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Special Lightwave promo


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https://www.lightwave3d.com/crossgrade_promo/

 

Current owners of ANY LightWave Version - promotion upgrade to 2015 - $395
Current Charter/Post charter - promotion upgrade to 2015 - $295

this gets everyone up to 2015. From this point forward, upgrades are $295. Fall behind, and it's $795

Current pricing of LightWave 2015 new license is $995. Current promotion of a cross-grade makes that $695

Once this promotion has gone away. Upgrades go back to standard $495 for regular and Post Charter users, and $395 for Charter. Full license is $995, no cross-grade promotion.

Once 2016 is available - Full License is $1195. Stay current - and your upgrade is $295. Fall behind and it's $795.

Charter/Post Charter benefit is not going away - the benefit will manifest through special deals just for those members past 2016.

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https://www.lightwave3d.com/crossgrade_promo/

 

Current owners of ANY LightWave Version - promotion upgrade to 2015 - $395

Current Charter/Post charter - promotion upgrade to 2015 - $295

this gets everyone up to 2015. From this point forward, upgrades are $295. Fall behind, and it's $795

Current pricing of LightWave 2015 new license is $995. Current promotion of a cross-grade makes that $695

Once this promotion has gone away. Upgrades go back to standard $495 for regular and Post Charter users, and $395 for Charter. Full license is $995, no cross-grade promotion.

Once 2016 is available - Full License is $1195. Stay current - and your upgrade is $295. Fall behind and it's $795.

Charter/Post Charter benefit is not going away - the benefit will manifest through special deals just for those members past 2016.

What is this Charter/Post Charter business? Never heard of that before.

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What is this Charter/Post Charter business? Never heard of that before.

 

People who got burned with Core got a charter deal to ease the "pain". :D

In short, if you bought into core for $395, then you're a charter member. Bought into core for $495 then you're a post charter member.

 

Anyway I'm past that fiasco. Lightwave has me made rich, extremely rich without slaving for a studio boss. Lots of assets but no debt or mortgage. That's rare for artists these days. So can't complain what lightwave did for me. :D

3dcoat, too, without it, I would still be doing things the old fashioned way. Thanks Andrew! You made my life better :D

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People who got burned with Core got a charter deal to ease the "pain". :D

In short, if you bought into core for $395, then you're a charter member. Bought into core for $495 then you're a post charter member.

 

Anyway I'm past that fiasco. Lightwave has me made rich, extremely rich without slaving for a studio boss. Lots of assets but no debt or mortgage. That's rare for artists these days. So can't complain what lightwave did for me. :D

3dcoat, too, without it, I would still be doing things the old fashioned way. Thanks Andrew! You made my life better :D

Thanks for the explanation. While it's good news to hear that LW is still alive and kicking, and may be close to final app unification/integration, and the crossgrade sounds like a good deal...at the end of the day, for those OUTSIDE the LW community, it falls a bit short. When you go fishing, you cannot talk the fish into the boat. You have to put some worm on the hook and cast it where the fish can see it. Likewise, Rob needs to show some previews or teasers to entice prospective customers, rather than expecting them to just take his word for it. Andrew does this with the Open Beta builds, and apps like Houdini show major new releases months in advance.

 

There are so many good options to choose from now, that you have to do all you can to show prospective customers that investing in your software is the right way to go. I'm looking at eventually weaning myself off of Autodesk products, but Blender and Houdini seem like better options for me personally. So again, Rob really needs to put a worm on the hook, so to speak.

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...nevermind. After looking on the forum, it seems Rob did mention they plan to show some things in the next few weeks. Will be watching to see what shakes out. Hope they have some unification/integration and would like to see some form of smoke/fire simulation system built-in. The Hypervoxels are so old and nearly obsolete. If they had something along those lines, I would probably go ahead and buy-in.

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Hey AbnRanger,

 

Rob has started a new thread with some examples http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?148246-Examples-of-the-New-LightWave-Volumetric-and-PBR-Engine

 

I got burnt with core back in the day so I'm not going to jump on any schemes to lock me into future discounts, I will wait for 2016 to surface then consider getting back on board, I still have my 10.1 install (which I hardly ever use now).

 

Andrew.

