LightWave 96 WhatsNew Guide

LightWave v9.6 What’s New Guide(includes updates from v9.2-9.5)

Contents

Chapter 1 Modeler Unify Normals..................................................................... Create Rows......................................................................... Untangle...................................................................................... Spin Edge..................................................................................... New Selection Options............................................................ Toggle Background Display................................................... Display Options Panel ............................................................

Chapter 2 Layout Panels........................................................................................... Display Options Panel............................................................. Handles and Icons Tab............................................................ Camera Tab................................................................................. Composition Overlay........................................................ Object Properties Panel.......................................................... Render Tab........................................................................... Global Illuminations Tab.................................................. Camera Panel.............................................................................. Camera Types..................................................................... Real Lens....................................................................... Shift Camera................................................................. Antialiasing.......................................................................... Adaptive Sampling..................................................... Motion Blur.......................................................................... Render Globals Panel.............................................................. Global Illumination Tab................................................... Render Tab.......................................................................... Limited Region Bounding Box.............................................. Render Status Panel................................................................. Dynamics..................................................................................... Voumetrics.................................................................................. Light Options Panel.................................................................. New Light Types................................................................. Dome Light.................................................................. Spherical Light............................................................ Photometric Light...................................................... Single Sided Area Light............................................ Anchor........................................................................................... Replace with Object Layer...................................................... Package Scene........................................................................... Motion Options Panel.............................................................. Controllers and Limits Tab.............................................. IK and Modifiers Tab......................................................... Bones............................................................................................ Scene Editor................................................................................ FBX and Collada Import/Export........................................... Footprinter.................................................................................. Feedback Agent........................................................................ Render Q......................................................................................

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© Copyright 1990-2008 NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents

Chapter 3 Surfacing Surface Editor............................................................................. Presets Panel............................................................................... Image Editor................................................................................ Node Editor.................................................................................. Shaders.................................................................................. Subsurface Scattering............................................... Kappa II.................................................................. SSS........................................................................... SSS 2........................................................................ Diffuse........................................................................... Occlussion II.......................................................... Material Nodes................................................................... Conductor............................................................................ Dielectric....................................................................... Delta............................................................................... Fast Skin........................................................................ Make Material.............................................................. Material Mixer.............................................................. Standard........................................................................ Switch............................................................................ Sigma............................................................................. Sigma2........................................................................... Simple Skin................................................................... Carpaint.......................................................................... Vertex Map........................................................................... UV Map........................................................................... Gradient........................................................................................ Curve...............................................................................Custom Configs for Universal Binary.................................................................Known Issues............................................................................................................

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LightWave v9.6 What’s New Guide

Page 4© Copyright 1990-2008 NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER1

Modeler

Unify Normals

(Detail>Polygons>Unify Normals) When you have normals on the same mesh that are pointing in opposite directions (such as a flipped polygon), Unify Normals will point them in the same direction. Unify Normals will flip all polygons in the same direction as the first polygon that is found or selected.

Create Rows

Creates a row of polygons based on the first row of selected points and the last selected point. The order of selected points on the first row does not affect the tool.

The first row of points is selected then the last point. The first row determines the number of polygons created. The first and last point selected determine the edge of the first polygon.

Here, the last point selected was at a different angle. Multiple rows can be selected. Here, all points on the original grid were selected before the last point.



CHAPTER1

Untangle

When a polygon is selected, this tool will make it circular. The more sides the polygon has, the closer to a perfect circle it will become.

.

Spin Edge

When an edge is selected, this tool will spin the edge and connect each end of the edge to the next adjacent point.



CHAPTER1

New Selection Options

Sel Entire Surface: Selects all the polygons making up the surfaces of the polygons that are currently selected.

Sel Entire Part: Selects all the polygons making up the Parts of the polygons that are currently selected.

Select Path: Selects a shortest path (there can be multiple) between two elements. The selected elements can be of any type (vertex, edge, polygon). The order of selection determines the path, so some trial-and-error is involved.

Select Outline Points: Selects the outer points of a selected set of polygons.

Select Outline Edges: Selects the outer edges of a selected set of polygons.

Edge Selection

Loop Expand: Expands an edge selection along an edge loop.

Loop Contract: Shrinks an edge selection along an edge loop.

Toggle Background Display

A new command for turning on/off the background image display. Found in the View>Viewport menu

Display Options Panel

Layout Tab

Show Origin

This option will show the 0 axis in the viewports. For the perspective view, only the X and Z axis are shown.

GL Tab

Texture Resolution determines the display resolution of images used. Lower settings will update faster and use fewer system resources.

Shading Method

OpenGL Multi- Texturing

De- /Activates Multi-texturing – multiple textures layers per polygon in OpenGL.

Depending on the settings that you activate (see below), the following combinations of texture layers are possible:

A. Two color-layers with one diffuse-layer, one luminosity-layer and one reflection map (5 textures/polygon).

B. One color-layer with one transparency-layer and one reflection map (3 textures/polygon).

Currently the Multitexturing is made to work with graphics-cards with at least two texture memory units.

GLSL HW Shading

GLSL HW Shading (OpenGL Hardware Shading) is now among the selections in the Display Options panel. Support for the OpenGL 2.0 hardware shader technology in newer video cards has been added to Modeler to provide very close approximations of render functions in the viewport displays. Light falloff, surface blending, gradients, and many procedurals can now be displayed in the OpenGL viewports in Layout when GLSL HW Shading is turned on.

Geometry Acceleration

Determines how the graphics card displays OpenGL. Streaming renders the mesh immediately to screen, using the lowest amount of memory at the cost of speed. Buffered(VBO) will attempt to store the geometry in graphics card memory, allowing for the highest speed, at the cost of memory. In cases where the mesh or shading changes with every frame no caching is possible, a fallback to the Streaming method will result, for example with animated meshes and reflection maps. Smooth shaded geometry will benefit the most from the Buffered(VBO) mode. If the mesh is buffered in graphics card memory the performance you will get as much performance as your graphics card can give you.



CHAPTER1

Mipmap

Mipmapping is similar to what is used in today’s games to avoid graininess of textures in a distance or at a flat angle. Basically lower- res versions of the texture are generated in realtime and blended in. This feature is supported in hardware by most of today’s graphics cards. This feature also works if Mutitexturing is turned off. Please note however that due to the nature of this filtering method, low-resolution textures may appear a bit blurry.

Color Channel

De- /Activates the display of textures in the Color Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Diffuse Channel

De- /Activates the display of textures in the Diffuse Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Transparency Channel

De- /Activates the display of textures in the Transparency Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Luminosity Channel

De- /Activates the display of textures in the Luminosity Channel if Multi-texturing is on.



CHAPTER2

Layout

NOTE: Due to the increase of the Layout scene file format version to 5, the “Export” menu in Layout has been updated to accurately represent the scene file versions to their LightWave releases.

Panels

Panels are now persistent, meaning you can have all Item Properties panels open at the same time.

Display Options Panel

General Tab

Threaded Mesh Evaluation will use however many cores you have and may help speed up mesh deformations..

The multithreading only happens in Layout for interactive work, not when rendering. Currently the following parts of the mesh evaluation have been multithreaded:

•Morphing

•Bone deformation

•Motion (application of item move/rotate/scale to mesh)

Popup Positioning

Center On Selected: this is the method where the selected item is always centered on the popup button. This can cause the menu to be partly truncated if it falls partly outside of the screen, which means that the user may have to scroll through the menu to get at the desired item.

Keep All On Screen: this is the method which ensures that the whole popup menu is always shown on screen. This may require the menu to be moved so that the selected item is no longer centred on the popup button.

Thumbnail Review

When this is checked and the Render Scene (F10) function is running, a series of thumbnails will appear in the Render Status Panel, showing the last several renders in the sequence..

Handles And Icons Tab

Handle, Camera, Light and Bone Icon sizes can now be changed. Bone sizes can also be changed individually in the Bone Properties Panel.Also, options for enabling Autosized Bones, the older method of displaying bones, and filling in the wireframe display of bones with Draw Bones Filled are available. The Draw Joint Rotation Tripod option will display the rotational direction of joint bones.The Handle Wire Smoothing setting draws wireframe handles and gizmos using antialiased lines. 0 (default) is off, larger values make the lines thicker (7 seems to work well). If set, this value also controls the line thickness of the grid, if grid antialiasing is enabled.



CHAPTER2

Camera Tab

Composition Overlay

The Composition Overlay divides up the screen in a number of ways and is used to help with the aesthetics of a composition. Some of the overlays use the Golden Ratio (sometimes called the Golden Cut or Golden Proportion) which is represented by the Greek symbol φ, or phi, and is a constant of about 1.6180339887. In mathematical terms, using a line as an example, the ratio of “a to b” is the same as the ratio of “a+b to a”, “a” and “b” being lengths on the line.

Golden Sections: The camera view is divided by φ in both directions for X and Y directions.

Golden Triangle: The camera view is divided by φ using the sides of triangles for the ratio.



CHAPTER2

Harmonious Triangles: Similar to the rules for Golden Triangle, it draws from opposite sides.

Rule of Thirds: Divides the screen into three equal parts in X and Y.



CHAPTER2

Spiral Sections: Using the rule of φ, the screen area is divided into a series of rectangles in the form of a spiral pattern.

Golden Spiral: Similar to the Sprial Sections, the screen is divided by a curve using proportions of φ.

Flip H-Rotates the Horizontal orientation 180 degrees.

Flip V-Rotates the Vertical orientation 180 degrees.

Rotate Compositional Overlay- Rotates the overlay by the specified amount.

Compositional Overlay Color- Select the desired color for the overlay.



CHAPTER2

Object Properties Panel

Render Tab

There is now a Shadow Offset text entry and mini-slider in the Render tab of the Object Properties panel. This defaults to 0. By entering a small amount (100mm worked in internal testing) the origin of the shadow rays cast by the object will be offset along the smooth surface normal by the Shadow Offset distance. This will cause nearby polygons on irregular objects to not cast shadows on their neighbors if they are roughly co-planar with them. More distant polygons on the same object or polygons that are not co-planar will still cast shadows as usual. This feature can be used to get rid of flickering shadows on the surface of irregular objects such as asteroids.

Note: One issue with Shadow Offset is that it is set in world space distance and there is no obvious way to tell how big an object is.One solution is look at the object position and start with a Shadow Offset of about 1% of the largest position coordinate and then increase or decrease it from there. It usually takes only a couple of tries to find a good

value that works for the scene.

Unseen By Radiosity

if this is checked the object will not be used for Radiosity calculations.

Global Illuminations Tab

A localized set of Global Illumination values on a per-object basis has now been implemented. The controls are located on a new “Global Illumination” tab in the Object Properties panel that allows the new per-object GI values to be enabled and modified.

The per-Object GI controls are: (see Global Illumination section for details)

* Use Global check box: defaults to on for backwards compatibility - stored with the object info in the scene.

* Rays Per Evaluation

* Secondary Bounce Rays

* Angular Tolerance

* Minimum Pixel Spacing

* Maximum Pixel Spacing



CHAPTER2

Camera Panel

Camera Types

Real Lens Camera

The Real Lens Camera Setting in the Camera Properties Panel will simulate a physical camera lens.

Zoom Factor Menu

The zoom factor drop down menu allows you to set a zoom factor equivalent to a real world camera lens. It has four different types of zoom factor for you to choose from, but LightWave defaults to a zoom factor of 3.2, equal to a 24 mm lens. LightWave users that are familiar with real world camera equipment may find that using the Lens Focal Length type on the drop down menu is the easiest to use. Those who are solely used to LightWave’s way of doing things may be more comfortable using the Zoom Factor type. You can also use the Horizontal and Vertical FOV (Field of View) settings. These set the degree of angle of view.

