Lightwave offer

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kat
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by kat » 07 Mar 2014, 14:14

Hi Nizar.
I'm not much of a modeler myself really. I do use 3D-coat however and have done some creature creations in that. I chose 3D-Coat because of its LWO format support specifically as zBrush at the time didn't have GoZ available for it and the GoZ interface made zip sense to me and the workflow was just too alien. So I know how it must feel when faced with the LW interface for the first time coming from another application.

If what you are doing based on your description is all you are looking to do, actually LW may be a really really good choice for you because you can work with those other applications and port the assets over to LightWave and take advantage of the speed of the renderer and the IKBooster which will work on anything that has bones in it and then some. So if you have rig from blender, export via FBX, throw it into LW, apply IKBooster and start posing. I was a big skeptic of IKBooster until Larry Shultz (who sadly passed away in late 2012, and was one of our co-founders at Liberty3d.com, and taught Ryan Roye and worked with Rob Powers) showed me just how powerful it was. I was doing an animated short film for the NFB at the time and I needed to keep the rigs identical for motioncapture reasons while still being able to modify them in aways to fit the characters. Within a couple of hours, I was all over it and worked out a system much like Ryan's relative motion loading techniques to drive the characters, pose them easily and even animate by hand (and I'm a horrible, and I mean horrible character animator - at least until that point) because of IKBooster.

You can create rigs using Genoma in Modeler and throw them on your character and continue on posing in Layout, or create a rig directly in Layout very quickly. You can adapt an existing rig in minutes if not seconds with the tools in Layout or Modeler once you know where all the goodies are and a few general workflow concepts.

If you browse some of the training products on Liberty3d.com you will find we cover almost everything and new products are coming all the time. From basic basic stuff, to advanced stuff to side topics like composting and Unity3D use with LightWave. Extremely reasonable priced stuff to. I'm not going to over sell LightWave or our training materials. Every year however that we've been running L3D, I will say that we have practically doubled our sales. That says something and our customer satisfaction rate is VERY, VERY high.

http://www.liberty3d.com/store/training/

While you may only be after base posing and that sort of thing, with LightWave3D you get so much more that is there when you need it. You mentioned 3D Printing. Well in 11.6 that was introduced and I've seen the results of a print off done at shapeways, pretty awesome.

How would you like to be able to pose a character without having to move bones by hand at all? Well, with Neveron Motion (plug-in for LightWave) you can do just that along with facial animation using a MS Kinect. I have it, Ryan has it and I know its been incredibly popular since released because you can block out mocap really fast. In your case, set up a character on the included kinect rig, hit record on the mocap side in LightWave's Virtual Studio system (introduced in LW11 and it freaking kicks ass... and I mean kicks ass), finish recording, pick a frame you like from your animation, render, done. Don't like where your arm was? Make a new track, record that portion (your arm movement or pose) and you are good to go. LW's VST implementation is just slick. It's a multi-track motion capture (but can work without a motioncapture device in the traditional sense) recorder and player. And like IKBooster, supports practically unlimited undo or multi-tracks (takes), accessible in the graph editor.

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ryanroye
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by ryanroye » 07 Mar 2014, 15:16

Nizar wrote:A (critical) answer to you, as freelance, with much effort in modelling characters (for animation and for 3d printing) , rendering and base posing it, why I must prefer LW over modo or Blender? I'm aware this can start the usual software war, but really, I (and probably "we") not in the condition to trying whatever we would like to try deeply before make a choice.
You won't get much of a chance to try out Modo without being rushed. They only offer a 15 day trial (you have to pay them for a 30-day one). To be fair, Modo's niche is modeling and that's what it was originally built for and their showcase/demo reel proves that; do not expect to have fast or efficient workflows concerning animation and rendering. If the majority of the stuff you do concerns modeling/surfacing/texturing, those are the areas where it beats Lightwave. Modo does not handle dense scenes well; don't expect to be able to visualize your content completely as you create it like with Lightwave.

