LightWave 3D Software provides Award-Winning, Production-Proven VFX and Animation Tools for Artists.
LightWave 3D combines a state-of-the-art renderer with powerful, intuitive modeling, and animation tools. Tools that may cost extra in other professional 3D applications are part of the product package, including 999 free cross-platform render nodes, support for Windows and Mac UB 64 and 32-bit operating systems, free technical support and more. LightWave is enjoyed worldwide, as a complete 3D production solution for feature film and television visual effects, broadcast design, print graphics, visualization, game development, and Web. LightWave is responsible for more artists winning Emmy Awards than any other 3D application.
Major Studios and Post-Production Houses spend years assembling their custom pipelines, often at great expense and requiring large numbers of technical staff to maintain. Those complex pipelines are perfect for companies with hundreds of employees, but can be overkill for the majority of studios around the world with 40 employees or less.
LightWave fits seamlessly into large multi-software pipelines - with its powerful interchange tools including FBX, ZBrush GoZ, Collada, Unity Game Engine Support, and Autodesk Geometry Cache. Unlike other software packages, LightWave offers artists and studios a complete end-to-end solution right out of the box. Robust polygonal and subdivision surface modeling, unique. Interchangeable layered and nodal texturing, along with powerful dedicated node material shaders. Powerful animation and rigging tools. Eye-popping volumetric and dynamic effects systems. A production proven, award-winning Global Illumination render engine - built in. You decide what workflow or pipeline suits you best and LightWave puts all of the tools in your hands.
LightWave has been the choice of countless studios and artists for over 20 years. Chances are LightWave was used to create many of your favorite films, television programs, and games. Download the LightWave 3D trial today and see why so many artists depend on LightWave to get their work done, on time, on budget, and with amazing render quality - it's all in the box!
Modeling
LightWave set the standard for polygonal, subdivision surface modeling a decade before many of the other 3D software packages included even basic polygonal modeling tools. While others were basing their pipelines on clunky spline-patching workflows, LightWave artists were quickly and efficiently modeling with smooth subdivision surfaces interactively. LightWave continues to offer powerful, rock-solid modeling tools and the latest versions of LightWave raise the bar with increased interactivity and ease of use.
Surfacing
LightWave offers two surfacing systems to the artist. A fast, simple to use layer-based system, and a very flexible and powerful nodal system. Each offer different workflows to suit the artist - for quick results, the layered system is perfect for fast visualization and concept design. For those who like to dig deep, the nodal system offers ultimate creative freedom.
These systems can be used independently of each other, but unique to LightWave is the ability to mix them together. You can use the layered surfacing to achieve results quickly, then choose any of the surface properties to use in a nodal context. This allows you to create extremely complex results very quickly. The node system also includes easy to use physically accurate material shaders for glass, metal, skin and carpaint, allowing you to achieve photoreal results quickly.
Rigging
The rigging tools in LightWave are fast and flexible and again offer artists choices in workflow. LightWave pioneered a very powerful and easy to set up automatic joint influence falloff system. This means that you can either choose to setup industry standard weight maps for your characters and rigged geometry or you can elect to bypass that often time-consuming weight mapping process for quick visualization and concept design animation workflows by using the automatic joint falloff that is built in to LightWave's animation system. This allows you to quickly and easily swap out geometry in rigs with zero weight map hassles. But you always have the choice to work with weight maps for that added control when your project requires it.
Animation
LightWave includes powerful procedural, nodal, and keyframe animation tools. An easy to use and customizable keyframe graph editor allows you to quickly place and edit keys, time scale, filter, and even manipulate your animations with expressions. Bake your animations per keyframe or with frame stepping and create motion clips to blend together within the non-linear motion mixer. You can even bake animations to Autodesk geometry cache or industry standard MDD files to simplify the scene for rendering or for export to other animation packages.
For facial animation LightWave includes an efficient blend-shape system called Endomorphs which includes all of your morph targets within your base object. Endomorphs can even be sculpted in ZBrush using the new ZBrush GoZ interchange tools included in LightWave.