Camera and Lens Menus

The first filter (top-left) will select the manufacturer of the camera. The second (top-right) filter will select the camera body. The third (bottom-right) filter will select the lens type.

NOTE: If the first two filters are left at the default “All” selection, the Lens filter will show all lens types.

Irradiance falloff simulates the darkening towards the boundary of the image, much like a real camera. What is happening on a technical level is the brightness of a pixel is reduced as a function of the angle between the ray and the film plane.

The brightness is proportional to the cosine of the angle between the film plane normal and the ray direction, taken to some power given



CHAPTER2

by the falloff value. So a falloff of 0 effectively disables it as the brightness will always be 1. Higher falloff values make the brightness drop off sharper and faster.

Load Image

The Real Lens camera can take its settings from the EXIF tags in an image or image sequence.

The model selection dropdown in the Real Lens camera panel has an “(from image)” option. Selecting this opens a panel in which an image can be selected, and the settings to use from it picked.

There is also support for getting settings from image sequences. Image sequences should first be set up in the image editor. You can set the time in the sequence from which to get the settings.

Some settings can be animated, which creates an envelope. Keyframes are set for all frames between the Scene Frame Start and End frame numbers (inclusive). If an image sequence is used, for each frame it will use the settings from the image matching the frame according to the sequence’s settings.

Limitations and cautions:

* If “Use Model” is greyed out, even though a make and model is shown, it’s because the Real Lens camera doesn’t recognise it.

* There is no EXIF tag that says what lens is used. LightWave does put the lens info in the MakerNote for a rendered image, and it will use that if available. Otherwise it will default to Standard.

* Focal distance is only rarely stored in the appropriate EXIF tag. Some of the most popular digital camera makers keep the focal distance in a proprietary MakerNote (presumably to get you to use their crappy photo software), if at all. Again, LightWave rendered images do store the focal distance correctly (if rendered with DoF).

* The focal length is the actual focal length, not converted to a 35mm film equivalent.

* Exposure is mapped to blur length using the current scene FPS setting, and causes photorealistic motion blur to be turned on.

NOTE: The Global Camera now has its own custom setting that can peacefully co-exist with the standard Custom setting for any active camera. This causes the “Resolution” pop-up to display “Global Custom” now whenever the Global Camera resolution settings are altered from something standard. The Camera Properties “Resolution” pop-

up will also show this same description when “Use Global” is enabled and the resolution settings of the Global Camera have been edited to something non-standard.



CHAPTER2

Shift Camera

The Shift Camera is a tilt/shift type of camera capable of 2-point perspective. views, popular for exterior renderings of bulding designs. It works the same as the Perspective camera, but removes the vertical perspective from the view. If part of the OpenGL preview is cut off, change the size of the grid size with Fixed Near Clip turned off.

NOTE: The camera must be kept horizontal, do not bank the camera, as unexpected results may occur in a render.

Vertical Shift

Shifts the camera along the vertical plane.. The Use Cam Pitch checkbox gives the original perspective correction behaviour.

Horizontal Shift

Shifts the camera along the horizontal plane.

Focus Item

An arbitrary focus plane can be selected from a dropdown menu of objects. This creates a focal plane from the XY plane of the selected item, allowing items at different distances to remain in focus.

The focus plan can be toggled on/off by checking Show Focal Plane.



CHAPTER2

Antialiasing

Antialiasing in the Advanced Cameras has been changed. You can now input any number of antialiasing levels or use the slider arrow with a left-click and drag.

Using any of the Advanced Cameras, Antialiasing will also occur in one pass for all levels, instead of one pass for each level. If you are using the Perspective Camera, for example, with an AA level of 9 will render in one pass, while using the Classic Camera with a PLD-9 level will render in 9 passes.

The advantage of a single pass in the Advanced Cameras is that the renderer does not have to reconstruct the geometry data for each antialiasing level. Multi-pass rendering is still required with the Classic Camera.

The Reconstruction Filter works the new camera modes as it has in previous versions of LightWave with one exception. If you set the antialiasing samples to 1 and set the Reconstruction Filter to any mode other than Classic, you will get the old PLD-1 antialiasing. This works best with the Fixed Sampling Pattern.

Sampling Pattern

There are three choices for how the antialiasing samples are arranged within a pixel. These are selected from the Sampling Pattern menu. Blue Noise generates a semi-random sample pattern and is best used when you are using a large number of samples (16 or more) or Adaptive Sampling is enabled. The Fixed pattern generates samples on a fixed grid. This mode works best with fewer samples or when the image contains straight edges. There is a limit of 64 fixed samples. If you select Fixed sampling and more than 64 samples, the additional samples are generated with Blue Noise. Since Blue Noise is semi-random, it does not produce Moré patterns when there are thin parallel lines close to each other.

Blue Noise

Blue Noise is a randomized sampling pattern. For a given pixel, Blue Noise will sample a semi-random point on the grid for a ray. The random point will be a minimal distance away from each other random sampling point. The sampling continues until the difference between two points are within a certain threshold or the maximum number of samples has been reached. A higher antialiasing setting will produce a finer grid for sampling, providing smoother antialiasing.

Fixed

Fixed sampling takes ray information from the center of the grid. As more information is gathered from the grid, the aliasing produced is reduced.

Classic

The classic sampling pattern is based on a grid pattern.

Adaptive Sampling

The Adaptive Sampling has been changed considerably. When you select the Adaptive Sampling option, the image will be rendered in multiple passes. The first pass will render with the number of antialiasing samples you have selected. Each pass after that doubles the number of samples. For example, if the antialiasing is set to 2, the adaptive passes will render 2, 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. Only the pixels that exceed adaptive Threshold will receive additional sampling during each pass. The adaptive sampling passes will stop when all of the pixels are within the adaptive Threshold. Because the number of samples increases each adaptive pass, later passes may take longer to render than earlier ones. For most images, it is best to set the antialiasing samples to 1 when adaptive sampling is enabled. An adaptive Threshold of 0.1 is good for draft quality work and 0.01 would produce production quality antialiasing.



CHAPTER2

How the Adaptive Sampling mode works:

Adaptive Sampling works by rendering multiple passes and comparing each pixel to its neigbors and to the current pixel in the previous pass. The Threshold value is used to determine which pixels need additional samples. When a pixel is within the Threshold of its neighbors or the same pixel from the previous pass, it is considered to be done. Since the neighbor pixels can change on each pass, it is quite possible that a pixel that was once considered to be done may need additional sampling in later adaptive passes. Each Adaptive Sampling pass doubles the total number of samples. The Adaptive Sampling stops rendering passes when all the pixels are done or the maximum number of passes is reached.

The Antialiasing value works with the Adaptive Sampling as follows:

In the first pass of the Adaptive Sampling, the number of samples rendered is equal to the Antialiasing level (level 0 = 1 sample). The second adaptive pass will render this number of samples again. The third adaptive pass will double the total number of samples again and so on. Although raising the Antialiasing will cause the first adaptive pass to render slower, the pixels will converge (become done) faster so the total rendering time may not increase all that much.

In most scenes that use Adaptive Sampling, setting the Antialising level to 1 will produce the desired results. Its possible that the intial level of adaptive sampling could miss tiny bright features (highlights for example). This could create temporal aliasing (flashing dots) in your animation. To prevent this, you can increase the Antialiasing level (try 4 or 6) and still keep the benefits of Adaptive Sampling.

The number of adaptive passes you see is determined by two factors. First, the maximum number of passes is set with the adaptive tolerance. If the Tolerance is 0.1, for example, the maximum number of passes will be 5. Second, the adaptive passes can stop early if they detect that no further work needs to be done. That is all the pixels have converged to the desired quality.

Oversampling is similar to the Enhanced modes for the Classic camera, where you oversample the pixel. the value will go from 0(no oversampling) to 1(sample current pixel and surroundings). Set Oversample to about 0.7 to mimic the Enhanced AA modes of the Classic camera. The Oversample feature may cause small discontinuities in the image if the scene uses more than one segment to render the image. This is the same limitation of the Classic camera’s Enhanced AA. If the Oversample is set to a large value, it will blur the image but can slow down the rendering. A post-process blur filter would be a more efficient way to blur the rendered image.

Oversampling is only in the new camera modes. In the new cameras, multiple sub-pixel rays are fired from the camera through each pixel in the image and into the scene. The oversample is a circular pixel radius within the image buffer. If a sub-pixel ray is close to the edge of the pixel, it will bleed into the neighboring pixels. The image buffers accumulate the energy from all the sub-pixel rays and a weight value. When the render pass is complete, the buffers are divided by the weight before being sent to the reconstruction filter (which is more like an image blur/sharpen filter for the new camera modes) Oversampling is applied during sub-pixel sampling which occurs before the reconstruction filter.

Blue noise determines the sub-pixel locations of each camera ray. It is an alternative to the fixed sub-pixel patterns. Blue noise is random in nature. This can make edges appear more ragged at low numbers of samples than the fixed patterns. On the other hand, blue noise can eliminate artifacts caused by small parallel lines.

No additional samples are generated by oversampling. It can slow down the rendering when a large oversampling radius is used because a very large number of pixels can then be affected by each ray fired from the camera.

The adaptive AA edge detection (really a neighboring pixel difference detection) is performed in a series of passes. During each pass, a number of camera rays are fired for each pixel. On each later pass the total number of samples per pixel are doubled for each pixel that requires additional sampling. Each camera ray has an oversampling radius and can bleed into neighboring pixels. The oversampling, therefor, occurs during adaptive AA.

The oversampling value is a pixel radius. 1.0 would mean a 1 pixel radius. A camera ray fired into the dead center of a pixel would affect a 3x3 block of pixels around the center pixel. The same ray with a 0.5 oversampling radius would only affect the center pixel since the circle would perfectly fit inside the pixel. If the ray had a 0.5 oversampling radius and was fired near the left edge of the pixel, it would bleed into the pixel to the left as well as the pixel into which it was fired.

Noise Reduction and PLD-n Work Around

Some features, such as Noise Reduction, do not work the same in the new antialiasing as they did in earlier versions of LightWave. There is a simple work around for this problem. You can cause the new antialiasing to work more like classic antialiasing by setting the Antialiasing to 1 and setting the desired antialiasing level in the Motion Blur Passes. You must also select Classic Motion Blur, set the Blur Length to 0 (assuming you don’t want motion blur) and disable Adaptive Sampling. If you also set the Reconstruction Filter to Box (or any other mode) instead of Classic and select the Fixed Sampling Pattern, you will get the old PLD-n antialiasing.



CHAPTER2

Edge/Point Rendering

The Advanced Cameras are now able to render points and lines. Wireframe mode will now render with all ray-traced cameras.

Headlight DisplayThis option in the Viewport Options menu will light the OpenGL viewports. Turning it on will illuminate the scene using a light attached to the viewing direction. It can be used to navigate a scene which would otherwise be too dark to conveniently work with in Layout. It is a convenient alternative to trying to set up OpenGL-only lights.

The setting is per viewport, and is saved to the scene file.



CHAPTER2

Motion Blur

The Blur Length sets the time that the simulated camera shutter will be open during a frame. 100% would mean that the shutter is open for the entire frame.50% would mean that the shutter is open for half the frame and is a more typical setting. Increasing this value increases the length of the motion blur streaks. It is possible to enter values larger than 1.0 if you wish to capture more than one frame worth of action.

In addition to the Classic and Dither motion blur, there is also a new Photoreal Motion Blur mode. When this blur mode is selected the motion of objects, lights and the camera will appear within a single motion blur pass.

