Remember the splash at NAB1990 when NewTek brought out the Video Toaster with LightWave animation software running on the Amiga platform? Things have come a long way since then.
The latest Version 10 of a whole series of evolutions called “LightWave 3D” packs a wallop of features for its price (new, $895; upgrades, $495) and is already being used by some creative visual effects artists on some pretty cool projects.
“The greatest improvement in this new release is its ability to help computer artists and graphic designers make iterative changes in real time,” explained Rob Powers, vice president of 3D development at NewTek. “It gives them interactive control over their creations, and this type of workflow was used extensively by James Cameron to visualize the scenes on Pandora for ‘Avatar,’ among many other projects. If film artists and game creators can see their changes in real time, their work can keep up with their imaginations.”
(from Stereoscopy.com “With the new stereoscopic 3D convergence rig LightWave has implemented in this latest release, you can adjust the zero parallax point in a way similar to Vince Pace’s Fusion 3D physical camera adjustments. It lets you dynamically track the inter-ocular distance throughout a shot.”)
by Jay Ankeney, 02.14.2011
Read the full article, with illustrations, here: http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/113668