These days, with the creative process, artists need to move at maximum speed in order to tackle incredible deadlines, demanding work and high expectations. Using LightWave® either exclusively or in a pipeline, makes it possible for an individual, a small team or a major facility to see their dreams and ideas come to life with award-winning quality work on time and on budget. Artists all over the world say the speed, flexibility, value and control they gain with LightWave throughout the creative process lets them get it done.

LightWave® is a complete modeling, rendering and animation system. Used extensively in broadcast television production, film visual effects, video game development, print graphics and visualization, LightWave is responsible for more artists winning Emmy Awards than any other 3D application.

benefits:

LightWave Platforms
A new platform has been added, Windows 32-bit with SSE2 enhancements.

Modeler
Modeler in the Windows version now does drag and drop for files.

Layout
Added drag-and-drop to the UI or the program icon for Layout Windows version, supports audio, lwo, lws, obj, images.
Added drag-and-drop of image files to the Image Editor.
Drag-and-drop extended to support .srf and image files dropped into the surface and texture image panes.
Dynamic Range Limit enhanced to provide a range, with Minimum and Maximum values in the Image Processing window. Negative values also supported.
Implemented "Exclude From Volume Stack" for surfaces.
Added the new raytrace functions (see SDK section) into volumetrics and pixel filters.
Added control script for setting the Radiosity Sample Diagnostics Flags.
The Radiosity Flags (Render tab/Utilities/Radiosity Flags) are now stored in the scene file.
Added ability to lock down Z buffer minimum and maximum range for export, for improved compositing compatibility:
Minimum sets the 0 point in the buffer.
Maximum sets the 1 point in the buffer.
Added snapping to item position (specifically to pivot point) when dragging items in Layout.
During Layout's bone re-parenting process, it now notifies plugins of the new bone item being added as well as the old bone item being removed.
Package Scene has undergone a significant rewrite:
New option "Preserve Existing Structure," will attempt to preserve all directories and subdirectories that are under the current Content directory when copying assets to the new content directory.
New option "Reload Old Scene," reloads the original scene after exporting.
Changed handling of Radiosity cache files,to work with the new Radiosity path behavior. Will also respect file structure if Preserve File Structure option is selected.
Added an option for Radiosity cache files to be included in the package or not.
Added an option to draw wireframe handles and gizmos using antialiased lines. This improves the look of bones quite a bit. The "Handle Wire Smoothing" setting is in the Handles&Icons tab of the Display preferences panel. 0 (default) is off, larger values make the lines thicker (7 seems to work well). If set, this value also controls the line thickness of the grid, if grid antialiasing is enabled.
Made Parent In Place more aware of scaling sign.
Two new Lscripts for working creating or assigning handles have been added: Create Handle, Assign Handle.
Enhanced Viper performance for all modes and all platforms.
Added new Mirror Hierarchy generic LScript.
Added Foot Printer LScript for automatically adding footprints to a character scene.
FiberFX Highlights:

Polygonal fiber modeler suitable for creating hair, fur and feathers, and consists of five plugins:

Fiber Modeler - Creates Polygonal Fiber models, fat hair, feathers, triangle strips
Strand Tool - Modeler tool to adjust guide chains using Inverse Kinematics
Strand Maker - Modeler plug-in to create fiber strands with standard tools.
Fiber Filter - Pixel filter renders two point polygon strands.
Fiber Node Handler - Nodal interface for control.
Added occlusion culling of fibers. Speedup depends on how many fibers are behind in the z buffer.
Added support for multiple FiberFX instances on a single mesh. Cloned FiberFX instances have a "(#)" appended to the object name in list. Deactivating a cloned instance removes the entry from the list.
Added right mouse button menu popup with clone command.
Implemented Feature Request Case 15884: Added stereo rendering ability to FiberFX.
Reworked mouse deltas for better combing. Comb direction is now independent of starting point.
Changed clamping of color values to support HDRI. Added dynamic range limits and clamping to LW interface values from the image processing panel.
Added FFx object list popup menu item (Save To Default) to save the current ffsurface as the default to be used the next time a new instance is created. This will allow the user to customize their default settings. Added support functions to save default to user setting folder.
Multi-threaded depth buffer raycast is now enabled. This allows the pixel filter to operate with the raytraced cameras, including features such as Depth of Field and Photoreal Motion Blur. Motion Blur must be on for this to engage, though the blur level can be set to 0. The quality is controlled using the Motion Blur passes setting.
Work has been done in FiberFX on disallowing subd changes after editing guides. This was a major source of guide edit crashes in bug reports. This will enforce the same subd level for preview and rendering. A warning message will be displayed when they are different, informing user that these settings need to be matched when using FiberFX.
Some optimizations have been made to the FiberFX IK solver.
Revised the way modeled strand fibers are built. Previously they were clones, now they are shortened on the inside of the curve and lengthened on the outside of the curve, following the modeled strand in a more natural way. See image attached below.
Guide edit panel now resets its control state when switching between editing objects.
Added "Random" toggle button for Swirl to make a random starting rotation offset, plus load and save code.


Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

New IK Calculation Options for Improved Performance

LightWave now has several options that allow the user to control the basis for IK calculation. These options provide improved performance for tuning the desired solution for each animation movement. Options are:

Base on First Keyframe - Calculate from the first keyframe to the current frame
Base on Most Recent Keyframe - Calculate from most recent keyframe to the current frame
Base on Current Time - Calculate based on the channel values for the current time.
Base on Frame - Select an initial frame to calculate from. Value can be enveloped
New Bone Type - Joints

Bones can now be either LightWave's traditional z-axis bones or they can be joints, which operate in a manner similar to the joint-based metaphor found in many other programs, while still preserving the strengths of the traditional LightWave bones. This allows animators familiar with other systems easy entry into animating with LightWave, and will improve animation I/O capabilities in the future.

Joint-based animation and deformation control allows for a "stretchy bones" effect with considerable control for the user. A more organic and natural motion effect for shoulder and neck movements can be achieved, for example, or a more exaggerated effect for cartoon-type characters. Even zero-length bones (e.g. isolated joints) can cause deformation (activate them and turn off Multiply Strength by Rest Length).

Support for Nulls in IK Chains

Nulls are now allowed in the bone hierarchy. This contributes to better inter-application integration and data exchange, as well as improving the rigging possibilities within LightWave.

New Objective Options for IK

Alternative objectives can now be set for IK; this control is right below the Goal Object control on the Motion Options Panel/ IK and Modifiers Tab.
 

Download NEWTEK LIGHTWAVE3D v9.6