Layout

Major Core Changes to the LightWave Rendering Engine:
The following changes have been made to the LightWave Render Core:
 

• Implementation of BSP/KD Tree Algorithm to achieve improved speeds as scene complexity rises
• Complete replacement of the original ray tracing core
• Any function that uses ray tracing calls will be significantly faster in most cases
• Improved multi-threading with dynamic segmentation to insure maximum use of available CPUs
• Typical speed improvements at 2.5x over LightWave version 8.5 for today's increasingly ambitious high-polygon count production scenes

The actual core of the LightWave rendering engine has been replaced with a modern implementation that reflects some of the latest developments in the CG industry. This new core allows for the addition of new rendering technologies, and lays a very strong foundation for the future. In addition to being higher quality, the rendering engine is now significantly faster for today's ambitious production needs - and the more complex the scene, the higher the speed differential!

Rendering

• Adaptive Subdivision
• Node Editor
• Node based Displacement
• Advanced Camera Tools
• Timewarp
• CCTV
• HV Deformer
• Stress Map
• Sketch
• Dissolve Ray
• Z-buffer improvements
• Realistic Fog
• “Unaffected by Object” Alpha Channel mode
• Dynamics Improvements
• ParticleFX Improvements
• Hypervoxels Improvements
• IK Booster
• Pixie Dust

Animation; Character Animation

• Relativity 2
• Sticky
• Proximity
• Quaternion Rotations
• Align to Path

User Interface / Workflow Improvement

• Mesh Editing
• List Manager
• OpenGL Improvements
• UI Configuration
• Visor
• File Format Support: Tiff importer
• Configuration Files
• New Render Status Panel
• Deformation Evaluation Order Controls
• Load-From-Scene System Redesigned
• Scene Loading

Modeler

Worflow

• Redesigned Subdivision Surface Core Engine
• Implementation of Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces in Modeler
• Edge Selection (throughout Modeler)
• Edge Weights
• Multishift now operates across multiple layers

New Modeler Tools

• Center Pivot
• G-Toggle
• Set Sharpness
• Multishift

New LScripts

• Flip it/ Flip it fast
• Absolute Measure
• CutSwapPaste/CopySwapPaste
• Mirror X/ Mirror Y/ Mirror

Render

Adaptive subdivision of a mesh based on distance from camera and visibility:
 

• Added Adaptive Sub-division methods - Per Object, Per Polygon and Per Pixel
• Highly optimized mesh, tied to render resolution when using Per Pixel
• Visibly similar to micro-poly displacement
• Improvements to Sub-division surfaces
• Support for both LightWave Subdivision Surfaces and Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces
• Subdivision level can be controlled via numerical values, envelopes, expressions, motion modifiers, textures, procedurals, gradients and more
   

Improvements have been made to sub-division surfaces (SDS) in Layout, including support for Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. A new subdivision control mode has been added, called Adaptive Pixel Subdivision, which provides the user with flexible control of subdivision and level-of-detail at render time. This approach has several benefits, such as significantly improved displacement performance, as the mesh is highly optimized. For example, if you are rendering an image and you set a pixel value of 4, then no polygon will have an area larger than 4 pixels in size. The value can also be set in the sub-pixel range (values below 1.0). This results in the ability to displace and deform with higher accuracy. While not true micro-poly displacement, this method will yield similar results in many cases.

Material Shader Node Editor - And New Shading Models:

LightWave v9 includes an integrated node editor to create complex shading networks or shader trees. Using new and improved LightWave shaders, the node editor allows the user to connect parameters of various shaders and operators together to create powerful shaders without any user coding required. Not just a face lift, the Node Editor is a completely new method of working with materials, which provides an order of magnitude more capability than LightWave's surface and material edit system previously offered.

The Node Editor also takes LightWave to a new level of flexibility in rendering. Until now, LightWave's renderer has used only the Blinn shading model with Lambert diffusion, but with version 9 now offers several additional shading models to choose from, including Phong, Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayar, and new implementations of Blinn and Lambert. We've also added Anisotropic and SubSurface Scattering (SSS) shaders to the mix. These new shading models and functionality bring artists a greatly expanded range of control over the final look of the render, making it easier than ever for LightWave to provide precisely the look you want at render time.

• New Shading Models
• Normal Maps from Z Brush 2 Supported
• Branches can be imported and exported
• Math Animation Nodes
• Animated Gradient Node
• Work how you want to work: Layers in Nodes; Nodes in Layers; Layers Only; Nodes Only
• Full support of native controls and envelopes
• Available in Layout and Modeler, and maintains context when switching between the two
• Full SDK Support for third parties to create nodes (including shading models) and for third party renderers to interface with/query nodal shaders.

Node-based Displacement:

Added Node-based displacement to the Object Properties displacement capabilities. Compatible with ZBrush 16-bit TIFF displacement maps.

Advanced Camera Tools:

New rendering technology renders scenes using arbitrary camera lenses and warps. This allows for some fantastic effects, such as:
 

• Camera plane deformations
• Arbitrary projections
• UV map generation
• True orthographic rendering
• Space warp simulations
• Lens distortion duplicating physically accurate real world lenses or non-existent "imaginary" lenses
• 360 degree panorama rendering (one camera)

The Advanced Camera Tools camera lens shader system is a whole new way of rendering in LightWave 3D. Renders are no longer limited to the standard perspective camera. Instead, you can now create any type of camera lens you wish: Perspective, orthographic, fisheye, 360 degree panorama.

You can even render the scene as seen from the surface of a mesh. The lens shader gives you full control over what part of the scene is rendered for any part of the image.

Previously, effects such as these were achieved with post-process filtering, which caused artifacts, and degraded the overall quality of the image. Now, these effects are done mimicking actual light physics, resulting in a very high-quality result. However, no camera lens is perfect; the camera lens shader will let you reproduce that reality as well, by allowing you to create lens artifacts such as barrel distortions. Don't stop there, though. The lens shader will also allow you to create outlandish, impossibly warped and twisted views for that unique look when normal just won't do.

