FiberFX
Polygonal fiber modeler suitable for creating hair, fur and feathers, and consists of five plugins:
- Fiber Modeler - Creates Polygonal Fiber models, fat hair, feathers, triangle strips
- Strand Tool - Modeler tool to adjust guide chains using Inverse Kinematics
- Strand Maker - Modeler plug-in to create fiber strands with standard tools.
- Fiber Filter - Pixel filter renders two point polygon strands.
- Fiber Node Handler - Nodal interface for control.
FiberFX Highlights:
- Interactive fiber styling and modeling
- Volumetric shadows
- Support of fiber rendering in reflection and refraction
- Creates UV mapped polygonal fibers
- Fast smooth pixel filter fiber rendering
- Animate with LightWave dynamics and collisions
- Unlimited ScreamerNet support
- Nodal Handler
- Area and linear light support
- Full volumetric renderer
- Volumetric instancing to allow for tens of thousands of instances and millions of rendered polygons per instance
- Save and Load functions and buttons for surface-based fiber settings in the Strand Modeler. This allows users to save fiber settings for re-use
- Support for hair and fur on sub-d meshes
- Swirl function to produce more of a twisting effect of the strands
- "Headless" strand scan does not require single point polygon to be present in strand to define start of strand. Useful in imported hair models
- Evaluated vparm color in interface for preview of fibers
- Per pixel fiber coloring
- Popup control for interpolated or per pixel color.
- Load and save for button state
- Faster and more robust voxel/ray clipper
Enhanced IK and Animation Systems
New IK Calculation Options for Improved Performance
LightWave now has several options that allow the user to control the basis for IK calculation. These options provide improved performance for tuning the desired solution for each animation movement. Options are:
- Base on First Keyframe - Calculate from the first keyframe to the current frame
- Base on Most Recent Keyframe - Calculate from most recent keyframe to the current frame
- Base on Current Time - Calculate based on the channel values for the current time.
- Base on Frame - Select an initial frame to calculate from. Value can be enveloped
New Bone Type - Joints
Bones can now be either LightWave's traditional z-axis bones or they can be joints, which operate in a manner similar to the joint-based metaphor found in many other programs, while still preserving the strengths of the traditional LightWave bones. This allows animators familiar with other systems easy entry into animating with LightWave, and will improve animation I/O capabilities in the future.
Joint-based animation and deformation control allows for a "stretchy bones" effect with considerable control for the user. A more organic and natural motion effect for shoulder and neck movements can be achieved, for example, or a more exaggerated effect for cartoon-type characters. Even zero-length bones (e.g. isolated joints) can cause deformation (activate them and turn off Multiply Strength by Rest Length).
Support for Nulls in IK Chains
Nulls are now allowed in the bone hierarchy. This contributes to better inter-application integration and data exchange, as well as improving the rigging possibilities within LightWave.
New Objective Options for IK
Alternative objectives can now be set for IK; this control is right below the Goal Object control on the Motion Options Panel/ IK and Modifiers Tab.
Go To Goal
The default is to go to the goal (which is the classic behavior of LightWave IK).
The second option is to solve so that the item points at the goal. The item's Z axis is used as the pointer.
Pole Vector is the third IK objective, listed as "YZ Plane through Goal" in the options. LWItemInfo, commands, and LScript have been updated to include the setting. IK GUI formerly only allowed objects to be used as goals; the selection has now been expanded to include all items, but operation with anything other than an object will produce unpredictable results at this time.
Pole Item
A Pole item selector has been added to the item Motion Options panel, just below Target Item Selector. The Pole item complements the target item to define the orientation of an item. For use in conjunction with the Pole item, an "Align to Pole" option has been added as a controller setting for heading, pitch, and bank, on the Controllers and Limits Tab of the Motion Options panel.
IK/FK Blending
Controls are available to apply IK/FK blending per bone and to chains. Blending can be enveloped over the course of the animation.
Soft IK
Soft IK has been added to the standard bone chain setup, with support added to the SDK/LScript as well. Essentially, Soft IK dampens the IK near the maximum extension of the joint, to help prevent the infamous "IK pop". LightWave is the only 3D application to offer this out-of-the-box. Other applications require the user to code or script this function for IK.
IK Control of Position and Scale
In Layout, position and scale can now be controlled by IK, and have limits applied. Controls have been added to the motion panel for position and scale controllers.
Animation of IK Goal Strength
Goal Strength for an IK goal can be animated, with multiple goals allowed for an IK chain; this means the user can vary the importance of a particular goal during the course of the shot.
IK System GUI/Workflow Enhancements
- Bone Gizmo size is now independent of length
- Preference controls for sizing icons and handles are now present as a tab in the Display Options tab on the Preference panel. Size in pixels, a control to adjust bone icons to a percentage of this base setting is available per bone, on the Bone Properties Panel
- Fulltime IK is now on by default
Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation
Multithreading for some of the mesh deformation evaluations has been added in Layout to provide an increase in speed. The control toggle is located in the General tab of the Preferences to enable/disable the feature. The multithreading will use however many cores you have.
