and how good and realistic they can be, not a mish mash of stylized environments and minor effects.
So it would be vast full 3D environments that covers infinite distances, both in terrain and volumetrics, as well as there is no way to produce infinite cloud layers except employing ogo taiki, ozone or mix with vue and terragen.
Otherwise you need to do workarounds and approach a seemingly vast landscape with sections, and render passes, as opposed to apporach it with more physical correct infintie cloud layers and terrain etc.
Apart from that there is the multiple scattering thing, but can be worked around by the help of octane, but octane do not solve the issues above.
So I would say it´s pretty much that which is lacking, you can probably produce any kind of model and environment apart from that when it comes to creation.
another thing when it comes to advanced dynamics and interactions or crowd behaviour, where it can only go so far where others can take it to another level.
The tools today can cover so much ..but it´s probably more a question of How to approach things with the most efficient workflow and how fast you can simulate or render.
here´s a sample of scenery that would take you forever to try and replicate within Lightwave alone, and keep in mind that even this with Terragen would require a render farm most surely, but to get this level of realism in the sky and terrain..boy you would have to work your..ar..off and still not getting that level of realism in clouds.
The vfx breakdown also is also accompanied with some tutorials here, and in fact it is also using Lightwave in combination with Terragen.
so a typical example of what you "can´t" create strictly within Lightwave, not at that level.
some users have made some commercials, like for some aeroplane company ..which I think our fellow well known user Lino Grandi did som cloud work on, but it´s not on the same realism and same level, though I think they researched terragen as well and still opted for Lightwave, but if you have a good eye for how it should look, one can see where that commercial is not seamless in it´s cloud coverage..nor has the same realism compared to this Terragen sample.
I´ll bet they cranked up the shots faster though.
Another part is terrain sculpting, you can´t sculpt parts like you can in zbrush or blender, you are restricted to displacements and cant adjust them on the fly with sculpting where needed, thus terrain rocks will only have a specific style and can´t be tweaked Exactly as you want them.
And there´s more, but I think we can discuss around that for now.
So it would be vast full 3D environments that covers infinite distances, both in terrain and volumetrics, as well as there is no way to produce infinite cloud layers except employing ogo taiki, ozone or mix with vue and terragen.
Otherwise you need to do workarounds and approach a seemingly vast landscape with sections, and render passes, as opposed to apporach it with more physical correct infintie cloud layers and terrain etc.
Apart from that there is the multiple scattering thing, but can be worked around by the help of octane, but octane do not solve the issues above.
So I would say it´s pretty much that which is lacking, you can probably produce any kind of model and environment apart from that when it comes to creation.
another thing when it comes to advanced dynamics and interactions or crowd behaviour, where it can only go so far where others can take it to another level.
The tools today can cover so much ..but it´s probably more a question of How to approach things with the most efficient workflow and how fast you can simulate or render.
here´s a sample of scenery that would take you forever to try and replicate within Lightwave alone, and keep in mind that even this with Terragen would require a render farm most surely, but to get this level of realism in the sky and terrain..boy you would have to work your..ar..off and still not getting that level of realism in clouds.
The vfx breakdown also is also accompanied with some tutorials here, and in fact it is also using Lightwave in combination with Terragen.
so a typical example of what you "can´t" create strictly within Lightwave, not at that level.
some users have made some commercials, like for some aeroplane company ..which I think our fellow well known user Lino Grandi did som cloud work on, but it´s not on the same realism and same level, though I think they researched terragen as well and still opted for Lightwave, but if you have a good eye for how it should look, one can see where that commercial is not seamless in it´s cloud coverage..nor has the same realism compared to this Terragen sample.
I´ll bet they cranked up the shots faster though.
Another part is terrain sculpting, you can´t sculpt parts like you can in zbrush or blender, you are restricted to displacements and cant adjust them on the fly with sculpting where needed, thus terrain rocks will only have a specific style and can´t be tweaked Exactly as you want them.
And there´s more, but I think we can discuss around that for now.
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[email protected]
Member
It's not really about what I can't make in LW. The issue has become: how quickly can a project come together with as few hoops as possible.
If you are a teacher, like me, then you have to make sure you are in the mainstream. I have done many a student no favors sticking with LW all these years; now it would just be stupid.
Doing little projects in other applications is a must in my regimen now. Seeing how it's done elsewhere has a lot of great points in keeping your work and skills fresh. LWGuru has been showing some cool stuff from vdb. Those sims take a lot of time, I believe. The speed at which they can be built and sim'ed in other software is ASTOUNDING. I am always willing to make time for astounding.
