[Thorn]

Originally posted by mikhael
On the other hand, though, Alex, Truespace is targetted at a different market than Lightwave, Maya and 3dsMax. Truespace is targetted at arty sorts and the web market, mostly. Lightwave and 3dsMax are targetted toward content creation for larger projects (Lightwave, especially comes from, and is still shaped by the broadcast industry).

Babylon 5 is probably what made LW big... They were using the old Amiga version too.. werent they?

[mikhael]

Believe it or not, Lightwave came on the tail end of Lightwaves TV prime. MODERN Lightwave is an outgrowth of, of all things, the amiga Video Toaster system. It was used for adding graphics to newscasts and postproduction stuff.

Foundation Imaging still uses it for most things, and its used in a lot of game houses for medium- to low-poly applications (real time models and the like) while they use Maya or the like for doing prerendered stuff like cutscenes and backdrops.

[USS Alexander]

Well dind't knew that about TS, but that the use of LW in the entertainment industrie is slim, the dominat package is maya these days, and 3dsmax is still used a lot in the games branch.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by mikhael
Believe it or not, Lightwave came on the tail end of Lightwaves TV prime.

Do you mean... B5 came on the tail end?

[mikhael]

yes, that's what I meant.

[USS Alexander]

I just heard since recently that B5 whas made using lightwave, i always loved the effect's in it, my oppinion whas always that the effects in babylon 5 where  of a much higher qualatie(how do you spell it correctly?) then the ones used in star trek those days.

Makes me wonder?what package they used for star trek?
I know that (enteprise)is made using LW by eden fx, at least a few effect's.

[karajorma]

B5 is what made Lightwave famous to people outside the TV graphics field. However it had been used both as Lightwave itself and as the toaster bundled application (lightrave IIRC) for many years before that.

Trek was done with models (at least TNG was).  The fact that CGI had moved forwards to the point where they could do space scenes without having to spend millions on models was one of the major reasons why B5 wasn't canned. Had it been a model based show I doubt it would have ever been given the chance.

[KillMeNow]

just a little note

the new battlestar gallactica was done with lightwave - as is enterprise adnd teh cg shots in dsn and voyager too, as were the effects in firefly, dune and children of dune, many fo the 3d elements in buffy were done in lightwave including the last episode in teh hell mouth

of the effects in stargate sg1 are also lightwave though maya is used for that aswell

lightwave primary market is tv broadcast though it has been creeping into the film market ( i believe all teh effects from teh film torque were done with lightwave jsut to name one )i think once lw 8 is released, a good link to renderman would see lightwave more prevalent in the film industry though at the moment in films its mostly used for modeling ( though there is one scene in star wars ep 2 that was modeled animated and rendered in lightwave as they didn't have time to do it in there other pipeline and the shot doesn't suffer at all from bypassing maya and renderman )

with reguard to B5, sadly foundation imaging is no more but there are many studios using lightwave still from digital domain (who use lots of other software aswell though) to eden fx, zioc studios and many more

as for lightwaves use in the 3d field to be slim i disagree the emmy awards all 5 of the candiates from last year were done with lightwave as i recall

as for maya being dominant - true it is so in the big studios that have techincal directors to progrtam mel code all over the place - the result is you dont have generalist maya users you have modelers - animators - dyanmics specialist etc  also its loosing a fair old wad of its market share to softimage xsi more and more and when it comes to effects the houdini is the master though its price point and its rather challanging to master interface will put off freelancers like myself

anyway i wouldn't worry to much about lightwaves future lightwave 8 should be out SOON (though they have been saying this for a while now) so those who bought lightwave 7 what within the last year should be eligable for the free upgrade to 8 ( good news on this too is we're getting 3 brand new content cd's =) which oh so terribly modest me has contributed too =) a cartoon bird based off a parot but in a sandy colour instead of bright colours

[USS Alexander]

Yeah i'm still waiting on my upgraide to 8:D heard of good things about lw8 the particle system has been improved i heard:D

My teacher at school also said to me that lw is getting much more populair as 3d package, he told me there are also a few game studios who use it for moddeling there characters:)although 3dsmax is used for it most often.

I never peakt in houdini before, i'll aks around at school if they have it installt in 1 of there computers.

Oh and a update on de ea transport is coming, been a little busy studying for ps exams lately so i haven't done much at it.

[KillMeNow]

you can get houdini aprentice edition free - and its only limited in that you have to reregister it ever few months or somethign and you get a houdini logo down the bottom right of your renders and i think teh output is limited to 640x480 but its better than most learning editions as i said be prepared to be seriously confused when you start it up - i made an attempt to learn it a while back and quit - would need to really really want to elarn it before you'll get through that interface

that said once you get the hang of it the interface is suppost to become one of its shinning glorys

as for 8 - yeah partculles can be hand animated =) offending partciles can be deleted some really cool stuff - and hard body dynaimcs and lots fo other cool stuff bee intergrated - though what i'm most looking forward to is the ik booster and otehr new bone tools - animting characters will be soooo cool in lightwave 8 and on the upside incase you not heard the rumours or got your email yet - its being shipped out to those who preordered next week apparently =) its finally done complete gold =)

hehehe cant wait  (that said those in europe aka ME  haven't recieved the email informing us of that yet and while those in the us that have say that international shipping is suppost to happen at the same time well lets face it it will probally be 2 weeks for those on this side of the atlantic)
 oh jsut checked the registering lw8 link is up on newteks site so if the email wasn't enough that should help encourage those eagerly awaiting 8

lightwave in games? your not wrong lightwave was used almost exclusily for quake 4 and unreal tournament  and i believe doom 3 is beign done in lightwave also and many others though as you say its a small market share as yet compared to max and maya

[mikhael]

Dude. KMN: punctuation is your friend.

The nice thing about LW and UT2003/4 is that the game can import the geometry directly from LWO/LWS files. A couple of the guys at LWG put some of their Stargate models into the game--they look great.

[USS Alexander]

Upgraded WIP

Added a few more component's like the gas pipes on top of the hull, engines part is almost finish and after that i'll begin at adding detail to the mesh.