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LightWave F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2023 Mar 27 3:17 pm)


 


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Subject: Hello! Rekindling the Lightwave forum


KarenJ ( ) posted Sat, 01 August 2015 at 12:41 PM · edited Thu, 28 March 2024 at 3:07 AM

Hello folks,

My name is Karen waves

I have been asked to take over moderating the Lightwave forum and gallery as there are currently no staff members for it. Some of you have probably seen me around before as I used to be a site admin on the community and the marketplace here, and prior to that moderated the Poser forum. 

I can see things are verrrrrrry quiet around here of late...

It would be great to see some discussions on Lightwave here at Renderosity. Do you have any ideas on the type of content you'd like to see here? Let me know. 

I have to confess I'm not a LW user. I know we used to have a very knowledgeable userbase here so I'm curious as to why you folks think that has stopped?


"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan Shire


ldgilman ( ) posted Sat, 01 August 2015 at 4:35 PM

Maybe because it is expensive?? I have Lightwave but have not done anything with it...YET. I have signed up for some Lightwave courses at Udemy. I thought I ought to know how to draw, know about perspective, and shading and coloring before taking on Lightwave.

And quite honestly there are so many programs that do what Lightwave does, abet, not to the same level of professionalism. But them again I don't think most people need that level.


roboman ( ) posted Sun, 02 August 2015 at 12:13 AM

Newtek had a disagreement with the developers of Lightwave, so they quit and formed Modo. Lots of people left with them. Newtek then decided to do a total rewrite of Lightwave, from the ground up. They went into hibernation, spent years on the rewrite, decided to go back to updating the old Lightwave, but people had left after years of no updates. Lightwave also use to be the lowest priced pro level software, Lots of the early Daz and Poser objects were built in Lightwave. Now there is Blender, plus Poser and Daz are now better at animation and rendering. Newtek was founded to put pro quality tools into the hands of any one who wanted to do video work and not just the studios. For a while they were the only ones in that niche, now they aren't and have made a few mistakes. I still like Lightwave though.


Spaceland ( ) posted Sun, 02 August 2015 at 11:58 PM

I got Lightwave 11.6, at the price i got, i can do more compare to Cinema 4D Prime and can match broadcast that cost more.

But my take is to try and do with what i have with a software and try to improvise.

I got lightwave because Maxon did an upgrade where i think they left the prime user version on some options left only for the higher end of their product.

But i will be happy to ask questions and help others too.

[ Denis ]

| Coreldraw X6 | Moi v2 | Carrara 8.5 Pro | Cinema 4D R15 Prime | Lightwave 3D 11.6 |
| Intel i7-4700MQ | GeForce GTX 765M 2GB |


petes ( ) posted Thu, 06 August 2015 at 8:31 PM

Hey Karen, it's not just here, but many LW sites across the board have slowed down drastically the last few years. Also, this site has a very Poser slant to it, even within using Lightwave. Just take a peek at the gallery. Mostly poser rendered in LW. Which is fine, but not for people really looking to learn LW. Most people looking for very specific LW information will go elsewhere. Going back 10 years ago, this forum was much different and vibrant, I'm happy to say I was a part of it, but it has been pretty dormant for several years now. Talley and I have tried to get it going several times, but it never took off..There's a few of the old timers like myself still haunt it from time to time :)

Good luck!

lightwave, photoshop, oreo's...tools of the trade.


lupus ( ) posted Sun, 23 August 2015 at 2:51 AM

I've not been especially active here at Renderosity for some years just because I stopped doing work for Poser and had a lot of work in other areas.

Now I'll start freelancing again and maybe I'll pick up Poser.

Of course I do all the 3D-work in Lightwave. I've been using Lightwave for over 20 years now and still loving it.
(I had to learn how to use Maya too but I still prefer Lightwave)


AlbertGriffin ( ) posted Sun, 06 September 2015 at 10:10 PM

For myself, I stopped checking in much when the activity went down. I could see what people were doing, and learned from that, and when people asked questions, I would figure out a way to do what they wanted if I could, which was very instructive. One problem was suddenly at some point, threads started disapearing. I belive the system went to a time based filter, so any thread that had no activity for x number o0f days didn't show. That made it seem very sparse. When you put a thread up, and after a week not only are there no new views, but it does not show at ALL, it's hard to have a dialoge


KarenJ ( ) posted Tue, 08 September 2015 at 8:20 AM

Thanks for all feedback.

Albert, the threads stay active for 45 days after the last post. Which is not a huge amount of time, I agree.


