About LightWave 11.6
LightWave 11.6 brings many exciting new features and enhancements to LightWave. Even better, this is a free update for existing LightWave 11 owners.
LightWave 11.6 Overview |
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3D Printing Support |
Import / Export of industry standard 3D printing file formats STL, PLY, and VRML. Also features new geometry cleanup tools | |
Spline Control |
The powerful new Spline Control allows the animation of snakes, trains, tails or anything that requires a natural fluid movement | |
Raycast Node |
Make your objects aware of their surroundings with the new Raycast node | |
DPX Support |
Support for DPX digital intermediate file format which enables direct loading as background plates for visual effects and film pipelines | |
CgFX Shaders |
CgFX shaders enahance Layout OpenGL quality for realtime playback of assets and characters and strenghthen the workflow for Virtual Production Asset Creation | |
Compound Node |
The node editor sees the introduction of compound nodes, making it simpler to package up complex flows into as easier to use nodes | |
NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 / Pro |
Stereoscopic renders can now be displayed in Active Shutter mode on 3D monitors (with appropriate hardware) | |
Alembic Object / Cache Loader |
Import objects and their caches saved in Alembic format | |
Python Improvements |
Python scripting in LightWave 11.6 has been enhanced requiring less scripting needed to achieve the same results in previous versions | |
New Color Picker |
A fully featured color picker dedicated for 3D artists, quite simply the best color picker in any 3D application, period | |
Stereo Camera Offsets |
The Stereoscopic effect can now be animated from either the Center Eye, Left Eye or Right Eye | |
Surface Baker Camera |
The Surface Baking Camera recieves a boost in speed by taking advantage of multiple processor cores | |
VPR Interaction Speed |
11.6 sees a huge boost in the interaction speed when working in Layout with VPR active | |
Motion Vectors for Instances |
Instances now contribute to the Motion Vector buffers | |
3D Printing Support
From 3D to Real
Wtih 3D printing becoming more popular with the introduction of cheaper home printing devices and online services. LightWave 11.6 allows you to output your models to standard 3D printing file formats, including support for color 3D printing.
STL, VRML and PLY Loaders and Savers
Support for the most common 3D printing formats.
Color 3D Printing
Using VRML, 3D printers that support color can accept models with color vertex maps applied.
Raycast Node
Casts Rays to Make Your Objects Aware of Their Surroundings
With the new Raycast Node in LightWave 11.6 your objects become aware of their surroundings when rays are fired into a scene from any item to determine distance, intersection or normal orientation. The simplest example using it to make an object track perfectly along the surface of terrain, but the uses are only limited by your imagination.
The ray cast functionality has also been added to the SDK so third-party developers can utilize it to expand LightWave's capabilities even further.
Spline Control
Native Spline Deformation, Path, and Spline IK Solution
With the new Spline Control node you can quickly add splines directly to layout and use nulls or any object to define nodes on the spline. Use Spline Control to easily animate items that need to conform to a curve and control the motion trajectory along the spline by animating the object nodes direclty in the animation graph editor for ultimate control. Spline Control can also be used for Spline IK rig setups for things like tendrils or tails and animating snakes, cables, tank tracks or even cameras along a path are easily achieved in LightWave 11.6.
CGFX Shaders
Enhanced OpenGL Real-Time Display and Normal Maps
CgFX shaders allow you override the default OpenGL respresentation for any surface with custom nVidia hardware CgFX shaders. This allows the realtime OpenGL representation of your characters and assets to look more detailed and higher quality in the viewport. You can write your own CgFX shaders or download many of the free shaders from the internet. CgFX shaders allow LightWave to be used as the asset creation backbone for real-time Virtual Productions.
New Color Picker
Highly Featured Color Picker
The new LightWave color picker is the most feature rich picker available in any 3D application. Features include color library management, direct color picking from image and screen, color mixing, variety of color modes and complimentary colors.
Compound Nodes
Group Complex Node Flows Within One Node
The node editor sees the introduction of compound nodes. These allow to group complex node flows into reusable, single nodes. The inputs and outputs can be renamed to allow for easier working. Compound nodes can then be saved allowing you build up your library of custom node flows.
Alembic Support
Object / Cache Loader
LightWave 11.6 introduces a new industry standard Alembic loader for importing object and cache data into Lightwave from any 3D application supporting the Alembic format. This added interchange functionality is added to LightWave's very strong support for FBX, After Effects, Autodesk Geometry Cache, LightWave MDD Cache, Collada, and the Unity game engine.
Minimum System Specifications
Windows™
- 64-bit Intel® Core™ 2 or better or AMD64 with SSE4 instruction set (Bulldozer onwards)
- System RAM: 4GB minimum
- Available USB Port (for users with existing hardware dongles)
- 64-bit: Windows 7 64-bit through Windows 10 64-bit
Hardware
Operating System
Mac OS®
- 64-bit Intel® Processor
- System RAM: 4GB minimum
- Available USB Port (for users with existing hardware dongles)
- Sierra 10.12 or better
Hardware
Operating System
Display
- Minimum Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® 9 series or ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series
- Minimum Screen Resolution: 1280 x 1024 pixels
- Recommended Graphics Card: GeForce® 10 series or newer at 1920 x 1080 or better
Installation Requirements
- Storage: All systems require 750MB available hard drive space (excluding content).