Blender still has a long way to go and it was the program I used before picking up Lightwave. The UI is a mess making the program harder to learn than it should be, and it also can't handle dense scenes very well. However, I do recommend exploring Blender as a possible supplementary 3d software; there are some areas where it excels that provide nice synergy with other programs. IE: Blender has a robust node compositing workflow, great for people who don't want to buy into expensive compositing software.

Lightwave I consider a well-rounded piece of software that provides workable functionality for the entire production pipeline. This is just my standpoint, but Lightwave really does give the user the most for their money... no other commercial software comes even close. Rob also made it clear that LW won't be adopting the software rental idea anytime soon. But let's not be 1-sided here; Lightwave isn't a perfect program either and the devs are very aware of what needs to be improved to get it to where its users want it to be. Specifically:

- Modeler is a bottleneck in some ways depending on the user's needs. The tools are there now and ABF unwrap was finally introduced as a native solution to UV mapping (free PLG plugin is still needed for packing and other UV stuff). There are ways to get around performance problems just like with XSI such as making geometry invisible to speed up viewport or moving the geometry to a new layer... it is just something to be aware of. If the user is constantly pushing against the maximum usable capacity of modeler's performance (~140,000 polygons), that's where other programs may take the cake there.

- Character animation workflows involving joint correction and deformation-constraint setups need improvement. It isn't that this can't be done in Lightwave, but it just isn't visual in the way it works as it stands now. I do know visual deformation (joint, etc) correction workflows can be achieved with 3rdpowers's cage deform tools in layout, but that's Tanadrine Studios R&D at work and I try to be careful about the workflows I publish publicly.

There is so much that can be said when comparing programs... here's a TL;DR version:

Lightwave ==> Get its value vs. cost, well-rounded toolset; especially animation/rendering.

Modo ==> Get it for its modeling-related capabilities.

Blender ==> Learn parts of it that are useful to you and use them with other software.

Of course, the final factor will always be YOU. Does the glove fit? Is the community helpful in problems you run across? That's something the user will always have to find out on their own. Text/videos only say so much in terms of helping people decide what is right for them. For me, I just like Lightwave because I don't have to bleed money to have access to the whole production pipeline like with other packages.

Pancho
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by Pancho » 07 Mar 2014, 16:11

Dear Ryan,

cost vs value: If you need to run a company it's not the software which costs, but the manpower. A software which takes you ONLY twice as long is twice the price for some artist. After one month the costs for maya or houdini are payed off seen from this perspective. So a program with many small problems will never be cost effective, even if it is for free.

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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by angus_davidson » 07 Mar 2014, 16:20

As I have mentioned on the list before as someone who has tried lightwave numerous times I always get stuck with the modeler.

I love layout and everything that it can do , but to me LW modeler is just as frustrating as Blenders arse about face modelling interface. I think the latest one we had bought was 9.something though so I will be looking at it again. Unfortunately there dont seem to be many Lightwave studios in South Africa so from a point of view of support and local skills we can tap that might be an issue.

Still havent heard anything about edu options yet as well.
--
Technomancer at Digital Arts
Wits University

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Nizar
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by Nizar » 07 Mar 2014, 16:24

Thank for your answers. Softimage corpse is still warm, but I'll give a try to LW downloading the trial (the total absence of history is a bad sign for me)

Yes, a shame only 15 trial for modo and 30 day at 25$. I don't love Modo, and as Modo is done by LW creator I was sceptical about. What interested me, as I would jump into animation is nevron motion and mocap tecnichis (chrono sculpt is also interesting too). In animation softimage is simple great, and I only scratched the surface, but I fear to be used to something cannot use in a not so distant future (is just difficult leave the habits I take in modelling workflow)

Blender is nice, if you can turn around the unusual workflow (butm modify preference on left select and release confirm mitigate a lot). Also viewport can handle a lot of polygons:


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ryanroye
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by ryanroye » 07 Mar 2014, 16:34

Pancho wrote:cost vs value: If you need to run a company it's not the software which costs, but the manpower.
This will, and has always depended on the size of the company and the needs of the user... I do agree with you in some aspects. Time is extremely valuable. I'm just saying forking out $10,000+ per year per person in software alone is a hard swallow for all but a very select few groups/individuals... especially if the software in question is the equivalent of cutting cake with a chainsaw (overkill). In this argument, it is often forgotten that there are other pieces of software that production packages require. Painting tools, video editing, OS licensing (if non-linux)... that adds up. Rental plans don't help this any, and it essentially blinds the customer as to what they are buying into rather then letting them decide whether or not the updates/features of the new version are valuable to them or not, and punishes them harshly for not sticking with the plan.

