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1. Lightwave Free Software Download

The on/off control is provided so you can temporarily turn the plugin off to save processor cycles, as the plugin is calculation intensive when you are working with a lot of frames. More Lightwave plugins. Newtonian Follower is Free per seat, or $60 for an infinite site license. Unlimited site $60. Download Newtonian plugin.

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NewTek LightWave 3D® makes it possible for anyone to become a 3D artist and animator. The software is affordable, complete, easy to learn and use and well established as one of the leading 3D systems on the market for producing beautiful photo-real renders as well as incredible anime. This complete out-of-the-box 3D animation solution now offers real-time collaborative 3D interactivity through a bridge to Unreal Engine.

Lightwave 3D Features

LightWave 3D® Bridge to Unreal Engine

Real-time Collaborative LightWave™ to Unreal Engine

LightWave 3D® enters the Real-Time Age for interchange with this workflow link between the Unreal Engine and LightWave 3D®, focusing on LightWave driving Unreal changes iteratively. Multiple LightWave seats are able to connect to the same Unreal Editor simultaneously to enable real-time collaboration between artists. The bridge uses NewTek’s proven NDI® network discovery mechanism for easy automatic configuration, and can be limited to single project use in Unreal, or installed as a general plugin for use in all Unreal projects.

Improved FBX Interchange

FBX and New Interchange Bridge

Work with industry-standard FBX data on a whole new level via the new Interchange Bridge.

• Interactively choose what to import / export and how.
• Add to existing FBX files from Layout and Modeler.
• Build LightWave 3D® assets from many FBX files.
• Easily revisit FBX files via workspaces.
• Support for:
  • Vertex Caches
  • Morph Mixer
  • Vertex Maps
  • Smoothing Groups
  • Animation Layers
  • Animation Baking
  • Bones
  • Hierarchies
  • Meshes
  • Pivots
  • Mesh Freezing

Shading Model Customization Tools

The ability to pull materials apart and build them to your tastes is new to LightWave 3D® 2019. There is access to Fresnel Functions, Material Components and Material Integrators. The Material Tools Group has been updated with new nodes to support this capability.

OpenVDB Creation

OpenVDB Content Creation

LightWave 3D® 2018 introduced the ability to import and render an OpenVDB fog volume. New for LightWave 3D® 2019 is a set of node tools that allow OpenVDB content creation. You can now create OpenVDB grids from meshes, particles, and even the shape primitive distance estimator. The tool kit allows for live Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) operations, grid filtering including level set tracking, smoothing, dilation and erosion. Solvers are included that allow for fluid simulation and smoke and fire effects.

Metamorphic Animated Sculpting/Painting

Metamorphic

Metamorphic is a multipurpose animatable mesh sculpting and vertex map manipulation plug-in for LightWave 3D® 2019 that works in Layout, and takes full advantage of the new capabilities of the modifier stack.

• Freeform animated sculpting
• Built-in undo/redo system
• Fully-multithreaded sculpting using all available CPU cores
• Pen pressure support for brush size, strength and hardness (Windows only)
• Nodal brush texture support
• Three modes of animation
• Non-linear interpolation of sculpt animation keyframes
• Supports converting sculpt animation keyframes to Endomorphs
• Predictive corrective morph sculpting that works after deformers with built-in driver/driven controller
• Full Motion Blur support

Display Scaling

• Support for scaling many UI elements for HiDPI and large-screen displays
• Independent scaling options for multi-monitor setups

Bone Enhancements for Game Development

Bone System Improved for Game Development

The new Bone Type option, Limited Bones, allows the animator to set a limit in Layout on the number of bones that affect a given point to match the limit in the target game engine, and engages real-time optimizations to more closely match the performance game engines expect from a rig.

Shading and Rendering Enhancements

Edge Shader Node

A node for simulating beveled or rounded edges at render time, to give more realistic results without increasing geometry.

Patina Node

This node can add Wear (a convex shader) to a surface, or Dirt (concave) based on a radius and offset.

Procedural Shader Node

This node encapsulates a chosen legacy system LightWave 3D® or third party procedural texture and exposes it with the typical nodal inputs and outputs. Previously, such procedurals were only available inside a Procedural texture layer of a texture stack.

Image Caching

LightWave now uses smart caching with very high-resolution images, allowing artists to use them for textures and other uses, regardless of the memory in the computer system.

New Compositing Buffers

The new Rho buffer is for extracting lighting and shading information from the direct and indirect buffers. A new Weight buffer contains the value of the surface shader settings for both direct and indirect buffers. These are useful for heavy compositing work.