Timewarp - Time Re-mapping and Warping Shader:

This shader remaps time for:
 

• Bullet-time
• Freeze-time
• Slow-motion effects
• Fast-motion effects

Timewarp manipulates time. Previously time has just been a steady clock ticking away at a certain number of frames per second. Now with Timewarp you can slow the clock down, speed it up, even wind it back, all during a single animation.

Timewarp can warp the time in a scene while keeping the camera unwarped. This will allow for unblurred camera motion, while retaining blurred motion of the action within the camera's field of view. Effects like bullet-time can be created in this way. Timewarp can also manipulate motion blur in new ways for special effects. You can now fly through a motion blur, without additional blurring from the camera's motion

CCTV Shader:

CCTV is a shader that paints a view of the scene on a surface; render a view from a camera onto a surface, with controls for brightness, saturation and contrast:
 

• Create a closed-circuit TV display
• Simulate digital camera displays
• Render a view through binoculars and magnifying scopes
• Create holographic instances

HV Deformer: HyperVoxel Particle Displacement Shader:

This shader stretches and squashes HyperVoxel particles based on particle properties and distance between particle and mesh. HV Deformer gives you new levels of control over HyperVoxel particles. With HV Deformer you can:
 

• Create more realistic looking pools of water
• Change the orientation of HyperVoxel particles arbitrarily
• Stretch and squash HyperVoxels based on the properties of individual particles
• Alter the size of HyperVoxels as a function of time, space, or distance to an object
• ...and much more.

More precisely, HV Deformer allows you to change the size, thickness (or flatness), and orientation of particles as a function of distance to object surfaces, particle properties, or any arbitrary envelope.

Stress Map:

Modulates bump amplitude based on degree of dynamic local mesh deformation.
 

• Create wrinkles on bending joints
• Alter the color of a surface based upon polygon distortion

Stress Map makes more realistic, dynamic wrinkles. This is done by altering the degree of bump mapping used based on the amount of local polygon distortion. For example, when an arm is bent, wrinkles applied as a bump map become more pronounced around the joint, where the mesh is being squeezed. If the mesh is instead being stretched, the wrinkles will disappear.

Stress Map can also be used to alter the color of a surface based on how much a polygon has expanded or shrunk due to some distortion. This could be used to simulate the whitening of the skin as it is stretched, or to indicate areas where the mesh is being stressed.

Sketch Image Filter:

This new image filter enables a render to be post processed with a sketch-like treatment.

New "Dissolve Ray":

LightWave v9 implements a new "dissolve ray". This is used to correctly implement the object dissolve feature when raytracing.

Z-Buffer Improvements:

• Buffer Output to RGB can now handle Z Buffer values correctly. It also supports invert for screen mode now.
• Computation of Z-Buffers for classic anti-aliasing modes has been improved.

Realistic Fog:

New fog mode generates realistic fog that supports transparent, refractive and reflective objects inside the fog.

"Unaffected by Object" Alpha Channel mode:

• "Unaffected by Object" Alpha Channel mode is now implemented for ray-traced transparency and the new camera modes.

Dynamics Improvements:

• Faster Loading of Dynamics Scene Files
• Better Workflow with Access to Dynamics in the Scene Editor
• Improved Solving Precision
• More accurate representation of wind vector fields in Layout
• Animation Paths for Winds
• FXDynamic-Linker links objects to particles with smart routines that reduce memory requirements

Improvements in dynamics loading and solving, and workflow improvements including access via the Scene Editor make dynamics more attractive and easier to use. Higher precision in solver engines allow for better results right out of the box.

ParticleFX Improvements:

• Particles have a new operation control -- random rotation and scale. This is also passed on to HyperVoxels, as noted above.
• Added a "Save All Selected Motions" option

Hypervoxels Improvements:

• Tuned for better performance with raytracing.
• Memory usage has been optimized. Gain is more noticeable as the number of particles increases - up to 40X less memory required.
• Improved rendering precision.
• Two new functions for use in conjunction with a new ParticleFX function: "Use Particle Orientation" and "Use Particle Scale".
• The HVs now make use of their rotated flag. Rotations have been simplified by calling a vector multiplication routine.
• Added "Orient Slices To Ray" setting for sprite HVs to the sprite basics panel. It orients the sprite's coordinate system with the ray, rather than the default of aligning with the camera, allowing the use of sprites in scenes where output from multiple cameras will be assembled for a panoramic view.
• HVs now can have their self-shadowing enabled and disabled again (you still have to enable ray traced shadows in the render options to get HV shadows).
• Hypervoxels are now calculated pixel by pixel in the new camera modes. Previously they were rendered in a separate pass.
• Refractions now work for non-blended HV surfaces.
• Shadows work now for non-blended surface HVs.
• The way HV volume shadows are activated as been simplified. They work just like all other inter-object shadows now.
• Removed the need to check the self shadow option for surface HV objects in order to use the internal HV self shadow option.
• HV surfaces can now render non-blended spheres correctly.

IK Booster:

• Support fractional frames at make key for IK Booster
• Update Bake-able Match Goal Orientation for IK Booster

Pixie Dust:

• Allows for fast rendering of large numbers (order of 1 million) of simple volumetric particles.

Animation/Character Animation

Relativity 2:

LightWave v9 includes the Relativity Expression Engine developed by Prem Design.