That's my take on it.

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ryanroye
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by ryanroye » 07 Mar 2014, 16:48

angus_davidson wrote:Still havent heard anything about edu options yet as well.
Educational pricing is available for all LW3DG products.

kat
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by kat » 07 Mar 2014, 16:52

Pancho wrote:Dear Ryan,

cost vs value: If you need to run a company it's not the software which costs, but the manpower. A software which takes you ONLY twice as long is twice the price for some artist. After one month the costs for maya or houdini are payed off seen from this perspective. So a program with many small problems will never be cost effective, even if it is for free.
Well, if I may comment on this. On Iron Sky the entire LW team that did a bulk of the space oriented VFX work (not to be confused with the set extensions work which was largely comp) consisted of 4 people really at any time although we had six artists rotate through in total including myself, plus our VFX Supervisor. As CG Supervisor on the show, coming from my experiences working on Cargo and BattleStar Galactica - I knew we could pull it off as did Samuli Torssonen (VFX Supervisor on the show and longtime LW users who made starwreck, doing the VFX most by himself as he taught himself the software), but I have to say that many of the assets we were handed were in really really bad shape. Those came from another team using another application. We quickly cleaned things up using a combination of Lightwave, (layout and modeler) and Modo. In the end looking back now it would have been faster for us to scrap a lot of the work done and rebuild it completely.
So when it comes to speed... consider those experiences. We had a very short time frame to work with and hundreds of shots to do. We got it done. It was brutal at times but we got it done and for two of the guys on the team it was their first taste of feature film work.
One of the other applications team leaders using another application (not soft, not modo, not max, not houdini) blew 3 months working on a single destruction simulation because it was felt at the time (before we arrived on site) that this could only have been done in that other application. Really if push came to shove and we had control, again that particular asset and work would have been thrown out, rebuilt from scratch and we would have had a dozen or so simulations (we needed 6, but only got one out of him) done in the time it took for us to make what he had done work in camera (3 weeks once the shots were locked). We won for Best Visual FX at the AACTA awards last year in Australia. The entire team at its peak was 25 people. 4-5 being LW. The rest were comp and the other application(s). To be fair, the bulk of the team regardless of the applications they used had never really done anything remotely like this before and most had just barely gotten into the VFX business. Three artists really really stepped up. Two were Lightavers and all 3 impressed the shit out of me. I would hire them again in a second and I'm hoping to do so an a set of productions coming up.

So when it comes to manpower, typically LW requires smaller teams. Another example...
This was true on BSG throughout my time there from the start of Season II until I left at the end of Season III. We had episodes on the second half of season II that totalled 100+ shots. By season III, especially the Exodus parts 1 and 2 episodes, it was well into 300 shots per episode and we had fuck all time to do it in. I think the total team inhouse split between LA and Vancouver for Exodus was about 13 people including comp'ers and another handful of people at Atmosphere VFX in Vancouver which also included some comp'ers... So total.. 18 people, 600 odd shots in 6-8 weeks (at the most, it was nuts)... This included about 100 shots with the centurions doing all sorts of stuff animated by 1 person (Timothy Albee) in our office in Vancouver.

I never want to do those kinds of hours again, but we did pull it off. Exodus Part II won an emmy for best VFX that year. Our average VFX budget for BSG per episode was around 125K USD. (2005 - 2007 dollars that is)

Something to think about. I don't even want to tell you how much (cheap) the VFX work for Iron Sky. In some places it shows, in other places the work rivals the best of the best.

kat
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by kat » 07 Mar 2014, 16:53

ryanroye wrote:
angus_davidson wrote:Still havent heard anything about edu options yet as well.
Educational pricing is available for all LW3DG products.
I think he's asking about cross-grade pricing from educational to educational. I don't think there is such an animal.

