What Killed Lightwave?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Well in all fairness LW is not stuck in the 20th Century, the same could also be said for quite a few 3d apps in the way they do things.

LW modeler is out of date without a doubt by probably at least 10 years but Layout and rendering native is not, yes it has its problems and also its way of doing things but so are other apps.

Blender when it first came along and even up until recently had its weird and quirky ways of doing things, in some cases still does, when i say weird and quirky of course i really mean different, which is why many people coming from other apps dabbled around with it but never got serious with it, me included.

Now of course things are different, 2.8 UI not least of all, and others are taking it seriously. How far that will go remains to be seen. I’m not sure there will be such a big change in what the big effects houses use, thats not a reflection on Blender but more a reflection on the business model and how the likes of AD license their software.

Mostly one man bands, small effects houses and hobbyists will be at the forefront and hopefully those are the people that will drive the big changes when they get into bigger effects houses.

I spoke to a friend of mine at MPC and asked him how much inroads is Blender making, he said not much, whilst its installed and some even started on it and still use it, its not making much of a mark in seat numbers and production.

They would have to get all their coders up to speed on Blender and Python to deliver what they already can with Maya and Mel, that’s a lot of knowledge and time spent learning. Im sure it will come but cost will always be the key and whilst Blender is free and powerful in the right hands at the moment most of the big houses dont have those hands.

Also there is the limitation of Python as well, which is a bit slow, relies on other things being installed, its also a memory and CPU hog at times. Python is not the best language for plugins/addons anyway.

Thats not saying you cant use other languages on Blender, its just that most of the addons are Python scripts.

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Just a couple of things briefly, for what it is worth.

I was referring mainly to LightWave as a being stuck with a workflow what was realized back in the early 1990s. The history of that has been debated endlessly. But to summarize, LightWave development was hindered by that old code. And failing to actually fix this caused people to leave. To this day it has not been fully accomplished. And the reasons are many. But at the end of the day, this is where LightWave is now. With NewTek completely silent about any efforts to finish it. Even hard core guys like you will eventually bail if they don’t pull it together.

Regarding Blender’s success and place in the industry. I am not sure why people get so hung up on this.

Statistically, Blender has been gradually growing and encroaching on the market. And there is no indication this growth is going to slow or fade or be hindered by other software, nor any lack of adoption by the “big boys”. It is growing steadily, each major release - 2.5 and now 2.8 - has increased this exponentially.

If it were a commercially public company you’d be an idiot not to buy stocks right now before 2.8. And those who invested 10 years ago would be getting set to land their retirement next egg.

That would be an accurate statistical analysis. Just by the numbers.

If we are comparing to LightWave over the last 10 years it has gone in the opposite direction. Just saying.

Regarding python. While it is absolutely not the fastest language it is the most popular and easy to use. And all apps are adopting it for this reason. There are plugins that do not require lightening speed. The advantage is that more people can write them. And it opens the door to functionality that would otherwise take a lot longer to make happen due to the lack of people qualified to write other code.

It is the universal and broad popularity of Python here that is the power. Maya also eventually has adopted it for this reason.

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Oh i agree the code is old, Core tried to do something about that and failed for a myriad of reasons not least of all to what you alluded to earlier, a lack of will and understanding in NT.

With Core, they realised they had bitten off more than they could chew and were willing to fund. That has always been the problem, LW was always seen as an addon to the core business of NT and now vizRT. Whether that will change, who is to know as its all gone quiet again.

For me Blender is just a tool, in fact like Houdini it is a great plugin for LW and addresses many short comings of LW. I am also future proofing myself by getting into it seriously for the first time after dabbling for a few years.

Im not sure bail is the right word, Layout is still very capable as a renderer and i will still use it with Octane as much as i can, but like i said its what i know.

Now modeling in LW is a destructive mess, that’s not saying you cant model in it and achieve good results, as i said before LWCad and 3DPowers and some others keep me coming back, because i know it, i know the work arounds and how to get what i want out of it.

Im looking more and more at Blender as a hard surface modeler to replace LW Modeler in my toolset, just in case there are no more updates or good updates for LW.

Im sure Blender is making inroads into the main stream, we can see it and we can see its sue in things like Man in the High Castle, that proves that it is more than capable of doing high end work.

I think part of the problem and something i notice as well on many Blender forums, its almost like Apple Fanboys sometimes. Yes Blender is good and capable, it has come on leaps and bounds now and is a very capable 3d app, it is no longer a little player at all.

However it is not the be all and end all of the 3d world, there are many apps out there that are just as good and capable. Someone tried to convince me i should dump ZBrush and use Blender for sculpting. Now Blender is good at sculpting, but its not ZBrush, its not even Sculptris, indeed its on a par with Metamorphic in LW.