• Point-and-click set-up using "professors"
• Multiple levels of expressions: one object can reference another object with an expression on it, and so on.
• Expressions to react to IK-based motions
• Ease of navigation between multiple instances of Relativity, so mass updates of expressions can be done with ease
• Relative referencing of motion data (SELF, PARENT, ROOT, PREV, NEXT and relative referencing of a matched object name within a hierarchy), so it is possible to copy expressions between objects and have each know what it's supposed to do
• A number of higher level functions are included that can measure path distance traveled, sum up an item's channel values over time, determine optimal following distances, watch for events, etc.
• Functions to measure speed, acceleration, velocity, interpolation, etc.
• Comments can be embedded within expressions, so you don't end up totally confused when revisiting an expression set up a month or two ago
• Language is simple and easy to understand
• Includes a large set of "scratch variables" that allow complex setups of expressions
• Receive detailed feedback when errors are encountered
• Expression-based morphing and displacement, including complex morphing forms like traveling morphs, effector morphs, etc.
• Objects can follow points on other objects and morph between points on multiple objects, allowing higher-level "crowd control" with a series of morph targets.
• Textures can be used for displacement, deformation, color envelopes, etc.

Sticky:
This new Item Motion plug-in allows an object to move on or by an offset distance across the surface of a target mesh.

Proximity:
A new Proximity channel modifier modifies a channel based on closest distance between an object and a mesh or other items.

Quaternion Rotations:
A new rotation controller offers quaternion rotations to minimize gimbal lock.

Align to Path:
LightWave's Align to Path command now offers a robust new align-to-path algorithm, unaffected by very slow or no motion. The original Align to Path is still available, and is now renamed to more accurately describe its function, "Align to Velocity."

User Interface/Workflow Improvement

Mesh Editing in Layout:

• Many modeling plug-ins now operate in Layout
• Use Vertex Paint in Layout to modify vertex maps
• Create Text in Layout

The core workflow has begun a radical new paradigm shift in LightWave. Many Modeler Plug-ins which operate on the entire mesh can now be used in Layout. In addition, the user can create text within Layout, speeding up motion graphics workflow. NewTek will be building more and more mesh-editing capabilities into Layout throughout the 9.x development cycle, eventually allowing the user to move the modeling process over to Layout very early, and continue refining the mesh, rigging the mesh, and adding and editing mesh weight and vertex maps directly from within Layout, saving many hours in the creation and animation process.

Workflow Improvements:
Selection workflow has been enhanced with a new List Manager panel, available by clicking a new button by the Current Item popup. The List Manager allows fast selection of groups of items and quick and easy creation of selection sets. We've also cut the number of keystrokes required to custom-tailor nulls for your scene from 13 to 3 - and this is exemplary of the workflow speedups that NewTek will turn our concentration to for the forthcoming releases in the v9 cycle - fewer keystrokes, tool consolidation, and tool designs that optimize your productivity. ScreamerNet now offers the ability to abort rendering in progress.

Complete Re-implementation of Open GL in Layout:

• Much faster UI performance
• Preview Lighting scenarios within the UI
• Less need for preview renders
• Hardware shading of materials and textures
• Hardware shading of procedural textures

LightWave v9 Layout fully supports the OpenGL 2.0 specification, leveraging the power of the latest graphics cards. New drawing modes provide new ways of interacting with scene objects and meshes, and provide for a faster turnaround of the creative process. Results from real time OpenGL shading very closely mirror the results of the LightWave rendering engine, which reduces the amount of test renders that are required. Lighting and materials can be previewed directly within the user interface with a much higher degree of accuracy than ever before.

UI Configuration:
Now the user has more control over how the user interface appears and operates:

• the ability to change colors of almost any element; the ability to create special tabs with user defined commands
• the ability to change the colors of animation channels
• the ability to customize display and selection colors of points, edges and polygons
• the ability to control the display of polygon normals beyond what was previously available

View Renders and Image Files in UI Viewports:
The user can now create a viewport viewer with full control in terms of context, placement and size.
You can:

• Create a Standalone Image viewer
• Create an Embedded Image viewer
• View texture images, renders, preview renders
• View as many images as you have memory for

File Format Support:
TIFF importer now can load 8-bit and 16-bit of every flavor

Configuration Files

• A new configuration preset called "Studio Production Style" is now available. This is based on menu configurations developed over the years by VFX artist Richard Morton, and used at Station X, Digital Domain and other studios and artists worldwide.
• Initial Configs are now created when the application is first run, instead of by the installer, including automatically scanning plugins.
• Added user option settings for scanning plugins automatically, and for setting the number of rendering threads upon first launch of Layout or Modeler if the config file doesn't exist.
• Customization changes now affect the config file without requiring a shutdown of the Hub.
• Layout General and Display Options Redesigned
• Improved logical grouping of elements
• New default options available for new and previously existing features.
• Path default options now available
• Reduced footprint with tabbed sections

New Render Status Panel:
Improved layout, adds additional information about the render in progress.

• Current frame, segment and pass information
• Current Frame Point, Polygon and Memory Statistics
• Rendering status line with description of the current rendering activity
• Current frame and sequence time elapsed and time remaining
• Progress bars for both individual frames and sequences.
• Persistent data for last frame rendered and render time
• Status for 23 Render settings including Camera and Raytrace options Render Globals
• All Render related controls on one convenient tabbed panel
• Option to use global or local settings for each camera
• Camera panel value displays toggle between global or local when user changes selection

Deformation Evaluation Order Controls:
To enhance the capabilities of APS in combination with displacements, the ability has been provided to set the evaluation order of the built-in Displacement Map and Bump Displacement in the object properties' Deform tab. There are two dropdowns to set the order for the displacement map and bump displacement respectively.

Load-From-Scene System Redesigned:

• Allows individual scene components to be selected from several pre-defined categories.
• Selection is available from a new panel with nested lists.

Scene Loading:

• Layout Scene loading logic redesigned to improve loading time for scene
• Scene Editor loading logic redesigned to improve loading time for scenes using the Scene Editor

Modeling Improvement

Redesign of the Core Subdivision Surface Engine:
These days, subdivision surfaces have become the standard by which most characters, props and environments are created. LightWave led the way with the first commercial implementation of subdivision surfaces. Now, LightWave sets the bar again, re-engineering the core algorithms for even faster speed, and better results. That means modeling in a shorter period of time.