"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan Shire


ronmolina ( ) posted Sun, 13 September 2015 at 2:56 AM

I love Lightwave. Have used it since the late 90's. The ordinal DAZ figures were made with it. I watched V2 being modeled in early 2000's. I have max and Maya as well and tried and own licenses to all the top and lower end products out there and in the past. However, when it comes to modeling I always go back to Lightwave. I worked here in the early 2000's as a published artist and tester.


lupus ( ) posted Tue, 29 September 2015 at 6:10 AM

Lightwave Modeler is still one of a kind. I's easy (once you get used to it) and you can do your work very fast and without the "too much" you'll find in Maya.


megalodon ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2015 at 7:04 PM · edited Sat, 17 October 2015 at 7:06 PM

While I used Poser to create morphs for my show, Scotty Chase: 2075, I also used the DAZ figures Hiro and Aiko. Motion capture was used for the biped animation, blended into the LW rig in Motion Builder, and then back to LW for rendering. This was essentially a one-man project, though many assets were purchased from Daz and here at Renderosity, and then altered in LW. It was a huge learning experience and allot of fun. And... Lightwave was a joy to use.

http://www.scottychase.com/index.htm

And yeah, ten years ago this forum was VERY lively. Now much of the time is spent in the Newtek forums. Fortunately those who use Poser are now more accepted there - long ago it was frowned upon and you were looked down at if you used Poser. Things have changed. :)


EventMobil ( ) posted Tue, 20 October 2015 at 8:42 AM · edited Tue, 20 October 2015 at 8:48 AM

I am using Lightwave 11.6. for around 2 years now, very happy with it. I had to make a decision between C4D and LW to purchase. First I seemed to prefer C4D, because I had previous experience with it years ago and felt more familiar with the graphic style user interface with icons, instead of Lightwaves text buttons. But I found out, that the functionallity (comparing packages of the same prices by that time) was larger, or at least more suitable to my needs with Lightwave. It seemed to me I would have to purchase a number of plugins on top of C4D, so finally I decided to go with LW.

Had a hard time getting used to the UI layouts first for some weeks, but this happens with any new software you try after being experienced with something else (I had used C4D R9 before, and a lot of Hexagon, some ZBrush). Blender is a good software obviously, I don't want to question that, but I could never ever get used to the 'alien' concept behind the user interface, no matter how hard I tried. Such a pity... But then I started really loving Lightwave. It is sooooo stable, I cannot remember EVER having crashed it. My Hexagon crashed at least every several hours, sometimes every some minutes... I also like the concept of having various objects, subdivided in various layers, it is really well thought out to handle even huge and extremely complex models very easily.

Also had a hard time learning the UV-Mapping strategies, but again, I guess this is just the same for any modeler which you are unfamiliar with. Still have a lot to learn and improve, when it comes to uv-mapping complex objects, but up to now I could handle everything I needed to.

Recently I purchased a first commercial plugin, LW Brush, and this is an amazing addon which allows (between others) for kind of organic softbody modeling almost like in ZBrush.

About the Lightwave forum here, I dropped in from time to time during the past 2 years, but found it basically dormant, apart from some hardcore members who occasionally dropped in just to exchange greetings, it seemed to me. I never felt a chance of getting integrated, so I kept it at just watching and reading.

So that's my introduction, haha, at least I can help keeping the thread alive for another 45 days ;-)

Poser Pro 2014 GameDev, Lightwave 11.6.3, Blacksmith3D Pro 6, Bryce 7, Carrara Pro 8.5, Reality 4 & LuxRender, Python 2.7 & Wx-Python, UV-Mapper Pro, XFrog 3.5, Paintshop Pro X7, Apophysis 7x64

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

Don't render faster than your artistic guardian angel can fly...


Vorlath ( ) posted Thu, 22 October 2015 at 7:41 PM

I'm a Lightwave user. I'm a programmer, so I'm working on plugins for Lightwave (both LScript and C/C++). I do all my morphs and modeling in Lightwave.

I'm not sure what we could talk about. I know that one of the most popular threads at Newtek is the one about simple techniques. Maybe we could start one about technique to use with DAZ/Poser re Lightwave. I do so many morphs that maybe just having a section on how to do it would be nice for others. There are a few pitfalls to watch out for as well that are good to know. Wish .obj export import was better in Lightwave re surfaces. Diffuse, luminosity and colour always seem to get messed up. FBX seems to work very well though. At least in LW 2015, the vertex order is stable for doing morphs with .obj so there's that.

For me, I'm looking for something that will fix symmetry. Sometimes, some morphs aren't perfectly symmetric and they make it hard to do morphs on both sides of the figure. I'd be interested in hearing what people do in this case. This is yet another plugin I want to write. Snap to background might have some uses too based on point order for undoing (parts of) morphs.


wEt_RaIn ( ) posted Tue, 13 February 2018 at 8:59 AM

Lightwave


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Sun, 01 April 2018 at 5:39 PM

Is anyone out there


Warlock279 ( ) posted Tue, 03 April 2018 at 12:02 AM

There's a few people watching, but that's about the extent of most things around here right now.

