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LightWave3D

LightWave3D 2020

LightWave 3D® 2020 provides Award-Winning, Production-Proven VFX and Animation Tools for Artists.

Check out all of the new features in LightWave3D 2020!
New GI Render Engines

Two New Global Illumination Render Engines

LightWave, long known for the beauty of its render engine, gains new advancements in LightWave 2020 with the redesign of the Global Illumination rendering engine, bringing two versions for artists: Brute Force, an unbiased ra diosity engine, and Irradiance Cache, an interpolated radiosity engine. Using the new render engines independently or in concert will assure you get the real – world render results you seek, with higher quality and more control.

New FiberFX Shaders

LightWave 3D® 2020

Two New Shaders in FiberFX

The new hair shaders in LightWave 2020 deliver more realistic hair leveraging the physical based renderer. Principled Hair Material is based on the Principled BSDF settings. The five inputs: Color, Cutical Tilt, Roughness, Radial Roughne ss and Index of Refraction provide a simple interface for spectacular results. With AFC Hair Shader (Artist Friendly Control — a simplified approach) the specular settings are divided into two sections: Primary, for reflection of the front side of the stroke and Secondary for the reflection bounced off the backside of the stroke. Now, you have the option to select a simple artist friendly shading option or complete control for the look you desire.

New Open VDB Tools

LightWave 3D® 2020

OpenVDB Gets New Set of Production Tools

Leading the pack in the LightWave OpenVDB roster is support for Partio particle objects. What you gain is the power of Houdini particles with the simplicity of the LightWave interface. Also included in the new OpenVDB toolset is:

  • Advect Point Node – Advect particles by velocity grid
  • Analysis Node – Grid creation Gradient, Curvature, Laplacian, Closest Point, Divergence, Curl, Magnitude, Normalize
  • Combine Math Node – Combines grids using math operators
  • Level Set Morph – Morph between level set grids
  • Partio Node – Load Houdini.HClassic particle files
  • VectorGrid Split and Merge – Split and merge Vector grids for further experimentation
  • Visualize Node – Grid viewer with options
OpenVDB Creation | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Redesigned Motion System

LightWave 2020 provides the ability to change Rotation Order per item and is saved with the scene file. This allows for an easier transition from other applications to LightWave. Additionally, instances of Gimbal lock can be avoided and items you are animating can be al lowed to follow a more natural rotation order.

Local Action Center

LightWave 3D® 2020

Local Action Center

LightWave Modeler allows you to impact a group of items all at once in the Local Action Center. Select disparate edges or polygons in your model and act on them as one, locally. The Local Action Center works on multiple layers at a time for fast and easy changes.

Display Scaling | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Tone Mappings

Gain greater control over the look of your render with the new Pixel Filter in LightWave 2020. Tone mapping is a tec hnique used in image processing and computer graphics to map one set of colors to another to approximate the appearance of high – dynamic – range images in a medium that has a more limited dynamic range. Further, as a Pixel Filter it can be used in VPR for qui ck results.

Bone System Improved For Games | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Shedding New Light

In LightWave 2020 the Environment Light has taken on new importance. Now, Environment Lights are connected directly to the environment, adding the direct sampling of the backdrop. The updated Environment Light opens as part of the default scene in Layout, and the new light results in the streamlining of environmental systems.

Display Scaling | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Scene Editor

Improved workflow in Scene Editor allows you to manage large, complex and layered scenes with ease.

Bone System Improved For Games | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

FBX Interchange

LightWave 2020 provides enhanced pipeline support, increasing access to motion capture for auto – rigging. More features are support in the FBX format, which provides greater flexibility when working with other animation tools.

Display Scaling | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Instancing

Processing time for third party render engines is improved with the added ability to set Surface instances to static to stop evaluation at render time

OpenGL Improvements

LightWave 3D® 2020

OpenGL

Updated shaders deliver visualization in the viewport that is closer than ever to the final render.

Better Sub-Surface-Scattering

LightWave 3D® 2020

Improved SSS

Better subsurface scattering algorithm delivers fast, better SSS for your renders.

Bone System Improved For Games | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® 2020

Untethered

LightWave 2020 allows you to monitor render progress on your mobile device with new applications for iOS and Android.


You also get all the amazing features from the break through release of LighWave 2018 and 2019 plus solid functions and technology that over the last 30 years has made LightWave3D the best all around 3D animation, rendering and visual effects tool for artist all over the world!
 