What it was it still is: a great piece of software for making things. What it is not becoming is more the issue. At this point, it is not becoming state of the art, unified or even publicly slated for any of those things nor an update.
Still... What it was it is.
If you are a teacher, like me, then you have to make sure you are in the mainstream. I have done many a student no favors sticking with LW all these years; now it would just be stupid.
Doing little projects in other applications is a must in my regimen now. Seeing how it's done elsewhere has a lot of great points in keeping your work and skills fresh. LWGuru has been showing some cool stuff from vdb. Those sims take a lot of time, I believe. The speed at which they can be built and sim'ed in other software is ASTOUNDING. I am always willing to make time for astounding.
What it was it still is: a great piece of software for making things. What it is not becoming is more the issue. At this point, it is not becoming state of the art, unified or even publicly slated for any of those things nor an update.
Still... What it was it is.
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
Have to bump this since this part is where the pipeline between Lightwave and Terragen is covered, interesting part about Lightwave terrain previz that later is exported as image maps for higher res terrain generation in Terragen, camera movement and object animation is made in Lightwave as well.
I just think this vid should be highlighted properly, especially in this forum, the title only says Terragen for VFX, but for this vid, the inclusion of Lightwave should be there.
I just think this vid should be highlighted properly, especially in this forum, the title only says Terragen for VFX, but for this vid, the inclusion of Lightwave should be there.
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
No..no ideas, can´t afford renderfarms as a hobbyuser right now, and I haven´t estimated quality and resolution and amount of frames needed etc, but I do know that terragen takes time to render single frames at lower resolutions ..and that is just with low res terrains as well, my CPU is too old to handle it, threadripper? No idea.
My system ..
Asus Rog G20CB
GTX1080 GPU
(Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3401 Mhz, 4 kärnor, 8 logical processors)
Will probably not upgrade computer until 2-3 years, or if this one gives up on me of course.
I suspect those who did this submitted this piece to pixelplow..
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
The video coverage is interesting, and I will have to look at it..as much as I can with the Terragen demo version that is, did something similar with lightwave terrain converted to heightfield and applying erosion within worldmachine on that.
They didn´t cover the surfacing part though, nor cloud creation etc, so for it to be complete, they should have added the full works, clouds and atmosphere, as well as texturing and surfacing and rendering, but perhaps that may come..I don´t know.
I just happen to loath the UI of terragen and how to navigate in it and work with various views unfortunately, which is one part of why I haven´t invested in it.
They didn´t cover the surfacing part though, nor cloud creation etc, so for it to be complete, they should have added the full works, clouds and atmosphere, as well as texturing and surfacing and rendering, but perhaps that may come..I don´t know.
I just happen to loath the UI of terragen and how to navigate in it and work with various views unfortunately, which is one part of why I haven´t invested in it.
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
TFD has been there for a while, and that is what you should use for "proper" fire and smoke, the gas solver is just too crude to be efficient to work with for that matter, at least to reach the TFD level of quality and workflow.
As for fluids, yes..some limitations natively have been removed with gas solver and the other VDB tools, deepfx and hurleyworks has been there for a while though, as well as realflow.
But with additional tools you can create anything, but without it, you can´t..at least not up to the same level though you can create pretty much everything if you can settle for less realism and more workarounds of course.
kadri
Member
Depends on what you do most probably.
I use Lightwave since the first pc version around 1994 (v3 ?) or so.
I make mostly things in planetary scale.
So after a while i begun using Terragen more and more for rendering together with Lightwave in this and that capacity.
The way you can get the clouds and lighting-atmosphere makes this very easy in Terragen. Render times are slow of course.
My last animation i am making was 10-15 minutes in the beginning. Now between half and one hour per frame.
Without my new AMD Ryzen 9 3950x this would have been too long for my old computer...5 times or so slower .
I use Lightwave since the first pc version around 1994 (v3 ?) or so.
I make mostly things in planetary scale.
So after a while i begun using Terragen more and more for rendering together with Lightwave in this and that capacity.
The way you can get the clouds and lighting-atmosphere makes this very easy in Terragen. Render times are slow of course.
My last animation i am making was 10-15 minutes in the beginning. Now between half and one hour per frame.
Without my new AMD Ryzen 9 3950x this would have been too long for my old computer...5 times or so slower .
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
Yes, all that to be expected, so much harder to get that lighting scattering and infinite cloud layering in layout with the new volumetrics.
Not sure if Octane has access to all the native lightwave procedurals for volumetrics as well as the Dpont Rman collection, it would be essential to work with octane in such case to get that kind of scattering in the clouds, since natively Lightwave seem incapable of it.