Expansion of Subdivision Surfacing Tools with Edges and N-sided Polygons:

In addition to making the subdivision surface engine faster and more efficient, the capabilities of the engine have been expanded to include the ability to use edges in the construction process, add weighting to edges which allows for sharp corners and creases with no additional geometry needed, and the ability to use polygons with greater than four sides in the process.

Edge Selection and Operation Added to Many Modeler Tools:

Edge selection and operation are now allowed in many tools available within Modeler. This powerful addition to the Modeler toolset will allow the user new ways of creating and refining shapes, and improve productivity in the creation process. The capability will be extended throughout the Modeler toolset in coming releases.

New Modeler Tools:

• Center Pivot tool
• Global Toggle Subpatch tool that preserves the user's selection when toggling subpatch mode.
• Set Sharpness, Increase/Decrease Sharpness tools for edge weighting adjustment.
• New improvements to Multishift, including operating across multiple layers

New LScripts:

• Deuce LScripts: Contributed by Deuce Bennett: "Added 9 LScript tools that I have used in the past, want to share and make them part of LightWave. I also wanted these to be uncompiled LScripts so that others could learn just how easy some of these tools are to make."
• Flip it / Flip it Fast: These tools take the current geometry and "turn them inside out, then flip the polygons". Wrote these because most STL imports from CAD programs are correct, but mirror images of what they should be. Flipit gives you a choise of flipping axis, where FlipItFast does it only on the X axis.
• AbsoluteMeasure: select two points and this script will tell you exactly how far apart they are.
• CutSwapPaste/CopySwapPaste: Select a background layer, and the selected geometry on the foreground layer will be either copyied and pasted or cut and pasted to the background layer.
• CopyUndoPaste: Takes the selected geometry copies it, undoes the last operation, and pastes the geometry down. Useful for quickly placing objects. Select a block, move it to a new location, hit "copyundopaste" and you have the block in the new location as well as the old one.
• MirrorX, MirrorY, MirrorZ: These are scripts that take away the many keystrokes to just mirror something across the "Zero" of the primary axes. It also merges points.

SDK Improvements

• Node Graph SDK, including the functions needed to add more shading models
• Access to information about new camera types
• Access to additional information from volumetrics
• The AnimUV, Camera and Nodes plug-in classes have been added to the support list of the LScript Object's server() method.
• Config files now allow loading and saving of double-precision integers (formerly only allowed floating-point)
• Modeler SDK updated with extensive list of new functions and improvements, including support for edge information for plug-ins, and elimination of redundant scanning for successive edit operations
• Many more improvements

Documentation Improvements

Reformatted documentation includes many improvements and additional material to help make LightWave easier to learn.

LightWave Platforms

A new platform has been added, Windows 32-bit with SSE2 enhancements.

Modeler

Modeler in the Windows version now does drag and drop for files.

Layout

• Added drag-and-drop to the UI or the program icon for Layout Windows version, supports audio, lwo, lws, obj, images.
• Added drag-and-drop of image files to the Image Editor.
• Drag-and-drop extended to support .srf and image files dropped into the surface and texture image panes.
• Dynamic Range Limit enhanced to provide a range, with Minimum and Maximum values in the Image Processing window. Negative values also supported.
• Implemented "Exclude From Volume Stack" for surfaces.
• Added the new raytrace functions (see SDK section) into volumetrics and pixel filters.
• Added control script for setting the Radiosity Sample Diagnostics Flags.
• The Radiosity Flags (Render tab/Utilities/Radiosity Flags) are now stored in the scene file.
• Added ability to lock down Z buffer minimum and maximum range for export, for improved compositing compatibility:
  -Minimum sets the 0 point in the buffer.
  -Maximum sets the 1 point in the buffer.
• Added snapping to item position (specifically to pivot point) when dragging items in Layout.
• During Layout's bone re-parenting process, it now notifies plugins of the new bone item being added as well as the old bone item being removed.
• Package Scene has undergone a significant rewrite:
  -New option "Preserve Existing Structure," will attempt to preserve all directories and subdirectories that are under the current Content directory when copying assets to the new content directory.
  -New option "Reload Old Scene," reloads the original scene after exporting.
  -Changed handling of Radiosity cache files,to work with the new Radiosity path behavior. Will also respect file structure if Preserve File Structure option is selected.
  -Added an option for Radiosity cache files to be included in the package or not.
• Added an option to draw wireframe handles and gizmos using antialiased lines. This improves the look of bones quite a bit. The "Handle Wire Smoothing" setting is in the Handles&Icons tab of the Display preferences panel. 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.
• Made Parent In Place more aware of scaling sign.
• Two new Lscripts for working creating or assigning handles have been added: Create Handle, Assign Handle.
• Enhanced Viper performance for all modes and all platforms.
• Added new Mirror Hierarchy generic LScript.
• Added Foot Printer LScript for automatically adding footprints to a character scene.

