NewTek has announced the release of the new edition of its popular LightWave 3D graphics and animation package. The 2019 edition offers new integration tools with Unreal Engine for real-time data transfer to the leading game engine and performs automatic discovery to make the workflow seamless.
“Game engines have become the predominant real-time rendering and visualization tools for 3D, far beyond their use in video game development,” said Dr. Andrew Cross, president and CTO for NewTek. “We recognize the importance of this trend, which offers so many advantages including the increase in productivity for 3D artists, vast savings of time and resources, and limitless new ways to create and visualize. Imagine everything from video games to virtual sets, animated TV series to feature film pre-vis, interactive architectural visualization and more all in real-time.”
The product also offers a Metamorphic system, which brings multipurpose animatable mesh sculpting and painting to Layout. Fully multi-threaded for fast operation, Metamorphic includes a wide range of brush options and controls, multiple animation modes, nonlinear interpolation, motion blur support and much more.
LightWave 2019 includes additional enhancements for animators. Among these is a new ‘Limited Bones’ mode for the character animation system. This provides the ability to match the number of bones able to affect a given point to the game engine in use. The new mode also has real-time optimizations to more closely match the performance that game engines expect from a bone system. Modeler’s enhancements for game development include new UV and UDIM tools, as well as support for smoothing groups, which allow for fine-tuned control of the contouring of models.
Among the software’s other highlights are:
- Improved FBX Interchange and added FBX attribute support
- Shading Model Customization Tools
- New Shape Primitives and Tools
- OpenVDB Creation
- Shading and Rendering Enhancements
- Workflow and UI:
- Display Scaling Options for high-resolution monitors and multiple monitor setups
- Expanded Layout Undo System
- Popup Menus now support mouse wheel, navigation keys, search and more
- Node Graph controls for grid size, snap to grid, grid brightness and color, Tidy Nodes
- Online Documentation adapts to the screen format of any device
- “Managed portal” licensing option for large facilities. Purchase by special arrangement.
LightWave 3D 2019 for Windows and Mac OS is available for $995. Registered owners of any previous version of LightWave 3D can upgrade to LightWave 2019 for $395, through March 31, 2019. International pricing may vary. Educational pricing is also available. Find out more at www.lightwave3d.com/buy-lightwave/.