The rest is about faking infinite cloud layers at such large scale, and getting the fractals right, and to render at decent speed with such large scale distrubution of clouds..as much as possible in one go rather than having to clone layers that could be looking the same.
But the really Huge issue is also if you try and combine that with lightwave´s global volume scattering, Terragen has been optimized for several years to handle such things.
Ogo taiki almost got it right ..except for renderspeed and a multitude of confusing quality settings.
shrox
Man of many cells.
I look at old HV stuff I did that I thought looked good, it doesn't...
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
Indeed so, also for me.
Tim Parsons
Active member
prometheus - how many words per minute can you type? Seriously you say so much that I don't even read your posts anymore and I think you generally have pretty good comments on all subjects. Maybe I'm just jealous that I can't type so fast. Maybe less is more?
prometheus
OFF TOPIC
prometheus - how many words per minute can you type? Seriously you say so much that I don't even read your posts anymore and I think you generally have pretty good comments on all subjects. Maybe I'm just jealous that I can't type so fast.
My latest post...Only five words
Your latest post..amazing 50 words
And yes, I have two conditions, just like ents in LOTR, I don´t write anything unless it´s worth writing a lot of it
..(or it was about saying something unless it takes a long time to say)I tend to write to much I know, part of it may be that I can write without looking at the keyboard, and can write quite fast since I learnt the finger method when I was around 9 years old, but I haven´t bothered on counting it to prove anything really.
So it´s an effect of fast writing that allows me to write more than I maybe should, and that I may have a tendency to just ellaborate too much on what I want to convey.
I am aware of it and will try to shorten things, so that means it ends right now.
For me in Lightwave, it isn't necessarily that I can't create something; sometimes it's just the hoops you have to jump through to do it that can be frustrating.
That's not limited to Lightwave by any stretch of the imagination. I've been working a lot in Blender lately out of job-related necessity and there are frustrations there too... some that are just software-centric oddities (the simple deform Bend... why does it have to be so weird?) and some that are just limitations of the software.
I think that if Lightwave could resolve integrated physics, add a modifier stack for Modeler (I don't personally feel the loss, but apparently for some it's HUGE), some third-party tool integration (LWCad and Third Powers integrated) and GPU render, that would be a huge step in the right direction. Some user interface upgrades would certainly also be welcome.
I also feel like there are a lot of comparisons to the capabilities of Lightwave that reference need / purpose-driven software, like RealFlow, Houdini, or Zbrush that might not be fair. The fact that those applications are still in heavy use speaks to the continued need for them across the industry.
Anyhoo.
edit: Just realized that my first sentence was essentially the same thing as [email protected]'s first sentence
That's not limited to Lightwave by any stretch of the imagination. I've been working a lot in Blender lately out of job-related necessity and there are frustrations there too... some that are just software-centric oddities (the simple deform Bend... why does it have to be so weird?) and some that are just limitations of the software.
I think that if Lightwave could resolve integrated physics, add a modifier stack for Modeler (I don't personally feel the loss, but apparently for some it's HUGE), some third-party tool integration (LWCad and Third Powers integrated) and GPU render, that would be a huge step in the right direction. Some user interface upgrades would certainly also be welcome.
I also feel like there are a lot of comparisons to the capabilities of Lightwave that reference need / purpose-driven software, like RealFlow, Houdini, or Zbrush that might not be fair. The fact that those applications are still in heavy use speaks to the continued need for them across the industry.
Anyhoo.
edit: Just realized that my first sentence was essentially the same thing as [email protected]'s first sentence
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Tim Parsons
Active member
I've read a lot of your posts over the years but I am finding life is too short to keep reading them especially when they go on and on.My latest post...Only five words
Your latest post..amazing 50 words
And yes, I have two conditions, just like ents in LOTR, I don´t write anything unless it´s worth writing a lot of it
I tend to write to much I know, part of it may be that I can write without looking at the keyboard, and can write quite fast since I learnt the finger method when I was around 9 years old, but I haven´t bothered on counting it to prove anything really.
So it´s an effect of fast writing that allows me to write more than I maybe should, and that I may have a tendency to just ellaborate too much on what I want to convey.
I am aware of it and will try to shorten things, so that means it ends right now.
Keep 'em short if possible. But seriously there must be a typing speed test on the internet somewhere I would love to know how many words per minute you can type, it has to be a lot. I'm no longer a hunt and pecker as I took some Mavis Beacon typing courses 20 years ago but that didn't help much.