FiberFX Highlights:

Polygonal fiber modeler suitable for creating hair, fur and feathers, and consists of five plugins:

• Fiber Modeler - Creates Polygonal Fiber models, fat hair, feathers, triangle strips
• Strand Tool - Modeler tool to adjust guide chains using Inverse Kinematics
• Strand Maker - Modeler plug-in to create fiber strands with standard tools.
• Fiber Filter - Pixel filter renders two point polygon strands.
• Fiber Node Handler - Nodal interface for control.
• Added occlusion culling of fibers. Speedup depends on how many fibers are behind in the z buffer.
• Added support for multiple FiberFX instances on a single mesh. Cloned FiberFX instances have a "(#)" appended to the object name in list. Deactivating a cloned instance removes the entry from the list.
• Added right mouse button menu popup with clone command.
• Implemented Feature Request Case 15884: Added stereo rendering ability to FiberFX.
• Reworked mouse deltas for better combing. Comb direction is now independent of starting point.
• Changed clamping of color values to support HDRI. Added dynamic range limits and clamping to LW interface values from the image processing panel.
• Added FFx object list popup menu item (Save To Default) to save the current ffsurface as the default to be used the next time a new instance is created. This will allow the user to customize their default settings. Added support functions to save default to user setting folder.
• Multi-threaded depth buffer raycast is now enabled. This allows the pixel filter to operate with the raytraced cameras, including features such as Depth of Field and Photoreal Motion Blur. Motion Blur must be on for this to engage, though the blur level can be set to 0. The quality is controlled using the Motion Blur passes setting.
• Work has been done in FiberFX on disallowing subd changes after editing guides. This was a major source of guide edit crashes in bug reports. This will enforce the same subd level for preview and rendering. A warning message will be displayed when they are different, informing user that these settings need to be matched when using FiberFX.
• Some optimizations have been made to the FiberFX IK solver.
• Revised the way modeled strand fibers are built. Previously they were clones, now they are shortened on the inside of the curve and lengthened on the outside of the curve, following the modeled strand in a more natural way. See image attached below.
• Guide edit panel now resets its control state when switching between editing objects.
• Added "Random" toggle button for Swirl to make a random starting rotation offset, plus load and save code.

Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

New IK Calculation Options for Improved Performance

LightWave now has several options that allow the user to control the basis for IK calculation. These options provide improved performance for tuning the desired solution for each animation movement. Options are:
 

• Base on First Keyframe - Calculate from the first keyframe to the current frame
• Base on Most Recent Keyframe - Calculate from 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 an initial frame to calculate from. Value can be enveloped

New Bone Type - Joints

Bones can now be either LightWave's traditional z-axis bones or they can be joints, which operate in a manner similar to the joint-based metaphor found in many other programs, while still preserving the strengths of the traditional LightWave bones. This allows animators familiar with other systems easy entry into animating with LightWave, and will improve animation I/O capabilities in the future.

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).

Support for Nulls in IK Chains

Nulls are now allowed in the bone hierarchy. This contributes to better inter-application integration and data exchange, as well as improving the rigging possibilities within LightWave.

New Objective Options for IK

Alternative objectives can now be set for IK; this control is right below the Goal Object control on the Motion Options Panel/ IK and Modifiers Tab.

-Go To Goal:
The default is to go to the goal (which is the classic behavior of LightWave IK).

-Point at Goal:
The second option is to solve so that the item points at the goal. The item's Z axis is used as the pointer.

-Pole Vector:
Pole Vector is the third IK objective, listed as "YZ Plane through Goal" in the options. LWItemInfo, commands, and LScript have been updated to include the setting. IK GUI formerly only allowed objects to be used as goals; the selection has now been expanded to include all items, but operation with anything other than an object will produce unpredictable results at this time.

Pole Item

A Pole item selector has been added to the item Motion Options panel, just below Target Item Selector. The Pole item complements the target item to define the orientation of an item. For use in conjunction with the Pole item, an "Align to Pole" option has been added as a controller setting for heading, pitch, and bank, on the Controllers and Limits Tab of the Motion Options panel.

IK/FK Blending

Controls are available to apply IK/FK blending per bone and to chains. Blending can be enveloped over the course of the animation.

Soft IK

Soft IK has been added to the standard bone chain setup, with support added to the SDK/LScript as well. Essentially, Soft IK dampens the IK near the maximum extension of the joint, to help prevent the infamous "IK pop". LightWave is the only 3D application to offer this out-of-the-box. Other applications require the user to code or script this function for IK.

IK Control of Position and Scale

In Layout, position and scale can now be controlled by IK, and have limits applied. Controls have been added to the motion panel for position and scale controllers.

Animation of IK Goal Strength

Goal Strength for an IK goal can be animated, with multiple goals allowed for an IK chain; this means the user can vary the importance of a particular goal during the course of the shot.

IK System GUI/Workflow Enhancements
 

• Bone Gizmo size is now independent of length
• Preference controls for sizing icons and handles are now present as a tab in the Display Options tab on the Preference panel. Size in pixels, a control to adjust bone icons to a percentage of this base setting is available per bone, on the Bone Properties Panel
• Fulltime IK is now on by default
• Compensation and flexing for joint bones now takes into account any bending, not just pitch angle.
• Added bone bulging, which causes a radial distortion based on bone stretching and bending (for parent bulging only bending).
• Made bone bulging textureable.
• Added a general bone deformation displacement texture. The input parameters for texture gradients include:
  -Bend: angle between bone and parent bone.
  -Bulge Falloff: bulging falloff along bone (0 at ends, 1 in the middle).
• Bulge: radial bulging factor away from bone.
  -Distance
  -Angle from Inside: angle of point along bone radial, with 0 being the direction facing the parent bone.
• Work on allowing bones to be reparented to different objects. This should make it easier to insert nulls in a bone hierarchy.
• The default name for joints is now "Joint" instead of "Bone".
• Tweaked the picking of joints to make it easier to pick them instead of the bones between them.
• When the bone part of a joint bone is selected, the axes are now effectively locked.
• Added option to use double-clicking to enter and exit bone selection mode. The option is in the General Preferences tab ("Dbl. Click Bone Mode"). When on, a double-click is needed to select a bone when not in bone mode. And when in bone mode, a double-click is needed to select a non-bone. The default is off.
• The IK solver has undergone another major rewrite. In internal testing this seems to have produced much greater stability. Maestro-generated rigs now appear to work properly again.
• Made some significant changes to IK, particularly with Go To Goal, to make it less jittery.
• The deformation settings for a bone are now hidden if the joint part of a joint bone is selected, with the exception of zero-length joints.
• More IK solver changes:
  -Better behaviour near full extension
  -Added a check for very slow error reduction, which allows the solver to stop sooner
  -Changed the way controller stiffness, goal strength, and controller limits influence the solver.
  -Changed "Go To Goal" IK to a hybrid second order method, which solves an issue with the chain going nuts when the goal is moved far away.
  -Some optimization if the second order derivative of the motion matrix is known to be zero.
  -Slightly changed the way stiffness is applied. This helps a bit to get closer to the goal near full extension.

Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation

Multithreading for some of the mesh deformation evaluations has been added in Layout to provide an increase in speed. The control toggle is located in the General tab of the Preferences to enable/disable the feature. The multithreading will use however many cores you have.

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)

Improved Morph Data Handling

In v9.5 MorphTarget values have been converted to use object identifiers instead of indexes. This change requires incrementing the revision of the scene file format to version 5.

All New Lighting System

• Improved the sampling for the photometric, spherical and dome lights.
• Implemented Feature Request Case 13690: Layout's Spherical light should have a default size of 100mm rather than 0.

New Light API

The lighting system is now a plugin API, the new Light Plugin Class header has been moved to the public SDK and is now available. Custom light plug-in user interfaces now appear in the Basic tab of the Light Properties panel.

IES Lights

The Light Properties panel now has a button to load IES light files and displays a thumbnail preview of the luminaire with other information and controls. In addition, there is an IES Info panel. The "IES Info" button below the thumbnail luminaire preview opens the panel. The panel shows the description from the IES file, a gonio photometric graph, and detailed text info on IES file.

New Dome Light

User selectable sized dome lights are now available in the Light Properties Panel.

Enhanced Area and Linear Lights

Area lights are now aware of being called for sampled rays. The area and linear light quality have been improved by generating one new random number for each light sample. The maximum area/linear light quality limit of five has been lifted.

Renderer Improvements

• The Oversample option for the new camera modes has been improved. 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.
• The oversample can now be animated via its envelope.
• Implemented changes to raytracer to improve detection and early termination of rays that will not affect shading, which should provide speed improvements in some situations. The control is on the Render Tab of the Render Globals panel, "Ray Cutoff." The default is the recommended setting of .01, which provides much faster rendering with little to no impact on quality. Setting this to 0 will make the renderer perform as it used to; setting it higher can gain further speed, with a tradeoff in rendering quality.
• Implemented the Ray Cutoff feature for the hard-coded shading model.
• Limit dynamic range is now applied to the shaded buffers. Examples are the reflection, diffuse, specular and backdrop buffers. Buffers that are not shaded and just output the shading parameters, such as ks, kd and raw color, will not be limited.
• Limit Dynamic Range render buffer changes - attempt #2. The reflection, specular and diffuse buffers are subtracted from the RGB buffer, clamped and then added back to RGB buffer. The RGB buffer is also clamped after the other buffers are subtracted. This should allow these buffers to be used for post processing when Limit Dynamic Range is enabled. No other render buffers are clamped.
• Added new functionality to the access structures to read and write to render buffers from shaders, nodes and volumetric plugins.
• 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.
• Changed the Z Buffer maximum sent to the multi-threaded pixel filters to 2.0E14f, which matches the Classic Camera.
• Added the multi-threaded flag to Skytracer for raytraced camera support.
• Added cloning of non-multithreaded pixel filters per render thread when pixel filter multi-threading is forced on. This allows multi-threaded rendering when using such pixel filters.
• The render buffers are now averaged when requested by a pixel filter plug-in in the ray traced camera modes. This is consistent with the way the buffers are treated for image filter plug-ins.
• Pixel filters can now set the z buffer depth and alpha when the primary ray does not hit any polygons.
• Implemented the smarter sampling for soft reflections and refractions.

Global Illumination

• Optimizations to improve the speed and quality of radiosity rendering.
• Speeded up rendering of animations when animated radiosity cache is enabled.
• Optimization to speed up the radiosity sample searches.
• Optimization to speed up radiosity preprocessing when the Multiplier is more than 100%
• Reduced the noise for area lights and non-interpolated radiosity when used in conjunction with anti-aliasing.
• Added manual control for the radiosity gradients.
• Added manual control for the behind test.

Faster Sampling System
The Sampling system has been completely revised, providing for up to two times speed improvements in some GI operations, plus some additional improvements and optimizations.

Improved GI Quality
Changes to the interpolated radiosity modes improve the render quality, including extending interpolation to the first recursion level. Shadowed areas of radiosity are slightly darker and better defined, and corner noise is significantly controlled.

Improved GI Speed
A variety of optimizations have been implemented to make all radiosity rendering modes faster in v9.5. Many scenes will render up to or better than three times faster over previous versions of LightWave 3D.

Enhanced Support for Transparency in Final Gather
In the Final Gather radiosity mode, light can now pass through a transparent surface even if Directional Rays is disabled.

New GI Controls to Customize the Render
-Secondary Bounce Samples:
Secondary Bounce Samples allow control over how many samples are used to interpolate secondary bounce radiosity, which has proven effective in image quality improvement, particularly for reducing corner noise.

-Maximum Pixel Spacing:
This value 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.

-Ray Precision:
A new text entry field has been added to the Render tab of the Render Globals panel named Ray Precision. This floating point value provides for the adjustment of the intersection precision of the ray tracer. The higher the numbers mean greater precision.

• The default of 6 represents 1.0E-6.
• A value of 0 disables ray trace precision entirely. This setting works fine in most scenes

Disk-Based GI Cache
A new disk-based GI Cache System has been implemented which provides the ability to pre-render the cache and apply the solution when doing the full scene render – either locally or across a render farm. ScreamerNet is aware of the caching system and will use it at render time if the user has "baked" a cache for use.

