NewTek is now shipping LightWave 11, the latest version of its Emmy award-winning, professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software that lets artists broaden their creative exploration. LightWave 11 incorporates many new features, such as instancing, flocking and fracturing tools, flexible Bullet Dynamics, Pixologic Zbrush support, and much more. With its innovative tools and unlimited creative possibilities, LightWave 11 is ideal for all genres of 3D content creation—from film and broadcast visual effects production, to architectural visualization, and game design.
Mikael Burman, technical supervisor at Massive, a Ubisoft Studio based in Sweden, says, “Our cinematics team works in a mixed 3D pipeline most of the time, and the updated I/O tools in LightWave 11 (FBX and MDD/GeoCache), combined with the new Unified sampling; colorspace-aware Adaptive sampling; and updated shaders, such as the reflection blur; allows me and my team to deliver fast, artistic, and adaptable content,” Burman explained. “LightWave 11 continues to improve and make our work more creative and enjoyable.”
Tom Bosschaert, managing director of Except Integrated Sustainability, based in the United States and the Netherlands, says “LightWave 11 adds a set of tools that enables us to push the boundaries of our inventions. Instancing and Bullet Dynamics natively provide possibilities that allow us to massively speed up production,” said Bosschaert. “The productivity enhancements throughout the program, give us tangible daily improvements in speed, workflow, and quality.”
LightWave 11 is designed to support the creative process, providing the artist with the ability to interact in real time with 3D content, to work seamlessly with the full range of software applications in production pipelines, and to render on unlimited render nodes. LightWave 11 incorporates groundbreaking technology, such as the Virtual Preview Renderer (VPR) for onscreen real-time rendering and Anaglyph Stereoscopic Preview for real-time interocular, ‘red-blue’ anaglyphic separations. Some of the many new features in LightWave 11 include:
Instancing
- Duplicate a vast number of objects in a scene without experiencing memory overhead
- Scale, position, rotate and surface randomly cloned objects for realistic detail
Flocking
- Animate realistic motion of grouped objects such as such as birds, fish, insects, animals, aircraft, spaceships and more using a new motion modifier
- Calculate crowd avoidance of neighboring objects, target alignment and cohesive attractions with the motion modifier
- Pre-fracture objects that are ready for destruction with a new Modeler tool that is designed to complement Bullet Dynamics in Layout
- Animate explosions without using dynamics and control the density of fractures by applying weight maps to objects
Bullet Dynamics
- Deliver physics-based animation with the Bullet Dynamics engine in Layout and the new Fracture tool in Modeler
- Collapse buildings, create explosions or quickly place objects in a natural-looking random pattern
Virtual Studio and Interchange Tools
- Support for new controller types, including the Sony Playstation Move, allow users to easily control and record the item results with a LightWave channel
- Import and export model and texture data to Pixologic Zbrush software with GoZ technology
- Additional LightWave 11 features include powerful new render buffer capabilities, robust Python scripting functionality, FiberFX enhancements, user interface improvements and more.
- LightWave 11 is now available for the retail price of US$1,495. Upgrade pricing from earlier versions of LightWave is US$695. Educational pricing is also available.