Amiga Video Toaster / Flyer FAQs
  Amiga VT/F LightWave
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      LightWave 3.1 and 3.5 Compatibility Issues

Product: Lightwave

Platforms: Amiga

Problem: Scenes or objects cannot be interchanged between LightWave 3.1 and 3.5.

The Scene file format and the Object file format used in 3.1 and earlier versions of Lightwave differ from those used in later versions of LightWave. 3.5 and later LightWave versions can load the earlier object types. Objects created in 3.5 or later must be converted to be used in 3.1. If you load a 3.5 object into 3.1 certain surface parameters will disappear: "tile" settings for cylindrical and spherical image-maps, and many of the number settings for Fractal Noise, Marble, Wood and Underwater textures. There is a utility for converting 3.5 objects to 3.1 on the BBS and FTP sites, objfxr.lha. No scene file convertor is available, so users should not attempt to use 3.5 or later version scene files in 3.1 or earlier LightWave.

The user may use scenes created in LightWave 3.1 or earlier revisions in 3.5 and up, but care must be taken. The primary problem that may be encountered when using scenes created in early versions of LightWave in 3.5 and up, is that the scene may lack a default light. This caused LightWave 3.5 to crash after loading such a scene, and doing just a few operations. However, if you load the scene, immediately save the scene, then quit and restart LightWave 3.5, and reload the scene, the scene will work from that point on, and you should not experience a crash.

Wavemaker and some other third party scene creators have versions that create 3.1 compatible scenes, and these must be handled the same way. Users of such versions of these programs may wish to contact the publisher of their software for an update.