CGenie - Professional CG Textures

The 'personal' touch

How users rated LightWave on the statement
"The support for this software is excellent"

CGenie: One of the themes that came from the survey was around the NewTek support, customer management and indeed respect from your users. Your results were consistently strong when it came to questions about what people thought about NewTek, what they thought of the support and so on. One of the weaker areas was probably around the feature sets in each upgrade. Now that you've announced a complete rewrite of the complete software, do you reckon this'll improve this score even more?

Jay: First of all, the LightWave v9 series has seen some rather impressive work - I could go through the whole list, but there isn't room for that. I am most proud of our completely rebuilt global illumination system; our node-based materials system; our fast photo-realistic motion blur; and, most important, our open beta process. LightWave is as vibrant now as it has ever been.

Regarding the future, I am very positive. As I write this, we have just released the Q1 version of LightWave CORE - on schedule. LightWave CORE is completely new - a next generation architecture. We have spent a couple of years in the design of this architecture. It is multi-platform, multi-processor aware and multi-threaded. We leverage the GPU where possible (GPU Sub-division surfaces are the first example of that), and with our complete access SDK, third-party vendors will be able to take CORE far beyond its original deliverables. The intention with LightWave CORE is to make it as powerful as possible, leveraging all of the great technology that we can, while innovating with new and easier ways to be a 3D artist. We also designed LightWave CORE to honor its roots. The workflows are inspired by the best in LightWave. In terms of tools, if you know how to use LightWave, then LightWave CORE^TM will be very familiar to you, even if the screen appearance is graphically different. The tools that our customers like still work the same way, and while some tool locations might be better organized, 3D artists can always create a preference to match the way that they prefer to work.

Introducing a subscription package

CGenie: You've recently announced your hardCORE subscription package for users - what was the motivation for developing this membership scheme?

Jay: HardCORE membership is an evolution of the open beta process that we originated during the LightWave v9 development cycle. What we are really doing with the HardCORE membership is changing the rules of the game. With HardCORE, we are creating a truly collaborative development process. This is a shift away from the monolithic methods employed by others in the marketplace where all the user community can contribute is bug report. HardCORE is offering a collaborative process to our customers - that helps them feel a true sense of ownership, both to the process and to the product itself. Already, HardCORE members have been influential in the development of the product, and that will only continue to increase.

HardCORE offers 3D artists year-long access to any amount of builds that will occur during that period. When we ship the final LightWave CORE product, HardCORE members will receive it as well. This first year is going to be very exciting for all involved, and that clock has now started ticking with the Q1 release.

Pricing plans

How users rated LightWave on the statement
"I feel that the upgrades are good value for money"

CGenie: Value for money was another very strong result for LightWave. The users seemed to really feel they are getting value for money in your product offering - with the general economic climate at present was there a temptation to raise the price significantly for LightWave CORE?

Jay: The MSRP when we ship the final version of LightWave CORE will be US$1,495, with upgrades starting at US$695. The new MSRP reflects the undeniable value that we have already demonstrated with LightWave - even at this new price, it is still a great value.

We have been seeing record sales numbers, especially since the announcement of LightWave CORE so it appears that we are doing something right.

Killer features

CGenie: With regards to CORE, you've got several enticing previews on your site that really showcase the benefits over previous versions of LightWave. However, what would you consider are the stand-out features that it has over competitors in the market - are there any unique features that users of other packages should be looking enviously at?

Jay: It is a little early to answer that question, as all of our features are still embryonic at this point. I think that they would find our CORE architecture a point of envy.

Right time to rebuild

CGenie: It's a fair old time since the first incarnation of LightWave 3D (1994?) and some would say this was what the original programmers were wanting to achieve eight years ago - what made you think that now was the right time to rebuild?

NewTek customers wanted LightWave to leverage all of these modern marvels, and have another incredible two decades, so it was time to re-invent the product. Not rewrite, but rather to completely re-encode its core DNA.

