Lightwave offer

[angus_davidson]

Unfortunately some of us dont have the option of April 2016, or running a permanent licence beyond that. We have a course starting end of June that we can now no longer teach Softimage in as we had planned. We need to look at options now to get our lecturers up to speed with whatever they will migrate too.

[Pancho]

Well, I guess you are in a special situation there, but the rest who needs to earn money with actually producing stuff, e.g. freelancers, shouldn't panic, but stay calm.

DON'T PANIC!

Mostly harmless ....

[angus_davidson]

Well, I guess you are in a special situation there, but the rest who needs to earn money with actually producing stuff, e.g. freelancers, shouldn't panic, but stay calm.

DON'T PANIC!

Mostly harmless ....

Haha, have often wondered if I were ever to find that book, what I would look up first ;)

[robpowers]

https://www.lightwave3d.com/crossgrade_promo/

A software package is a reflection of the people who make it. Passionate developers give years of their lives to create a 3D package and that must be respected.

In a world dominated by heavy-handed subscription programs and public corporations that kill products based on shareholder demands the LightWave 3D Group proudly stands independent with our voice in support of individual artists, rogue studios, and the creative spirit.

For those of you that choose to follow the public corporations you have several options but for those of you that stand for creative freedom and individuality we invite you to check out LightWave 3D.

Just last week the amazing Japanese animator Morita-san was at the academy awards for his nominated short film "Possessions" done using LightWave and many of you may have seen the LightWave created "cg eye" animation from Chris Jones that has caused quite a stir. The LightWave 3D Group is excited to offer tools to empower individual artists and studios. The great thing about LightWave is that it can scale perfectly from one person to a larger team. Check out www.lightwave3d.com to see what LightWave could do to help you get your ideas out there.

https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/articl ... omination/

http://lightwavebox.blogspot.com/2014/0 ... jones.html

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

[Pancho]

Dear Rob,

I've started my carreer software wise with LW 5.6. I still own new licenses, although I didn't work with them for quite some time. A transition to LW from SI can only be seen as a major downgrade. Honestly. I spent thousands of hours with LW. I know this stuff quite well.

I did have high hopes with Core. Well, as you know, after years of promises, big presentation events and again more promises, NT did have to admit that Core development is aborted. Yeah, under the hood some parts might have been passed forward, but in the end NT played with us as Autodesk does.

I never received a compensation for this marketing disaster, no free 11 license as an excuse. Nothing. Although I payed for Core, I never received anything. And I contacted NT services a lot about that, running against a wall.

NT hired you to make a difference. As a "Mark Schoennagel" for NT. Well, I guess you are doing quite a good job. But what you are missing here: The whole thing is about trust. Here are a lot of angry customers. Very angry and disappointed customers.

I moved on from LW years ago to Modo and SI. For the very same reasons. I was fed up with promises, promises which were never kept. Over and over again, paying advances, giving NT a free credit for development, receiving nothing or very little. And I honestly don't want to use a Modeler who last received some love a dozen years ago. I guess that speaks for itself.

I doubt that the management has changed. I doubt that anything has changed. For sure not even the first sentence of each press statement "Lightwave, the award winning .... emmy proven ... bla, bla, bla."

I'm fed up with companies which don't take their customers serious, cherish them. That's all a business got. Customers. Hopefully satisfied customers.

I want to quote of a very wise man here, who seems to have gone through some equally tough times.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.'"

[kat]

Thanks for chiming in rob.
one thing though... Public "corporations" are not the problem really. Bad fucking management is. AutoDesk takes the cake on that front, always has and everyone knows it.

public or private, good management makes it work regardless.

when you said "and the public corporations.." it gave me flash backs to Alec Baldwin in team America at the end during the "act off".

[Bullit]

Shareholders are what make a company possible.

And a company is a bunch of people, it can bad , good , anything in between and changing or not with times.

Autodesk is an incompetent company because with their resources they should be Eons distance from everyone else. In fact they are loosing.

Also a private company has much more freedom to behave badly than a public company. It is just close the door.

[robpowers]

Dear Rob,

I've started my carreer software wise with LW 5.6. I still own new licenses, although I didn't work with them for quite some time. A transition to LW from SI can only be seen as a major downgrade. Honestly. I spent thousands of hours with LW. I know this stuff quite well.