NVIDIA OptiX™ Denoising

A new Noise Filter option uses the NVIDIA OptiX™ library for AI-accelerated noise reduction when rendering still images. Requires NVIDIA card.

Despike

This new Renderer option is a tool for reducing or removing “fireflies” in renders.

Physical Sky and SunLight

Physical Sky

An Environment plugin to replicate physically accurate skies and create otherworldly skies, with equal ease.

Physical Sunlight

A new Light Type that simulates a sun using state-of-the-art scientific methods.

Game Development Enhancements in Modeler

Enhanced UV and UDIM Mapping Workflow

Modeler has added a suite of new tools for working with UV maps as well as UDIM tiled mapping:

• FlipUV-U
• FlipUV-V
• MoveUDIM
• Turn Poly UV
• SelectUV Island
• SelectUV overlap
• SpreadUV
• Rectangular UV Grid
• New view modes for working with UVs:
  • Sketch
  • Scale
  • Angle
  • Overlap

Smoothing Groups

Modeler now supports the creation of smoothing groups within a mesh. Smoothing groups provide a way to create creases and hard edges, and more precisely control regional contours on your model. You are no longer limited to a single smoothing angle, adding extra control geometry, or breaking your model into parts to achieve the look you desire. Smoothing groups can be created automatically using a vertex normal map, imported with OBJ files, by using a smoothing angle threshold or manually. Smoothing groups can be exchanged with other software that supports the format.

New Primitive and Tools

Empty Volume Shape Primitive

LightWave 3D® 2019 adds the new Shape Primitive, Empty Volume, which can be used for creating procedural surface shapes. In addition to being directly useful in scenes, the Empty Volume primitive is helpful in workflows that need to convert meshes to volumes or vice versa. Empty Volume can also provide for real-time Boolean operations in Layout.

New Tools for Shape Primitives

The Empty Volume shape primitive allows advanced users to write their own distance estimators for rendered SDF shapes and volumetrics.

Other new nodal distance tools include:

• Mobius
• Capsule
• Shape CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry)
• SmoothMin, a soft blending node.

Workflow and UI

Expanded Layout Undo System

The Layout Undo System has been expanded to many of the systems involving Transforms & Keys. Unlimited Undo is now available in:

• Graph Editor
• Scene Editors, both new and classic
• Dope Sheet
• Many Layout navigation tools

Popup Menus

• Menus can now be navigated via keys (arrow, mouse wheel, home, end, etc.)
• Large popup menus can be navigated with filtering and searches
• Regular expressions can be used in filters
• FLAT MENU: You can now call up a flattened version of every entry that exists in the main menu with the keyboard shortcut CTRL Space. Doing so presents a list of all available commands in Layout or Modeler (with their associated keyboard shortcuts). As with other LightWave menus, you can type to narrow down your selection and the cursor keys and Enter can be used to choose the command you require.

Node Graph UI Options

• Tidy Nodes Command: A tool to make ‘cluttered’ node trees ‘straight’ and easier to read from left to right automatically.
• Background Grid: You can adjust the brightness and color of the grid in the Node Editor
• Snap to Grid: you can turn on this tool to make the nodes ‘snap’ to a user settable grid size.

Online Documentation

Responsive layout – the LightWave 3D® documentation now fits on any device you care to use it on.

License Server 2019 Option

A new licensing management option for large facilities, this is a specialized build of the LightWave 3D® applications wherein licensing of LightWave 3D® is controlled through a managed portal. Purchase is by special arrangement.

Windows™

Hardware

• Intel® Core™ 2 or AMD Athlon™ II Processor (or better)
• 64-bit System RAM: 4GB minimum
• Available USB Port (for users with existing hardware dongles)

Operating System

• 64-bit: Windows 7 through Windows 10 64-bit Edition

macOS®

Hardware

• Intel® Processor
• 64-bit System RAM: 4GB minimum
• Available USB Port (for users with existing hardware dongles)

Operating System

• El Capitan 10.11 or better

Display

Minimum Graphics Card

• NVIDIA™ GeForce® 8400 series or ATI® X1600

Minimum Screen Resolution

• 1280 x 800 pixels

Installation Requirements

Storage

• All systems require 750MB available hard drive space (excluding content); complete Content library is approximately 3GB.

What’s new in Lightwave 2019.1.2?

Update: LightWave 3D® 2019.1.2 is available now in the Registration system. This update covers just two issues that affect a limited number of users:

• The new automatic license mover would fail for users who have a space in their login username for their system
• The LightWave Bridge to Unreal Engine folder for UE 4.22 was not being placed on Mac OS installs

The LightWave 2019.1.2 update is a free download for registered users of LightWave 2019.

What’s new in Lightwave 2019.1?