The quality of the streaks is determined by the antialiasing settings. For best results, enable the Adaptive Sampling option and set your desired quality with the adaptive Threshold value. Set the Antialiasing samples to a fairly low number. Antialiasing 1 will be fastest and should work for most scenes. If there are very long motion blur streaks in the image, you may need to increase the Antialiasing to 2 or 4 in order to get rid of all the gaps.

DoF/Motion Blur Viewport Mode

A new feature has been added to viewport menus to preview Motion Blur. It functions like the Shift F9 option, but is always on when activated. The number of preview passes is controlled in the Preferences Panel. You must use the Camera View to use the Motion Blur preview. The DoF/MBlur preview is activated in the Viewport Toolbar menu.

Photoreal Motion Blur

Instead of rendering a new pass for each motion blur sample, Photoreal Motion Blur allows for multiple samples within each render pass.

Note: Photoreal Blur will not work with the Classic Camera. You must use one of the Advanced Cameras, such as the Perspective Camera.

The Motion Blur Passes sets how many sub-frames will be rendered. Each sub frame will be anti-aliased with the settings described above. These sub-frames are blended together to produce the final image. This is the same way the the classic motion blur has worked in earlier versions of LightWave with the addition that each sub-frame can now be anti-aliased.

Shutter Efficiency determines the amount of time, per frame, the shutter will be open. The Shutter Efficiency is limited to a range of 0.5 to 1.0. A value of 100% means the shutter is open 100% of the frame time, so the light exposure is equal for the entire frame, closing instantly at the beginning and end of each frame. A value of 50% means the shutter does not open fully until midway of the frame, so the beginning and end of the light exposure are darker. This produces a more realistic but shorter looking motion blur streak.

If your scene contains object deformations, you should use multiple Motion Blur Passes when using Photoreal Motion Blur. This will save you a lot of rendering time and produce more precise motion blur streaks.



CHAPTER2

Classic Motion Blur

Dithered Motion Blur

Photoreal Motion Blur

NOTE: Photoreal Motion Blur captures the blur from the start of the frame until the aperture is closed. This is exactly the opposite of how LightWave captured the blur in the past with what is now called Classic Blur, which was to calculate the blur before the current frame.

HINT: If you do not have any motion happening after the last frame you are rendering, and are expecting motion blur, it will not happen. You must have some motion after the last rendered frame to have motion blur, even if those frames are not rendered.



CHAPTER2

Render Globals Panel

Global Illumination Tab

An updated radiosity model is now used for all modes. Previously, the model used was dome shaped, made from a globe pattern. The model is still a hemisphere, however it now uses a jittered sampling pattern.

Several GI default values have been changed. This should make it easier to get started with radiosity.

* The mode will now default to Final Gather.

* Volumetric Radiosity is disabled.

* Directional Rays is disabled.

* Interpolation is enabled.

* Use Transparency is disabled.

Points, lines, edges and outlines will no longer affect radiosity illumination.

Z offset (Edge Z Scale) edges are no longer visible in secondary rays (reflection, refraction, etc.) This is deemed better than having them appear in the wrong place in the rendered image.

When ray tracing, the Edge Z Scale must be less than 0.998 in order to offset the edges towards the camera. This is because the Edge Z Scale currently defaults to 1.0 for the Classic camera to work correctly but this offset is not needed for the ray trace camera modes. Edges are now disabled from being seen in ray traced shadows. You can disable them from being seen in non-camera rays by setting their Z-Scale to 0.9999. They will still be seen through transparencies but you can convert them to refractions, by setting their refraction index to 1.0.

Final Gather Type

Final Gather calculates the rays cast from the illuminated points on a surface, from which a hemisphere created with a specific radius and calculates the direct and indirect illumination. Final Gather stores shaded samples in world space but only for secondary rays. Final Gather only shades the surface if there are no other Final Gather samples near the point that it was from. Final Gather samples so that if a point near it gets hit again, it won’t need to be re-shaded. This is why Final Gather is faster than Monte Carlo but takes more memory. Final Gather can be slower than Monte Carlo, but Monte Carlo tends to be the slower, and more accurate, type of Radiosity..

NOTE: Any directional illumination, including illumination from behind partially transparent surface, is not included in the radiosity solution for Final Gather. Final Gather only includes direct diffuse illumination. Any other type of illumination will not work correctly with Final Gather, as it creates a lot of shading noise. You should use Monte Carlo

for all directional illumination (reflections, refractions, transparency, etc.)



CHAPTER2

New Settings for Global Illumination Modes

All radiosity types have had an Interpolated mode added as an option. Interpolated only works with the primary rays (surfaces seen directly from the camera). It can use either Monte Carlo or Final Gather rays to generate a radiosity illumination value at the point hit. It generates a hemisphere of these rays, which are evenly distributed but randomized to some extent.

The way the rays are distributed inside the radiosity hemisphere have been improved. They should be more evenly spaced now in longitude and latitude.

The hemisphere has 360 degrees around the edge and 90 degrees from the edge to the center. This gives a natural sampling of 4x1. This means that whatever RPE value the user sets, the best fit of a 4x1 ratio set of samples is chosen. For example: 4x1=4, 8x2=16, 12x3=36, 16x4=64, 20x5=100 and so on. If you select 80, the nearest fit is 20x5 or 100 samples.

It may be easier for users to enter just the smaller number (1=4, 2=16, 3=36, 4=64, 5=100 and so on). If users agree to this I can implement it easily. It would be backwards compatible with existing scene files.

The Directional Rays option defaults to off in existing and new scenes. When this option is enabled, the radiosity will include illumination from directional sources such as reflections, refractions, transparency and fog. When the option is disabled, the only illumination will come from non-directional sources such as diffuse.

Blur Background provides you with a way to use GI settings that provide a quicker render, but still have a smooth background in the image.

The purpose of Use Transparency is to disable transparency calculation, including clip maps, for backdrop radiosity rays. Backdrop radiosity is supposed to be a fast and simple form of global illumination. Having it do a lot of transparency calculations makes the image slightly higher quality but if you want higher quality you will probably be using one of the other modes anyway. This option is only available for Backdrop type radiosity. When Use Transparency is disabled for Final Gather, all transparent surfaces are ignored by rays. This acts the same as putting all the transparent surfaces into an object and setting it to be unseen by radiosity.

Intensity determines the overall amount of radiosity, with a default of 100%.

Indirect Bounces determines the number of times an indirect ray from a light source on a surface will be calculated. Up to 24 bounces are available.

Rays Per Evaluation represents the number of sides and segments of the projection hemisphere (as when you model a ball), which determine the number of radiosity rays sent out for evaluation. As you might expect, the higher the density, the more accurate, but the longer rendering will take.

Secondary Bounce Samples will allow users to control how many samples are used to interpolate secondary bounce radiosity. We have found that a value of half the Rays Per Evaluation works well. This should help speed up renderings. This option is disabled when not using Final Gather and when Interpolated is disabled. It is also disabled when using Indirect Bounces of 1.

NOTE: Each radiosity ray acts like it is a first bounce ray at every level of radiosity conversion. This prevents the rays from going into ambient occlusion mode and doing other bad things when the ray recursion level is set low. Or to put it another way, you don’t want a radiosity sample that is created by a series of reflection bounces to be shaded

differently than one that is created by a camera ray since the next time the sample is hit, it may be hit by a ray with a different recursion level.



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The numeric value for Angular Tolerance is set in degrees. Angular Tolerance is the amount +/- in degrees in which the rays are allowed to vary after hitting a surface. This should be easier for you to control and is more compatible with other rendering programs (such as K-Ray) that use degrees to control this value. The minimum angular tolerance is 10 degrees, to allow for better sample blending. When the Angular Tolerance is set to more than 45 degrees, the behind test will be disabled. For highly uneven surfaces (such as trees or asteroids) this will greatly cut down on the number of radiosity samples in the scene and improve rendering performance. The behind test is used to prevent samples on steps from blending with samples on other steps. the Use Behind Test option is now disabled if the Angular Tolerance is more than 45 degrees. This allows the Behind Test to be disabled on any object that has custom GI settings by setting the object’s Angular Tolerance to more than 45 degrees.

NOTE: Ray Recursion is the upper limit on the number of Indirect Bounces you are allowed. For example, if you have Ray Recursion set to 1 and Indirect Bounces set to 8, only one radiosity bounce will be calculated. However, if you have Ray Recursion set to 8 and Indirect Bounces set to 4, you will still get 4 bounces of radiosity.

NOTE: In internal testing, Minimum Pixel Spacing of 1 or less eliminates “light leaks” and produces sharper shadows

Maximum Pixel Spacing controls the maximum distance in pixels between interpolated radiosity samples. The value should be fairly large (100 pixels or more) to speed up rendering. Large values can also cut down on visible noise in large flat areas of the scene. A setting of 0 in the Minimum Pixel-Size (MPS) control means that pixel size will not be factored into sampling.

A Volumetric Radiosity checkbox has been added to the Global Illumination Tab in the Render Globals Panel. Volumetric Radiosity was previously added in the Edit Menu Layout Panel. When the Volumetric Radiosity GI option is disabled, volumetric plug-ins will no longer see any illumination from radiosity.

Also, an Ambient Occlusion checkbox has been added. When this option is selected, the ambient light is added to the background color when computing radiosity. This allows the ambient light to be occluded. You can illuminate your scenes with just ambient light now if you wish. The ambient color will not affect the background color in your rendered images.

Use Gradients enables gradient interpolation.

Cache Radiosity

Cache Radiosity: Turns on the ability to cache radiosity.

Saves radiosity data for subsequent render passes and frames, which can significantly reduce rendering time. The results can be



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inaccurate if objects or lights are animated, but this option works particularly well with scenes like a walk-through in which only the camera moves.

The Always Preprocess option will force the radiosity to be preprocessed even if the current frame already exists in the cache. Automatic preprocesses each frame in compliance with the cache Frame Step setting, and stores all the information available. It remembers which frame has already been stored, and will skip preprocessing of these frames and just load the solution if it encounters them. It will make sure that frames in between the set Frame Step are also not preprocessed. Never uses the cache saved to disk and never preprocesses it. This is useful when you have a nice cache of a space and do not feel it needs further refinement. You can then extend the frame range and it will never preprocess. However, samples are still generated in previously unseen areas due to spatial effects of AA, Motion blur and others during normal rendering. These samples are still stored to disk with this setting, and reused for other frames. Locked is much like ‘Never’ except that it does not store the samples it finds during rendering to disk. It does compute them to make sure there are no black holes or ugly unseen areas and artefacting, but it does not touch the cache file at all. This is a good setting for a scene where the cache has been carefully constructed and you want no scene to mess with it, just use it. This is the mode LWSN operates in, as they are not allowed to write to the cache file.

The radiosity cache now gets loaded before baking begins if it exists. This will allow you to continue baking an existing radiosity cache. You could, for example, extend an animation by setting your start and stop frames beyond those you have already baked and clicking Bake Radiosity Scene. You could add just a single frame to the cache by selecting a frame and clicking Bake Radiosity Frame. The down side to this change is that if you want LightWave to bake the radiosity from scratch, you must first click the Clear Radiosity Cache button before baking.

If your chosen Radiosity mode set has Interpolated checked, the Cache Radiosity option is available.

Animation: This option is only available when the Global Illumination Type is not Final Gather. This setting adjusts the sample size and should reduce trailing in rendered animations. This setting will also run the “behind test” for Photoreal Blur or if the object is not moving.

Cache File Path: Saves the cache to disk at the specified directory. The disk cache always needs to be created with a single computer. This part of the process cannot be distributed among a network of computers since each frame is highly dependent on another. Therefore special baking tools have been added to facilitate this and make the most use out of a render farm.

