When time is short and the job impossible, LightWave 2018 simply delivers. Workflow enhancements and powerful new tools solve your animation and design challenges and streamline your creative process. Direct and robust, LightWave 2018 serves the artist first, for visual effects, motion graphics, game development, architectural visualization, product design and advertising.
LightWave 2018 introduces an all-new physically based rendering, shading and lighting architecture for greater realism and accuracy.
LightWave 2018 includes an expanded workflow for render and light buffers that simplifies compositing and offers more flexibility. The system also features multi-layered EXR saving.
Using the new volumetric engine and primitives, you can specify physically based properties for your clouds and fog. These include, Scattering, Absorption, and emission parameters, along with the use of powerful node networks to control all parameters. Additionally there is support for the OpenVDB datasets that can be created from other applications.
The new lighting architecture offers physical lights that can be optionally visible to the camera. Mesh lights allow any geometry to become a physical light source, and improved loading of IES web files provide the ability to better match the intensity of real manufactured lights.
The Surface Editor has been overhauled for the new shading system with powerful node-based materials under the hood that are presented with a familiar interface.
Create stunning virtual reality content using the new VR Camera. Featuring both cylindrical and spherical modes, ideal for creating stereo 360-degree renders and animations for VR applications. May also be used for creating your own HDRI maps using the new visible lights in LightWave 2018.
Unlocks and simplifies the previously fixed order of operations for Bones, Morphs, Subdivision and Displacements. You can now drag and drop to re-order mesh deformations interactively.
Offers flexible NPR control over material shading and allows gradient-based cel shading, while Edge Rendering can now use any material available in the Surface Editor to shade any line.
FiberFX has been expanded to integrate closely with the new lighting and shading system, and can use any material on the fibers. Fibers are now generated using the new primitive object architecture.
Parametric shapes allow you to create virtual primitive shapes in Layout that can be displaced, surfaced and rendered without needing any geometry.
Allows you to speed up render times using less Global Illumination rays and samples, while cleaning up the resulting noise using the filter instead of increased render settings.
A "Layout View" viewport shows the current camera view from Layout. LightWave 2018 Modeler also adds new fully interactive tools including Lattice, Smoothing, Array and Spline Bridge to speed up your modeling.
• UDIM Support • PBR OpenGL Mode • Per-Object Interpolated / Brute Force • Floating Viewports • Render Presets • Preview Render Pass
• Multi-Selection Editing of Modifiers • Improved Render Progress View • Fixed Autokey Mode • Improved Layer Tools in Modeler • Proportional Scaling in Layout
• Image Viewer RGBA Channel Toggle • Image Viewer / VPR Normalize Display Toggle • Viewport Numeric Readout for Move and Scale • Preset Shelf Improvements
Hardware
Operating System
Hardware
Operating System
Minimum Graphics Card
Minimum Screen Resolution
Storage
All systems require 750MB available hard drive space (excluding content); complete Content library is approximately 3GB.