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MauricioPC
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by MauricioPC » 07 Mar 2014, 17:11

I'm still hoping Rob Will came back and say: "ok Mauricio, you didnt buy Softimage but I'll let you be part of The rebelion. You can buy LW with this promotion. Welcome aboard.". :D

Pancho
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by Pancho » 07 Mar 2014, 17:16

kat wrote:So when it comes to manpower, typically LW requires smaller teams.
Compared to what?

Of course LW requires smaller teams, as the work you can do with it is not cutting edge and if it is, than it'll take 2-4x the time another production may have needed.

Try to do some animal animation with hair and hair dynamics in LW. It'll take many times longer than in SI as LW's toolset isn't made to do this in a realistic way (some funky furry ball, o.k., but not a realistically groomed animal). So a LW team wouldn't get this kind of work in the first place.

For hard surface animation, a lunar lander or spaceship: Never mid the package, as long as it can handle the amount os polys. Probably LW in this area is a bit quicker than for instance Maya. But the so often quoted opinion that you can do stuff in LW more effective or with less manpower is a legend.

P.S.: I was one of the first persons working with fprime. These were the days when LW rocked. Now, a decade later, this plugin has finally made it into LW itself. This tells you a lot about the speed of development over at Newtek.

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ryanroye
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by ryanroye » 07 Mar 2014, 18:41

Pancho wrote:Now, a decade later, this plugin has finally made it into LW itself. This tells you a lot about the speed of development over at Newtek.
Why would Newtek want to smash a 3rd party developer's creation and make a redundant tool? They pretty much waited until Worely quit development on Fprime before they decided to integrate the functionality directly into Lightwave. I think it was a smart move.
Pancho wrote:Try to do some animal animation with hair and hair dynamics in LW. It'll take many times longer than in SI as LW's toolset isn't made to do this in a realistic way (some funky furry ball, o.k., but not a realistically groomed animal).
I agree hair simulation is not as easy as it could be. Possible, but not a strong area of Lightwave. I disagree regarding animation and other dynamics systems however. Last time I checked, most animation programs don't allow you to propel your character relative to their current position, scale, leg proportions and orientation without any coding or manual moving or even node setups. If this workflow has existed for over a decade... I think it speaks volumes as to how much potential was lost by the LW3dG's mistake of not documenting stuff like this; I do believe that is and will continue to be changed for the better.

Again, people need to look at the projects they will run into in order to justify the cost vs. benefits of the application they buy into. If people/studios can afford to train their employees in multiple high-priced software packages each and take advantage of the things they excel in, then I see no reason not to if they have the cash on hand and time to invest. Modeling in Maya isn't super, animation in 3dsmax is lackluster... yet they cost several times more than Lightwave and will also force users into subscription plans that require a yearly fee of $4500-6000 for both programs (the price which says explicitly in the fine print that they can change at any time). Lightwave happens to be able to do both, for a hell of a lot less, and with many of the same core tools and features. The major differences lie in the specific scenarios/needs of the production.

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MauricioPC
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by MauricioPC » 07 Mar 2014, 20:07

I think people don't one good thing about this ... for $ 495 you can have an amazing render, better than Mental Ray.

This "my software makes better fx than yours" is a waist of time. If I had Softimage, I would surely buy LightWave since just the render would be a nice addition.

Pancho
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by Pancho » 07 Mar 2014, 20:26

You'd buy Redshift first, trust me.

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MauricioPC
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by MauricioPC » 07 Mar 2014, 20:38

Pancho wrote:You'd buy Redshift first, trust me.

I need to try Redshift ... it's time to install Maya. :x

robpowers
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Re: Lightwave offer

Post by robpowers » 07 Mar 2014, 21:06

MauricioPC wrote:I'm still hoping Rob Will came back and say: "ok Mauricio, you didnt buy Softimage but I'll let you be part of The rebelion. You can buy LW with this promotion. Welcome aboard.". :D
Hi Mauricio, Contact our customer support on the lightwave3d.com website. I'll let them know to look for your email.

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