Reset Cache Directory: Set the cached directory back to the default, if the user changed it to something else.

Clear Radiosity Cache: Deletes all files in cache directory.

Bake Radiosity Frame: Bakes a single frame.

Bake Radiosity Scene: Bakes a scene file.

Cache Frame Steps:Bakes every N frames, with a default of 10.



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Render Tab

Ray Trace Occlusion

Allows you to enable occlusion when the ray recursion level is reached. If the ray is occluded, the background will not be seen by the ray. This should work for all reflection, refraction, transparency and dissolve rays regardless of their origin (LightWave, plug-ins or Node Editor). Rays can be partially occuded when they pass through partially transparent or dissolved surfaces. Occlusion also considers clip maps. Ray Trace Occlusion will save users from having to create reflection masks to remove the background from areas where it should be blocked by other objects.

Ray Precision

This floating point value will allow users to adjust the intersection precision of the ray tracer. The default is 6 which means 1.0E-6. The higher the number, the higher the precision. If the user sets the value to 0, ray trace precision is disabled entirely. This actually works fine in most scenes.

The ray tracer needs a small tolerance to solve the problem of nearly coplanar polygons. Two polygons that don’t share the same vertices but lie on the same plane are considered to be coplanar. Rays cast from one of these two polygons may or may not hit the other polygon. Whether it will or not depends upon floating point precision. This problem can be avoided by offsetting the origin of the ray slightly by the tolerance.

In other cases a smaller or no tolerance (higher or 0 precision) is preferred. The tolerance can cause one pixel light leaks in the corners of objects. If the camera is inside an opaque cube with a lightsource outside the cube, the inside surfaces should be dark due to shadows. When shading a pixel very close to a corner of the cube, the shadow ray may not intersect the adjoining polygon because the intersection point is within the tolerance. This will cause the pixel to be appear brightly lit.

Use Z Buffer Min Max

LightWave’s depth buffer always “normalizes” between the closest point to the camera and the farthest point to the camera. As objects come into or go out of frame, that causes the entire depth buffer to “shift” which makes it impossible to use in compositing. The most common workaround was making a separate white-fog-with-black-objects pass for use with the compositor. Controls have now been added on the Render Globals Panel/Render Tab that allow the user a way to specify a “minimum” and “maximum” zDepth value. These are for export only, and do not affect Lightwave’s internal depth calculations.

In the Renderer, the Z buffer value for the camera ray is now available to pixel filters that are rendered multi-threaded. Multi-threaded pixel filters are now called as if they were single-threaded from the Classic Camera. The Z Buffer maximum sent to the multi-threaded pixel filters has been changed to 2.0E14f, which matches the Classic Camera.

NOTE: When an object is set as MATTE, it should take on the matte color where it is visible to the camera but it should not be seen by any other rays. In addition, the luminance channel should be 0 for the object’s pixels. The matte color is still affected by fog.



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HDR Filtering

As an experimental feature for improving antialiasing issues with HDR images, an option for Gaussian or Bi-linear blur passes has been added to the Editing tab of the Image Editor and to Render Globals; this smooths out HDR values greater than 1. The HDR filtering control is located on the Editing Tab of the Image Editor.

The radius for HDR rendering has been changed to match the radius Photoshop uses.

NOTE: The Layout task bar will now blink when a render is complete.

Multithreads

More options have been added to the Render Threads menu. The option “Automatic” will set the render threads to the number of logical processors on the computer. Also, 3, 6 and 12 threads are now supported.



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The Limited Region Bounding Box

The Limited Region Bounding Box has been updated to have handles. They can be enabled/disabled in the Preferences Panel. The handles are represented as small rectangles. For more information on Limited Region, see the Layout volume of the documentation.

Render Status Panel

The Render Status panel has has some alterations to the status grid. Some labels have changed (some shortened, some lengthened), and some values have been adjusted for their newly allotted space.



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Dynamics

Now displays the calculation progress dialog with Abort button when starting a calculation via the Objects/Dynamics properties panel

Particles

The display of particles in the OpenGl windows can now be turned ON/OFF in the Particle Tab of the Particle Property Window.

Volumetrics Panel

Fixed Near Clip Distance: When checked this will determine the clipping distance of volumentrics.

Hypervoxels

The way Hypervoxel sprites are calculated has changed. Values now work as expected, where 100% means 100% and not 50%. The texture amplitude is now only applied if there is a hypertexture. 100% amplitude is full contrast not 50% contrast as before. The amplitude is also applied in a more logical fashion and clipped to 0 to prevent negative values. This means that if you apply a texture map to your sprite, it will appear at 100% intensity as you would expect if the luminosity and density are 100%. All of this will change the look of Hypervoxel sprites considerably. Please note that there is an ambient color that is applied to sprites. This can only be set in the Advanced shading tab for Volume Hypervoxels. It will make sprites a bit brighter than you would expect but it is being calculated correctly and can be turned off.

The smart random sampling algorithm has now been applied to volume light and HyperVoxels when jittering is enabled. This greatly reduces the noise that jittering creates when combined with anti-aliasing. Volumetric anti-aliasing must be enabled to take advantage of this feature.

NOTE: If you want to use fog with transparency, you MUST use Realistic fog! It produces realistic appearing fog but without the transparency problems of the other modes.

NOTE: If you adjust the Ambient Color settings (Hypervoxels>Shading>Advanced tab) in Volume mode and switch to Sprite mode, the Ambient settings will still apply.



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Light Options Panel

The Light Options panel will now update based on the type of light selected. Options not available to certain light types will not be seen. The previous behavior was to have the inavailable options ghosted.

The “Max OpenGL Lights” setting in the OpenGL Preferences has its limit raised to 256. The new limit only applies to GLSLShaders mode. The MultitextureShaders mode will only use up to 8. The actual number of lights drawn depends on the graphics card and scene complexity.

Also, three new light types have been added.

New Light Types

Dome Light• Photometric Light• Spherical Light• Single-Sided Area Light•



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Dome Light

A dome light lights the scene from all sides within the dome. It is exclusively the rotation of the light that determines the light’s effect in the lighting solutions. Position and scale do not contribute any effect to the lighting solution. Set the Z-axis upwards to light a scene from the top.



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Spherical Light

The spherical light emits light rays from the edges of a sphere. The default size is 0, which essentially makes it a point light at that size.

The position and size of the spherical light is important. For example, if you have a spherical light as the only light in a scene, and the light intersects geometry, the section of geometry “inside” the sphere will not be lit.

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Spherical light

Spherical light intersects geometry.



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Photometric Lights

Photometric lights are custom lights used to replicate real lights. The bottom section of the Light Properties panel allows you to load Photometric lights and control different aspects of the lights..

.

Photometric Info provides information about the loaded light.

Angle, Brightness, Zoom and Distance afftect only the Thumbnail Preview window and do not change the display in Open GL or in a render.

Show in OpenGL will turn on/off the Photometric light for OpenGL display in the viewport.



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Example of a photometric light icon.

NOTE: A wide variety of IES, or photometric, lights,are available online. A search for “IES Lights” in a search engine should bring up a list of different web sites providing IES lights.



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Single-sided Area Lights

Area Lights now have a toggle in the Global Renders Panel Render tab to become single-sided. The icon for Area Lights will update and indicate if the area light is single or double-sided. The switch toggles all area lights in the scene.

Single-sided

Double-sided



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Anchor

Anchor is a Motion plug-in which sticks an object to another object via UV Maps.

After IK: Calculates motion after the IK calculation

Mesh: The object which will be sticky.

UV Map: The UV Map which will be sticky. The UV Map is placed in the preview window

Place on Mesh: Places the object on the sticky mesh.

Align with Mesh: When checked, the object will ignore rotation changes on itself and align to the sticky object’s rotation.

Undo Parent Scaling: If it is parented to another object, the selected object will ignore the scaling of the parent object.

Image: Loads an image into the preview window

Preview Window: Use the cross hair to place the object, this is where it will stick based on the objects pivot point.

Zoom: Zooms in/out on crosshair in UV/Image view.



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Replace with Object Layer/Load from Layer

The Replace with Object Layer and Load from Layer functions have been updated.

When activated, Layout will scan the object file for information, including layer number and layer name, if one exists. In the load menu, the name and number of each layer will be listed.

Package Scene

Package Scene (File Menu) gathers information from your scene and locates the items into the specified directory.

The basics are that Package_Scene is an LScript that uses only Lightwave/LScript commands to accomplish everything that Content Manager did, but also will work with .MDD, .BDD, and .PFX files, and works whether or not your content is actually in the current content structure. If a content element is currently loaded into your Lightwave scene, Package_Scene should find it.

Preserve Existing Structure, if you check this on, Package Scene will attempt to preserve all directories and subdirectories that are under the current Content directory when copying assets to the new content directory. Using this option will cause Package Scene to ignore the Subfolder field and manually-typed paths for any assets below the Content Directory. Any assets *outside* the content directory will be copied and pathed using the subfolder and manually-typed paths, as had been the case before.

The Reload Old Scene option will cause Package Scene to reload the original scene after it’s done exporting.

Select the destination folder and if you want a new level under that for each subdirectory, type the name in the Subdirectory box. The paths will be updated after tabbing or pressing the Enter key. The displayed paths are folder requesters rather than read-only paths. You may edit the paths by hand, or click on the requester icon at the side to point the asset exactly where you want it to go.

After the interface in which you select the target directory for the export, the script:

1. Gets a list of all images and their paths.

2. Copies these images to the target directory.

3. Replaces all the images with their new location.

4. Changes the content directory to the target content directory.

5. Saves each object to the target location.

6. Saves the scene to a temp location.

7. Parses the scene file to find .MDD, .BDD, and .PFX references.

8. Finds and copies the dynamics files to their target location.

9. Rewrites the scene file, changing the respective dynamics paths, to the target location.

10. Loads the new scene file. This means at the end of operations, the user is now active in the newly exported and saved version of the scene, not the original scene from the original location.



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Motion Options Panel

The Motion Options panel has received a number of updates. The IK and Modifiers Tab now has an “Objective” menu and a control for IK/FK blending.

Controllers and Limits Tab

The Contollers and Limits tab has been updated to include Position and Scale controls. The limits are based on the parent space and not world coordinates.

A “Same as Item” controller has been added to the Motion Panel controller options popup list for Controllers and Limits. The channels controlled by this option will have the same values as the corresponding channels of the set item. The stiffness value can be used to interpolate. The one for position has the option to use the world coordinates of the position item (instead of local). The calculations currently assume that X, Y, and Z are controlled, so the result may not be optimal if not all three position channels are “Same as Item” controlled.

Pole Item

A new “pole item” has been added to the motion panel, to be used in combination with the new “Align to Pole” motion controller setting in the Controllers and Limits Tab.

It is similar to the target item, and typically used in combination with it. It sets the angle controlled by “Align to Pole” so that it points towards the pole. Typical usage is to set heading and pitch to a target, and bank to a pole. That way the item’s Z axis will point at the target, and the pole controls the banking around the resulting Z direction.

This can then for example be used as the base of an IK chain as a pole vector. Set the heading and pitch to target the goal of the chain, and the bank to align to a pole item.

You are already familiar with one way of defining orientation: specify heading/pitch/bank values. These three values are sufficient to define any orientation. Another way is to define a target which the item should point at (giving a heading and pitch), and a pole vector to fix the bank angle so that the item’s up vector is in the general direction of the pole.

Notice the complete lack of mention of IK in the previous paragraph. Target + pole can be used in any situation where you may want to set orientation based on direction towards other items.