Edited by Drocket
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Hey AbnRanger,

 

Rob has started a new thread with some examples http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?148246-Examples-of-the-New-LightWave-Volumetric-and-PBR-Engine

 

I got burnt with core back in the day so I'm not going to jump on any schemes to lock me into future discounts, I will wait for 2016 to surface then consider getting back on board, I still have my 10.1 install (which I hardly ever use now).

 

Andrew.

I hear you. I sold my seat of LW about the same time CORE was revealed. I actually liked what they had planned with CORE and thought they should have stuck with it. But if they have been able to rebuild the architecture of the Classic, then that's OK, too....I just hope they unify the app.

 

The problem I have with their whole pricing scheme is, they have a crossgrade promotion that ends in a day or two and they aren't going to show any 2016 stuff until next week. That just doesn't make any sense to me. If you are going to try and lure people outside the LW community with such an offer, why not give people time to see what you have in the oven, first? I don't want to waste $700 on software I probably won't use much...just because it seems like a good deal. That's what I did with the LW seat I had. Ended up using Max almost all of the time, anyway...because there were so many things I missed in Max, that LW just didn't have.

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I hear you. I sold my seat of LW about the same time CORE was revealed. I actually liked what they had planned with CORE and thought they should have stuck with it. But if they have been able to rebuild the architecture of the Classic, then that's OK, too....I just hope they unify the app.

 

The problem I have with their whole pricing scheme is, they have a crossgrade promotion that ends in a day or two and they aren't going to show any 2016 stuff until next week. That just doesn't make any sense to me. If you are going to try and lure people outside the LW community with such an offer, why not give people time to see what you have in the oven, first? I don't want to waste $700 on software I probably won't use much...just because it seems like a good deal. That's what I did with the LW seat I had. Ended up using Max almost all of the time, anyway...because there were so many things I missed in Max, that LW just didn't have.

 

I no longer pay for software without seeing or prefereably testing it first, CORE taught me that.

 

It is a shame as I like a lot of other users were fully on board for CORE but looking back it was too ambious a plan, they should have gone the route they eventually did go. The trouble I have is how things changed with regards customer feedback when Rob came on board, I get he doesn't want to reveal things until they are ready but he needs to show things to get people to bite. You fishing analogy is a good one. Faith in a product can only get you so far.

 

I hope Lightwave sticks around, I always enjoyed using it.

Edited by Drocket
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Now I'm curious, what was the "Core scheme"?

It was Newteks first (borked) attempt at unifying and redisgning a new lightwave.

 

A lot of the stuff in CORE eventually made its way into the current version of lightwave (I have 10.1 and haven't looked at newer versions but it has gradually been improved).

 

If you google newtek core you will find lots of material on the web.

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I no longer pay for software without seeing or prefereably testing it first, CORE taught me that.

 

It is a shame as I like a lot of other users were fully on board for CORE but looking back it was too ambious a plan, they should have gone the route they eventually did go. The trouble I have is how things changed with regards customer feedback when Rob came on board, I get he doesn't want to reveal things until they are ready but he needs to show things to get people to bite. You fishing analogy is a good one. Faith in a product can only get you so far.

 

I hope Lightwave sticks around, I always enjoyed using it.

I actually liked what they were trying to do with CORE. I just wasn't willing to wait around for 5+yrs for them to build it into a full-featured, rebuilt version of the old. I liked how they had a modifier stack, just like 3ds Max has...that's been one thing that has kept me in Max all this time. Hard to give that up when it's been an integral part of your daily workflow. What I have been saying all along is that LW3DG should have developed BOTH while they were getting CORE on it's feet. split 80% of your development team to working on CORE, and 20% on LW Classic....periodically releasing modest new features and fixes + bundling 3rd party software to keep the LW community invested and outsiders a bit interested.

 

What they should have done was wait to reveal CORE when they were also ready to release LW 10. LW 2015 was a very modest feature release, so likewise they could have done the same thing going from LW 9.6 to LW 10. Modest improvements but hey looky here, guys....we got something special on top of that. LW CORE, the foundation of Next Gen Lightwave! That would have been the way to sell it. Not just selling CORE which was tantamount to charging people to be Alpha/Beta testers.

 

I guess we'll see if they end up at the same destination, with this supposedly new architecture. That is a modernized version of LW...whether it's just rewritten or built from scratch.

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If its a unified app don't expect it anytime soon though. Imho Rob's reign started with lw 11. Lw 10 was damage control from core and Jay Roth.  So they probably planned unification in lw 2015. If ever it does happen maybe it will in Robs 4th version.

