#LightWave better?
22 messages in this thread
I have some friends that are braging about VideoToaster's Lightwave.
They say it is much better than 3D-Studio. Can somebody please tell
me why they think this is so? What are the pros & cons of each
package??? In the intrest of fair play I will be posting a similar
message in the AMIGA-ARTS area.
Your friends could very well be suffering from Amigainsecurityitis,
which is brought upon by being told time and time again that they are
working on an "unprofessional" platform that is not very well
supported, even by it's parent company, Commodore Business Machines.
The condition can manifest itself by causing symptoms like you
describe: the wholesale denial of any other software (in this case
3DS) to be anywhere near theirs, in terms of quality and
functionability. Actually, I'm a little suprised, 'cause I've seen
less and less of this as time goes on, and very little of it in my
own circle of Amiga users a few years back.
Anyway, lets hope this is a quickly diminishing phenomenon, because
it dosen't do *anyone* any good to spread dis-information around
about a hardware/software solution that they are truly not familiar
with. As far as LightWave is concerned, I have no firsthand experience
with it, but Amiga-oriented friends who deal with it every day tell
me that it is a *very good* 3D program and they are quite satisfied
with it, but I couldn't make a A-B comparison for you — maybe
someone else here with real experience with both can.
One thing that people *have* said, though, is that if it was a
stand-alone product like 3DS, and not bundled with the toaster (known
by some LightWave users as "the World's largest dongle", I'm told),
it might get the support and attention it deserves, much like we
enjoy with 3D Studio. Please note that these views are *not* mine
but have been articulated to me by Amiga/Lightwave users I have
talked to.
I'd like very much to hear an A-B comparison of the two packages from
*anyone* who is qualified to make it. As far as Pros & Cons of 3DS, I
just can't think of ANY _substantial_ "cons" at all. Sure, I'd like
to see a Spline-Patch modeler and selective Ray-Tracing for
reflections and such eventually, but these things, IMHO, would be
just "frosting" on the cake for an *extremely* able-bodied
production-oriented desktop 3D solution.
Does lightwave have a spline-patch modeler? I've heard that the
worst thing about LW (other than the Toaster dongle) is the modeler.
Not *real* sure, Bailey. Don't remember talking about that recently.
Hmmmm…anyone else?
LightWave has a spline patch modeler.
LightWave's Modeler does have a method of using splines and patches,
but only three people in the world know how to use it. 🙂 And as
soon as you move the object into LightWave, it's reduced to polygons,
similar to what happens in 3DS.
Guess I'm one of those three, as I'm sure your reffering to the infamous
"curves do not cross correctly". Your right, it can be extremely frustrating,
as the guys who built the seaQuest sub would attest. And actually, LightWave
doesn't even render splines- they are only used as boundries in the modeler for
patching, which is all ploygons. In fact, the splines are never even used in
Layout at all. BTW, do you know Richard Payne? He works with us over at
seaQuest and asked me to mention that he says hi.
-GT
Yup, I've known Richard for years. Tell him I still have a copy of his
"flaming man" animation on floppy in my vast archives. 🙂
Told Richard today that you still had a copy of his anim, he practically fell
out of his seat. Said he must have done it about 5 or so years ago. BTW, on a
simailar note, I understand that you were writing a DXF conversion utility for
us, and Richard and John Gross asked me to mention how it was comming along.
-GT
Actually, they were/are waiting for some improvements that I promised
to make to our existing DXF converter. If you haven't seen the
standalone InterChange, ask one of the other guys if they have a
copy…
I think Richard has one, so I'll ask tomarrow and let you know.
-GT
Yes, I'm referring to that error message in Modeler. Sometimes
Allen/Stuart's notion of a "user interface" can be extremely
frustrating. Believe it or not, "VideoScape", the first incarnation
of Allen's rendering software, sold for at least 18-24 months in the
early Amiga market *without a model-making editor.* The manual
recommended building objects in profile on graph paper, then entering
the numbers in ASCII using your favorite text editor, performing the
2D to 3D transformation yourself, along with the proper orientation of
the normal as calculated by the first, second and Nth points. Yeesh.