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The Same as Item option has the following menu options:

“Interpolate” uses the blend to interpolate between Same As Item value and channel value.

“Compensate” removes the Same As Item value from the channel value to a degree specified by the blend.

IK and Modifiers Tab

Objective Menu

This menu selects how the item uses the goal. The default is “Go to Goal”, which the familiar way of trying to get the item to be as close to the goal as possible. “Point at Goal” is similar to targeting in that it aims to make the items Z-axis point at the goal. “YZ Plane through Goal” the IK solver will attempt to get the YZ plane of the effector to go through the goal position.

Based on Menu

Formerly LightWave’s IK was initialized using the first keyframe of each channel.” A few new options have been introduced:

Base on First Keyframe - uses the first keyframe value of each channel as the initial value

Base on most recent keyframe - uses the most recent keyframe to the current frame

Base on Current Time - calculate based on the channel values for the current time.

Base on Frame... - Select a frame to get initial channel values from. Value can be enveloped.

ChainActivates the IK/FK blending options for the entire chain.

IK/FK Blending

Will blend the calculations for inverse kinematics and the keyframes for forward kinematics based on the percentage, with 100% being full FK.

Soft IK

Soft IK can be used with the “Go To Goal” objective. Its purpose is to smooth out the transition from a bended chain to a straightened out chain. It does this by changing the position of the goal that the chain uses, moving it closer to the chain root.

The threshold at which it starts to do this is set by the Max value. If the distance between the chain root and the goal is larger than that indicated, the soft IK will kick in smoothly.

There are three ways to specify what “the distance between the chain root and the goal” means:

* Chain Chord: the Max value is given as a percentage of the straight-line distance between the chain root and the goal.

* Chain Length: the Max value is given as a percentage of the distance between the chain root and the goal, as measured along the chain.

* Given Lengths: the Max value is used as the distance.

Additionally, as well as a soft IK on stretching the chain, there is a soft IK on squashing the chain as well. If the distance between root and goal is less than a given minimum value, then it will start to push the goal away.



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NOTE: Keep the joints/bones within an IK chain the same length, if possible, when you are creating your chains. Having all of the components of the chain the same length will help to stabilize the solution of the IK solver. The SoftIk feature will help to dampen the hyper-extension of the chain, minimizing that final “pop” that you often see

on IK-controlled joints. So, how do you know you are creating joints of the same length? Well, create one bone for an arm, from shoulder to wrist. Then, use the Split Bone tool, the one with the numeric input, to break that down into smaller joints. An addition benefit here is that all of the joints created by this tool will have the same orientation, another key component to a successful IK chain.

Bones

A new Bone type is now available, Joints. The older Bone type has been labeled Z-axis. You can change the bone type in the Bone Type drop-down menu in the Bone Properties Panel.

The easiest way to visually tell a Joint from a Z axis bone is the small circle where the bone types are connected. The small circle is actually the Joint, two connected joints are represented by a triangle pointing towards the child joint. Keep in mind that a single joint will be represented by onlya circle as it does not have a child.

Deformation is entirely defined by the change in position of the joint. Currently, joint rotation has no effect whatsoever on deformation. Joint-based animation and deformation control allows for a “stretchy bones” effect with considerable control for the user. A more organic and natural motion effect for shoulder and neck movements can be achieved, for example, or a more exaggerated effect for cartoon-type characters. Even zero-length bones (e.g. isolated joints) can cause deformation (activate them and turn off Multiply Strength by Rest Length).

NOTE: Joints are not meant to be a direct conversion from z axis bones. If you have a current rig, you may have to create a new rig or modify the existing rig.



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Twist (Bone Properties Panel)

The rotation axis most aligned with the bone at rest is used. For zero-length bones the bank axis is used. The amount of twist is the change in rotation of that axis between rest and current (limitation: local rotation values are used, so a twist of a bone is not inherited by child bones). There is a Twist toggle in the bone panel (default on), and an input which controls how curly it is (0% is no curl, 100% is curl by the amount of twist over the length of the bone).

Bone Icon Size changes the size of the bone icon in the OpenGL display. It does not affect how the bone influences the mesh or other bones.

Additional Joint Tools

Add Joint: A bone will be added with its base at the selected object’s local Origin.

Add Child Joint: A bone will be added with its base at the tip of the selected bone, The new bone will be a child of the original selected bone.

Draw Joint: Draw Bones will allow you to draw a Joint in any orthogonal viewport (This will not work in Perspective). This bone will be parented to the object. Each successive bone added will also be parented to the object. If you need to add a child bone use Add Child Bone or Draw Child Bone.



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NOTE: As of this writing, Z-axis and Joints are not compatible, so it is recommended you do not mix the two types on a bone chain.

Make Joint Chain: The joint chain making script sets up a 2D IK chain on a plane. The plane is defined by the position of the start of the chain, the position of the goal, and the position of the pole vector. The positions or orientations of the other joints in the chain have no effect on defining this plane.

The IK chain is set up to control the pitch angle of the joints in the chain. Except for the first joint, the pitch angle is limited to a few degrees, reflecting the reality that most limbs don’t bend backwards so well.

For this setup to work, the joints must be created to lie on the plane. The pole vector defines the plane to be the YZ plane of the first joint in the chain. If the joints are not positioned on this plane, then the IK solver will likely not be able to reach the goal (as said above, only pitch angles are IK controlled).

In practice this means that as a rule of thumb, the joints in the chain should be created with a heading and bank angle of 0, and a local X position of 0 (there are the obvious exceptions: the first joint, and the rotation of the last joint, which have no effect on the IK solving). That way the pitch angle of the joints will align with the pole vector plane, and the joints will always be on the plane.

The setup can of course be modified by you after the makejointchain script has been run. For example, changing some joints to also have heading IK controlled, or altering the pitch constraints.

Any locked bones made by this tool can be unlocked in the Scene Editor.



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Muscle Bulge

Causes a radial distortion based on bone stretching. and is texturable.

Parental Muscle Bulge

Causes a radial distortion based on bone stretching and bending and is texturable.

Texture Options, in Gradient Mode, for Muscle Bulge and Parental Muscle Bulge:

Bend: Angle between bone and parent bone.

Bulge Falloff: Bulging falloff along bone (0 is at the ends, 1 is in the middle).

Bulge: Radial bulging factor away from bone.

Distance based on (Item): The amount of bulge is determined by the distance of the bone from the specified item.

Angle fron Inside: Angle of point along bone radial, with 0 being the direction facing the parent bone.

NOTE: When using Mirror Hierarchy, not all items on a rig will be cloned. If items are not part of the hierarchy, for example a null being used as a target, it will not be cloned as part of the Mirror Hierarchy tool. There are also limitations to the data that is copied over, so items can

be copied but the rotational data is not always copied.



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Scene Editor

Re-Parenting: Once some items are highlighted, use the mouse to drag and drop them onto an existing object, bone, light, or camera item to change the parent of the highlighted items. The mouse ‘drop’ point can also be below the desired parent item at the same indentation level of that parent. Visual markers appear in both cases. The visual aids are brightest when all the highlighted items are appropriate for the reparent operation and darkest when none are appropriate. As an example, trying to reparent a bone from it’s owner object to another object is an inappropriate reparent operation. Reparenting can only be performed when the item view is in ‘hierarchy display mode’.

The above image shows reparenting the highlighted items to ‘Light’

Re-ordering: It is possible to change the internal storage sequence of lights, cameras, objects, and bones when a ‘Sequence’ sort modes is active. The sort modes are changed by mouse clicking on the item view’s item column. The mouse is used to drag and drop a highlighted selection between existing items. It is important to note that the sequence is implicitly defined as: all objects (for each object, all bones in that object) followed by all lights followed by all cameras. As such, it is not possible to reposition an object between two lights, for example. The horizontal mouse position is important in determining where to actually reorder items. A visual aid shows the desired insertion point, even if that insertion point is not valid for the highlighted items.

The above image shows inserting the highlighted items between ‘Null (1)’ and ‘Null (4)’

Of important note is that the instance part of the name (the “(2)” in “Null (2)” for example) can change when saving and reloading the scene. This is because the instance value assignment is based on the item sequence at during certain item updates internal to Layout. Instance identification is not part of a scene reference to an item. To best ensure item name display consistency, each item name should be unique.



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FBX and Collada Import/Export Options

Import Options

FBX and Collada imports just as a LightWave scene file, go to Load Scene/Load Object, locate the file. in the load panel, then click Open.

When importing FBX and Collada files as scene files, the following requesters open. The file path is where the objects associated with the imported scenes are stored.

Export Options

The exporter for Collada will save the file as .dae. The exporter for FBX has different options, such as Binary or ASCII types, and allows you to save as different FBX versions..

NOTE: The FBX and Collda exporters do not export information associated with plug-ins, including plug-ins native shipped with LightWave.



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Footprinter

Footprinter is an LScript that is designed to automatically create “footprint” objects at the intersection of any object with the ground.

It can use any object or null for placement. The script detects anytime the object goes from above the ground plane (Y=0) to below the ground plane, and places a null object at the point of intersection with the plane. The nulls that are created are sized to 0,0,0 before the hit and then scaled up to 1,1,1 at the hit frame. Optionally, it can also take an existing object and attach a clone of that object to each “hit”.

A list of comma-separated keywords is used to designate which objects to track throughout the scene. There is no limit to the number of keywords. A “master” null is created for each keyword in the scene that has corresponding object, and each “hit” of that object is parented to the matching keyword. The master null/hit object combinations are also color-coded for easy identification, and at the end of the script’s operation, the newly created master nulls are left selected.

The basic workflow for a character walking or running across the ground, as an example, would be something like this:

Add a null for each foot, and parent to the appropriate foot bone. Adjust the null to ensure that it goes below the Y=0 plane for each footstep. It’s recommended that each foot has a different name, so that each set of hits will have a different parent and can be mainpulated separately.

Run the script.

Enter the keywords into the text field (for instance, if you named your foot nulls “lefty” and “righty”, then you would enter “lefty,righty” in the text field).

Enter the desired start and end frames for the scan (thus allowing you to skip parts of the scene where no interaction is happening)

Footprinter always creates a FOOTPRINTER_MASTER null, and parents everything to it. If you select the Create Master Null for Each Keyword button, every instance of each keyword found will also create a separate Master Null.



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For example, if you have separate characters, you might want to be able to move the footprints indificually. You will usually want this off if you’re using Footprinter with FX_Linked objects.

If you wish to attach a clone of an object to each hit, click on the Clone Item in Place checkbox and select it from the Item to Clone list.

The script will run through the designated scanning frames. When it’s done it will return you to the frame you were on, and leave the new master nulls selected. Check your scene and see if the results are as desired. If not, it’s a simple matter to delete the master nulls (and their children, of course) and re-run the script after you make adjustments!

The Usage Guide button is a quick reference included with the plug-in.



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Some addtional notes on using FBX files:

1: Generaly other applications require joints/bones to be bound/skinned tothe mesh they control, write brief rundown on how to skin a character(setup weights, and use the weightmap in the bones panel).

2: Some applications that do support FBX tend not to like multiple joint/bone roots within a hierarchy, if the scene created in LightWave is intended to be exported try to keep the hierarchy intact as much as possible.

3: FBX files exported from MotionBuilder 6.0 or earler need to be updated using MotionBuilder 7.5 or later for better compatibility. The non-skinned character setups in version 5.5 and earlier require this update to enable proper operation.

Feedback Agent:

The Feedback Agent is now available, and will help users to provide the 3D Team with the most possible information about LightWave issues they encounter. It can create a log of the problem or crash situation, and can email the log to NewTek’s bug reporting system.