Unreal | LightWave 3D

LightWave 3D® Bridge to Unreal Engine

Real-time Collaborative LightWave to Unreal Engine

LightWave 3D® enters the Real-Time Age for interchange with this workflow link between the Unreal Engine and LightWave 3D®, focusing on LightWave driving Unreal changes iteratively. Multiple LightWave seats are able to connect to the same Unreal Editor simultaneously to enable real-time collaboration between artists. The bridge uses NewTek’s proven NDI®network discovery mechanism for easy automatic configuration, and can be limited to single project use in Unreal, or installed as a general plugin for use in all Unreal projects.

FBX New Interchange Bridge

Improved FBX Interchange

FBX and New Interchange Bridge

Work with industry standard FBX data on a whole new level via the new Interchange Bridge.

  • Interactively choose what to import / export and how.
  • Add to existing FBX files from Layout and Modeler.
  • Build LightWave 3D® assets from many FBX files.
  • Easily revisit FBX files via workspaces.
  • Support for:
    • Vertex Caches
    • Morph Mixer
    • Vertex Maps
    • Smoothing Groups
    • Animation Layers
    • Animation Baking
    • Bones
    • Hierarchies
    • Meshes
    • Pivots
    • Mesh Freezing
Shading Model Customization Tools | LightWave 3D

Shading Model Customization Tools

Shading Model Customization Tools

The ability to pull materials apart and build them to your tastes is new to LightWave 3D® 2019. There is access to Fresnel Functions, Material Components and Material Integrators. The Material Tools Group has been updated with new nodes to support this capability.

OpenVDB Creation | LightWave 3D

OpenVDB Creation

OpenVDB Content Creation

LightWave 3D® 2018 introduced the ability to import and render an OpenVDB fog volume. New for LightWave 3D® 2019 is a set of node tools that allow OpenVDB content creation. You can now create OpenVDB grids from meshes, particles, and even the shape primitive distance estimator. The tool kit allows for live Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) operations, grid filtering including level set tracking, smoothing, dilation and erosion. Solvers are included that allow for fluid simulation and smoke and fire effects.

 
Metamorphic | LightWave 3D

Metamorphic Animated Sculpting/Painting

Metamorphic

Metamorphic is a multipurpose animatable mesh sculpting and vertex map manipulation plug-in for LightWave 3D® 2019 that works in Layout, and takes full advantage of the new capabilities of the modifier stack.

  • Freeform animated sculpting
  • Built-in undo/redo system
  • Fully-multithreaded sculpting using all available CPU cores
  • Pen pressure support for brush size, strength and hardness (Windows only)
  • Nodal brush texture support
  • Three modes of animation
  • Non-linear interpolation of sculpt animation keyframes
  • Supports converting sculpt animation key frames to Endomorphs
  • Predictive corrective morph sculpting that works after deformers with built-in driver/driven controller
  • Full Motion Blur support
    Display Scaling | LightWave 3D

    Display Scaling

    Display Scaling

    • Support for scaling many UI elements for HiDPI and large-screen displays
    • Independent scaling options for multi-monitor setups
    Bone System Improved For Games | LightWave 3D

    Bone Enhancements for Game Development

    Bone System Improved for Game Development

    The new Bone Type option, Limited Bones, allows the animator to set a limit in Layout on the number of bones that affect a given point to match the limit in the target game engine, and engages real-time optimizations to more closely match the performance game engines expect from a rig.

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Edge Shader Node | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Edge Shader Node

    A node for simulating beveled or rounded edges at render time, to give more realistic results without increasing geometry.

    Patina Node | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Patina Node

    This node can add Wear (a convex shader) to a surface, or Dirt (concave) based on a radius and offset.

    Procedural Shader Node | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Procedural Shader Node

    This node encapsulates a chosen legacy system LightWave 3D® or third party procedural texture and exposes it with the typical nodal inputs and outputs. Previously, such procedurals were only available inside a Procedural texture layer of a texture stack.

    Image Caching | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Image Caching

    LightWave now uses smart caching with very high-resolution images, allowing artists to use them for textures and other uses, regardless of the memory in the computer system.

    New Compositing Buffers | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    New Compositing Buffers

    The new Rho buffer is for extracting lighting and shading information from the direct and indirect buffers. A new Weight buffer contains the value of the surface shader settings for both direct and indirect buffers. These are useful for heavy compositing work.

