NewTek Announces Fourth Major Update to LightWave 3D® v9

Posted by Safe Harbor Staff
February 20, 2008

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NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading video and 3D animation products, today announced the release of LightWave® v9.5, a major update to its award-winning 3D application, LightWave 3D®. LightWave® v9.5 new capabilities include a complete hair and fur solution, new lighting system and many improvements to animation, global illumination, rendering and workflow. The update will be available to registered owners of the LightWave v9 series at no charge. The LightWave v9.5 Open Beta program is scheduled to begin early March; LightWave v9 owners who wish to participate may register now by visiting: http://register.newtek.com/.

"As promised with the LightWave v9 series we’ve added major capabilities with each of the updates we’ve delivered so far and LightWave v9.5 is certainly no exception," said Jay Roth, president, NewTek 3D Division. "With the addition of a complete hair and fur solution, all new real-world lighting system and GI that is significantly faster with even more beautiful results, LightWave v9.5 has something to offer the 3D community regardless of the specialty - from game developers to character animation to architectural visualization."

LightWave v9.5 Updates Include:

Character Animation Enhancements
- New Hair and Fur System
- Enhanced IK and Animation Systems
  - New Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O
  - New IK Calculation Options for Faster Performance
  - New Bone Type - Joints
  - New Objective Options for IK
  - IK/FK blending
  - Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation
- Modeler
  - UV Unwrap/UV Relax
  - Symmetry Tolerance
Lighting,Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements
- All New Lighting System
  - New Light API
  - IES Lights
  - New Spherical Light
  - Area and Linear Lights Enhanced
- Renderer
  - Faster Sampling System for GI
  - Improved GI
  - New GI Controls to Customize the Render
  - Disk-Based GI Cache
- Node Editor Enhancements
  - Interpolated Soft Rlections/Refractions
  - Support for new Light API Functions
  - Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
  - Optimizations for Materials and Shaders
SDK and LScript Improvements
- New Light Plug-in Class for third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
- SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
- SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
- Set surface properties through the Surface Global
UI and Workflow Enhancements
- Enhanced Scene Limits
- Updated Scene File Format
- EXIF Metadata Support
- OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
- Image Viewer Consolidation

In addition to the new capabilities in LightWave v9.5, the LightWave v9 series has delivered enhanced performance in a number of areas including improved global illumination with higher quality and faster rendering, expanded OpenGL capabilities with new depth of field preview, advancements in the new camera tools and the node and materials editing system. Further, there are now over 24 hours of free LightWave training available online at www.lightwave3d.com.

Visual effects artists who used LightWave's world-class rendering system and other capabilities in recent major projects such as The Jumper, The Ruins, 300, The Guardian, VFX Emmy®-winning Battlestar Galactica and other hit series, such as The Sarah Connor Chronicles, CSI, CSI Miami, The History Channel’s Dogfights and the up and coming high definition game, WarDevil, depend on LightWave to produce state of the art visual effects on time and on budget.

Pricing and Availability
LightWave® v9 is available now at suggested retail price of $895US. LightWave v9.5 will be available as a free update to registered LightWave v9 owners. Registered owners of LightWave 3D® [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US.

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