History
In 1988, Allen Hastings created a rendering and animation program called Videoscape, and his friend Stuart Ferguson created a complementary 3D modeling program called Modeler, both sold by Aegis Software. NewTek planned to incorporate Videoscape and Modeler into its video editing suite, Video Toaster. Originally intended to be called "NewTek 3D Animation System for the Amiga", Hastings later came up with the name "LightWave 3D", inspired by two contemporary high-end 3D packages: Intelligent Light and Wavefront. In 1990, the Video Toaster suite was released, incorporating LightWave 3D, and running on the Commodore Amiga computer.
LightWave 3D has been available as a standalone application since 1994, and version 9.3 runs on both Mac OS X and Windows platforms. Starting with the release of version 9.3, the Mac OS X version has been updated to be a Universal Binary.
The last known standalone revision for the Amiga was Lightwave 5.0, released in 1995. Shortly after the release of the first PC version, NewTek discontinued the Amiga version, citing the platform's uncertain future.
LightWave was used to create special effects for the Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager, Space: Above and Beyond and seaQuest DSV science fiction television series; the program was also utilized in the production of Titanic as well as the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series, Sin City, Star Trek, 300 and Star Wars movies. The short film 405 was produced by two artists from their homes using Lightwave. In the Finnish Star Trek parody Star Wreck - In the Pirkinning, most of the visual effects were done in LightWave by Finnish filmmaker Samuli Torsonnen, who produced the VFX work for the feature film Iron Sky. The film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was made entirely in Lightwave 6 and messiah:Studio.
In 2007, the first feature film to be 3d animated completely by one person without the typical legion of animators made its debut, Flatland the Film by Ladd Ehlinger Jr. It was animated entirely in Lightwave 3D 7.5 and 8.0.
In its ninth version, the market for LightWave ranges from hobbyists to high-end deployment in video games, television and cinema. NewTek shipped a 64-bit version of LightWave 3D as part of the fifth free update of LightWave 3D 8, and was featured in a keynote speech by Bill Gates at WinHEC 2005.
On Feb 4 2009, NewTek announced "LightWave CORE" its next-generation 3D application via a streamed live presentation to 3D artists around the world. It features a highly customizable and modernized user interface, Python scripting integration that offers realtime code and view previews, an updated file format based on the industry standard Collada format, substantial revisions to its modeling technologies and a realtime iterative viewport renderer. It will also be the first Lightwave product to be available on the Linux operating system. CORE was eventually canceled as a standalone product and NewTek announced that the CORE advancements would become part of the ongoing LightWave platform, starting with LightWave 10.
On February 20, 2012 NewTek began shipping LightWave 11 Software, the latest version of its professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software. LightWave 11 incorporates many new features, such as instancing, flocking and fracturing tools, flexible Bullet Dynamics, Pixologic Zbrush support, and more. LightWave 11 is used for all genres of 3D content creation-from film and broadcast visual effects production, to architectural visualization, and game design.
Read more about this topic: LightWave 3D
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