That Carrara is dead and buried deep in Daz3d's basement should by now be obvious to everybody. Question is: Is Lightwave alive and well? And the answer is a big, resounding, vibrating YES, Lightwave is alive and kicking.

Lightwave 2015 was released in, well, 2015, and then there was 3 years of silence. So much so that everybody thought Lightwave is dead for good. But then in January 2018 Lightwave 2018 was released with a plethora of new features.

One would have thought that from now on Lightwave will go on a 3-years basis for new releases. But then, O surprise, early January 2019, Lightwave 2019 was released. The initial impression was that this is a minor release to bring-in update/upgrade money, on top of new sales.

But no, Lightwave 2019 is a new release loaded with new powerful features See Here, which proves that NewTek, the makers of Lightwave, is spending some serious development money on it, leaveing no doubt in anybody's mind that Lightwave will live a healthy and joyful life for many years to come.

What makes Lightwave 2019 a gem to use is its Display Scaling feature, which lets the user seamlessly scale the UI size independently on up to 2 high resolution monitors. If you have 2K, 4k, 6K or higher resolution monitors, you can use them at their native resolution, without the fonts or icons becoming so small that they are unreadable or stressful, especially for weaker eyes.

At $995.- Lightwave 2019 may be a bit expensive, But considering the huge amount of features it offers, and the vast horizons it opens, it's only a small price to pay.

Another advantage that came with this new release is that previous owners of Lightwave prior to 2015 can now upgrade to the new version for only $395 still a little steep but considering that if you wanted to upgrade to 2018 from 11.6 the price was $695 this current sale is for a limited time so if you have an old license now would be a good time to upgrade to the latest version

I cannot see the OP poster's post but if now the Carrara forum is considered fair game for every other software to it's demise I might as well share Flowscape

@ Lobo3433: I agree with you that $395.- upgrade price is a bit steep. If Lightwave plans to make yearly releases, and charge $395.- for the upgrade, that equates to a quite expensive subscription model.

For me the real value in LW 2019 is its scaleable UI, which works extremely well. The UI can be enlarged or shrunk by any factor, to suit any monitor or any eyesight.

LW always had the reputation of a quirky UI, but with the new UI scaleability, LW 2019 is now ahead of every other 3D app. Some 3D apps let the user enlarge the UI font size (within limits), but no 3D apps, as far as I know, has such an elegantly designed mechanism as LW 2019 does.

The display scaleing thing is nice but has been around a long time in some other software actually. The Unity engine had a similar feature going all the way back to 2015. It could scale automatically depending on the monitor size, even on a mobile device with support for 4k monitors and hDPI. I think Zbrush has the same kind of thing too. As far as custom UI's go, I think Blender has them all beat. You could literally redesign the entire UI any way you want from the ground up. Zbrush has a very customizable UI too, although I don't know if it's automatic like Unity and LW.

Both apps were released in the 90ies and actually were started in the 80ies. Both are supported by the Octane render plugin, that keeps them fresh enough for the 2020ies.

Lightwave actually works very nicely with Daz/Poser contents. See Link 1 and ee ink 2

Besides, if we add to the Carrara price the $600 or so for Octane, to get a decent and fast render, plus the price of a couple of plug-ins, we get quickly close to LW's $995 price, and Carrara doesn't even have 1/100 of LW's features and power.

Octane is 600$ for any app. Same price for Carrara and Lightwave. Carrara is about 50$ vs LWs 995$, so LW better have 20x more features... But for 995 you can get a modern 3D app like Clarisse iFX 4.0 that does 3D and compositing with "a bazillion polygons" in new Hollywood movies. Still requires Zbrush and Maya (or Carrara, LW, whatever) for modeling, but 20 years newer than Carrara, LW, Maya, 3dsmax makes it efficient. There is a free Clarisse PLE, thinking about trying it with Carrara...

