http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/lw9_features.php
I love this one “Complete Re-implementation of Open GL in Layout”
Less need for preview renders
Hmmm I wonder, has anyone ever asked for that before? Ya know cause it saves time and all ?? Anyone?
quite some fun to see that some of the new tools they added where tools blender had already for some time. i was very surprised about the old shader system. i did not know that it was only based on blinn.
but there are few things i realy like: the camera tools to create fish eye renderings for example. i love the adaptive subdiv levels. to specify in rendertime which areas should be more subdivided is great.
also they new addition of more accurate blinn models and also the ani refl, ani refr, and the ani specular light models look good also their sss.
i am curious about how their new more accurate blinn is different from the blinn in blender.
I like the CCTV Feature:
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
That would be dead useful sometimes!
oh my god, i just check their catmull subdiv type. you can create ngones and all works smooth and fine. so you can model in small details without subd the area around.
great!!!
I’m only mentioning this because I’ve heard them mentioned along with n-gons, but… What are voxels and hypervoxels?
something i loved when i was working with lightwave.
it is an extension to their particle system. you can use it to create smoke, snow, clouds, structured stone textures, rocks
c4d and max for example use this technique as well. the plug in is called pytocluster. amazing results. check out google for that.
Blinn is blinn. Blender and Lightwave should produce identical results. The only difference should be speed. If there are visual differences that means one or the other’s implementation is flawed (speaking of which, I should probably re-check my old implimentation of Blinn to make sure I didn’t scew anything up).
Thanks cekuhnen, I know I can always trust Google for an answer! 
Voxel = 3D pixel = point of data in 3D space instead of 2D monitor.
To be honest, I don’t see nothing really new in these Lightwave features, a great but old program.
I think Blender could be better than it,with time…
X Cessen
Your shaders are great,work very well,the only one that can work better is the toon(MHO),I find it useful for simulating translucency but it creates some banding(obviously I try to use it not in the right way,but only for faking purpose),the smooth option for that does not work well when the light is at full intensity.
BTW,great work
renderdemon,
blenders modeling tools are quite powerfull and outscore in some areas lightwave. but as it looks like lightwaves dubdiv and catmull system and ngones produce meshes blender cannot support at the moment.
also lightwave has some animation tools which are more than genious.
cessen they say that they use a new more improved blinn and the renderings ligtwave produces now seem to be a bit more accurate.
cekuhnen,blender for me is much better than Lightwave in modelling(my opinon).The n-gons for me aren’t so important,I learnt to model clean,mainly quad,and I think is better.
The animation in the past was probably the weakest part of Lightwave,but I’m not tryng to say that Lightwave it’s not a great program,I only think that its development isn’t one of the most advanced.
cekuhnen: the only thing I found on the website that might suggest that is the following quote: “and new implementations of Blinn and Lambert”
New implementation, however, does not mean different results. I imagine it’s exactly the same model, but simply a more efficient implementation (or perhaps reimplemented due to the material system’s change in architecture). If interpreted the way you seem to have interpreted it, that must mean that their Lambert model is new and improved as well (which is ridiculous).
Unless there is a “Blinn the sequel” material model that I am unaware of, any visual difference between their old and new implementation must mean that either their old or new implementation is flawed–flawed in the sense that it shouldn’t be called Blinn, and at most should be called something like “modified Blinn”.
I would be curious to see renders of the two implementations on identical scenes (with no GI to confuse things).
guess you can be right. as they wrote they also support other light models now and not only blinn. could be that their old one wasnt the best.
I’ve got v8.5. I don’t know if I will upgrade anytime soon though. But the upgrades are pretty cheap now. But Blender is fine for now. 
I’m no expert, but I believe the ngons let you model faster, even if you want all quads in the end. For instance you could combine a couple of faces, leaving you with a large ngon that you could resplit into the quad config you want. Doing the same thing without ngons means a bit of Rubiks style shifting to get stuff the way it needs to be.
Of course fastest of all is probably zbrush combined with topology brush (in silo or new zbrush), but I have no $$ for that right now. 
Shawn
what do you use it for?
do you use hypervoxel? and what do you think about the texture system 8.5 has for todays needs?
Don’t we have this already in environment mapping?
The first three on the list should be fairly simple to do in Blender as it is now with some post-processing. I’m not sure on the last one only because I’m not sure exactly what kind of holograph effect they’re talking about (I haven’t been to the site lately), but I’m thinking something like that could be pulled off with multiple, offset environment maps (and maybe some displacement, depending on what you’re going for).
Maybe it’s easier said than done, but it’s something to put on my list of things to figure out in Blender.
The time-warp feuture would be great.
2 times I’ve thought about making bullet time animations but there were going to be all too much frames so I didn’t done it (plus the fact that I ain’t good at animating), but with the time-warp feuture I think I atleast would have tried.
Well, I will make some BlenderHeads mad with my post, but…
What Im jealious for in LightWave is its interface. Not only it draws far faster, but its organization is far easier as for me. There was a thread in Blender development forum that B should have an alternative, more beginner-friendly interface. In LW, you just look where the function should be... and it IS there. In Blender, I almost always have to find a tutorial how to use a given function to make it work at all... and rarely I dont have to additionaly post to forums to figure out how to use it. Lightwaves interface is something Im simply mad about in Blender. I`m learning it from more than a year and I still feel like a beginner-every window, every function has its own logic and… an unique place to be hidden in :<