Softimage tooks a long time to start from scratch and lost a lot of userbase and died. Blender rewrite is ongoing. Modo took more than 10 years to be a full app. 3dmax actually failed the xcalibur rewrite.

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If its a unified app don't expect it anytime soon though. Imho Rob's reign started with lw 11. Lw 10 was damage control from core and Jay Roth.  So they probably planned unification in lw 2015. If ever it does happen maybe it will in Robs 4th version.

Softimage tooks a long time to start from scratch and lost a lot of userbase and died. Blender rewrite is ongoing. Modo took more than 10 years to be a full app. 3dmax actually failed the xcalibur rewrite.

Softimage died because Autodesk saw it as serious competition and took it off the market for pennies on the dollar. It wasn't killed because it wasn't a sustainable app. Everyone knew AD's plan was to put the Kibosh on XSI, all along. The goals of XCaliber have largely been met, in Max, with a major rewrite of the viewport technology (Nitrous). Most of the dynamics in Max is unified through PhysX tools.

 

With that said, I'd be very interested in going back to LW, if they added the new mesh engine, that supposedly spawned Chronosculpt, and if they have a new Volumetric FX simulation system (sort of like a built-in TFD, or Maya's fluids). I've been wondering if Rob's talk of the new volumetric renders hints at that, or is it just a volume shader. Hypervoxels is so outdated, and I never really liked the look of it.

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It died because the smaller userbase couldn't sustain itself. Many migrated to maya when it went dark. It was sold by the company due to low profit. Its not autodesks fault it failed.

 

3dmax was supposed to be comptelely rewritten with Xcalibur like maya, softimage, blender. The rewrite never happened.

 

 

Here's some news for lw.

https://blog.lightwave3d.com/2015/10/lightwave-philosophy/

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It died because the smaller userbase couldn't sustain itself. Many migrated to maya when it went dark. It was sold by the company due to low profit. Its not autodesks fault it failed.

 

3dmax was supposed to be comptelely rewritten with Xcalibur like maya, softimage, blender. The rewrite never happened.

 

 

Here's some news for lw.

https://blog.lightwave3d.com/2015/10/lightwave-philosophy/

That's not correct. XSI may not have had the numbers of Maya or Max, but they were easily the 3rd best in the market. If Lightwave could remain in the game, there is no reason whatsoever for XSI not to. Again, AD bought it to kill it and get one major competitor off the market. That's the kind of thing they do. They killed Combustion and Toxik, because improving them would mean they would be a threat to their uber-expensive Flame compositor. AD knows how to kill apps like no one else. And it's not because they are not profitable enough.

 

Mudbox is a good example. They had the No.2 spot in the 3D sculpting market nailed down for about 5+yrs...until 3D Coat started infringing into it's territory. They don't want to invest the resources it takes to make many of their products, competitive....so they just let the product die. XSI could very easily hold off C4D and Houdini, for the 3rd place spot in the industry, but AD didn't want to commit the resources to keep it thriving. They WANTED to kill it and "trim down" their portfolio, in the process. Sure XSI lost some market share when they went dark, but being No.3 in such a crowded market is no slouch.

 

As for the Max, Excaliber deal, I know all about it. I've been a Max user all this time, and I used to frequent the AD Area forums for 3ds Max, when it was ongoing....while Ken Pimentel was the Product Manager. All of their main goals for it, have been reached, so I don't know where you get this erroneous notion that it was a failed attempt. It was anything but. They rewrote the viewport, and we have Nitrous....one of their major goals....ACCOMPLISHED. Unify the dynamics engines in Max....ACCOMPLISHED via the NVidia PhysX dynamics toolsets. They discontinued the Reactor system and everything now is unified through the PhysX toolset. They updated the mesh-deformation performance during animation playback with the option to convert the mesh from EditPoly to GPoly, or to add a OpenSubdiv modifier to the mesh.

 

 

I understand that it's going to take LW3DG some time. That's why I always felt they should have kept CORE going, while selling LW classic with modest updates from time to time and adding in some bundles to sweeten the deal. That would have given them plenty of time to build CORE into a full-fledged replacement. Nevertheless, as long as they are able to replace major components of the app. then that is good too. I just liked the idea of CORE better.

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What's not correct? You nor I don't have the exact numbers or are working for the owners of softimage at that time. So don't state things as facts. :D

XSI was sold period. It was auctioned to the higest bidder which turned out to be autodesk.

