NewTek Ships New LightWave 3D® Version 9

NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, has announced the availability of the latest release of LightWave 3D® version 9.0, the next generation of the Emmy®-winning 3D application. The new release is the first in a series of major rewrites and restructuring of LightWave 3D’s core with the addition of comprehensive new features such as a node-based materials editor, optically correct cameras, adaptive pixel subdivision, Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces, sub-surface scattering and vast render speed improvements.

"LightWave version 9.0 changes the value proposition for 3D software – we significantly improved LightWave’s core strengths of incredible power and amazing speed with this release. When you consider this along with the entire LightWave feature set, NewTek brings an outstanding value to the market," said Jay Roth, president, NewTek 3D Division. "The fantastic work that our development team has accomplished under-the-hood provides a foundation for the implementation of innovative new capabilities faster and more effectively as we build the future. Throughout the LightWave v9 development cycle users will see the capabilities of the software further extend… and quite dramatically."

The most noticeable changes for v9 are the addition of a node-based materials system that adds new shading models to LightWave, such as Oren-Nayar, anisotropic, and sub-surface scattering; the greatly improved rendering speed for today's high-demand scenes; and the enhancement of subdivision surfaces in Modeler and Layout, including Adaptive Pixel Subdivision, which gives the user a variety of capabilities for film-quality displacement mapping, normal mapping (including ZBrush support) and level-of-detail control at render time. LightWave now has arguably the most comprehensive toolset for matching real camera lenses, an addition that will greatly enhance the ability of visual effects artists to match 3D elements to live footage.

Among the changes that contribute to enhanced workflow in Layout are faster OpenGL performance and additional OpenGL hardware shader support, building on the initial implementation in version 8.5. For many scenes this provides a very accurate preview of the look of the final image or animation in real time, without the need to create test renders. The GUI has been enhanced to allow far more user configurability than in the past. Users can adapt the look to fit their needs and preferences to provide the best workflow for the ways they use LightWave.

"LightWave has always been a very easy tool to learn and use, with super fast modeling and outstanding lighting and rendering capabilities," said, Nicholas Boughen of Rainmaker Animation and Visual Effects. "With LightWave v9 NewTek has pushed the envelope beyond anything I've seen in a single upgrade before. The new node-based materials editor makes shading virtually unlimited. Camera tools allow you to recreate any camera in the world and many cameras thatcan't exist. APS exceeds sub-pixel displacement and now that modeling tools are migrating into Layout, modeling tasks in LightWave will be virtually unlimited. The render engine is much faster and more capable than ever. And you still get 999 render nodes for free, making LightWave the greatest value by an order of magnitude. No wonder so many studios render using LightWave."

LightWave 3D version 9.0 Features:
Rendering:

Implementation of BSP/KD Tree Algorithm to achieve improved speeds as scene complexity rises
Complete replacement of the original ray tracing core
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

Adaptive Pixel Subdivision:

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

Modeling:

Added Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces
Subdivision level can be controlled via numerical values, envelopes, expressions, motion modifiers, textures, procedurals, gradients and more
Edge Selection
Edge Weights
N-gons (polygons greater than 4 sides) for subdivision surface modeling

Node Editor:

New Shading Models
Normal Maps from ZBrush 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 and query nodal shaders.

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)

OpenGL

Preview lighting scenarios within the UI
Less need for preview renders
Hardware shading of procedural textures

Other:

Timewarp – Time Re-mapping and Warping Shader
CCTV Shader
HV Deformer: HyperVoxel Particle Displacement Shader
Stress Map
Sketch Image Filter
Pixie Dust Volumetric shader
Relativity 2
Quaternion Rotations
Mesh Editing in Layout
Native 64-bit support
Multiplatform
Dual and multi-core support

Pricing and Availability
LightWave v9 is available now for US$795 for a single user license. LightWave v9 upgrades for LightWave owners are US$395.

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