What is Reddit's opinion of LightWave?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I think Hallowed Jungle would have a theme focused on a more intense "hallucination" vibe. Something like a cross between mushroom forest biome and hallow, like this

Lots of that cyan green and pink shit, dark blue ambience, fog

Mike Okuda posted this on his wall shortly before his passing:

"Visual effects wizard Ron Thornton played a pivotal role in harnessing personal computer technology to bring amazing CG effects to mainstream productions. You probably know his groundbreaking work on 'Babylon 5', as well as on numerous 'Star Trek' productions including the Director's Edition of 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture'. Ron has been suffering from a very serious illness. He's home, in a coma, from which he is not expected to regain consciousness. Please keep my friend in your thoughts."

His IMDB page lists some amazing credentials, including Babylon 5, Spaceballs, and several Star Trek movies and TV shows. He won an Emmy for special visual effects in the Babylon 5 pilot The Gathering.

Here is an interview from 2013 about his visual effects work.

very much doubt it, theres no call for it. a modern pc is far more powerful than even the most powerful amiga. https://www.lightwave3d.com/try_lightwave/ these days lightwave - which is iirc what they modelled b5, runs on windows anyway.

yeah, its probably not the most accurate rating, but its the most comparable benchmark i can find:

1200 with 030/50mhz, 9.91 mips (sysinfo benchmark)

x5000/40 using the P5040 2.4Ghz quad core and would reach over 28000 MIPS (quite impressive, but still no market for it.) (https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/03/02/the-upcoming-amigaone-x500040-64bit/)

29,963 MIPS (http://www.techspot.com/review/1041-intel-core-i7-6700k-skylake/page12.html) + im assuming this program now uses GPU rendering as well....

That helicopter going under the overpass was so smooth, I always figured it was some 1991 version of erased cables or bluescreened vehicle like this, but life-sized and pulled behind a truck.

Instead it turns out it was some guy's rock-steady flying skills. Nice.

Reading through that thread, there seems to be some confusion about how long Amigas were used (thanks in part to poor wording on Lurker's Guide). According to this interview with Thornton ( https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/article/interview-with-a-lightwave-legend/ ), Pilot and Season 1 was all Amigas, Season 2 was a mix of PC and Amiga, and Season 3 all PC.

The B5 CG is a rabbit hole of fun. They used Lightwave 3D on a PC, possibly a Commodore Amiga, to make all the CG and put it to video tape. This is a good read.

Also, just because I like telling everyone who'll listen about it: This is an amazing documentary by the guy that founded Newtek, who made Lightwave 3D.

There is an official free 30 day demo version of Lightwave that you can download and try out. Worth using that to see if you like it or if it is for you before you actually buy it : https://www.lightwave3d.com/try/

I think you're going to need to connect the speakers to an audio receiver. The power and the signal are both delivered through the speaker wires, you can't just hook up an ipod to them unless there is already a line input receptacle on the speakers.

you need something like this: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=audio+receiver&tbm=shop

Unless your speakers are internally powered you need something with connections like this: https://www.lightwave3d.com/static/media/uploads/gallery_images/visualisation/tim_parsons-audio_video_receiver.jpg

Wings 3D [free] or Silo [$109] for modeling.

Lightwave 3D [$795 for a crossgrade if you have another vendor's licence] for a full modeling and animation suite.

I thought it did...? I still remember it was used for doing 'preview' channels for a while as the hardware was getting old and would guru on tv... Their breakout product, lightwave, is still being made/sold!

https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/article/going-viral-growing-audiences/

Many careers have been made because a photographer or videographer just happened to stumble upon a major event as it unfolded, and capture it for all to see. The chances of this happening, however, are few and far between – many professionals have gone a lifetime without such luck. But, not so for filmmaker Aristomenis (“Meni”) Tsirbas, who has captured several OMG moments, including a roller-coaster as it derails, a helicopter getting sucked up into a tornado, a close-up UFO encounter, a glimpse of a secret prototype vehicle in flight, and a near miss as two jets almost collide during takeoff and landing, respectively. And, that’s just for starters.

So, what is the secret to Tsirbas’s uncanny ability of being at the right place at the right time? LightWave 3D.

You see, although the videos are totally believable, they are, in fact, all-CG, created inside a computer. And it is this combination of photorealism and outlandishness that have earned the filmmaker and his viral videos a large following on Tsirbas’s YouTube channel. Tsirbas has been creating the viral videos for the past year in his spare time, using LightWave Version 11.5.

>Yep that's my animation. Just a little dynamics test with some cheesy drama thrown in to keep me interested while learning particles. I'm not too happy with the tornado because the voxel system I used isn't very sophisticated. For my next try I'm going to switch to fluids on a different software package.

>Thanks for all the feedback BTW.