3Drendero posted at 2:13PM Wed, 20 February 2019 - #4346526

Octane is 600$ for any app. Same price for Carrara and Lightwave. Carrara is about 50$ vs LWs 995$, so LW better have 20x more features... But for 995 you can get a modern 3D app like Clarisse iFX 4.0 that does 3D and compositing with "a bazillion polygons" in new Hollywood movies. Still requires Zbrush and Maya (or Carrara, LW, whatever) for modeling, but 20 years newer than Carrara, LW, Maya, 3dsmax makes it efficient. There is a free Clarisse PLE, thinking about trying it with Carrara...

Keep in mind, the most "state of the art" you get, the more complex and steep the learning curve. People had been suggesting Houdini in some forums I visit as an alternative to Maya, 3dsmax or Cinema 4d because Houdini is state of the art and infinitely more powerful than any of the aforementioned packages. They often cite various productions created with Houdini that major VFX studios have produced as an example of the power it can wield. So I downloaded the trial of that, or at least the free version they offer on their website and quickly found out that you pretty much need a PhD in computer science to do the kind of stuff you see big effect studios doing with Houdini. Houdini is SO complicated, node based for EVERYTHING. You have to build nodes just to extrude a face out of a cube for God's sake. Well, maybe not that much, but it's way more complicated to use than something like Cinema4D or Maya. I thought Maya was one of the biggest and most complex professional softwares out there, until I tried my hand at Houdini. I'll leave Houdini to the nerds. It's not an artist friendly software package. Yes, it's powerful and you can do anything with it, but at the cost of learning it for years and years.

dr_bernie posted at 4:03PM Wed, 20 February 2019 - #4346068

@ Lobo3433: I agree with you that $395.- upgrade price is a bit steep. If Lightwave plans to make yearly releases, and charge $395.- for the upgrade, that equates to a quite expensive subscription model.

Luxology did that with their modo back in the day. I had to jump off of that treadmill eventually because the program wasn't seeing any huge improvements in my view. Someone else owns modo now. The price is way too much now for my hobby existence.

Luxology was bought by Foundry, but I think it's still the same guys working on it. I always found Modo difficult to understand. Believe it or not, I got used to Blender faster than I did Modo. And I'm happy that happened now, because Blender 2.8 is just amazing by any standard. The Eevee render engine ouptuts photorealistic results in seconds. Cycles is still useful for some things, like still renders, but Eevee is unbeatable for animation.

The main selling point of Clarisse iFX is "by artists, for artists" which is supposed to be 10x faster than the usual pipelines with whatever 10k$ apps that take 10 years to master. There is a new Clarisse builder app with nodes, like Houdini they target highly skilled teams of engineers, not for hobbyists or indies.

For a hobbyist or indie, I guess 1000$ is the limit for a 3D app. Also some sort of trial or PLE is a must. Modo is now 1800$. Lightwave needs more updates to catch up with other apps, I understand from some reviews, so 1000$ and 2x400 for 2 years upgrades brings it to Modos level. Or some pricey LW plugins...

My criteria for chosing Lightwave were:

1. It has a price tag below $1,000.-, and it seems that it is actively developed and supported.
2. It is reasonably easy to learn, and even master, for a hobbyist with limited time.
3. It has enough exciting advanced features to keep one 'engaged' for many long years without getting bored.
4. It has a very adequate support for Daz/Poser contents.
5. Last but not least, the new scaleable interface is truly essential for users with weak eyesight. After several weeks of working with LW 2019, I can tell you that the scaleable UI is truly a joy to work with, although it has some quirks.

I have carefully looked at Modo ever since its version 6, and each time I said I'll wait for the next release. It's just not my cup of tea, although it is a great 3D app in its own right.

Well, the free option Blender 2.8 has received big updates in many areas. Now easy to learn with a simple UI. Lots of features and cheap plugins. Support for DS content via the free plugin DAZ importer. Scalable interface since a few years back.

Carrara should scale with the latest Windows 10 versions Properties per app for high dpi settings. I guess a simple blurry scale, but still...