Workflow “Quality-of-Life” Enhancements:

Modeler Enhancements:

• Layers Panel
  • Rename window is resizable
  • Right-click to freeze/unfreeze a layer as selected
  • Easy insert/exchange layers option in List mode
  • Clicking on the Eye icon on the Object row will select all Layout visible layers.
• Vertex Maps Panel
  • Added Name Filter field at top of panel
  • New Right-Click function: Select By Map, for all points, edges or polygons in a map
  • Delete now allows deletion of multiple VMaps of the same type at a time

New Navigation Options in Layout and Modeler:

• New game-style navigation mode combining hotkeys, mouse and scroll wheel to move within the viewport, adjust the view and move the scene playhead.
• Alternate control subjects and styles can be engaged from the Navigation Panel:
  • View
    • Grab
    • Orbit
    • Helicopter
    • Walk
  • Current Item
    • Grab
    • Helicopter
  • Timeline
    • Activate Twist on Space Explorer or horizontal mouse movement, etc., as jog/shuttle for timeline

Layout Panel List Pane Improvements:

• A variety of new functions have been added to “tree-style” list panes in many panels to allow more customization of the view and easier drag and drop re-ordering and hierarchy adjustments (Scene Editors, Graph Editor, Configure Keys, etc.)

Enhanced Configuration Control:

• Layout and Modeler both now have separate Key and Menu configuration files
• When the app asks for configs to be cleared, only LW2019.1.cfg, LWM2019.1.cfg, Extension Cache-64, and LWHUB2019.1.cfg need to be deleted and rebuilt. Customized hot keys and menus can now be preserved
• Reset Configs command plugin clears the files mentioned in the previous item, preserving customized hot keys and menus

VPR:

• An optional progress bar added on the bottom bar of the Layout window; if multiple viewports are set to VPR, the progress bar will split into multiple bars, to show a bar for each viewport set to VPR

New OpenGL Viewport Option:

• Hide all non-renderable elements – grid, motion paths, camera, light, bone and null icons, etc.

LightWave Network Render Controller:

• Scene files can now be dropped on the lower window in the NRC
• Node Pick-up allows you to enter an IP address (v4 or v6) to access a machine anywhere on the Internet

Feature Enhancements

LightWave™ Bridge to Unreal Engine:

• Added support for the new Red, Green and Blue channels for the Unreal Bridge.
• Improved performance for sending of meshes for scenes with many smaller objects

FBX Interchange Enhancements:

• The Interchange panel now has two options for the Transfer Mode. You can either Append Assets or Replace Animation. Append Assets was the default functionality from before, but Replace Animation is new, and is used to transfer animation over items that are already animated.
• You can now drag and drop complete scenes or individual elements from one side to the other.
• You now have the option to import materials as Principled BSDF using the FBX Interchange.

Node Editor:

• Image and Image Sampler Nodes now offer Red/Green/Blue/Alpha/Luma as Scalar outputs

OpenVDB Enhancements:

• Mesh To Volume node can create a particle system from the vertices of the input mesh.
• Solver and Gas Solver now accept velocity grids for dynamic collisions in addition to level set grids for static collisions.

Physical Sky Enhancements:

• Physical Sky background shader now uses a softened horizon line
• Physical Sky now includes a ground; the ground is an alpha channel that can be colored by any items placed above Physical Sky in the Environment list.

Cel Shader Enhancements:

• The new Cel Integrator now supports light color, but differently from LightWave 2015. The gradient is evaluated separately for each light. This allows for per light buffers for cel shading.

Python Enhancements:

• LightWave’s installed Python is now v2.7.16
• PCore Console has been upgraded to Mark II
  • Save and copy buttons no longer needed
  • Log output is now text; not multiple, separate list entries
  • The window is split in two, with log output and command input sections. The division between the two can be moved as needed and can be maximized in one direction or the other
  • The command input area is deigned to emulate the python CLI, including syntax highlighting, and command recall that is retained between sessions up to the maximum prompt recalls
  • Recall search using Shift-Space
  • Command matching
  • Fully customizable
  • Primary and secondary prompts, even Bash-style
  • The Prompt area has two modes:
    • Command Prompt: default, immediately evaluates each command when entered
    • Editor mode: enter as many commands as you wish; evaluates on return to Command mode
  • Custom key bindings can be set, retrieved and inline documentation is provided

We have a playlist showing some of the new workflows in LightWave 2019.1: LightWave 3D 2019.1 Playlist

What’s new in LightWave™ 2019.0.3 (Build 3117)

LightWave Bridge to Unreal Engine: Batching sending of meshes for potentially higher performance in scenes with many smaller objects