The multithreading only happens in Layout for interactive work, not when rendering. Currently the following parts of the mesh evaluation have been multithreaded:
- Morphing
- Bone deformation
- Motion (application of item move/rotate/scale to mesh)
Improved Morph Data Handling
In v9.5 MorphTarget values have been converted to use object identifiers instead of indexes. This change requires incrementing the revision of the scene file format to version 5.
All New Lighting System
New Light API
The lighting system is now a plugin API, the new Light Plugin Class header has been moved to the public SDK and is now available. Custom light plug-in user interfaces now appear in the Basic tab of the Light Properties panel.
IES Lights
The Light Properties panel now has a button to load IES light files and displays a thumbnail preview of the luminaire with other information and controls. In addition, there is an IES Info panel. The "IES Info" button below the thumbnail luminaire preview opens the panel. The panel shows the description from the IES file, a gonio photometric graph, and detailed text info on IES file.
New Dome Light
User selectable sized dome lights are now available in the Light Properties Panel.
Enhanced Area and Linear Lights
Area lights are now aware of being called for sampled rays. The area and linear light quality have been improved by generating one new random number for each light sample. The maximum area/linear light quality limit of five has been lifted.
Renderer Improvements
Global Illumination
Faster Sampling System
The Sampling system has been completely revised, providing for up to two times speed improvements in some GI operations, plus some additional improvements and optimizations.
Improved GI Quality
Changes to the interpolated radiosity modes improve the render quality, including extending interpolation to the first recursion level. Shadowed areas of radiosity are slightly darker and better defined, and corner noise is significantly controlled.
Improved GI Speed
A variety of optimizations have been implemented to make all radiosity rendering modes faster in v9.5. Many scenes will render up to or better than three times faster over previous versions of LightWave 3D.
Enhanced Support for Transparency in Final Gather
In the Final Gather radiosity mode, light can now pass through a transparent surface even if Directional Rays is disabled.
New GI Controls to Customize the Render
Secondary Bounce Samples allow control over how many samples are used to interpolate secondary bounce radiosity, which has proven effective in image quality improvement, particularly for reducing corner noise.
This value controls the maximum distance in pixels between interpolated radiosity samples. The value should be fairly large (100 pixels or more) to speed up rendering. Large values can also cut down on visible noise in large flat areas of the scene.
A new text entry field has been added to the Render tab of the Render Globals panel named Ray Precision. This floating point value provides for the adjustment of the intersection precision of the ray tracer. The higher the numbers mean greater precision.
- The default of 6 represents 1.0E-6.
- A value of 0 disables ray trace precision entirely. This setting works fine in most scenes
Disk-Based GI Cache
A new disk-based GI Cache System has been implemented which provides the ability to pre-render the cache and apply the solution when doing the full scene render – either locally or across a render farm. ScreamerNet is aware of the caching system and will use it at render time if the user has "baked" a cache for use.
The standard GI Cache allows the user to render fly-through type animation, where only the camera moves.
The Animated GI Cache allows moving objects as well as the camera.
Wireframe Rendering
Implemented wire frame rendering mode to the ray traced camera modes.
Stereoscopic Rendering for New Cameras
The Perspective Camera and other new cameras can now render using the stereoscopic option, formerly reserved to the Classic Camera.
Enhanced Integration Capabilities
Collada and FBX I/O
Valkyrie.p is NewTek's new import/export functionality for LightWave 3D. This file contains four new plug-ins that will show up in Layout and Modeler, in Windows 32- and 64-bit, and UB. Import and export of Collada and FBX scenes is provided, as well as import/export of Collada objects. Meshes, materials and animation information are supported for FBX and Collada. Import is transparent using the standard Load Scene and Load Object commands, and export options are made available on the Export menu.
New OBJ I/O
A new, highly optimized OBJ I/O plugin has been built from the ground up. Supports:
- Geometry
- Materials
- Texture Maps
- Bump Maps
- Continuous and Discontinuous UVs
- Vertex Normals
- Groups
- Shading Groups
- Export UV Maps for Projection Types: PLANAR, CYLINDRICAL, SPHERICAL, CUBIC, FRONT
- Points and Lines
Node Editor Enhancements
Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions
A number of Node shaders and materials have an option in the Advanced Tab for interpolated Soft Reflections and Refractions. This is a pre-process, similar to that engaged for other speed improvements in the Nodes, for blurred reflections/refractions. process.
Support for new Light API Functions
New Light API illumination functions have been implemented for all Nodal shaders and materials, which substantially enhance efficiency.
Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
Added "OrenNayar" shading model toggle button for conductor, delta, sigma and sigma2 materials that provides the ability to select between the slower Oren-Nayar model and the faster Lambert model.
Enhanced SSS
Shaders New SSS shader components have been implemented.
Optimizations for Materials and Shaders
A variety of enhancements have been achieved to improve the speed and efficiency of the material and shader nodes.