Jay: LightWave 3D was first delivered as a component of NewTek's Video Toaster on the Amiga, in October of 1990. 1994 was the first year that LightWave was "decoupled" from the Video Toaster and debuted on the Windows platform, followed soon after on the Apple Macintosh.

When LightWave debuted in 1990, so much of the computer graphics world was in its infancy. There were no rules, just really expensive software running on really expensive machines. NewTek changed that landscape in 1990 with a professional 3D product at a break-through price point.

As for why we did this now, the answer is really simple: it was time. Today, we have affordable, incredible power. It's hard to find a new computer without at least two processor cores. Terabyte drives are available for a couple of hundred dollars. Today's cost-effective game cards easily outperform the CRAY supercomputers that were favored for 3D rendering back when we started our development. It is a completely different world today that even Moore's Law did not completely predict. It has been seven or eight years since a professional 3D application has utilized the newest technologies in its core architecture. NewTek customers wanted LightWave to leverage all of these modern marvels, and have another incredible two decades, so it was time to re-invent the product. Not rewrite, but rather to completely re-encode its core DNA.

Open architecture

CGenie: You've got what seems to be a hugely open architecture - you mention the SDK available being exactly the same as used by your own engineers. This is a fantastic amount of power to offer third-party developers, a concern would be that the perceived stability of your application could be dependent on the quality of other developers. Do you have safeguards built into the core application? (pun intended!) Would it be possible, for instance, for me to install a plugin that modifies my base install of LightWave so a reinstall is needed to fix, or is the core application protected?

Jay: There are still safeguards, and layers to the SDK, but we really believe in being as open as possible. If there is a plugin that really messes with the application then I would suggest that it be removed immediately. There is no substitute for safe computing!

CGenie: One of the themes I'm picking up from the rebuild is a strong shift towards industry standard formats - whether it's COLLADA for import/export, CSS for UI, Python scripting or the Qt toolkit, I get the impression LightWave is positioning itself on some fairly stable shoulders. Is this a deliberate plan?

Jay: Our base format is a modified COLLADA format. There are several formats that we use for importing and exporting. We chose stable, proven standards to start with, it just made sense to leverage what we could to build a great application platform.

Key NewTek strengths

CGenie: Looking beyond the initial release of CORE and its features, what do you feel is the biggest advantage for NewTek - is it the flexibility of design, the speed of deployment or the ease of development?

Today, with this new architecture, we can create entirely new applications in a matter of several months. This gives NewTek a tremendous advantage as we move forward.

Jay: In our case, all of the above really. We started off the whole CORE project with some simple questions: what do we want to do? What do our customers want to do? What is our vision for the technological landscape for the next three years? Five years? Decade? We wanted to discover how we could make CORE workflows truly helpful to our customers. We spent a lot of time studying people, machines, markets, methodologies and history. All of these thoughts and experiences went into creating CORE. And now, we are at the beginning of not only an initial implementation, but also the beginning of 64-bit operating systems, commonplace multiple processors, multi-threading, GPU computing and more.

We ensured that we had a solid design before we ever began with a line of code. With this new architecture, we can do things so much faster than ever before. Throughout the LightWave v9 development cycle we began to apply the development principles for CORE into the original architecture as much as it allowed. As we moved through the cycle, more and more features happened more quickly, and the product became more stable than ever. Today, with this new architecture, we can create entirely new applications in a matter of several months. This gives NewTek a tremendous advantage as we move forward.

Developing a cutting-edge product is never easy, but it is much easier when you begin with logical structures. Once you hit a certain threshold, things start happening rather quickly.

All of this adds up to position NewTek LightWave CORE as the best choice for 3D animation.

CGenie: Thanks very much for your time, and keep up the great work of the new breed of LightWave!

Jay: Thank you for the opportunity! I look forward to seeing the next survey. Best of luck!

Visit the NewTek site to find out more about LightWave CORE.