-Static GI Cache:
The standard GI Cache allows the user to render fly-through type animation, where only the camera moves.

-Animated GI Cache:
The Animated GI Cache allows moving objects as well as the camera.

Wireframe Rendering
Implemented wire frame rendering mode to the ray traced camera modes.

Stereoscopic Rendering for New Cameras
The Perspective Camera and other new cameras can now render using the stereoscopic option, formerly reserved to the Classic Camera.

Enhanced Integration Capabilities

Collada and FBX I/O
Valkyrie.p is NewTek's new import/export functionality for LightWave 3D. This file contains four new plug-ins that will show up in Layout and Modeler, in Windows 32- and 64-bit, and UB. Import and export of Collada and FBX scenes is provided, as well as import/export of Collada objects. Meshes, materials and animation information are supported for FBX and Collada. Import is transparent using the standard Load Scene and Load Object commands, and export options are made available on the Export menu.
 

• Rotation and scale animation export have been added to Collada
• Implemented converting the filename to utf8 for the FBX library to save non-ASCII filenames.
• FBX:

-Now exporting Bezier interpolated Animation curves.
-Converting TCB->Hermite->Bezier on export.
-Importing FBX animation curves as Bezier.
-Now using the last UV mapped texture layer for color UV map export.
 
New OBJ I/O

• A new, highly optimized OBJ I/O plugin has been built from the ground up. Supports:
• Geometry
• Materials
• Texture Maps
• Bump Maps
• Continuous and Discontinuous UVs
• Vertex Normals
• Groups
• Shading Groups
• Export UV Maps for Projection Types: PLANAR, CYLINDRICAL, SPHERICAL, CUBIC, FRONT
• Points and Lines
• Allow the user to determine if the new OBJ exporter will or will not merge points in export with a new option, OBJ Merge Points. When checked on, vertices will be merged; when off, then none of the vertices are merged.
• OBJ I/O: Added ZBrush Mode to user interface. ZBrush does not seem to want to handle all the additional features supported in the new OBJ export, such as textures, etc., and needed different handling of point order than the new OBJ I/O provides. Our previous OBJ exporter handled export to ZBrush successfully, so those export routines have been added back in and they engage when you export using the Zbrush compatibility mode.
• The ZBrush-compatible OBJ reader has now been added. Now, if ZBrush mode is selected, the reader will read in the object with Zbrush selection sets (groups) intact.

Node Editor Enhancements

• Added a new material node called Carpaint. Sample renderings and UI image attached.
• The Node Editor now sports a new procedural based off the carpaint material, "flakes". It is located in the 3D Textures menu.
• Added a new node called Curve, for editing gradients using curves. Adding a key in the new curve node is done with CTRL + Left Mouse.
• Curve Node changes:
  -Added a toggle to turn on "key creation mode" for the Curve node.
  -Made the viewport in the Curve node pan with ALT+LMB.
  -Added a toggle button to turn on "stretch mode". The stretch mode works as follows: Left button stretches the values(Y), and holding down CTRL stretches the positions(X).
  -Changed the coloring of the grid area in the Curve node to separate the workspace from the position/value scales.
  -Added Copy, Cut and Paste functionality to the Curve node.
  -Added undo/redo functionality to the Curve node.
  -Selecting keys with shift held down will add keys to the selection, and holding ctrl will remove keys from selection.
  -Clicking on the gradient at the bottom of the graph will popup a color requester and add a key with the selected color.
  -Changed the control point handle lines to stippled lines.
  -Made different curve types conform to each other when lock control point is on.
  -Made the the opposite side control point highlight when lock control points is on.
• Added a "Partial Internal Reflections" toggle checkbox for Dielectric. Toggle this on for full accuracy with internal reflections, or off to allow for faster rendering when full-on accuracy is not required.
• Added the new raytrace functions (see SDK section) into materials and shaders.
• Implemented buffer writing for all materials and all shading models.
• Made the shadow buffer work with most material nodes. Sigma and Sigma 2 still need work.
• Implemented Feature Request Case 18030: Make Nodes use the new smarter "AA" aware sampling.
• Improved the accuracy of the cubic bezier used in the Curve node.

Modeler

Symmetry Tolerance
A tolerance capability has been added to Symmetry. The control for Symmetry Tolerance is in the General Options panel. Tolerance is set in distance units.

Improved select loop for vertex and edge loops
Select loop works in more instances.

Unify Normals
Added Unify Normals tool to modeling pack. Select one or more polygons and run, the rest of the connected polygons of the mesh will have their normals matched. The tool can also run with no polygons selected, at which point it will unify according to the first polygon found.

Smooth UVs
A general Smooth UVs tool has been implemented. Smooth UVs operates in Points mode on the user selected points, and applies an algorithm similar to 3D mesh smoothing to the 2D UV map chart data. The tool smoothes the 2D geometry in an objective fashion without considering how it maps to 3D space. Texture distortion/stretching is not taken into account and the results don't necessarily result in more optimal cases from that standpoint, though the 2D geometry will be made cleaner and this can be used to untangle areas and make tight areas wider and so on.

SDK and LScript Improvements

• Renderer
  
  -Changed the illuminate functions added in v9.5 to implement improvement to raytracing speed, roughly 30% to 40% reduction in rendering time for affected situations.
  -Added all the radiosity settings the Scene Object Agent so that they are now available to third party plugins and renderers.
  -Added the Layout RadiosityFlags() command. This command is used to set one or more radiosity flag values. These values are passed to the command, logically or'ing multiple flags to enable them. Any flag values not included in the resulting or'd value are disabled.
  -Added 8 Radiosity user debugging display flags to the SDK.
  -Added 8 environment constants for use with the RadiosityFlags() command.
  -Exposed the LightWave render mode in the scene info structure.
  -Changed the new raytrace data function to accept an opaque pointer to renderer specific data.
  -Add min and max dynamic range to scene info structure.
  -Add saturation to scene info structure.
  -Added which stereo eye camera is currently being evaluated to SDK, and a supporting SDK flag.
  -Added a new flag to the SDK in the sceneinfo which will force all pixel filters to render multi-threaded in the ray trace cameras.
  -Added as_multithreaded_filters to LWSceneInfo structure. This is a flag added to test if all active pixel filters are capable of being multitasked.
  -Separated out filter buffer flags from filter buffer types.
  -Added pre-multiplied alpha flag to the scene info render options.
   