Notes on use of the Feedback Agent

* Please Edit the “Exception in LightWave” portion of the default subject line to include a description of the problem, such as “Crash in Modeler when hit all keys on keyboard at once.”

* Please be sure to list steps to duplicate the problem in the “Brief Description” field.

* Please attach the content with which the problem was encountered.

* You will not usually have to fill in the “To:” field. Feedback Agent knows to send to the LightWave Bugs address if this is left blank.

* You may need to fill in your smtp-server information if Feedback Agent does seem to be able to send out email.



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Render Q

Render Q (Render Tab>Render-Q) creates a render queue for the selected scenes.

Move Up/Move Down: Moves the selected scene up or down the queue.

To Top/ To Bottom: Moves the selected scene to the top or bottom of the queue.

Add Scene: Adds a scene to the queue.

Remove Scene: Removes the selected scene from the queue.

Clear Queue: Removes all scenes from the queue.

Load Queue: Loads a saved queue.

Save Queue: Saves the currently loaded queue.

Render: Renders the queue.

Bake Radiosity: when enabled, each scene in the queue will first bake radiosity when the render is launched. This script requires LScript v2.13 to function with radiosity baking. If a scene in the queue does not have Radiosity enabled, then the request to bake radiosity will be ignored when it is rendered. In addition, if Radiosity is enabled in the scene and bake radiosity is requested, the script will now check the state of the “cache radiosity” setting (LWROPT_CACHERADIOSITY), and enable it if it is not, before baking.



CHAPTER 3

Surface Editor

Volume Stacking

Surfaces with single-sided surfaces will now be treated as a solid mass, as in “no air inside”. Double-sided surfaces will work as before. This will be true of all SSS and refractive surfaces from now on.

When using Volume Stacking, the geometry must be closed, meaning no holes in the mesh. The enclosed volume can have “holes” however, which is usefull for things like air bubbles. These geometric air bubbles could be created by inversing the normals on the “bubbles” and using the same surface properties as the enclosing volume.

When a surface is single sided and transparent, it will be added to the volume stack. The problem when a single sided surface is not a closed volume, so the volume stack is confused because in some areas of the image the ray never “leaves” the volume because there is no backside to hit.

The problem goes away when the surface is made double sided, which in effect will not put the surface into the volume stack.Now as to why the classic camera renders differently, this is because how it sorts the transparent polygons before rendering and it does not cast any rays because the surfaces are not refractive.

The perspective camera is a ray tracing camera, so all transparency is raytraced. You can make the surface double sided to turn off the volume stack for a surface.

Implemented a feature called “Exclude From VStack” for surfaces. This way when you use polygons to replicate things like fire or space ship engine flames, these polygons are excluded from being included with the volume stack.

Compatibility Menu

Scenes created before LightWave v9.0 had Surface Editor features which did not work as intended. The features have been updated. The Compatibility menu allows you to use older scenes created before LightWave v9.2 and match those scenes rendered in older versions of LightWave. The Compatability menu is found in the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor.

An additional option has been added for LightWave v9.6, with a selection available for 9.3.1.

Surface Editor Advanced Tab

Bump Dropoff

A value of zero (the default) disables the feature. A positive value close to zero cuts off the bumps close to the terminator line of the surface (as computed without bumps). As the Bump Dropoff value increases, the dropoff of the bumps becomes wider. This feature prevents bumps from being shaded on the surfaces that face away from the light source. Also added to Standard material node.

NOTE: As of v9.5 the Kappa, Kappa II, and Omega nodes have been moved to the Subsurface Scattering>Legacy folder. They have been replaced with the SSS and SSS2 nodes.

NOTE: A new option in the Node Edtor Options Panel allows you to switch from Straight to Square lines. This can be found by clicking on the Options Panel and choosing the prefered type in the Line Type section.



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Presets Panel

The Presets Panel has been updated with all available menus listed. Each library is listed in a separate category. The light colored lines indicate available ‘library containers’ and their lock state, which depends upon design decisions and folder permissions.

The ‘Bundled’ container refers to presets stored inside the Layout application (inside the application bundle); these would be specific to that application and provided solely by NewTek. The “Built-In” container refers to presets stored in the “SharedSupport” folder, which is shared among all the LightWave applications; these would be provided solely by NewTek and is not modified by the user or third party installers. There is a “This Network” container (not shown here) that would refer to presets shared among members of a Mac network The “This Machine” container refers to presets stored on the local machine and shared among all users that can log into this machine. This is where third party presets would normally go (so that they can be shared among all users on the machine). The “This User” container refers to presets stored specific to current logged in user and are not shared with any other users. The “Custom” container (not shown here) refers to the user define preset folder that can be specified within Layout. The lock symbol means there is no write access allowed to the container. For the current library, you will also see the lock state if that particular library has not write access.

Double-clicking on the preset image (like before) will activate that preset. One difference now is that double-clicking on the name will open up the editing dialog to set the name and description of that preset.

Changes to the preset folder made outside of LightWave are ok and will be realized when the preset shelf is brought to the foreground.

You may also notice that the description field (at the bottom) does not clash with the window resize gadget anymore.

This new capability removes a restriction and allows LightWave to be operated from a read-only device such as a CD-ROM, a network application server (educational environments), a mounted DMG file. In many environments, users do not have write access to the previous single preset folder, so having these other locations is useful. Also, third party UB installers now have a reliable location to place their preset updates. Also, when updates to the Universal Binary version of LightWave are made via the intended drag-drop install, the previous Applications/LightWave3D folder will be totally replaced; so it is important not to make third party or user modifications to that follder.



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Image Editor

MIP maps are now only used to soften maps. You can control the exact amount of softening by editing the MIP Strength for the map: 1.0 is fully sharp, 2.0 is 2x filtering, 3.0 is 3x, and so on. This change presumes that all texture map anti-aliasing will be performed with pixel sampling. One major benefit of this change is that maps can now be softened when seen by reflection and refraction rays.

A toggle for using Classic mipmap handling of the new “Soft” mipmap option has been added to the Image Editor. For new scenes the default is Soft. Loading any scene that does not have Soft specified in the scene will use the Classic mode.

LightWave now supports the OpenEXR format for input-output. True floating point formats in LightWave are TIFF, OpenEXR and Flexible Format.

The Image Editor was updated in V9.5 to read meta-data, if available, in images. A new button, Metadata, will open a panel with this information..



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Node Editor

WARNING: It is recommended that you never add any shader node output into any “amount” input, such as reflection amount, as this can cause a considerable amount of calculations.

Shaders>Subsurface Scattering

Kappa II

This nodes’ output is intended to be connected to the Diffuse Shading input of the Surface destination node. Other uses may be possible but are not documented and may have unexpected results.

It has the advantage of speed over the “real” SSS model called Omega by the same creator and often looks just as good. Additionally it’s easier to set up and does not require raytracing be enabled, Double Sided turned on, nor need a layer of Air conversion polygons be present in the model to work its magic.

Kappa II actually works best and was designed to operate with ray traced shadows turned ON.

The SSS-like results can be dramatically pleasing when soft back-lighting is applied, such as that from an Area Light on the opposite side of the object away from the viewer when the Backward sampling Mode is selected in the Edit Panel for this node.

Inputs

Forward Color (type: color):

Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network. Users may also specify a color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this node.

Specifies the color used for the diffuse translucent channel.

Backward Color (type: color):





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Range (type: scalar):

Is the maximum range of the sampling or the maximum distance at which samples are considered from the spot being evaluated.

Can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in the network. This value can additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node.

Forward Amount (type: scalar):

Scales the result of the effect which is the output, You can think of this as scaling the amount of SSS that is being applied to the surface.


Backward Amount (type: scalar):



Samples (type: integer):

Can receive numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. Additionally, controls offered in the Edit Panel for this node may be used to specify this value.

Sampling is the number of directions the shading model examines the surface from in order to calculate the shading value of each spot on the surface under evaluation.

These readings or “Samples” are taken from positions on a hemispherical lattice and it is the number of longitudinal and latitudinal sections of this hemisphere that you are defining when you select one of the Sample preset values from the Samples pull down menu. It is for this reason that there are two numbers in each of the possible Sample selections.

It’s quite easy to understand if you imagine one half of an unsmoothed (faceted) default ball object in Modeler. The first number defines the number of longitudinal strips and the second number defines the number of latitudinal sections where each facet (or “face”) formed by their intersection defines one of the directions from which the spot is evaluated. You could visualize a sample size of 1x4 for example, as a bottomless pyramid centered over the evaluation spot protruding straight out from the surface normal - 1 segment high and containing 4 sides.

Higher values will sample the shading from more directions and produce smoother more accurate shading.

Normal (type: vector):

Normal maps connected to this input will replace the normals that this shader applies shading to in an individually exclusive manner from other shading models. This means that more than one set of normals can be utilized by any shaders exclusively or shared between any of the various shaders and/or the global normals for an individual surface.

The per-surface global normals are defined by either the interpolated geometry itself or by whatever is connected to the Normal input on the Surface destination node.

By using a different set of normals either from different normal maps or from any of various nodes that may offer normal outputs themselves, it becomes possible to create truly layered surface shading and texturing.

Can receive input from other vector type outputs that define surface normal information. Usually these outputs contain the word “Normal” in the output labels.



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Outputs

Color (type: color):

Outputs three channel color information in R, G, B format, evaluated on a per spot basis.

Typically this output is connected to the Diffuse Shading input of the Surface destination node. However, it may also be used within a network when using this shading model for other purposes or when mixing several diffuse shading models together.

Edit Panel

Here the Radiosity check box is not offered as a node connection in the Workspace area. When checked this shading model will accept properties from the radiosity illumination system.

Unchecked, radiosity calculations will not be applied to this shading model as it is applied to the object surface being edited. This can be used to omit both entire surfaces or per channel surface attributes from radiosity calculations thus offering more diversity in the rendered output as well as reducing the time needed to calculate the surface in scenes where radiosity is used.

Mode determines whether sampling occurs toward the viewer (Forward) or away from the viewer (Backward). You can remember which one to use by their names. Basically Forward Mode is used for when light is entering the material from the front - meaning from a similar direction as the viewer. Backward Mode is suitable for when light is entering from behind the object. Positioning of all light types matters when setting the Forward or Backward Mode types.

Forward scattering is classically associated with Jade and similar materials. Backward scattering is useful and more predominate in clouds and such.

For a realistic human head, for example, probably both scattering Modes would be needed but with different colors and values. For example Forward scattering with a skin tone coloring and a smaller Range for the skin shading and a reddish colored Backward scattering with deeper or larger, Range for the blood and flesh properties of the model.



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SSS

A new, simple subsurface scattering node.

Edit Panel

Color


Distance

The depth into how far light is absorbed into a surface.

Quality

Controls the quality of the subsurface scattering.

Refraction Index

Index Of Refraction or IOR, is a charted index of the different amounts of refraction associated with real world materials.

Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through transparent materials or substances of different density.

Dense substances bend light more than materials that are not dense.

See elsewhere in this manual for a list of many real world transparent materials and their corresponding IOR values.




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Bump Height

Specifies the bump height or “amplitude” of the Bump directional vectors.

Using Alpha or luminance (connecting Color) values from other textures in the network along with their respective bumps can have the effect of blending the bump textures together.

Capable of receiving patterns or numerical values from other nodes in the network, this value can additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node.

Since Bump Amplitude is a shading feature and not a displacement coordinate system value it is specified as a percentage, specifically as a percentage of the texture value.



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SSS 2

A new, simple subsurface scattering node.

