If you’ve ever seen effects heavy movies like Sin City or, more recently, The 300, you’ve seen the workhorse which is Lightwave at work. Used to create the majority of the backgrounds in Sin City and used to create an astonishing number of the effects and projectiles in The 300, Lightwave is a nearly all-encompassing 3D solution that deserves to be seriously considered by any microfilmmaker who needs to add 3D objects or particle physics in their movies.
Recently upgraded to version 9.3, Lightwave boasts some serious improvements from both 8.0 and, now, from the initial release of 9.0. Lightwave veterans will be pleased to know that while a number of procedural and performance additions have been added, the overall look and feel of 9/9.3 is virtually identical to 8.0. (As such, those familiar with past iterations of Lightwave can probably skip our ease of use section, which is really aimed more at the new users and explains the Layout and Modeler setup of Lightwave. )
With that said, let us get into the specifics of this software.
Ease of Use
Lightwave does not pretend to be simple to pick up. It has a completely different look and design feel to virtually anything else on the market that I’ve used. In a way this is a bad thing and in a way it’s a good thing. The bad thing is that, if you’re new to 3D (or even if you’re just new to Lightwave), you can’t really crack into Lightwave without training like 3D Garage’s Lightwave 9 Signature Course DVD or the Lightwave Revealed book. (Currently they’re only up to Lightwave 8 Revealed, but I understand that Lightwave 9 Revealed should be along shortly. However, LW8R gives you all the basics you need to get into LW, so if you can’t wait, that’s okay.) The good thing is that because Lightwave looks so foreign and strangely menacing to neophytes, most won’t just try to jump into it without a trusty training guide, unlike many tend to do with a more basic program like Poser, which looks easier to use than it is. It’s kind of refreshingly honest for a software package to state up front: “I’m powerful and dangerous, but, if you put in the time, you can create some killer things with me.” (They do include training videos with Lightwave 9, but these are focused on the newer features, which help experienced LW users get up to speed on the new LW9 features, as opposed to initiating the new user.)
With that warning given, allow me to explain the basics of how Lightwave works, as it is much easier to understand when it’s broken down into film terms. There are two main components to Lightwave: Modeler and Layout. These function like two separate programs that are chained together with quick keys. The best way to think of this is to think of the film terms, the shop and the set. The shop is where you build your props and set pieces and, then, the set is where you arrange things to your liking, light them, and film them. The modeler is the shop area, in which you can build virtually anything from cars to buildings to monsters. Once you’ve created whatever you want to film, then you hit the “F12” key and your entire model is now in the Layout area (or ”set”, to use our earlier analogy). From here, you can set up your cameras, lights, and motion. Once you get a feel for this, Lightwave becomes much easier to manage.
Now, there is one new feature that I would normally list in the Depth of Options area which relates to ‘Ease of Use.’ If you are familiar with 3D programs but are not familiar with Lightwave, then you may want to check out the new “Production Studio Style” option, which is a menu preset that I found fairly straight forward and more logical than the default Lightwave setup. Of course, if you’re new to both 3D and Lightwave, then you’ll probably just want to leave it on the default, as all the training will reference the default configuration, which could become a little confusing if you change the preset.