3Drendero posted at 11:13AM Fri, 22 February 2019 - #4346824

Well, the free option Blender 2.8 has received big updates in many areas. Now easy to learn with a simple UI. Lots of features and cheap plugins. Support for DS content via the free plugin DAZ importer. Scalable interface since a few years back.

Carrara should scale with the latest Windows 10 versions Properties per app for high dpi settings. I guess a simple blurry scale, but still...

I was going to suggest Blender 2.8 too! It's an amazing upgrade, and now with the Eevee real time pbr render engine, it's one of the most powerful applications with one of the most advanced rendering options of any software package out there! The results of Eevee are literally almost as good as Cycles in some cases, and it's real time, which is incredible. It's like the Marmoset Toolbag engine, but free! You can render smoke, water, skin with SSS and any kind of PBR material for free in real time, or near real time including atmosphere and HDR effects! Who could ask for anything more? That alone is worth having Blender in the toolbox. I'm sure someone could write a good Python script to import Poser stuff to it too, but the support for Makehuman and other automated character generation stuff is already in there.

The free daz importer for Blender 2.8: https://blenderartists.org/t/daz-importer/684697

3Drendero posted at 8:14PM Fri, 22 February 2019 - #4346832

The free daz importer for Blender 2.8: https://blenderartists.org/t/daz-importer/684697

Wow! Well, there we go. If this plugin works even reasonably well, then I suspect Blender to become the ultimate companion to Daz Studio or Poser for creators and artists who want to create their own stuff. That's fabulous. I know Daz Studio has Iray render now, which is fantastic but requires at least a gamer-level GTX Nvidia card to be useful. Poser has a Cycles clone, which is excellent, but not quite as good as Blender's Cycles. However, the Eevee solution is the next step. While not as accurate and realistic as Iray or Cycles, it's as good or better than most other Real Time engines out there, like Marmoset. And it can use most of Cycles shaders without any trouble! That's powerful for animations. Way faster than any GPU path tracer out there, and almost as good.

I suggest any Carrara user who isn't happy with lack of dev to really check out Blender 2.8. Most of the complaints people had with it have been solved now, and now it's as easy to learn as Lightwave, Maya, 3dsmax or any of the others. So there's no reason not to now.

Lightwave, despite its many UI quirks, is very easy to learn and numerous aspects of its workflow show they have done their best to listen to their users, but designing UI wasn't their forte.

Lightwave has reasonable support for Daz/Poser contents through FBX, Poser Fusion, and this plugin.

Bringing Daz/Poser contents into Blender is still somewhat of a challenge, but I will definitely use Blender the minute this issue is resolved.

If you are doing fluid simulations, the Carrara plugin Fluidos 1.4 is free and supports forces, while the Blender plugin Flip fluids costs 80ish $ (without forced but with other features). Lightwave plugins are more expensive...

@ 3Drendero: When you mentioned Clarisse in one of your posts above, for a second I thought I went the wrong way with Lightwave. But then I took a very close look at Clarisse, and that convinced me that, for the likes of me, Lightwave is the right choice.

Clarisse, even though it is in the same price range as Lightwave, is more geared as a tool to fit in large production studios pipelines. Its support for pre-made contents is limited to .obj and Alembic at this time, and I suspect that if you mention Daz/Poser contents in their forums they will laugh at you as some kind of unprofessional noobie.

There is no right or wrong nowadays, the software is not the limitation. There is a free Clarisse PLE you can use with LW and Carrara. LW/Carrara supports modeling while Clarisse supports compositing, somewhat different apps.

Clarisse has an indie version for 995, for 1 man studios, they would probably laugh at bad renders/scenes and not specifically DS/Carrara content. Even with pro tools, it takes time to model and kit bashing should be OK nowadays...

Another free app that works with Carrara (or LW) is Fusion 9, a pro compositing app that can render imported 3D models. Maybe that is the future for Carrara? https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

I got Carrara near free a while ago. I haven't done much with it. I'm thinking, Carrara still plays nice with Daz. It may not be advancing. It may never advance. That doesn't make it bad. Some people still use truespace! I'm not joining the funeral celebration.