Edit Panel

Forward Color (type: color):



Backward Color (type: color):





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Forward Amount (type: scalar):



Backward Amount (type: scalar):



Distance

The depth into how far light is absorbed into a surface

Quality


Refraction Index






Bump Height







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Shaders>Diffuse

Occlusion II

Occlusion or “ambient occlusion” is a shading method used to help add realism by taking into account attenuation of light caused by obstructive geometry.

Local shading methods like Lambertian shading or the OrenNayar model do not take into account such global information; by contrast ambient occlusion is a global method even though it is a very crude approximation to full global illumination, considering only a visibility function and cosine application.

The appearance achieved by ambient occlusion is similar to the way an object appears on an overcast day.

This shader requires that Ray Trace Shadows be turned on in the Render Globals Render tab.

It was intended to be used as input to a wide variety of connections within any given network. For example as direct input to any number of channels (connections) on the Surface destination node, as input to the Opacity connection of any of the 2D or 3D Texture nodes or even as input to another Shaders’ properties. It’s use as intended, is limited only by your imagination with the few simple rules that apply to dissimilar connection types.

Edit Panel

Samples





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It’s quite easy to understand if you imagine one half of an unsmoothed (faceted) default ball object in modeler. The first number defines the number of longitudinal strips and the second number defines the number of latitudinal sections where each facet (or “face”) formed by their intersection defines one of the directions from which the spot is evaluated. You could visualize a sample size of 1x4 for example, as a bottomless pyramid centered over the evaluation spot protruding straight out from the surface normal - 1 segment high and containing 4 sides.


Incoming values lower than 0 will be set to 0.

Mode

Mode is a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.

Max

Requires that the Mode be set to Ranged in the Edit Panel for this node. When Ranged Mode is selected evaluation sample lengths are limited to the specified Max value.

Occlusion shading works by firing a set of rays from the surface spot being evaluated. If a ray hits any other surface in the scene that ray is evaluated as occluded. In Ranged mode the ray will automatically be set to a non-occluded status after it has traveled the length specified as the Max limit.

Spread

The overall cone angle of the sampling rays.

Heading

The rotation angle of the map for the spherical mapping mode, and also for the light probe mode.

Pitch

The pitch rotation angle of the map, but is only applied for the light probe mode.



CHAPTER 3

Material Nodes

The Material nodes combine features of existing nodes into a more convenient and easier to use node system. The Material nodes duplicate specific surfaces, but can still access the power of the node system. Several types of material nodes are available.

Conductor

Appropriate for simulating metallic surface finishes accurately. The appropriate values for various conductors (metals) can be obtained from published data in handbooks of optical constants.

Edit Panel

Basic Tab

Color


Specularity

Defines the amount of specularity that is applied to the surface by this node.




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Roughness


Specifies the amount of roughness that will be applied. Roughness is the result of microfacet evaluation in lighting conditions. Higher values produce rougher surface properties while lower values produce smoother looking surfaces. This kind of roughness is more easily seen on objects with many sharp edges or where high contrast bump or normal maps are applied.

Bump

Specifies a vector direction for modifying the surface normal. This is surface normal direction information and affects the way the surface is shaded. Care should be taken when connecting to this input. Connecting dissimilar types or non directional vectors may cause the surface to shade wrongly.

Can receive input from other nodes in the network only.

Bump Height





Receive Radiosity/ Receive Caustics

Here the Radiosity and Caustics check boxes are not offered as node connections in the Workspace area and are features exclusive to the Edit Panel of the node.

When checked this shading model will evaluate shading information for the surface channel it is being applied including any Radiosity or Caustics computations as defined by those system attributes applied to the scene.

Unchecked, radiosity and/or caustics calculations will not be evaluated by this shading model as it is applied to the object surface being edited.

This can be used to omit both entire surfaces or per channel surface attributes from radiosity or caustics calculations thus offering more diversity in the rendered output as well as reducing the time needed to calculate these surfaces in scenes where either radiosity or caustics are used.

Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur

Controls the amount of blur of the surface reflections. Some amount of blur is required in order to have the Dispersion amount affect the surface. The number of samples used also greatly affects the quality of blurring that takes place.


Mode

Reflection Image

Mode and Image are features exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.



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Image Seam Angle

Angle or “Image Seam Angle” as it is designated in the Edit Panel for this node allows the user to rotate the seam line of a wrapped image around the Axis that has been selected for the projection method.


Samples









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Dielectric

Dielectric is a physically accurate node for simulating glass-like materials. Use this state-of-the-art node when you want to create realistic glass. Dielectric uses Beer’s Law, which is about energy absorption, occuring when light passes through a surface. The more light that is absorbed by the material, the darker it will look.

Edit Panel

Basic Tab

Color


Absorption

The amount of light that is absorbed.

Refraction Index








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Partial Internal Reflections

Toggle this on for full accuracy with internal reflections, or off to allow for faster rendering when full-on accuracy is not required.

Roughness



Bump Height




Since Bump Amplitude is a shading feature and not a displacement coordinate system value it is specified as a percentage. Specifically as a percentage of the texture value.

Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur



Mode

Reflection Image




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Image Seam Angle



Samples







Refraction Dispersion

Controls the amount of light dispersion. This input can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in the network. This value can additionally be specified via user input by entering values into the Edit Panel for this node.

Dispersion is a phenomenon that causes the separation of a wave into spectral components with different wavelengths, due to a dependence of the waves’ speed on its wavelength.

In simpler terms dispersion occurs in materials in which the Index Of Refraction (IOR) is not constant, but rather varies depending on the wavelength of incoming light. White light splits into its monochromatic components, where each wavelength beam has a different IOR. The classic example is a beam of white light entering a prism of some sort and projecting a rainbow colored pattern out the other side.

Dispersion as used in this shading model simulates real light dispersion. The higher the value the greater the amount of dispersion that will be simulated and applied.

NOTE: Air polygons are no longer necessary for Dielectric. Just plug the Material Output from Dielectric into the Material Input of the



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Delta

Delta is an energy conserving material. What this means is that it has realistic properties like when specularity is 100% the diffuse in turn will go down to 0%.

Edit Panel

Basic Tab



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Color


Specularity



Roughness



Refraction Index






Bump



Bump Height




Since Bump Amplitude is a shading feature and not a displacement coordinate system value it is specified as a percentage. Specifically as a percentage of the texture value.



When checked this shading model will evaluate shading information for the surface channel it is being applied including any Radiosity or Caustics computations as defined by those system atributes applied to the scene.





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Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur



Mode and Reflection Image


Image Seam Angle



Samples









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Fast Skin

Fast skin is a skin shader with improved subsurface scattering and less noise.



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Edit Panel

Diffuse Color

Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network. Users may also specify a color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this node. Specifies the color used for the diffuse translucent channel.

Diffuse


Specifies the amount of Diffuse reflectivity that will be applied.

Diffuse Roughness

Can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in thenetwork. This value can additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node.




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Specular Color


Specularity



Glossiness

Defines the amount of glossiness that is applied to the surface by this node.


Fresnel

Defines the amount light reflection on a surface.

Refraction Index






Epidermis Visiblity

Determines the visiblity of the outer-layer of the skin shader.

Epidermis Color


Specifies the color used for the outer-layer of skin.

Epidermis Distance


Epidermis Gamma

This function provides a standard gamma correction function. Gamma correction is a function that adjusts the brightness and contrast simultaneously.



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Make Material

Make Material can be used to make a material from the older shader components.

Diffuse



Specular



Reflection


Defines the amount of reflection that is applied to the surface by this node.

Refraction

Can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in the network. This value can additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node. Defines the amount of refraction that is applied to the surface by this node.



CHAPTER 3

Material Mixer

Material Mixer blends materials together, the strength of the blend determined by the alpha channel.

A/B

The two Materials which will be blended.

Alpha

Using the alpha information from another mode, this input determines how the materials are mixed.



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Standard

Standard is a replication of the built-in shading model. Build custom materials with this node.



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Switch

Switch switches between the materials using the integer input. It is mainly meant for air polygons, where you need to have different material on the flipside of the polygons.

Switch

This input determines where the switch will be made. Typically you will use the Spot Info node and the Polygon Side output for best use of this input.

True

Used for the positive side of the polygons.

False

Used for the negative side of the polygons.



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Sigma

A material node which uses subsurface scattering, which occurs when light partially passes through a surface, and is scattered within the object, then exits through a different location. Subsurface scattering is an important and recent addition 3D computer graphics for the realistic rendering of such materials as marble, skin, and milk and other real-world semitransparent substances.



CHAPTER 3

Edit Panel

Basic Tab

Surface Color


Specularity Color


Specularity

Defines the amount of specularity that is applied to the surface by this node. Also has the affect of reducing the diffuse, so when Specularity is set to 100%, diffuse will be 0%.

Roughness



Bump





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Bump Height





Translucency

Translucency is the material quality of allowing light to pass diffusely through semitransparent substances.

Since translucency is in consideration of light rays in specific, it is considered and classified as a diffuse shading model.

Translucent shaded surfaces will not reveal the surface colors and properties of other object surfaces that exist on the other side of the translucent object away from the observer. Lights however will show through translucent surfaces and are needed in order for translucency shaders to affect the surface at all.

Absorption Color

The color channel which is absorbed. Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network. Users may also specify a color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this node.

Absorption

The amount of light that is absorbed.

Distance


Refraction Index




See Suracing & Rendering manual for a list of many real world transparent materials and their corresponding IOR values.


Samples




It’s quite easy to understand if you imagine one half of an unsmoothed (faceted) default ball object in modeler. The first number



CHAPTER 3

defines the number of longitudinal strips and the second number defines the number of latitudinal sections where each facet (or “face”) formed by their intersection defines one of the directions from which the spot is evaluated. You could visualize a sample size of 1x4 for example, as a bottomless pyramid centered over the evaluation spot protruding straight out from the surface normal - 1 segment high and containing 4 sides.


In Incoming values lower than 0 will be set to 0.

Pass Light Inside

If on, light is passed inside the surface. Which means all aurfaces inside the Sigma surface receive illumination. If it is off, no light passes inside the surface.

Advanced Shading

If this is on the SSS rays will hit any other surfaces inside the SSS surface, otherwise the rays will only hit the SSS surface.

Subsurface Radiosity

When checked, Sigma will calculate the radiosity for the subsurface of the surface.






Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur



Mode/ Reflection Image


Image Seam Angle





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Sigma2

A material node which uses subsurface scattering, which occurs when light partially passes through a surface, and is scattered within the object, then exits through a different location. Subsurface scattering is an important and recent addition 3D computer graphics for the realistic rendering of such materials as marble, skin, and milk and other real-world semitransparent substances.



CHAPTER 3

Edit Panel

Basic Tab

Surface Color


Specularity Color


Specularity

Defines the amount of specularity that is applied to the surface by this node. Also has the affect of reducing the diffuse, so when Specularity is set to 100%, diffuse will be 0%.

Roughness



Bump





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Bump Height





Samples







Scattered Color


Distance


Quality


Refraction Index




See Surfacing & Rendering manual for a list of many real world transparent materials and their corresponding IOR values.




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Simple Skin

Simple Skin, as the name implies, is a physically accurate skin shader with subsurface scattering. Subsurface scattering occurs when light partially passes through a surface, and is scattered within the object, then exits through a different location.



CHAPTER 3

Edit Panel

Basic Tab

Diffuse Color



Diffuse



Diffuse Roughness

Can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in thenetwork. This value can additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node.




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Specular Color


Specularity



Glossiness

Defines the amount of glossiness that is applied to the surface by this node.


Fresnel

Defines the amount light reflection on a surface.

Refraction Index






Epidermis Visiblity

Determines the visiblity of the outer-layer of the skin shader.