    NVIDIA OptiX Denoising | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    NVIDIA OptiX Denoising

    A new Noise Filter option uses the NVIDIA OptiX library for AI-accelerated noise reduction when rendering still images. Requires NVIDIA card.

    Despike | LightWave 3D

    Shading and Rendering Enhancements

    Despike

    This new Renderer option is a tool for reducing or removing “fireflies” in renders.

    Physical Sky and SunLight

    Physical Sky | LightWave 3D

    Physical Sky and Sunlight

    Physical Sky

    An Environment plugin to replicate physically accurate skies and create otherworldly skies, with equal ease.

    Physical Sunlight | LightWave 3D

    Physical Sky and Sunlight

    Physical Sunlight

    A new Light Type that simulates a sun using state-of-the-art scientific methods.

    Game Development Enhancements in Modeler

    Enhanced UV and UDIM Mapping Workflow | LightWave 3D

    Game Development Enhancements in Modeler

    Enhanced UV and UDIM Mapping Workflow

    Modeler has added a suite of new tools for working with UV maps as well as UDIM tiled mapping:

    • FlipUV-U
    • FlipUV-V
    • MoveUDIM
    • Turn Poly UV
    • SelectUV Island
    • SelectUV overlap
    • SpreadUV
    • Rectangular UV Grid
    • New view modes for working with UVs:
      • Sketch
      • Scale
      • Angle
      • Overlap
    Smoothing Groups | LightWave 3D

    Game Development Enhancements in Modeler

    Smoothing Groups

    Modeler now supports the creation of smoothing groups within a mesh. Smoothing groups provide a way to create creases and hard edges, and more precisely control regional contours on your model. You are no longer limited to a single smoothing angle, adding extra control geometry, or breaking your model into parts to achieve the look you desire. Smoothing groups can be created automatically using a vertex normal map, imported with OBJ files, by using a smoothing angle threshold or manually. Smoothing groups can be exchanged with other software that supports the format.

    New Primitive and Tools

    Empty Volume Shape Primitive | LightWave 3D

    New Primitive & Tools

    Empty Volume Shape Primitive

    LightWave 3D® 2019 adds the new Shape Primitive, Empty Volume, which can be used for creating procedural surface shapes. In addition to being directly useful in scenes, the Empty Volume primitive is helpful in workflows that need to convert meshes to volumes or vice versa. Empty Volume can also provide for real-time Boolean operations in Layout.

    New Tools for Shape Primitives | LightWave 3D

    New Primitive & Tools

    New Tools for Shape Primitives

    The Empty Volume shape primitive allows advanced users to write their own distance estimators for rendered SDF shapes and volumetrics.

    Other new nodal distance tools include:
    • Mobius
    • Capsule
    • Shape CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry)
    • SmoothMin, a soft blending node.

    Workflow and UI

    Expanded Undo Layout System | LightWave 3D

    Workflow and UI

    Expanded Layout Undo System

    The Layout Undo System has been expanded to many of the systems involving Transforms & Keys. Unlimited Undo is now available in:

    • Graph Editor
    • Scene Editors, both new and classic
    • Dope Sheet
    • Many Layout navigation tools
    Node Graph UI Options | LightWave 3D

    Workflow and UI

    Node Graph UI Options

    • Tidy Nodes Command: A tool to make ‘cluttered’ node trees ‘straight’ and easier to read from left to right automatically.
    • Background Grid: You can adjust the brightness and color of the grid in the Node Editor
    • Snap to Grid: you can turn on this tool to make the nodes ‘snap’ to a user settable grid size.
    Online Documentation | LightWave 3D

    Workflow and UI

    Online Documentation

    Responsive layout – the LightWave 3D® documentation now fits on any device you care to use it on.

    LightWave License Server 2019 Option | LightWave 3D

    Workflow and UI

    License Server 2020 Option

    A new licensing management option for large facilities, this is a specialized build of the LightWave 3D® applications wherein licensing of LightWave 3D®is controlled through a managed portal. Purchase is by special arrangement.