• External Renderer
  
  -Implemented capability in SDK for an External Renderer
  -Updated Layout UI to respond to an external renderer. New External Render Tab shows choice of renderers, F9, F10, F11 commands will engage for external renderer.
  -Enhanced Image Viewer to display renders from an external renderer.
  -35 Layout commands have been activated in ScreamerNet to assist with network rendering with an external renderer.
  -An LWSDK header and a sample plug-in for implementing an external renderer are now included in the SDK.
   
• Volumetrics and Improved Thread-Safe Interaction with FPrime (Thread -Safe Interaction affects all platforms, but is most critical for resolving UB problems)
  
  -Added new defines in ComRing for liMBO_STATE notifications, for use in volumetrics plugins for safe access for interactive preview applications.
  -Added liMBO_STATE notifications to HyperVoxels to improve safe access for interactive preview applications.
  -To provide stability when Viper and FPrime are both active, the HyperVoxels subsystem has been changed to protect access when HyperVoxel preview functions are engaged and until they conclude, preventing both from polling HyperVoxels at the same time. Please note that it is still recommended not to use Viper if FPrime is in use.
  -ViperAbort() public routine added which triggers a VIPER preview to quit early and finish up its sequence stepper (cleanup).
  -System now detects and handles Viper initialization and cleanups that occur without the expected predecessor event.
  -Volumetric Changes: 
                
  + Function prototype now C++ instead of C.           
  + When value changes, start limbo state after stopping current preview render.
  + Remove dependency on layout header for MAXTHREADS constant. Since the Volumetric render startup routine receives the number of threads to use, a function called VRenderMaxThreads() is used to retrieve this.
  + Volumetric init/cleanup is nesting counted so that they only occur at the root nesting level. This requires clients of volumetric routines to ensure the nesting is balanced.+ Volumetric light preview ray is a structure member, which could in future allow for rendering multiple such lights simultaneously. (Note that this is not the same as multiple threads to render a single volumetric light). Previewing uses current time info instead of time 0, which might occur sometimes.

Package Scene Changes:

• Based on user requests, Package Scene has undergone a significant rewrite, adding the ability to preserve a proper content structure, and an option to reload the original scene
• A new option is presented in the interface, to "Preserve Existing Structure". If the user checks 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.
• Another new option is the "Reload Old Scene" option, which will cause Package Scene to reload the original scene after it's done exporting.
• Changed handling of Radiosity cache files, to work with the new Radiosity path behavior. Will also respect file structure if Preserve File Structure option is selected.
• Added an option for Radiosity cache files to be included in the package or not.

Viper Changes:

Further work has gone into Viper, improving performance for all platforms and completing the Mosaic mode for the Mac. The progress of Viper rendering has been adjusted so that a display update only occurs 4 times a second instead of for every single pixel evaluated. The result is that all modes draw faster than before and that Mosaic mode is about as fast as Normal mode if not faster and that Normal mode is about 4 times longer than Draft mode, which is consistent with there being 4 times more samples being evaluated than in Draft mode.

• The VIPER render time displays milliseconds when less than one second, but larger times are made more readable.

Mac/Universal Binaries

• Added a Dock menu to the Hub that adds the ability to launch applications, like the Hub Taskbar menu does in Windows.
• Added Dock Tile Render Status to the Mac UB version. This updates the dock icon with a progress bar during rendering a frame or scene. The progress bar goes away when not rendering.
• Added Command+R and Command+Shift+R shortcuts for Render Frame and Render Scene. Newer MacBooks already have up to three different default behaviors for F9, which may make it difficult for users to render with that shortcut out of the box on a new Mac. This allows them to use a more Mac-like shortcut if they want, without disabling that feature for those users who prefer F9.
• UB: dialog style windows will bounce dock icon when LightWave is not the front process so as to alert user a request is waiting. Made change on quit window a dialog instead of a palette window so it can bounce dock icon when not in front.
• UB: Text fields show all selected when focused and previously not focused. It becomes easier this way to replace existing numeric values by single clicking in field and type new value.
• UB: Added partial support for SECURE property for a text field, which is supposed to allow for password-style entry.

 Features Films

Games

Allgemeine Voraussetzungen:
System RAM: Minimum 512 MB erforderlich , 1 GB empfohlen
Grafikkarte: nVidia FX 5200 Serie (minimum) oder ATIFireGL V 5100 (minimum)
Grafikunterstüzung: OpenGL (OpenGL 2.0, oder ARB_shading_language_100
OpenGL Extension in den vorgänger Versionen, empfohlen wird GLSL features zu benützen)
Grafikkartentreiber: Den aktuellsten Treiber vom Hersteller
Video RAM: Minimale 64 MB Displayeinstellung wird vorausgesetzt, 128 MB  werden empfohlen
Auflösung: 1024x768 werden vorausgesetzt, 1280x1024 werden empfohlen
Festplattenspeicher: 230 MB für die Installation der Software (ohne zusätzlichen Content)

Windows 32-bit
System: Windows XP
Prozessor: Intel oder AMD

Windows 64-bit:
System: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Prozessor: Intel EM64T oder AMD64
System RAM: 1 GB

Macintosh:
System: Tiger (10.4.10 oder neuer) oder Leopard
Prozessor: PowerPC G4 800Mhz or faster; any G5 or any Intel-based Mac