Lightwave User Overboard

Lightwave: What Was and What Is

Lightwave has been a big part of my graphics, animation and video for years. And for all those years its relatively ease of use (both in Modeler and Layout) where championed with great renderings. There is still a checklist of positives that can be brought up, but with each passing year, these case points are being worn down.

Complexity Introduced

It's really ironic how in order to compete with key 3D packages that Lightwaves renderer has become much more robust. Its feature set and capabilities have really been expanded on. But at what price?

For all the depth, capacity and capabilities Lightwave's renderer has seen, so has its learning curve in complexity. Lightwave 9's development time has largely been used to hone this capacity at the cost of most everything else.

When Will it Be Done?

Doing the math - if 9 was the renderer, then what will it take to get Character Animation and Dynamics up to speed to name a few. Taking Lightwave 9 into account what are we looking at? Lightwave 11 or Lightwave 12 - 2011 or 2013.

Taking the Leap for XSI

Unlike my anticipated leap around the release of Lightwave 8, Lightwave 9's development cycle has made me see the light (no ironic pun intended). It just feels each iteration is a game of catch up while still falling behind.

XSI is here and now and offers more of what I need now. And much to my satisfaction it appears that many more lightwavers have or are considering the move. That's real important because the Lightwave community as a whole is known for being very supportive. It can only be good to be in a group that is taking on the change for learning, experimentation and production.

Not All is Lost

I don't plan on dropping Lightwave, even though I have no intention of upgrading to version 10. Lightwave is still the application I am familiar with and despite its new complexities for cameras and rendering, the workflow between XSI and LW are said to be very workable.

Reviewing the introductory video tutorials on XSI's site, it becomes easy to see that a powerful package need not be overly complex. I expect to buy one of the XSI packages, most likely a version 7 release when it is released.