Torquinox posted at 5:17AM Mon, 18 March 2019 - #4348257

I'm not joining the funeral celebration.

It's an empty hearse with only a poor guy behind...

I won a copy of Lightwave 2018 via the Holiday animation contest at Rendo, plus I think they offered me an upgrade price to the new version. I used Lightwave years ago (V.6?), and even found my old USB key. It doesn't work in Win10 but you no longer have to use a hardware key. Still, I'm probaly only going to use it for LW specific content and features, and not often at that. Carrara just has too many features that I don't see elsewhere - NLA (my clip library has grown substantially), seamless Poser content handling, a great NPR renderer, excellent lights, a full featured Sequencer, etc., etc. I suspect LW has better modeling features, but not being a modeler, not an attraction for me. My preference for Carrara is undoubtedly based to a large degree on familiarity. For most tasks, I've done it many times and don't have to think about how to do it in Carrara. Leaving more time for how to make a scene better. I'm trying to move into a new video editor because of some other plugins I won, and also because the new version of Particle Illusion requires a high end video editing program. (Vegas - now from Magix - vs. Magix Movie Edit Pro) Not too big a leap, but still sometimes have to wonder how Vegas does things. But still, Lightwave does not have some key features that I mentioned, e.g. NLA clips and seamless animating with Poser content (of which I have LOT). Last I checked, animating with Poser content in Lightwave requires Poserfusion, meaning you have to animate in Poser. Not a terrible thing, but Carrara's animation features are much superior to Poser's, although I do use the latter for Poser specific features like ERC models.

@ Steve K.

Lightwave DOES have motion clips, and had it for ages. It's called Motion Mixer See Link and Link

davidstoolie posted at 8:24PM Thu, 21 March 2019 - #4346721

I always found Modo difficult to understand. Believe it or not, I got used to Blender faster than I did Modo. And I'm happy that happened now, because Blender 2.8 is just amazing by any standard. The Eevee render engine ouptuts photorealistic results in seconds. Cycles is still useful for some things, like still renders, but Eevee is unbeatable for animation.

Yes. Modo is not at all intuitive. Lots of MOV videos to go through just to see what its tools do. I use Modo just for its rendering. I may give Bender another shot.

On Modo's web site they say Modo is for artists. I say no true, no true, Modo is for rocket scientists.

But seriously, I find Lightwave, with all its quirks and rough edges, far more intuitive and easy to use than Modo.

I still think ZBrush has the most unnecessarily metaphorical GUIs around.

Lightwave has been a TV/movies production package. If it's $300/yr for maintenance plan, that's likely not a problem for their target market. I have no intention to get started with that. I am interested in what Reallusion is doing.

Carrara? I spent ~$14 for Carrara 8.5 pro some time ago and it came with a pile of DAZ content. It seems very happy to eat 3DS meshes and spit them out as objs for Daz. It has many other laudable capabilities. You get no complaint from me on any of that. It's probably never getting upgraded. That part is not so great. At least it's a 64-bit program. It might not be a workhorse in a production environment, but it's fine for what it is.

Torquinox posted at 9:48AM Sat, 23 March 2019 - #4348629

It seems very happy to eat 3DS meshes and spit them out as objs for Daz.

Don't use 3DS. The format is too old.

But there are loads of 3ds meshes floating around. It's nice to be able to use them, and other inexpensive programs I've tried seem to have trouble with them.

3DS was abandoned back in the mid '90s. It had cool features before that time, back in its day with early editions of 3D Studio before Max was released. But OBJ had matured more. And continues to mature still. See what 3D-Coat does with the OBJ format now. It's still my main mesh/texture transfer format.

3DS was replaced by MAX, if you want to keep with its current form. See of your apps will import/export the MAX format.

I'm opening old 3DS files, Shawn. That's what I have to open. Carrara does it well. Turns out Poser 7 does it even better. No reason that should cause you any pain.

That said, 3D Coat looks like a very spiffy modeling program.