This deficiency fueled the development of the first version of
InterChange, which I wrote to convert Sculpt models to VideoScape
format. At the time, I'd "given up" programming to pursue a writing
career. So maybe it's Allen's fault that I didn't become the next
John Dvorak. 🙂
>>>Yes, I'm referring to that error message in Modeler. Sometimes
Allen/Stuart's notion of a "user interface" can be extremely frustrating.
Tell me about it!!! I was amazed when Richard told me how VideoScape built
models! He said that's how Allen thinks, like a programmer, not an end user.
I would imagine that building something like a simple box would be a real pain
for the average user. (like me) Thank god that NewTek promised us at seaQuest
"A1 Support" concerning tools and interface design for 3.0 LightWave. It's
funny, Allen and Stuart would come down from there little hideaway's in
Northern California to see how we were doing, and we'd always ask for new tools
or better refinement of existing ones, and they would always offer some
complicated "workaround" that was usually more trouble than it was worth, but
NewTek would always step in and make them do it anyway, after all, it only
makes their product better. I'd have to say that 50 to 60 percent of all the
new features in the current LightWave release are there because we asked for
them, many of them being in the modeler too. When I first started working
there I used 3D Studio exclusivley for building models because LightWave's at
the time was so poor. It wasn't until the spline patches came into being and a
few other neat little tools that they switched me over, although I still like
Autodesk's splines better than LigthWave's, However I feel both need to abandon
their current types in favor of B Splines like the kind found in Alias Power
Animator, which hands down has the best modeler around.
-GT
PS; I'll tell Richard you still have his anim..
My long-term plans are to add spline-and-patch support in InterChange
in the next major revision, after the ports coming up in the next few
months are released.
I'm sorry, but I have never used your software before, as LightWave is my first
introduction to the Amiga platform. I've always used 3DS before. Is
InterChange a modeler or a conversion utility? Please excuse my ignorance in
this….
-GT
You not only described my first foray into 3D modeling, John, but also the
reason I bought your first Interchange utility way-back-when! Wow, I'm sure
glad things are a *little* easier to model these days…
-Alan (doesn't take *anything* for granted!)
John,
All this brings to mind your inquiry not too long ago about some standard or
set of rules or parameters to equally test rendering speed, etc. Did you ever
come up with a resolution and/or aliasing parameters, etc. I've had a running
debate with a local video house who's a Toaster dealer who quite frequently
pays me to model in 3DS for use in his Lightwave setup. He keeps telling me I
should buy an Amiga. I tell him I can't afford to slow down that much. While
modeling a highly detailed logo for a project he was doing for HD MotorCompany,
I was rendering the logo in 12 seconds. It was taking his Amiga 12
minutes…seriously. Has anybody come up something like one of Viewpoints
models to benchmark? If the above was a fair comparison, even if they hook
that thing up to nitros oxide, it won't go fast enough. Especially if R3 is 40%
faster yet. For the cost of one of those steroid boxes, I could be well on my
way to an Amiga-lethal render farm.
Roger D.
All of the non-laboratory testing I've ever heard tells me that 3D
Studio is significantly faster than LightWave. Although I've always
had the highest respect for the programming abilities of those at the
Yost Group, I think a good chunk of the speed increase is due to the
hardware: today's 486s versus 030/040s. For comparison, a relatively
straight port of another Amiga-based 3D program called "Imagine"
resulted in vast speed increases once it was running on the PC.
I doubt there could ever be a "standard scene" benchmark that would
satify (read: "seem fair") to every 3D promoter. No matter which
package someone has, to my eyes they're always looking for speed
increases. Each package has different tricks that help it along.
Each package has features that will slow them down to a crawl, too.
Like programming, I think there's always potential for an order of
magnitude improvement in rendering times, based on these "tweaks." If
the "standard scene" doesn't exploit each package's tweaks, then
someone will say it isn't "fair."
John,
From my own observations programming on both the Amiga and the PC, similar
instructions run about the same speed on a 60040 and 80486. C compilers on the
Amiga are real trash and generate code that is half as fast as the 32 bit
compilers on the PC. And of course the 486 is available at twice the clock
speed as the 040 (66 vs 33 MHz). The PC version of Vistapro runs about 4 times
faster on a 486/66 than the Amiga version on a 040/33. Roughly half that 4x is
the processor clock speed (and other design considerations, mainly the 486's
external cache) and the other half the C compiler (Manx 5.1 on the Amiga,
Watcom 9.5 on the PC). Clint has recently changed from Manx C to SAS C on the
Amiga and is getting 25% faster renderings now. So the new Amiga VP3 has
improved from 1/4 to 1/3 the speed of the PC version. I have found that a
60MHz Pentium runs VP3 (a Pentium optimized version) about twice as fast as a
486/66.