I agree that Python is a good all round language, easy to learn and open to everyone, Maya has adopted it as has LW as well, but it still has its limitations. Things like Flip, Khaos and many of these sorts of addons really need something like C/C++, they are memory and CPU/GPU intensive work and in part Python is what slows them down in the computation.

I like Python because it forces people to look at code more often and indeed get into it as a tool as much as an addon.

Oh indeed the stock value of Blender if it were a stock would be doing very well indeed. I see some people saying that Blender could never be for sale in the future. Well if you look at the structure of the foundation, it is possible, not easy but still possible given enough will on all parties.

As i have said for me i really hope that Blender forces AD and the likes to really look at their pricing and business model, personally a good kick up AD backside is long overdue and maybe Blender is the guy to do it.

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Every software has its fanboys.

At my studio we use the following software:

Blender
Maya
Maya Lt
MotionBuilder
Mudbox
Zbrush
Substance Designer/Painter
Mari
Unreal
Unity

Forgot:
Photoshop
AE

I have not used LightWave at the studio or in any way since (year) 2016. And I stopped upgrading after 2015. I refuse to support NewTek after the last stunt they pulled. Just no way. Can’t in good conscience do that with a company that treats their loyal users with such lack of respect and contempt.

We have tried (I set a guy the project to learn it for a few weeks) but not yet had the need to add Modo. I really want to push it though. I think it is a fine app and would add so much to the studio. It is just a matter of time that this will happen.

No real reason to add Max - or Cinema 4D

I still own - and can use - XSI though it is not in the studio pipeline.

Houdini I have learned briefly and it is a fine app indeed. Something I also want to explore more in the future.

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If you have Maya why do you have Maya LT as well, im assuming just another seat then.

ZBrush is a must have as is substance, although i will wait to see what happens with Adobe now. I have Adobe CC but seriously looking at Affinity at the moment.

I have Unreal and Unity but dont really use it that much as im mostly modeling. I also have MOI as well.

I have Houdini Indie and really need to get more up on that when i can find the time. However i cant see at the moment ever using it as a modelling tool, but i do like the procedural nature of it.

I had high hopes for Modo and indeed still do, as a modeler its great but it still lacks in other areas and im not sure these will be addressed any time soon. I might consider getting it in the future as i know Craig swears by it.

I know Vitaly still swears by XSI, i have a license for it and it still has a very active community and plugin developers, its just a shame AD asset stripped it and then killed it off. I started my 3d journey with Softimage 3.9 i think on an SGI, so i have a soft spot for it and i loved XSI but had to move on.

LightWave, well i agree they have not been very forthcoming and to some degree honest. I have got 2019 but have decided that enough is enough and when and if the next version comes out, if it does not have a significant improvement in modeler then i will save my money.

Im actually thinking of Blender Octane, or EECycles in the future. I run BforArtsists at the moent, the UI is a lot better i find even in comparison to 2.8 vanilla.

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Cool. I have/rent 3 seats of Maya Lt. It pays for itself in speed for some things.

It is used mostly for modeling/retopo and some light Rigging. Some of my artists still prefer it overall. But it is our go-to app for most of the hand retopo from Zbrush.

Before AD scrapped XSI, I bailed on it for Maya which had more of what I needed at the time.

Still love it though. How can you not… :slight_smile:

Blender is a staple for us. I have been using it since 2008. I still use it daily along side other apps.

And many of my artists (young under 25) prefer it over Maya or anything else.

But I have to remain objective for those who are more comfortable with Maya. I would say 90 percent prefer Blender overall. And then of course - if we need to - I train guys in Blender anyway. And they usually take to it right away.

Been doing this. Training Maya guys in Blender for over 5 years now. Rarely do I encounter any issues with this at all and the majority stick with Blender and never look back. However I still require they use Maya lt for retopo. Nothing is better.

Oh and also Blender’s influence on AD and the industry at large has been already happening in a big way in the last 9 years. Most people however, fail to see the connection between Blender and many of the software licensing trends we see today. But I have seen it as it was happening and I am convinced this is the case.

Post Blender 2.5 ushered in a new era that reflected in a job market that did not exist before and a trend in “indie software” as an answer to Blender’s free tools.

People will come down divided on that I am sure. But I know what I saw and experienced. I built my entire freelance business and studio on Blender post 2.5.

I now hire and run a crew of 12 because of this. And there is an absolute direct connection.

I have seen it taught in Universities. And I have also seen a drastic increase in awareness and adoption by students who intern for me and those I hire. It is a totally different landscape than 10 years ago. 180 turn I would say.

By comparison. Not a single student has ever heard of LightWave.