Modeler
Symmetry Tolerance
Improved select loop for vertex and edge loops
Unify Normals
Smooth UVs
A general Smooth UVs tool has been implemented. Smooth UVs operates in Points mode on the user selected points, and applies an algorithm similar to 3D mesh smoothing to the 2D UV map chart data. The tool smoothes the 2D geometry in an objective fashion without considering how it maps to 3D space. Texture distortion/stretching is not taken into account and the results don't necessarily result in more optimal cases from that standpoint, though the 2D geometry will be made cleaner and this can be used to untangle areas and make tight areas wider and so on.
SDK and LScript Improvements
SDK Support for New Light System
Full support for the new Light System additions and capabilities is included in the SDK. Third parties can access and control the new light types and lighting capabilities in LightWave, as well as add new light types and capabilities. A wide variety of capabilities have been added for allowing custom lighting to affect the render pipeline, including shadowing, occlusion, and volumetrics.
SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
SDK access to the new bake frame and bake scene render commands, has been added, as well as support for querying the basic settings on the GI panel.
SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
- Added documentation for commands for position and scale motion controllers
- Added min and max position and scale limit record commands
- Added the new position and scale controller commands to LScript
Plugins Can Determine Position in Motion/Deformation Evaluation
Added the Layout commands ApplyServerByItemID(), "PositionServerByItemID". Allows plug-ins appear in a certain position for motion/deformation evaluation. Added the ApplyServerByItemID() and PositionServerByItemID() commands to LScript.
Set and Get a Layer Name from Layout via SDK and LScript
Implemented new command "Rename Layer" in Layout.
Modified Scene Flag is now detectable via SDK
The Modified Scene Flag is now visible to the SDK, so that plugins know when a scene has been modified.
Set surface properties through the Surface Global
Surface properties can be set via the SurfaceFuncs Global. The capabilities have also been added to LScript.
Master event notifications for the List Management functions
Added discrete Master event notifications for the List Management functions that alter internal list orders.
Mouse Wheel Event Support
Added mouse wheel event support to the toolkit's basic mouse input, and to the LWPanels interface.
UI and Workflow Enhancements
Enhanced Scene Limits
Layout now uses dynamic arrays that begin with smaller allocations than the former defaults, but increment as needed without user intervention. There are still numeric limits to scene items, now based on the ItemID limit of 65535 per item type - objects, lights, and cameras - and of course still subject to the limits of available memory.
Properties Panels Now Independent
Light, Camera, Object and Bone property panels as well as the Motion Options and Render Globals panels can be open, all at one time. All property panels occupy their own window, and contain their own component panes. This makes it possible for each panel to be open and positioned on the user's screen at the same time as every other panel. In addition, panels remember their locations individually, and all adhere to the "tab" action of hiding/showing. Panels are also cognizant of selection changes, and will automatically update, where appropriate.
EXIF Metadata Support
The Image Editor sports an "Information" button that will pop up a window that displays EXIF metadata stored within the image file for TIFF and JPEG images. The TIFF and JPEG Image Savers have been enhanced to include support for writing EXIF data into rendered files, specifically the render statistics for the image.
OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
The number of GLSL lights that can be previewed in Layout has been increased to 256. The new limit only applies to GLSLShaders mode. The actual number of lights drawn depends on the graphics card and scene complexity.
- Added luminaire shape drawing in OpenGL for the IES lights
- Implemented OpenGL previews for the new spherical and IES light types
New Preference Controls for Icons and Handles
New preference controls for sizing icons and handles are present as a tab in the Display Options tab on the Preference panel. Size is in pixels, and the tab includes the capability of reverting to the old autoscale handling for bones, and toggling between wireframe and shaded drawing of bones and joints.
Image Viewer Consolidation
The floating point Image Viewer is now the default. The floating point Image Viewer now saves both integer and floating point formats. The Image Viewer blend slider now updates interactively.
Render Globals Panel Revised
- Changed the Render Globals panel so that it is all tabbed
- Added a new General tab to Render Globals
- Removed the Mask tab and moved its buttons to the Output tab
- Improve alignment and positioning of the buttons and text on the Render Globals panel
LW_ColrPikr –Expanded to 40000 Kelvins
Expanded Kelvin scale in LightWave color picker to 40000K.
Graph Editor
Enhanced Path Display in Tree Pane
“Auto-fit" feature added to Tree Pane columns so they will automatically adjust their widths to their values. This was specifically added for the Graph Editor trees. The pipeline for handling Channel and Channel Group names has been widened from 100 characters to 512 characters, from object load to the Graph Editor interface.
Audio Waveform in the Graph
Provides the ability to make the audio waveform of an audio clip visible in the background of the Graph Editor.
Scene Editor – Mouse Wheel Support
Scene Editor supports vertical mouse wheel for scrollbars, item list, surface list, channel list, dope sheet view, and property view.
Scene Information Panel
Last GI Time and Last Frame Render Time have been added to Layout's Scene Information panel.
Node Editor Connecting Line Options
The Node Editor also has an update to its line type selection for connecting nodes. You can choose either straight or square line connections.
Feedback Agent
The Feedback Agent will help users to provide the development team with information about issues they encounter. A log can be created and emailed to the NewTek bug reporting system. Some notes for usage:
- Edit the default name to include a description of the problem
- Add steps to duplicate the problem
- Attach the content with which the problem was encountered