I have found these speed differences to be fairly consistant across many 32 bit
programs I have written on both machines. As you noted, other program design
considerations can make a very large difference in execution speeds so this may
not mean anything in the Lightwave vs. 3DS speed issue.
John.
Actually, if you're talking final output quality, Lightwave and 3DSr2
were very similar. They both computed color in 24-bit space and they
both used adaptive super-sampling for antialiasing.
However, the 3DSr3 renderer is so much better than Lightwave that it's
in a completely different league. If output quality is what you're
comparing, there IS NO COMPARISON. You just can't get the edge
quality with super-sampling that you can with an analytical
A-buffered renderer. Plus, you'll have color posterization
(quantization) problems in dark areas with Lightwave… especially
if you attempt to do gamma correction.
To be perfectly honest, we have objective proof that the 3DSr3
renderer is even better than the ALIAS renderer, which also uses
adaptive super-sampling. Gene Bodio currently has both systems in
his studio and he's sending the ALIAS system back because it's so
slow and the quality is so bad.
Edge and color quality is something we made sure in 3DSr3 was as good
as Renderman. Nobody else except for Wavefront (and Pixar, of
course) in the commercial rendering business can honestly make that
statement.
However, the 3DSr3 renderer is so much better than Lightwave that it's
in a completely different league. If output quality is what you're
comparing, there IS NO COMPARISON. You just can't get the edge
quality with super-sampling that you can with an analytical
A-buffered renderer. Plus, you'll have color posterization
(quantization) problems in dark areas with Lightwave… especially
if you attempt to do gamma correction.
I sure enjoy reading messages like this. You guys are awesome. I love
R3 so far, we got our copy on Monday. Very impressive indeed. I can't
seem to be able to stop using it though……
I'm a 3DS user and I've demoed lightwave and read alot about it. I
know alot more about 3DS than LW, but here goes nothing:
The only features of lightwave that I really care about that are not
in 3DSr2 or 3DSr3 are the "bones" and the displacement mapping. The
bones especially seem really cool.
The worst thing about LW is that it runs on an Amiga. The Amiga isn't
a bad system, but I've noticed that for doing animation, it helps to
have a big, fast, high-resolution, CAD-type display. There are no
cad type displays for the Amiga. Also, the Amiga flickers alot. The
best refresh it ever does is about 60Hz NI, and most of the modes are
interlaced and therefore flicker REALLY REALLY bad. Most PC CAD type
displays are refreshed at 70Hz NI or better. Also, Amigas are still
stuck at 25MHz (though I think 40MHz accelerators are out now) while
PCs are in now in Pentiumland. A 60MHz Pentium should be about five
times faster than the 25MHz 68040 in the A4000 for floating point.
The other bad thing about LW is that it HAS to come bundled with the
Video Toaster. The Toaster is a great piece of hardware/software for
video production, but if you are just into animation, it is just a
big dongle. Also, you cannot put the Toaster into just any amiga,
just the A2000, the A3000 (with modifications), and the A4000. It
will not work with the most cost-effective Amiga, the A1200 with an
accelerator.
Finally, on a related note, unlike 3DS, Lightwave will not even render
without its dongle. So while 3DSr3 has transparent, built-in network
rendering supporting up to 9999 render nodes on one licensed copy of
3DS, you would have to buy a Toaster for every machine you wanted to
render on with LW.
I don't know why Newtek doesn't unbundle LW from the Toaster and sell
it for 2/3 the price of the Toaster. They could use a normal dongle
like everybody else and it would work on the A1200. BTW, the Toaster
costs about $2300, so it is cheaper than 3DS. But if you are not
already into Amiga but already have a 486 PC, then you are certainly
better off with 3DS.
Just from my personal observations, about an equal number of people
I've run across on the net who have used both alot eventually went
with LW or 3DS.