A huge oversight by NewTek. I mean huge. Just a glaring ridiculous and even arrogant mistake.

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I started using Lightwave in 2001 dropped it in 2016 for Blender. I never bothered learning another 3D app because I’m a loyalist and like throwing my money at a ‘good’ underdog. At the time I wasn’t interested in the other player$ and thought Blender wasn’t very capable. I was/am a fool. If I would have started using Blender sooner It would have changed things dramatically. Thankfully I wisened up and hope others will as well.

/vent

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That was indeed a very big oversight by NewTek, one of many im afraid, but thats in the past and nothing to be done about it now.

Do you not get clean retopo from ZBrush then, sorry im not really Maya conversant, used it years ago as i was forced to. Since i went indie i did not need it or the cost. Ive always found ZBrush to be quite good in this area.

I agree its the youngsters that know only Blender that will force the issue and they will know it because its free and open source, im also willing to bet that many more code in python as well because of Blender, so a win win for everyone and hopefully a wakeup call to the likes of AD.

I remember 10 years ago when my daughter was doing her interior design degree, they all used 3DS Max, i told her that Max for what she was doing was overkill, she was using less than 1/10th of the capabilities of Max. I spoke to her and her teacher about this.

He of course knew less about Max than i did and i knew very little but i knew 3d software. I got the usual corporate speak from him about how good it was, i agreed, but it was overkill on their part to use it for such a low level task. I said why don’t you use, Sketchup, Blender, hell even LW would have been a lot cheaper.

Thing is AD knows that if they get them early then they have more potential customers down the road and also why Max was the most pirated 3d app there was, even AD admits this now.

Enough to say i managed to save my daughter and her purse from serious outlay, she brought C4D and is slowly learning Blender now as well.

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Cool man. Thanks for sharing. I am sure we both have a lot of great stories to exchange.

Regarding retopo, now we are getting technical. And maybe a bit off topic. I will summarize to say that retopology we encounter is not a one-solution-fits-all. There are probably about a half a dozen different techniques and tools we will use for one character for example. Overall time is saved by using auto reptop where it can be of course. But for situations where we use hand retopo (which is still a large portion of the work) Maya has the fastest tools out of other options available. We have investigated other options including Blender addons and Modo, but we always come back to Maya for this.

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Autodesk tried to rope in youngsters as potential customers for life when it produced the 123D family of apps, but I think that faded away with Carl Bass’ departure.

Right now, they do not have compelling apps. with cheap pricing to turn kids into future Maya and Max artists.

The bad news for Lightwave people is that if this thread’s points are accurate, Newtek is not learning from their mistakes. Based on what I read here, it seems a lot of them are thankful for Blender’s existence to keep their CG dreams alive (as many cannot financially afford the jump to Autodesk or Maxon).

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Well of course as i have previously said you cant beat free, you never can beat free. The only way to go up against free, is better. Maya, Max and all of these have to be better than Blender and now its getting less and less the case. Which is why people are questioning even now the price they are paying to rent their apps.

However the industry standard and the most common used app in most big houses is Maya, or shall we say a heavily modified version of Maya, so youngsters will always strive to learn it because they will be asked if they can use it if they want to work in the big houses.

Some amount of training is offered in house, but you always stand a better chance at getting the job if you already know your way around it. Now this may change and indeed probably is with Blender becoming more mainstream, but it is still Maya that is cock of the roost at the moment but the more you know the better.

Houdini and indeed ZBrush are also useful apps to have under your belt and guess what Houdini has a very good package indeed for new learners, far better than AD does.

Im not so sure that they dont learn from their mistakes as dont care. I remember the flaming going on the NT forums in the past and some of it got very nasty especially around LW Core, so in a way i can understand why they feel best to not say anything, but of course you just alienate more people doing this and thats what they have not learnt.

Who is to say what happens in the future, im in the dark as much as many of the admittedly dwindling user base is. Only time will tell but many of us are or indeed have started future proofing ourselves.

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Just wondering if you had a better solution which i did not know about. I also was wondering if Blender had a better way of doing it…

Funny i was looking at an old picture of Softimage 3.8, the first 3d program i worked on as a job. We used the old SGI’s back then. It was that UI that pushed me to use LW, i like the simplicity of it, very few icons and mostly words, ok i grant your the grey and purple colour was not the best but i do have fond memories of using it and rigging in it.