Epidermis Back Scatter

Controls the relative amount of backwards scattering for the Subdermis layer. This parameter is relative to the Visibility parameter for the Epidermis layers.

Epidermis Color


Specifies the color used for the outer-layer of skin.

Epidermis Distance


Epidermis Gamma


Quality

Controls the quality of the subsurface scattering. Increased quality produces less noise but increases render times.



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Subdermis Visiblity

Determines the visiblity of the sub-layer of the skin shader.

Subdermis Back Scatter

Controls the relative amount of backwards scattering for the subdermis layer. This parameter is relative to the Visibility parameter for the Subdermis layers.

Subdermis Color


Specifies the color used for the sub-layer of skin.

Subdermis Distance


Subdermis Gamma


Quality

Controls the quality of the subsurface scattering. Increased quality produces less noise but increases render times.

Bump



Bump Height












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Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur



Mode/ Reflection Image


Image Seam Angle





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Carpaint

The Carpaint node replicates the look of carpaint, including parameters such as the specularity, clearcoat, even the sparkly flakes some paints have.



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Edit Panel

Paint Color- The color of the base of the paint.

Specular Color- Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network. Users may also specify a color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this node.

Paint <-> Specular- is the amount of tinting from the specular color applied to the paint color.

Paint Specularity- Defines the amount of specularity that is applied to the surface by this node.


Paint Roughness- Specifies the amount of roughness that will be applied. Roughness is the result of microfacet evaluation in lighting conditions. Higher values produce rougher surface properties while lower values produce smoother looking surfaces. This kind of roughness is more easily seen on objects with many sharp edges or where high contrast bump or normal maps are applied.



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Paint Bump Height- Specifies the bump height or “amplitude” of the Bump directional vectors.

Using Alpha or luminance (connecting Color) values from other textures in the network along with their respective bumps can have the effect of blending the bump textures together. It is not necessary to use an Alpha or luminance setting, however.



Paint <-> Clearcoat is the blending between how much of each shading will be visible. 100% equals no paint, just clear coat. This parameter needs an input from a Fresnel node, or a user defined gradient to produce a physically correct surface.

Clearcoat Color- Clearcoat is the layer of resin over the base paint. This option specifies the color of the clearcoat.

Clearcoat Roughness- Specifies the amount of roughness that will be applied.

Clearcoat Bump Height- Specifies the bump height or “amplitude” of the Bump directional vectors.

Bump Dropoff- A value of zero (the default) disables the feature. A positive value close to zero cuts off the bumps close to the terminator line of the surface (as computed without bumps). As the Bump Dropoff value increases, the dropoff of the bumps becomes wider. This feature prevents bumps from being shaded on the surfaces that face away from the light source. Also added to Standard material node.

Flake Height- Specifies the direction of the paint flakes.

Flake Density- Specifies how many flakes are in an area.

Flake Distance Falloff- Specifies how far away Flakes will be calculated on a surface. A setting of “0” is infinite and will always render flakes.

Paint Specularity: 0% Paint Specularity: 25%

flakes.

Paint Specularity:50% Paint Specularity: 100%



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Advanced Tab

Reflection Blur



Mode

Reflection Image


Image Seam Angle



Samples







Interpolated- Turns on the Interporlation mode.

Sample Size- Determines the area to be sampled, measured in pixels.

Blend Size- the radius in which the samples are accounted for.



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Vertex Map

UV Map

Provides the U and V information from a UV map as Scalar outputs.

Edit Panel

UV Map

Choose from a list of available UV maps from this menu.



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GradientCurve

The Curve gradient node uses a graph editor to create a color gradient. Using red, blue and green color channels, as well as an alpha channel, limitless color gradients are available. The Curve Editor works much like the Graph Editor, you can add/subtract and edit keys and change the type of curve. The Curve Editor has the advantage of being able to tie into the Graph Editor via envolopes to have animated curves.

Inputs

Bg Color


Specifies the color of the background color layer.

Blending

Can receive input from other nodes in the network or can be specified to by selecting a blending mode from the Blending pull-down menu in the Edit Panel for the node.

For general use specifying the blending mode by using the Blending pull-down menu in the Edit Panel will probably be the most desirable method of use. However, for larger networks where control of the blending modes of many texture nodes simultaneously is needed or when conditional blending is desired then using a node connection to control this value may be advantageous.

Input

The output color and alpha are derived using the gradient based on this input.



CHAPTER 3

Edit Panel



CHAPTER 3

Navigating the Curve Editor

Top Bar

1: Bg Color

2: Blending Menu

3: Input Menu

•The X Coordinate where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects X coordinate for the current hit point as the input.

•The Y Coordinate where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects Y coordinate for the current hit point as the input.

•The Z Coordinate where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects Z coordinate for the current hit point as the input.

•The Slope where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle between the current hit point and the object’s up direction as the input.•The Incidence where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle between the current hit point and the camera’s viewing direction as the input.

4: Edit Menu

Delete Selected Keys- This function deletes any selected keys.

Undo/Redo- This function will undo or redo a function performed in the curve editor.

Purge Undos- Removes the Undo stack

Select All- Selects all selectable keys in the curve editor

Clear Selection- Clears all selected keys

Invert Selection- Keys that are selected will no longer be selected and keys that are not selected will now be selected

Copy/Cut/Paste- These functions will copy, cut or paste keys in the curve editor

Fit All- The function will fit all keys into the view

Fit Selected- This function will fit the selected keys into the view

Line Antialiasing- The curves will display antialiased

High Quality Lines

Show Control Points- Toggles On/Off the control handles for the keys



CHAPTER 3

5: Add Keys will add additional keys to the Curve Editor when the button is activated and you click on the left-moust button on the curve window. Stretch mode will move the keys when activated and you click the left-mouse button. Left-mouse button stretches the values(Y), and holding down CTRL stretches the positions(X).

6: Pan and Zoom buttons

Bottom Bar

1: Value and Position: Specifies the value and position for the selected key. The values can be enveloped.

2: Curve Menu: Selects the specific curve type to be used for the selected key.

3: Lock CP: Locks the curve point. Unlocking allows each side of the curve point to be edited individually.

4: Channels: Selected channels will be highlighted. Multiple channels can be selected at once and the selected channels will receive any editing done by the user.

Custom Configs for Univeral Binary

UB LightWave configuration files can be changed by placing the ‘redirected’ config files into a folder named “Preferences” in the same folder containing the Layout and Modeler applications. For example, the following image shows a ‘custom’ config file location:

This allows the config files to ‘follow’ the location of the UB applications, such as being placed onto a USB flash drive.

Alternatively, it is also possible to place config files into a “SharedSupport/Preferences” folder, which can be used to avoid cluttering the folder containing Layout and Modeler apps. The former folder supersedes the latter, and both supersede a user’s “~/Library/Preferences/Light-Wave3D” folder. For example,

Known Issues

Animated Radiosity

-Volumetric plug-ins such as HD Instance don’t work because radiosity cannot get at their object IDs and transformation matrices. This causes extreme flickering and slow renderings.

-Deformations don’t work because they do not move with a simple transformation matrix. Although this has not been fully tested, they will probably cause flickering and slow rendering like the volumetric plug-ins.

-Intersecting animated objects don’t work because samples that get generated in areas that are not intersecting become light leaks when they are intersecting.

-Moving lights do work but the moving shadows they cast do not generate extra samples so the animation can look a bit ragged. Try decreasing the maximum pixel spacing and/or increaseing the RPE and SBR values on the objects these shadows land on.

-Baking at a lower resolution than the rendering, a multiple less than 100 or a frame step more than 1 can cause flickering since missing samples must be added on the fly. If you render with LWSN, the flickering would probably be even worse.

-A small highly luminous object can cause flickering as it moves. Even though the samples are in the same locations in every frame and fire rays in the same directions, as the object moves those rays will hit or miss it causing differences in the shading. If you can’t replace the object with an area light, you could greatly increase the RPE and SBR values to cut down on the flickering.

Load from Scene

-When using Scene files that are version 1, you may have to first load the file and resave (thus making it the new version of the scene file) before Using Load From Scene.

Import of FBX Joints

Due to the way rotational information is brought into LightWave from imported files, pivot points from FBX files may appear to be askew by 90 degrees. This does not affect the functionality of the rotation of the pivot points.

Exporting FBX File

Exporting an FBX file into the same folder as the original LWS file can result in the LWS file being overwritten, it is recommended a separate folder be created when saving FBX files.

Non-planar Polygons

-The problem is that a complex polygon (4 or more vertices) which is not flat to a high degree of precision is a bad polygon for ray tracing. Really a modeler should prevent the creation of polygons like this and automatically break them up into smaller flat polygons (or just triangulate them). There is no way to ray trace them directly without causing rendering errors (split seams, depth problems, shading issues, etc.)

The obvious solution to the problem is to triangulate them before rendering. This is something the renderer could potentialy do but it will then cause other problems. No tessellation algorithm is perfect.

If a polygon has edges that cross each other or is extremely non-planar, a tessellation algorithm can fail and leave a gaping hole in your model. Tessellation can be a slow process. Is it really something you want to do for every frame (even every pass of every frame) in your animation? Triangulation will change the shading of your model rather noticeably. If every single complex polygon is triangulated, even the flat ones, that could increase the memory size and rendering time substantially. If we only triangulate the non-flat polygons, we still have to detect them. If there is a deformation, polygons may change from flat to non-flat and back again during an animation resulting in shading “pops”.

The very best way to handle this problem is to triangulate the non-flat polygons or the entire object in the modeler. There are tools for doing this in LightWave’s modeler.

The bottom line is: Garbage in. Garbage out. If you want a high quality rendering, use high quality models. Don’t assume that the renderer is going to magically fix the problems with your model. We render polygons not surfaces. If a complex polygon is non-flat something is going to break (even in the Classic camera where non-flat polygons can cause shading pops).

A few rules for a model to render correctly:

-Complex polygons (more than 3 vertices) must be flat to a high degree of precision.

-The winding must be consistant (normals must point in the same direction).

-The model should come with vertex normals that were calculated from the original parametric surfaces.

-All vertices must be welded (if two vertices are supposed to be at the same position, they must have identical coordinates).

-Edges should not meet in T shaped junctions.

Fiber FX

-If you have styled the fiber guides in Layout and go back into Modeler and change the number of faces on the mesh, you will lose all of the work done on the styling.

-If you are using FiberFX with an object with a flat surface, a box for example, you should turn on Smoothing in the Surface Editor. This is due to the fibers being grown from the smoothed object.

-When hen using volumetric lighting with Fiber FX, it is recommended you use the Volumetric Only option.

-The kink setting does not render when Volume Only mode is activated.

-A crash can occur in this specific case: In Modeler, if you delete the 1-vertex polygons created by Fiber Modeler then turn on Strand Tool and activate All Knots, if you try to edit the strands in the OpenGL window this can cause a crash.

-Using the Real Lens camera system with FiberFX does not always produce desired results. For example, offset fibers may be rendered. However, using volume mode does work with the Real Lens camera.

-When fiber guides are created the mesh is copied then frozen. After the guides are generated the frozen mesh is deleted and the original mesh is copied back. If you are using a subpatched mesh and are using a Bias Map in Fiber Modeler, the normal information will not be saved. It is recommended you switch to only polygons before generating fiber guides if you intend to use the normals.

Mac/Universal Binary

The “Use Mac Keys” option only works for cut/copy/paste in fields - it does not swap the command key and control key for all operations.

Copyright and Trademarks

LightWave and LightWave 3D are registered trademarks of NewTek, Inc. TriCaster, and VT[5] are trademarks of NewTek, Inc.


Documents

LightWave 96 WhatsNew Guide