Whether AD killed it or not is the outcome of the events that happened prior to that which is the very long rewrite of xsi that had people migrating and xsi changed owners not just once in its history.

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Creative Environment > Softimage3D > Softimage XSI

acquired by Microsoft > sold to Avid > sold to Autodesk

 

28 years of development and I never saw a stable version.

 

Autodesk killing SI ? sorry but no

 

When Maya 1.0 arrived -with MEL scripting- the FX companies built their pipelines around Maya.

later when XSI was introduced, Maya had already established, and XSI never catch up.

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What's not correct? You nor I don't have the exact numbers or are working for the owners of softimage at that time. So don't state things as facts. :D

XSI was sold period. It was auctioned to the higest bidder which turned out to be autodesk.

Whether AD killed it or not is the outcome of the events that happened prior to that which is the very long rewrite of xsi that had people migrating and xsi changed owners not just once in its history.

You can gauge, approximately, where a particular application ranks, among others by the number of job openings that require experience with it, by the comparative number of studios who use it, and by the breadth of tutorials on major training sites. like Digital Tutors. Again, it was stiff competition for both Max and Maya, and AD simply wanted to take it off the market, and harvest what technology it could in the process....rather than continue to sell and maintain a 3rd redundant 3D application. They effectively reduced the number of competitors they had to deal with. From their perspective, it was probably a smart and shrewd business move. But that has no bearing on it's inherent profitability.

 

What's more is, if you are going to try and claim we can't know how well an app was performing in the market, does it not occur to you that you've just refuted your initial argument? You first claim they lost so much marketshare (for going dark), that they were unprofitable and THAT is the reason the went under. Then you come out and contradict yourself by saying we cannot know what their sales/market figures are? You just outsmarted yourself. Bravo. Magnificent job. LOL :)

 

At any rate, the point is somewhat irrelevant. CORE could have continued alongside modest development to the current LW architecture. But if they are able to pull off a full code rewrite and unify Modeler and Layout, while staying solvent, then good for them. I guess we'll see in the next few weeks just how far they've come.

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Creative Environment > Softimage3D > Softimage XSI

acquired by Microsoft > sold to Avid > sold to Autodesk

 

28 years of development and I never saw a stable version.

 

Autodesk killing SI ? sorry but no

 

When Maya 1.0 arrived -with MEL scripting- the FX companies built their pipelines around Maya.

later when XSI was introduced, Maya had already established, and XSI never catch up.

 

That's a good assesment.

Though the studio I worked for was multi pipeline, with lightwave as its rendering core, some of the artists that were using xsi had to switch to maya or 3dmax to remain relevant. That was BEFORE AD acquired them. It was already losing long before.

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Some of the upcoming 2016 features look amazing.

I'm intrigued by the new Volumetrics and Unified Mesh system, cant wait for more reveal.

 

https://blog.lightwave3d.com/

 

Also, I'm wondering if with the unified mesh system they'll be able to integrate Chronosculpt in the base package now.. Same with Nevronmotion.

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Some of the upcoming 2016 features look amazing.

I'm intrigued by the new Volumetrics and Unified Mesh system, cant wait for more reveal.

 

https://blog.lightwave3d.com/

 

Also, I'm wondering if with the unified mesh system they'll be able to integrate Chronosculpt in the base package now.. Same with Nevronmotion.

I'm hoping the Volumetrics engine includes physical simulation to drive it, rather than just particles. The later is really no different than HyperVoxels....just a new render engine to improve the quality. That platform for volumetrics is old and nearly obsolete, because they require a lot more work to achieve realistic results. That's why the developers of FumeFX have practically stopped developing it's plugin, which preceded it...Afterburn. The developers of Pyrocluster (Cebas) have long since stopped developing it, and have since added a simulation system to their Thinking Particles plugin.

 

Just as Newtek developed their own internal version of FPrime, I hope this system is their own version of TFD or Maya Fluids. I didn't see a single word that hinted at a simulation engine to drive the volumetrics...just the rendering side of things.

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Frig I just remembered I owned a Video Toaster 4000 back in the days with Lightwave running on it.. I wonder if that's available for the upgrade?

I remember it came with the Babylon 5 animation render of a Vorlon ship entering B5's docking bay.. It was the coolest thing ever back then.

 

It's just crazy how long LW has been around.

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