Indeed. However going from memory, some of the Original CGI guys kept copies of the original files and stated that they did design the ships and scenes to great detail. Due to budget and time constraints, in order to speed up the rendering of each frame, they'd only have to switch off the effects, lighting and other details to speed up the process, thus provide enough detail to look decent for the TV format of the time, but also still retaining all the detail they would need later down the road.

Im guessing that their textures were designed to something like 1024x1024px files, but only they would know. Worst case is they would redo the textures to a higher resolution then replace them in the scenes.

All the animations and harder stuff would have already been done. Adding some extra particle effects here and there (if they weren't already done) also wouldn't really break the bank.

As for Lightwave, it's not dead: https://www.lightwave3d.com

Even if it was, there's plugins and add-ons to other programs like 3D Studio and Maya that allow you to import..... But obviously importing older Lightwave files into newer and different programs like Maya would no doubt not be a perfect transition.

Either way, improving the CGI of DS9 isn't like having to do everything from scratch.

> In the late 80's early 90's, the Mac was the platform for creatives.

"Creative" was an over vague word choice on my choice.

> Photoshop debuted on the Mac exclusively.

While Photoshop may have started on a Mac. It really didn't achieve the total market dominance it did until very late in the '90s.

> If you were doing serious desktop publishing in the 80's to early 90's, you were doing it on a Mac.

Agree, I'd neglected the DTP niche, and during the early 90's that market had definitely coalesced around the Mac. However, there was a lot more competition in the late '80s, including (oddly enough) from the Atari ST.

> The Mac hardware also was aimed at creatives.

This is an interesting statement? And again, creatives is an over-vague word, but there is a lot of work that could not be done on a Mac in the 80's and early 90's:

• 3D Modeling? Not on a Mac, see Lightwave 3D on the Amiga.
• Non-linear Video Editing? Not on a Mac, see VideoToaster
• Music/Audio work - Again, Amiga with it's Paula chip. Atari ST line also very popular due to in-build MIDI Ports, apparently there are still studio owners that keep them.
• Hi Color Graphics - Amiga again. The best a Mac II could do, and at great cost, was 256 color modes, whereas EVERY could do very impressive color modes with software like Deluxe Paint, Photogenics to match.

On fronts like these, the Mac didn't really catch up until we started seeing the Centris and Quadra line, and those really didn't come down in cost until probably '93 or '94.

And I don't mean this in a theoretical sense. Very real work was performed on Amigas in this area. Most notable of all, I still think, is Babylon 5's CGI scenes.

Additionally, I also want to submit Andy Warhol painting on the Amiga. This was in 1985, when Macs were still Black and White.

Movies like Toy Story and Kung Fu Panda (computer animation films) are done 100% on computer but there is obviously a digital camera, of which works exactly the same as a traditional camera. You can animate the camera for camera moves. Reference Picture In the reference picture, the left picture is what the camera is seeing. The bottom picture is a scene, which you can see where the camera is as well as the lighting, and models. (right picture is a full render)

>How high-poly do the models have to be?

I'd actually prefer low-medium poly for the game.

>Do you have drawings/designs developed that can be used for modeling?

I am an awful artist, but I can provide some examples of the aesthetic I'm looking for.

>How detailed do the models have to be?

This is pretty close to what I'm looking for.

>How many animations, if any, will you need?

I'll need a run/walk and attack for all models. I can probably skimp on the hurt animations, but I probably need a death animation.

>Do you know what kind of export file...?

I'm pretty sure a .blend file is fine for Unity.

>When will you need all of these models done?

I honestly don't have a time limit, so I can't give a deadline. Just whenever you finish a model/animation, I'll add it in.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

No, I'm a hobbyist with far more enthusiasm than actual talent -- my only professional jobs were animating a biologically-accurate walk cycle for a physical therapy video and also a little stick figure guy for a cheap local commercial, both done with Maya.

I suck at modeling but have a lot of fun with photoreal shaders. I've been out of the 3D world for a few years now and never made anything of note, but of all the 3D programs I tried, Lightwave was the one I stuck with, and actually purchased once I got a job that let me be not broke anymore.

They've added quite a bit in the areas of rigging and whatnot. I should really upgrade to the latest version. Which happens to be on sale at the moment.

Cuando era muy niño no pensaba en mi adultez. A veces se me hacia chido ser policia, o bombero, pero nunca lo pensaba en serio. Era una realidad muy lejana.

Ya más grande, como de unos 12 años quería hacer películas por computadora. Tenia el lightwave pirata en la casa. Era de las primeras versiones y aun así logre medio entenderle para hacer animaciones 3D con modelos de naves espaciales que ya venian incluidas.

Me quise meter a estudiar diseño grafico, pensando que ese seria el camino a seguir... pero no pasé el examen de admision y ahora soy programador.