(April 14, 1999) NewTek will be demonstrating LightWave [6] at their booth S3309 in the Sands Convention Center throughout NAB. NewTek will be showing LightWave 3D 5.6 in the following booths at NAB: IBM booth #L12826, Intel booth #S8471, Intergraph booth #S3948 and Silicon Graphics booth #S3315.

"NewTek has been developing LightWave [6] for over two years. This architectural restructuring of the application has allowed us to modify key components while maintaining the many advantages of the current system," said Brad Peebler, vice president of marketing for NewTek. "By creating a new development environment along with the architecture, we are able to deliver a toolset for animation, modeling and rendering that will make people's head spin. The new version of LightWave will be significantly different than current incarnations, however, NewTek's usability labs have gone to great lengths to ensure 5.6 users will have a smooth transition. This includes workflow compatibility as well as backward compatibility with existing plug-ins and user data such as object and scene files."

LightWave 3D's production oriented approach makes it faster to use and more straightforward to learn than other 3D software packages. NewTek has honed the workflow and user interface of LightWave [6] with the assistance of thousands of broadcast and film content creators over the past 11 years.

"When it comes down to it, quality at a price point is the deciding factor in our choice of 3D software. NewTek has delivered a 'No excuses' powerful animation system with LightWave [6]," says Ron Thornton, founder of Foundation Imaging.  "The LightWave design team have really listened to user feedback, and have produced what is in my opinion, the new benchmark for high quality 3D production. There isn't another package out there that can compete with the features of the new LightWave, let alone compete at the price. It's the ultimate filmmaking tool."

"LightWave 3D's modeling tool set is so far beyond the competition in features, ease of use, efficiency and overall control of the model that we see no end to the types of work we can accomplish at Digital Muse," says John Gross, founder and co-owner of Digital Muse.

Major changes in LightWave [6] include:

New hybrid forward/inverse kinematics animation engine

Extensive character animation tools

New floating point accurate rendering engine with distributive ray tracer, integrated volumetric rendering (Hypervoxels) for lights and objects, caustics and other real world rendering effects

Enhanced visual work environment using custom OpenGL features to give the user an unmatched level of real-time scene display

Extensive UV mapping control; radically enhanced plug-in architecture

Dozens of other new features to soon be named.

Price and Release Date
LightWave 3D [6] will be available later in 1999 for $2495.00.

 

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