I agree that LW is very organized and clean, but I wouldn’t say it’s faster. Maybe thats because I just started using it and I am used to using Blender. I am getting faster with LW, but sofar I am much quicker with Blender. The thing I like about blender is all the instant shortcuts with hotkeys. When I press S to change the scale of an object, it automatically goes into scale mode. All I have to do is move the mouse. In LW, I have to go into scale mode, and then click the LMB and drag.
But they are two totally different programs and need to be learned totally different ways. I think you will always be more comfortable with the app you started out using.
Nah, that’s just a phase. I was in the same boat you were, but now I feel much more comfortable in LightWave than in Blender. In fact, by comparison Blender seems very awkward to me now.
Hehe…another Lightwave user here…but the slow OpenGL is really killing all the fun.
And all the OpenGL 2.0 gimmiks where added to Layout and only make it extremely laggy on scene changes for me anyway…hence i didn’t (and most likely won’t) upgrade to LW9 as it looks Modeler is still the same old crap back from 6.0 viewport wise.
The rest of the features doesn’t really impress me either, compared to other commercial packages…Newtek is just good at making you believe it’s great IMHO.
What Id be happy too see most of all would be an app with interface organized like LWs and shortcut system like Blender. In other words, I`d like Blender to have its GUI modified but the hotkey system left as is.
Im not a Lightwave user. Ive just tried a tut or two with LW and I found it way easier to learn. If there was a free ver (w/o that save limitation thats killing LW Discovery), I would go to it. Im a Blender user who would like the program to be improved, not a LW user who would like Blender be like LW.
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[/quote]
currently I resort to ripping holes in my models where I have loop count discontinuities until I feel like patching them up.
working only with quads and loops is ok but doesnt work always.
specificly with ngons you have the option to increase the detail of the mesh
at point without adding mesh data in other areas.
i am not so sure if LW is such a bad tool, otherwise it wouldnt be used that much for movies either.
I think you have some drivers problems, because for me blender’s interface runs at 700FPS, do a help-> system->benchmark, and if you have something under 100fps, you have driver problems (or a very very old 3Dcard)
we use workstattions here and blender slows down significantly, selecting objects and other tasks will be done with small delays. that happens a lot when i start using subdivs.
my scene runs much smoother in maya.
i went to blenders system benchmark but the numbers given out dont make sense to me.
I think you have some drivers problems, because for me blender’s interface runs at 700FPS, do a help-> system->benchmark, and if you have something under 100fps, you have driver problems (or a very very old 3Dcard)[/quote]
I meant Lightwave’s viewports not Blender…
Large polycounts in Modeler are a nightmare, and no i do not have driver problems, everything runs at expected speed…
You’ll find long threads over at Newtek’s forum about poor OpenGL performance…
But editing large meshes in Blender is not really a joy either…
Lightwave 9 looks great. I’m very close to saving up the amount of money for lightwave; i will be ordering it soon. From what i’ve read, the modeling speed/flow is extremely well put together. Some of the most impressive things i think lightwave has are:
Stress Maps
Hypervoxels
N-gons
Animated Particle flow
Dynamics System
I still think lightwave could really use static particles though! i look at the forums and people are still using alpha-mapped polygonal hair. That’s what i’d like to see in future versions.
~Emfrobia
Edit:/ Hey i was just looking at the lightwave dynamics example videos and they were amazing. Not only can it differentiate seperate parts of objects (without making seperate objects) it can have other objects cut, crush, bounce, and sew together a mesh.
I had always heard lightwave’s animation system is lacking in some parts, and maybe it is, but i was just watching the hardbody video and the keyframing i saw was :o! The animation path was represented like a linear ipo curve, except it was in the 3D window. The artist just went through the frames with the arrow keys one by one, moved the object slightly, then pressed a single key to lock the frame. (I’m not sure, but i think the key framing might have been done automatically, without even having to press a key. It was pretty sick. Check it out! (I believe it’s located under the learning section on newtek.org, but i don’t have an exact link.)
Lightwave looks impressive and I love the stress maps, unfortunately I don’t have the money to buy it and i’m happy with Blender either way.
If they want hair they could always take the Blender code and adjust it to their app. It is perfectly legal with Blender being GPL and they could just rip out the source code.
And the award for most feature requests ever made in a life time goes to…youngbatcat?!
“Oh, this is so unexpected…I don’t even have a speech prepared…I just want to thank all the people that shot down my ideas because they liked the old way of doing things and um…oh! All of the coders that didn’t implement the things I requested…um…oh and also the people that told me that I should learn to code before making feature requests! Thanks everyone! Oh god, look I’m crying! Thank you! Thank you!”
You are my hero actually. You keep things a-movin’ around here!
particle based hair will always be slower than polygon based hair, but just as a side not lightwave has Sasquatch Lite which is a quite powerfull particle based fur system, to create grass, hair and fur. this oen also works togetehr with their softbody dynamics. i would say quite a professional solution.
Maybe Icoxo is confusing the GPL with one of the other free-use licenses.
Here are relevant excerpts from the license that came with Blender 2.41. Note the CAPITAL LETTERS are mine for emphasis:
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that… you can change the software or use pieces of it in new FREE programs;
You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, … provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
…
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
WHOLE OR IN PART contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
It’s possible that a plug-in for Lightwave could be made using open-source code, as long as the plug-in was also distributed open-source and not integrated into the main Lightwave application, based on the following (again, caps are mine):
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections WHEN YOU DISTRIBUTE THEM AS SEPARATE WORKS.
However, if any code used in the plug-in would be considered proprietary to Newtek, and would prevent the plug-in from being distributed as open-source legally, then the plug-in could not use GPL code, based on:
If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason … they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License … For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Edit: By the way, I went through all this trouble thinking that Joghurt was arguing with Broken’s comment. When I looked closer and realized that wasn’t the case…well, it’s still useful to anyone fuzzy on this.
As with most things that have gone in during Orange, not really. Hopefully there’ll be time for that after the project. But there are a few details in the commit message:
You are my hero actually. You keep things a-movin’ around here!