I did have high hopes with Core. Well, as you know, after years of promises, big presentation events and again more promises, NT did have to admit that Core development is aborted. Yeah, under the hood some parts might have been passed forward, but in the end NT played with us as Autodesk does.

I never received a compensation for this marketing disaster, no free 11 license as an excuse. Nothing. Although I payed for Core, I never received anything. And I contacted NT services a lot about that, running against a wall.

NT hired you to make a difference. As a "Mark Schoennagel" for NT. Well, I guess you are doing quite a good job. But what you are missing here: The whole thing is about trust. Here are a lot of angry customers. Very angry and disappointed customers.

I moved on from LW years ago to Modo and SI. For the very same reasons. I was fed up with promises, promises which were never kept. Over and over again, paying advances, giving NT a free credit for development, receiving nothing or very little. And I honestly don't want to use a Modeler who last received some love a dozen years ago. I guess that speaks for itself.

I doubt that the management has changed. I doubt that anything has changed. For sure not even the first sentence of each press statement "Lightwave, the award winning .... emmy proven ... bla, bla, bla."

I'm fed up with companies which don't take their customers serious, cherish them. That's all a business got. Customers. Hopefully satisfied customers.

I want to quote of a very wise man here, who seems to have gone through some equally tough times.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.'"

Hi Pancho,
I understand your points from the past but as for the CORE situation everyone who paid for CORE received the option for a refund or to get LightWave 10 for free. Not to mention massive discounts on future upgrades for several years as a member of that group. I think NewTek was pretty fair with that situation with the options that they gave to the customers at that time and I haven't seen another company offer discounts like that to customers in that way. So if you did pay for CORE you should have a LightWave 10 license in your account. LightWave 10 introduced several new features but one of the strongest was the LightWave interactive VPR renderer which is a favorite feature of many users.

[kat]

Precisely.

[kat]

Shareholders are what make a company possible.

And a company is a bunch of people, it can bad , good , anything in between and changing or not with times.

Autodesk is an incompetent company because with their resources they should be Eons distance from everyone else. In fact they are loosing.

Also a private company has much more freedom to behave badly than a public company. It is just close the door.

spot on comment really.

[kiwimation]

I think now would be a great time to see a roadmap for Lightwave. There are only a few things that keep me from going back to Lightwave and if I knew they were being addressed then I would seriously consider going back.

[robpowers]

I think now would be a great time to see a roadmap for Lightwave. There are only a few things that keep me from going back to Lightwave and if I knew they were being addressed then I would seriously consider going back.

You can imagine why it is not possible for companies to share their product development details very far in advance. There are many reasons why that is not practical. I can say that our product has been rapidly advancing over the past several years and we are certainly working on many exciting things in LightWave. Our current users around the world are doing amazing work with our current product offering as you can see from the links I provided above but ultimately only the individual can determine what tools work best for them.

[kat]

I think now would be a great time to see a roadmap for Lightwave. There are only a few things that keep me from going back to Lightwave and if I knew they were being addressed then I would seriously consider going back.

You can imagine why it is not possible for companies to share their product development details very far in advance. There are many reasons why that is not practical. I can say that our product has been rapidly advancing over the past several years and we are certainly working on many exciting things in LightWave. Our current users around the world are doing amazing work with our current product offering as you can see from the links I provided above but ultimately only the individual can determine what tools work best for them.

Best way to be able to help drive the applications development is to be a user. Things have changed drastically with Rob in place and the new additions to the development team since he came on board.

[MauricioPC]

Rob,

I'm not a Softimage users in the sense I use Softimage Student Edition for learning (1+ year). Have not bought since I was still learning. If you say I can buy LW for the $495 I'll purchase it right now (even though I haven't bought Softimage in the first place). And yes, I'm kind of pushing, but I think it's work the try.

Lately I'm so disappointed to what is happening to this industry that I'm thinking of actually going freelance all the way, and in that sense LW would fit perfectly.

Cheers.

[kiwimation]

I think i will just have to wait and see what lightwave 12 and 13 brings, Soft will be good for awhile yet. I also understand that they cant give out a roadmap (just had to ask), I think that is where Blender is really good being opensource, you can see where they are taking the software and make a informed choice.

[MauricioPC]

For me if the offer goes through it might be a good idea, since I don't own Softimage to use in years to come.

I'll still study Maya or Max (but in all honesty I'm kind of put down about all I've being hearing of the VFX industry).