Lightwave 2015 has new updates for more control over product design renders
With a mantra of ‘created by artists for artists’, LightWave 3D has launched its 2015 edition of its end-to-end production pipeline for artists and designers to model, animate, render, and output to 3D.
Alongside its longstanding Sub-D modelling tools and as standard animation and rendering tools, LightWave 2015 includes a full list of new features, which might prove useful for product visualisations.
Most improved is its Bullet dynamics feature, an open source physics engine with 3D rigid body dynamics, new constraints for 2015 give more control of dynamic simulations with new constraint types such as Point-to-Point, Hinge, Slider, Cone Twist, Spring and six degrees of freedom constraint types.
Scene lighting has been improved in the 2015 release
Importance sampling now improves the quality of scenes lit by GI and HDR images or background lighting, while the Match Perspective Tool, whether matching plates or simply placing objects in photographs, can quickly sync the LightWave camera to an original photo or plate.
Intersection edges can now be drawn where geometry intersects on the same object and/or separate objects, allowing for more creative control over cel rendering.
With Patch Border Rendering, users can make sub-division patch borders visible in the renderer with the click of a button, great for modelers who want to showcase their mesh topology combined with the full render.
Also, Edge Buffer can be used to render all edges into their own buffer, allowing for post-process manipulation in compositing software.
Lightwave 2015 offers 64-Bit QuickTime Support for loading and saving Quicktime movies using 64 bit versions of LightWave for Windows.
The latest release also includes new enhancements to the Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR) and introduces many new features and improvements such as Interactive Dynamic Parenting, Textured Falloffs in Modeler, Fiber FX, GoZ Multi-tool and Unity 5 support, and also supports the latest interchange formats such as Alembic 1.5 and FBX 2015.
LightWave 2015 is available at a ‘crossgrade’ price of $695 for a full license until 20 February. This applies to current owners of all other 2D and 3D software programs – saving $300 off the current $995 retail price.