Core i7 950@3.02GHz | 12GB Corsair Dominator Ram@1600mHz | 2GB Geforce GTX 660


Lightwave | Blender | Marmoset | GIMP | Krita


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Tue, 03 April 2018 at 6:51 AM

I see.


ruscular3d ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 1:40 AM · edited Fri, 06 April 2018 at 1:41 AM
Online Now!

I have Lightwave 2018.3, Poser pro 11, Daz4.1, 3Dcoat and Marvelous Designer 7 I have Poser fusion for Lightwave and (Daz to Lightwave plugin which works mostly with Genesis2 model) Among the Lightwaver group most of the consensus is that Daz listen to the Lightwaver needs and were able to export directly to Mix morpher list of all the dial into Morph list in LW. From there they can add IK booster to the existing FBX skeleton. The future for Lightwave 2018 is the PBR material node render setup.

I am watching this to see if the new lightwaver will show up and support this forum!

I am currently using the new poser character created by the Project Evolution team!


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 6:47 AM

I am mostly using Lightwave and Daz Studio. Usually Genesis 3 and 8 characters. If you get the time check out my Deviant Art page at https://eraldegold.deviantart.com/ or my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Eral.Delog/. Hope to rekindle this site.


ruscular3d ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 5:50 PM
Online Now!

I checked out your pages, and saw many still photos. I assume you are using lightwave for volumetric lighting and rendering. Have you use it for animation?


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 6:19 PM

no I haven't yet


ruscular3d ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 8:42 PM
Online Now!

Check out Ryan Roye "Daz to Lightwave motion caption plugin" at liberty3d.com You can import Daz into lightwave and then add the Carnegie CMU BVH files to the character and then render inside of Lightwave. You can also alter the animation as well to suit your needs. It was made to work with Genesis2 but will often work on Genesis 1 and 3 as well.


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 9:04 PM

I've got it. I'm trying to get Ryan to add Genesis 8 characters


ruscular3d ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 9:10 PM · edited Fri, 06 April 2018 at 9:11 PM
Online Now!

Hah, I'm trying to get Ryan plugin poser to Lightwave. Poser did add a new improvement to adding feature to keyframe editing. I am in love with Poser Project Evolution model. She can bend very flexible and has great facial expression, and also morphable in Lightwave. I use 3RD Powers brush plugin to make this character.

Ryan moved on to a new workflow away from DAZ. SaRenna Lee Smile.jpg


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Fri, 06 April 2018 at 10:54 PM

Place display text here He did tell me he was busy with a lot of plug ins


ruscular3d ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 12:14 AM
Online Now!

I like Ryan approach to making Lightwave3d workflow affordable! He kind of represent the hobbyist and makes using 3D animation accessible.


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 7:16 AM

yes he does


ruscular3d ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 12:43 PM · edited Sat, 07 April 2018 at 12:45 PM
Online Now!

I pick up the Lightwave tutorial on rigging and there is a section on using DAZ model with FBX bone to be able to convert it to LW rigging, and I have not had the time to go thru it yet. But is that something you have tried to do with DAZ model in Lightwave? Or did you do the setup in DAZ and then export the still to Lightwave?

Also I saw that DAZ had a sale on the Alembic exporter and I saw very little example of how well it work in Lightwave anywhere.


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 1:05 PM

Mostly I export to obj format. Been doing this until I can get the surfaces correct. Then I'll start to use fbx format and set up my poses


ruscular3d ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 1:29 PM · edited Sat, 07 April 2018 at 1:34 PM
Online Now!

You might want to check out Akeytsu animation software to animate the FBX model. and then import it back into Lightwave. If you dont to mess with rigging it in Lightwave.

Which goes back to why this section been real quiet lately. Lightwave took a long time to update their program, and many gave up on them, and now coming back with the latest update. Even tho most of the update is really mostly on the rendering part of switching to PBR render even tho its not GPU dedicated rendering. Sort of a mix review on the newest version of Lightwave. I am please with the new update, because of the modifier stack option for animation. You can now modify the model before the bone deformation over time to fix some animation issues of joint deformation.


GrafxStudio ( ) posted Sat, 07 April 2018 at 3:29 PM

Yeah it looks like they are going to work on modeler next


ruscular3d ( ) posted Wed, 11 April 2018 at 8:36 PM
Online Now!

I am surprise to hear that as last blog I saw he did a inquiry on the next file format to add to the motion export option to Alembic.


ruscular3d ( ) posted Sun, 06 January 2019 at 3:54 PM
Online Now!

There is a new group on Facebook called Messiah Studio & Lightwave Julian Herring is admin for it and giving great tutorial on using messiah Studio to animate character into Lightwave.


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