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Oh they learn from their mistakes absolutely. But it is their concept of what a mistake is, that is the issue. They have no clue how to manage the development of 3D software. So they actually can’t see what they are doing wrong. And when the community gets up in a tizzy over it, they are quick to shift the focus on the reactions. Almost as if the major mistake they seemed to learn from is communicating. So in some kind of bizarre twist to the whole thing, they just finally decided to stop talking entirely. So for them, they have identified the main mistake. Communicating. And they have certainly learned to stop communicating. We can give them that much credit. Nevermind that it has nothing to do with their problem. But they think it is and so at least they are not completely brain dead. They are trying…

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Another thing we did not discuss is 3D Coat. So there are those retopo options which I am aware of but we don’t use that. Just from looking at the tutorials I could see it seemed to be missing certain features I wanted in hand retopo. Auto retopo looks great. But since we use Zb it is better to do it there.

Blender has a hand retopology tool called RetopoFlow which I bought and we put through the paces. It has since been upgraded, but the artist I had trying it to evaluate if we should switch preferred Maya.

As mentioned I did the same with Modo

Another artist sort of invented or cobbled together a method he swears by in Blender just using off-the shelf-features. He is pretty good at it.

The Maya tools I am referring to that we keep coming back to used to be a plugin called NEX. They are modeling tools that open up in a separate panel. AD bought this and hired the guys who made it to work in house and finish integrating it into Maya. It was finished I think around version 2018.

I have used this toolset extensively myself and introduced it to the studio. It is the best tool for hand retopo I have found.

RetopoFlow is now at v2. For someone looking to avoid AD rentals I would highly recommend it as a sort of best option outside of Maya.

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I actually had a choice some time ago between ZBrush and 3DC, i went with ZB, but i am aware of some of the benefits of 3DC, i might pick it up one day.

Ive heard of Retopoflow, in fact quite a few plugins look interesting, but i am waiting until Blender 2.8 full is finally out around the end of the month. I cant go back to use 2.79, just to confusing in UI for someone who does not know Blender very well.

I got flip fluids as i needed it for a fluid sim in LW. I like the looks of Khaos as well but its still 2.79, so i will get that when 2.8 comes out as well.

I wont touch AD for that very reason and reasons ive stated earlier, their software is still to pricey and unjustified IMHO and especially with 2.8.

What do you think of Maya now as it stands and especially the code base. Is it stable. I ask this as i was on the AD forums not long back. It was actually a thread about costs and licencing after their last announcement. Many seemed to be very unhappy, not just the cost but what they were actually getting in terms of features and stability.

That’s when i first saw that quite a few were looking to switch apps and looking at alternatives, some mentioned C4D, some Modo and quite a few mentioned Blender.

Many also stated that the code base was getting very old indeed, i know in Max they had Excalibur but ive not heard much about it for a year or so, seems they also had all sorts of problems.

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From my experience Maya seems fairly stable compared to say, 2015 which was the point they had refactored everything and also broke a lot of plugins. It seems to have smoothed out.

But I have been using Maya so long, I don’t think much about it. I loved it when I started using it in 2012 and I never really stopped enjoying it.

Blender is coming along. But it is going to be a while before all features are back in 2.8. I would say next year would be the time to switch. And keep using 2.79 with all the plugins.

At my studio for example we have just started implementing 2.8 with one artist in production for Modeling only. After release that will increase. But we are still doing the rigging part in 2.79 and I figure it will be some time before we make the full switch to 2.8

First release of a new Blender 2.5 or 2.8 is way too bleeding edge for me. :wink:

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I decided to use 2.8 and BforArtists 2.8 because the UI was very different to 2.7 and there seemed no point to learning 2.79 to then go to 2.8, so i jumped in admittedly early but i like what i see so far. Just some of the stuff that is good in 2.79 will take time to get to 2.8 but im in no hurry, its going to take some time to get fully ok with Blender 2.8 and its way of doing things.

Seems the best way, get one person up to speed on it and then that can trickle down in time.

Im glad to hear you are happy with Maya, the few times i used it years ago i really liked it which was more than i could say for Max.

I do however hope that the likes of Blender and the pricing of Houdini will force AD to change its pricing and maintenance structure and costs, but we will see, whilst they are king of the hill as far as Maya goes i dont think it will change that much.

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Holy crap… You guys are still beating this dead horse?.. LightWave is dead. You are not. Go live your lives. Go outside. Go on a picnic… Go make some 3d art (rather than talking about making 3d art)… John, Richard, I command you two to stop this tomfoolery at once.

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TBH I am finding the discussion on pipelines and workflow with view on the various aspects of software packages enlightening. It’s not like anyone is ranting on how crap LW is, it’s measured, polite and informative.

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I second this. As a generalist i have touched most major DCC’s at one point, but never Lightwave. My instinct always told me to stay away from it and i never came in contact with it professionally.
It always struck me as the odd kid on the block. But nevertheless i am interested in different viewpoints, if only to confirm that my decisions where right.

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