LightWave3D combines a a brand new state-of-the-art render engine with powerful, intuitive modeling, and animation tools. Tools that may cost extra in other professional 3D applications are part of the product package, including 999 free cross-platform render nodes, support for Windows and Mac UB 64 and 32-bit operating systems, free technical support and more. LightWave is enjoyed worldwide, as a complete 3D production solution for feature film and television visual effects, broadcast design, print graphics, visualization, game development, and Web. LightWave is responsible for more artists winning Emmy Awards than any other 3D application. Major Studios and Post-Production Houses spend years assembling their custom pipelines, often at great expense and requiring large numbers of technical staff to maintain. Those complex pipelines are perfect for companies with hundreds of employees, but can be overkill for the majority of studios around the world with 40 employees or less. LightWave fits seamlessly into large multi-software pipelines – with its powerful interchange tools including FBX, ZBrush GoZ, Collada, Unity Game Engine Support, and Autodesk Geometry Cache. Unlike other software packages, LightWave offers artists and studios a complete end-to-end solution right out of the box. Robust polygonal and subdivision surface modeling, unique. Interchangeable layered and nodal texturing, along with powerful dedicated node material shaders. Powerful animation and rigging tools. Eye-popping volumetric and dynamic effects systems. A production proven, award-winning Global Illumination render engine – built in. You decide what workflow or pipeline suits you best and LightWave puts all of the tools in your hands. LightWave has been the choice of countless studios and artists for over 20 years. Chances are LightWave was used to create many of your favorite films, television programs, and games. Download the LightWave 3D trial today and see why so many artists depend on LightWave to get their work done, on time, on budget, and with amazing render quality – it’s all in the box!

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Check out the powerful features of LightWave3D


Modeling

LightWave set the standard for polygonal, subdivision surface modeling a decade before many of the other 3D software packages included even basic polygonal modeling tools. While others were basing their pipelines on clunky spline-patching workflows, LightWave artists were quickly and efficiently modeling with smooth subdivision surfaces interactively. LightWave continues to offer powerful, rock-solid modeling tools and the latest versions of LightWave raise the bar with increased interactivity and ease of use.

Surfacing

LightWave offers two surfacing systems to the artist. A fast, simple to use layer-based system, and a very flexible and powerful nodal system. Each offer different workflows to suit the artist – for quick results, the layered system is perfect for fast visualization and concept design. For those who like to dig deep, the nodal system offers ultimate creative freedom. These systems can be used independently of each other, but unique to LightWave is the ability to mix them together. You can use the layered surfacing to achieve results quickly, then choose any of the surface properties to use in a nodal context. This allows you to create extremely complex results very quickly. The node system also includes easy to use physically accurate material shaders for glass, metal, skin and carpaint, allowing you to achieve photoreal results quickly.

Rigging

The rigging tools in LightWave are fast and flexible and again offer artists choices in workflow. LightWave pioneered a very powerful and easy to set up automatic joint influence falloff system. This means that you can either choose to setup industry standard weight maps for your characters and rigged geometry or you can elect to bypass that often time-consuming weight mapping process for quick visualization and concept design animation workflows by using the automatic joint falloff that is built in to LightWave’s animation system. This allows you to quickly and easily swap out geometry in rigs with zero weight map hassles. But you always have the choice to work with weight maps for that added control when your project requires it.

Animation

LightWave includes powerful procedural, nodal, and keyframe animation tools. An easy to use and customizable keyframe graph editor allows you to quickly place and edit keys, time scale, filter, and even manipulate your animations with expressions. Bake your animations per keyframe or with frame stepping and create motion clips to blend together within the non-linear motion mixer. You can even bake animations to Autodesk geometry cache or industry standard MDD files to simplify the scene for rendering or for export to other animation packages. For facial animation LightWave includes an efficient blend-shape system called Endomorphs which includes all of your morph targets within your base object. Endomorphs can even be sculpted in ZBrush using the new ZBrush GoZ interchange tools included in LightWave.

Virtual Studio Tools

LightWave’s development team is bridging the gap between real and virtual worlds, by bringing together the broadest array in any application of new devices with which to interact with the set and characters inside LightWave’s virtual stage and model shop. Device support ranges from economical mice, tablets and game system controllers to the sensor arrays and custom cameras and devices used let directors, lighting grips and camera operators walk a real set and fully capture their data into the virtual set modeled in LightWave. Applications range from propelling your camera on an architectural flythrough using a 6DoF mouse to puppeteering your characters live on stage using Playstation Move controllers, to recording every camera move shot for shot for a major motion picture, a technique pioneered on the film Avatar.

