DECEMBER 12, 2001
NewTek LightWave [7] for the Mac
3D modeling and animation suite
 by Kevin Schmitt, Contributing Editor
Page 4 of 8

"That's nice," you may be saying, "but what about the NEW stuff?" The short answer is, "there ain't much here." A couple of new tools, like the rail modeler and rounded edge box tool, are scattered here and there, but nothing spectacular. Though the few new features are kind of nice, it seems as though Modeler hasn't benefited much from the version 7 upgrade over the previous 6.5 version; the lion's share of changes and additions seem to have come in the productivity and workflow area. While productivity enhancements aren't the big name stars of any upgrade, here they are quite welcome because some of them have been sorely needed for a long time. Some examples:

  • You can finally save individual layers as object files, and many layers as a single object.
  • A full object can be loaded into a single layer in a new object.
  • Vertex points on subpatch models can be selected directly.
  • >Revert Current Object. 'Nuff said.
  • The new (and sometimes useful) Rove tool combines rotation and moving into a single command.
  • You can now flatten multiple layers into a single layer.

Again, workflow fixes aren't exactly A-list talent here, but they do represent an improvement. The big bright shining stars of LightWave [7] are what NewTek has done to the ...

Layout [an error occurred while processing this directive]Layout is the second of three programs that make up LightWave, and it's where you take your models, surface them (if you haven't already in Modeler), animate them, add lights, environments and effects and then render. Like Modeler, it's packed with stuff, and I know I'll scratch about as much of the surface as I did when talking about Modeler, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Any ol' 3D program can give you a chrome sphere on a tile floor, but what separates the wheat from the chaff in the 3D world are what I like to call the "gooey" features (not to be confused with GUI features, which is a phrase I did not come up with). LightWave [7] has plenty of gooey to go around, and the place where all this goo gets applied is the Layout application. Before I specifically call out a few new Layout toys, here are a couple of the kinds of things LightWave is able to do, after which you'll actually know what I mean by "goo."

Character animation. LightWave is chock full of good stuff for character animators, such as morph mixing, bones, forward and inverse kinematics, just to name a few.


Clip 1: LightWave's Bones feature turned a detached, freaky, static single-object arm into a detached, freaky, realistically animated single-object arm.



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