Depth of Options
This originally started out as a review of Lightwave 9, but, as we were writing it, the new 9.3 upgrade came out and we felt it would be good to cover a few of the new features. With that said, we will still focus mainly on what improvements have occurred between 8 to 9, but we will mention a couple improvements from the new upgrades that are especially nice. (Considering that 9.3 boasts nearly 50 pages of new elements, we won’t even be scratching the surface, of course.)
As I mentioned, there are a huge number of new additions that have rolled out with the core 9.0 release of Lightwave, so I will brush across some of the coolest new features.
Perhaps one of the most powerful new features is the inclusion of the new Node Editor for doing everything from painting objects to creating bump maps and fur. Anyone who’s ever used Apple’s Shake has come to realize that node-based algorithms are a great way to customize things in comparison to a layers- or scripting-based approach. For those of you unfamiliar with nodes at all, nodes work sort of like an audio patch bay. You can pull up different graphical panels that deal with surface textures, bumps, scale, gradients, etc. and then determine how they interact with other panels by what elements of each panel are plugged into the others. Besides simplicity, one of the advantages to this approach is that if you want to try out a couple of different configurations, you can just pull out bypass nodes and reroute the pertinent section of the chain to quickly see the results of different brainstorms without having to make anything invisible.
Another useful new feature is the new Catmull-Clarke subdivision algorithm, which gives greater options for sub-dividing polygons. While this seems like a very technical improvement, it actually allows you to more directly modify certain sorts of shapes, as Catmull-Clarke subdvision doesn’t have the limitations that the older Subpatch subdivision does.
One nice improvement from an animation standpoint is that they have included a brand new “Sticky” motion modifier, which allows linearly animated objects to “stick” to a surface as they move. This makes having water droplets sliding down window panes or leaves much simpler. Cars can now race over a hilly road with a simple linear animation path and a combination of an application of the “Sticky” motion modifier to the tires with a coating of “Sticky Surface” to the road.
Another animation help for animators who want a more organic look is the new sketch renderer, which gives a semi-hand drawn look to Lightwave’s 3D animation and can be customized to go from neon line drawing to a Japanese-style cell shading approach.
Progressing into 9.3 improvements, any filmmakers who wish to combine footage created in Lightwave with live action footage will find two of the sweetest improvements in 9.3 to be the Real Lens Camera and Photoreal blur options. Real Lens Camera allows you to customize the 9.0-released 3D camera to exactly match any film camera or lens you can think of, customizing things like manufacturer, prime/zoom, and a variety of other things. As it includes a huge number of SLR setups in addition to motion picture lenses, this is a Godsend for anyone blending Lightwave elements with footage acquired from a camera with the Redrock Micro M2 or P+S Technik Mini35 35mm lens system. The Photoreal blur option ties into these Real Lens Cameras and allows moving elements to blur just like they were filmed with an actual motion film or SLR camera. The combination of these two things really give a huge dose of reality to renders and help make seamless integration between 3D and photographic footage much easier.