Instancing

Instancing allows vast duplication of objects in a scene with very little overhead. With instancing huge ‘virtual’ polygon counts can be achieved allowing the artist to populate their scenes with incredible detail, yet retain reasonable render times and memory usage. While instances can be thought of as clones of the original source objects, they do not need to look identical. They can be randomly scaled, positioned, rotated and even surfaced entirely differently from the source, allowing for a huge variety of uses.

Effects


Bullet Dynamics

Bullet is a fast, production-proven, open source physics engine that is used in many high profile, effects-driven films and real-time game engines. Bullet features 3D rigid body dynamics originally created by Erwin Coumans. LightWave 11 features the Bullet dynamics engine directly in Layout so that it can be used with the new Fracture tool in Modeler to create compelling physics-based animation. Things like collapsing buildings, explosions, and even natural placement of items in a random pattern, would otherwise be difficult to do by hand.

HyperVoxels

Hypervoxels allows you to create beautiful smoke, flame, liquids, explosions, nebulas, clouds or any other volumetric effect that you can imagine. With real-time interactive support within LightWave’s VPR, you can experiment and adjust volumetric effects to your heart’s content. All calculated at beautiful, final render quality directly within the LightWave interface.

ParticleFX

Is a robust, fully-featured particle engine within LightWave. The flexibility of ParticleFX allows a wide variety of looks; from explosive effects to slow moving smoke-like behaviors. Particle emitters can be stand-alone, or attached to objects to emit particles from their vertices, polygon normals or surfaces. ParticleFX works seamlessly with HyperVoxels to allow the rendering of particles in any way imaginable.

FiberFX

If you need hair, fur, feathers, or scales then the FiberFX tools included with LightWave are just what you are looking for. Styling and guide creation tools are included so that you can get your fibers looking just as you envision. FiberFX is known for its visual quality and its consistent look in various different lighting environments. FiberFX includes a beautiful and speedy pixel shader mode and for complex scenes where you need fibers to be ray traced in reflections or refractions you have the option of a more detailed volumetric mode.

Flocking

LightWave’s flocking system is based on 3D computer models of coordinated animal motion, things like flocks of birds, herds of animals or schools of fish. It can be used with LightWave’s instancing system or HyperVoxels. Use the Flock controller, which calculates crowd avoidance of neighbors, target alignment, and cohesive attractions, to create realistic natural motions, with ease. Classic examples of flocking motion are:
  • Flocks of Birds
  • Schools of Fish
  • Swarms of Insects
  • Animal Herd Behaviors
  • Craft Maneuvers (planes, alien ships, etc)

Rendering

Network Software Renderer

LightWave includes one of the world’s most amazing render engines at no extra cost. Everything comes down to the final rendered image and with LightWave you don’t have to buy extra rendering software to setup a complex render and shading pipeline. LightWave has everything you need to achieve the most amazing results at the highest quality. You will quickly see why LightWave is the Emmy Award-Winning Software used on so many top Hollywood films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and games.

VPR (Viewport Preview Renderer)

LightWave’s VPR (Viewport Preview Renderer) is an interactive renderer that enables artists to experiment with lighting, textures, volumetrics, and shading right in the LightWave viewport. VPR produces results which are similar to a final rendered image and often at a fraction of the time. VPR also has the advantage of being able to render in any viewport and with any view type, which demonstrates the versatility of the renderer. VPR provides you with instant results and a shockingly fast interactive rendered view of scenes and objects with interactive lighting, nodal shading and full support for instancing, fibers, and volumetrics. The VPR has to be seen to be believed… users of previous LightWave versions refuse to go back after experiencing the LightWave interactive VPR rendering system right in their viewport window.

Linear Colorspace Workflow

Linear Colorspace Workflow is the process of ensuring all scene assets that are fed to the renderer are in the same colorspace as the render engine. The resulting rendered image also needs profiling for the target display it will be viewed on in order to look correct. This process can be quite complex in other software. In LightWave, it’s as simple as turning it on, and choosing the output profile. LWF in LightWave supports standard sRGB as well as ICC Color Profiles. You have complete control over which assets are profiled, along with pre-defined presets to make setup a one-click process.

Stereoscopic Rendering

LightWave offers all three major stereo camera rigs including parallel, toe-in, and off-axis rig types. Artists have the ability to dynamically correct for toe-in distortion in the animation pipeline and preview the stereoscopic effect interactively in OpenGL with a simple click-and-drag convergence point adjustment in the viewport. The interocular and convergence points can be dynamically animated over time to track stereo changes within a shot and the rig included in LightWave is the same exact rig used by several top Hollywood production companies on full stereoscopic IMAX 60mm feature film effects sequences on projects including ‘Aliens of the Deep’ and ‘Ghosts of the Abyss’ both by James Cameron.

Scripting

Python is an industry standard programming language prevalent in most CG pipelines. The inclusion of Python in LightWave 11 allows even further integration of LightWave into studio pipelines, as those familiar with Python can quickly begin writing tools for LightWave.

Interchange

LightWave has extremely robust interchange tools tested and production-proven by top Hollywood studios. This allows easy dataflow back and forth between LightWave and the other major 3D animation and effects software packages. LightWave offers a complete pipeline from model to render but the sky is the limit with your pipeline setup. LightWave can solve problems and offer unique solutions for any mixed software pipeline. For example, rig and animate in Maya and then export your geometry cache files directly into LightWave where you can build your environments, add effects, and then render the entire project in LightWave. Or simply model and texture your geometry in LightWave and export via FBX to any major package. Another example would be quickly rigging in LightWave and exporting the rig to Motionbuilder where you can apply motion capture files and then import the final character performance into Maya or Max. It’s your pipeline with your unique needs. LightWave can be a powerful tool to solve a large number of production problems and help streamline your project.

FBX

FBX is one of the standards for 3D file interchange. FBX files can be imported and exported with a few button clicks with support for bones, weights, geometry, textures, UV’s, Camera, and Lights. Our FBX support makes it even easier to integrate LightWave content into a variety of pipelines including motion capture and games.

OBJ Geometry Export

OBJ import and export has been further improved in LightWave 11. Large OBJs are now saved much faster than before. OBJs textured with image maps or numeric values in other packages will come in textured but Nodal or procedural textures will not translate in either direction. Autodesk’s Maya™ reverses diffuse and ambient, so make sure you save OBJ files for Maya using the switch provided on the OBJ tab of Options to ensure that your textures are transported correctly.

MDD Geometry Cache

MDD is a proprietary format developed by NewTek and was the first commercially available geometry and deformation caching file format. MDD is widely used in many 3D packages and provides an easy way to move animated characters, dynamic simulations, and geometry deformations between packages. The MDD Multi Baker allows users to select multiple objects at once to bake and allows the user to export the geometry to .OBJ in one step.

Autodesk™ Geometry Cache™

LightWave also includes integrated support for Autodesk Geometry Cache files as an alternative for geometry and deformation baking. This makes it extremely simple to transfer files to and from Autodesk Maya™ or any other 3D software that support these formats. This allows LightWave’s efficient production proven workflow and exceptional renderer to be integrated easily within any pipeline setup to help studios meet demanding budgets and schedules.

ZBrush GoZ™ Support

GoZ™ is an interchange technology from Pixologic® that allows applications to send model and texture data to and from ZBrush™ for sculpting detail on a base mesh. It has proven incredibly popular among many 3D artists. The GoZ implementation in LightWave Layout and Modeler is robust and fully featured. It allows you to exchange model data, along with all the associated texture maps. The Modeler implementation even lets you use ZBrush for sculpting Endomorphs for things like facial morphs. GoZ now allows LightWave to be even more integrated within studio pipelines, making it a great addition to the LightWave toolset.

Unity Game Engine Support

LightWave can now save scenes for Unity to enable a seamless transfer between the two programs with an automated FBX file export system which is updated every time your LightWave scene changes.

ASCII Text-Based Scene Files and Object Referencing

The LightWave architecture is well thought out. LightWave has had a very efficient and robust ASCII based scene file format from the very beginning. This production-proven text-based scene file format set the standard which other professional software packages have eventually followed. Because of this simple, well thought out ASCII scene file format and the way that LightWave references separate object files you never run the risk of a large all inclusive binary scene file corrupting your assets. Additionally, LightWave’s text-based scene file format allows for amazing flexibility and customization within complex pipelines when coupled with the powerful Python scripting language. The way that LightWave references separate object files is also extremely powerful and flexible in a pipeline. This means that the modeling team can be updating the object files as the design progresses and those objects are instantly updated across all scenes in the production. Or you can try different looks on your character rigs with a simple object replace with none of hassles that you might encounter in other software packages.