• LB-4747 How to confuse the Hub/Layout
• LB-5478 cloned image gets lost on reload
• LB-5650 geometry is hidden behind the grid or the origin
• LWB-4481 Selecting objects in Layout doesn’t always work
• LWB-4597 Frame Slider on Timeline is frozen when a viewport has been added
• LWB-4641 OpenVDB saver not working with one input only (save frame).
• LWB-4711 Relativity Rotation in Degrees button partially functional
• LWB-4750 Preview messing up with ui_screen_scale_factors of non whole numbers
• LWB-4820 Bones in LW2018 scenes and earlier with Use Morphed Positions enabled loaded into LW2019 as “Faster Bones” instead of “Full Bones (Morphed Positions)”.
• LWB-4894 This OpenVDB scene works well in 2019.0.1 but not in 0.2. Clamp particles radius to > 0.
• LWB-4899 Instant crash in layout – OpenVDB causing instability. make meshes not available in primitivetovdb node.
• LWB-4903 Connecting nodes in OpenVDB causes hard crash. Fix velocity return.
• LWB-4905 Creating preview skips through frames without resolving
• LWB-4909 Activate Legacy HV crash
• LWB-4911 Motion blur and OpenVDB freakout. Fix MB refresh when the source mesh is animated.
• LWB-4913 Spin Edge Crash
• LWB-4914 LightWave Bridge to Unreal Engine flips the green channel
• LWB-4916 ReplaceObjectLayer command not updating OpenGL with single layers
• LWB-4919 Physical Sky in the popup appears as SunSky in the applied plugin list
• LWB-4920 BandGlue error
• LWB-4921 Background image not rendering in proper color space…
• LWB-4924 Crashing when selecting items in Layout

What’s new in LightWave 3D® 2018.0.6 (Build 3069)

• Bumped product version to 2018.0.6.
• Set the build number to 3069
• LB-4740 Loading From Preset Shelf to Many Surfaces Is Very Slow
• LB-4744 Command Port only functions when the mouse moves (investigated other main loop delays)
• LWB-4122 Keyboard entry to any numeric field = Crash, consistent
• LWB-4131 Crash ModelerTools option mini-slider.
• LWB-4189 NevronMotion 1.0 Kinect rig fails to work in LW2018.0.x
• LWB-4206 Save All Buffers In Image Viewer Not Being Saved

What’s new in Lightwave 2018.0.5?

Mac users: Please download again if you got the update prior to 4:30 PM USCT 3-July-2018. A crash when using numeric entries has been fixed.

LightWave 2018.0.5 will install into its own directory. 2018.0.5 uses the same license as your 2018.0, 2018.0.1, 2018.0.2, 2018.0.3, and 2018.0.4 license – just drag-and-drop the license into the interface of 2018.0.5 when first launching 2018.0.5.

• Bumped product version to 2018.0.5.
• Set the build number to 3068
• Fixed the picking issues in Modeler not working at all with grid scales larger than 5km or so.
• LB-4697 Crash using scene editor plug-in to toggle camera stereo Anaglyph filter on.
• LWB-3641 SyncMesh gizmo picking was weird because picking and drawing were using different scales.
• LWB-3657 morphing (morph target) has weird behavior
• LWB-3715 ClothFX crash
• LWB-3796 LW2018.0.3 crashes on my Mac 10.13.4 when performing certain tasks
• LWB-3883 IKBooster menu no draw on Dope track.
• LWB-3907 OpenGL Update RefreshNow/RedrawNow not working with instances
• LWB-3914 Tree control move func not working (crash)
• LWB-3974 Rendering results in “out of application memory”
• LWB-3987 layout crashes when an instancer is deleted
• LWB-3998 “Not enough memory” error cutting mesh with two-point polygons
• LWB-4007 Memory leak in animation render
• LWB-4033 Shadow Buffer shows errors with Limited region On and the bucket size
• LWB-4065 Object crashes Layout when sending to Modeler
• LWB-4081 Crash when tweaking light samples on Scene editor
• LWB-4083 Deleting a camera could cause a crash because camera evaluators of other cameras in the scene became confused about which cameras they belonged to.
• LWB-4095 The MULTILIST controls require a different kind of value lists than other trees. Added the set_addr_int() function to address this.
• LWB-4101 Layout crashes when you try to access a surface’s node editor
• LWB-4102 Opening the graph editor for an Advanced Camera could crash if no prior evaluation of the camera was done.
• LWB-4103 Modeler crashes when loading object with metalink node

Burning Question: Greeble... What is it and how to make your own.

A greeble is really all about faking out your audience! It's the small details that make something appear to be more complex than it actually is.

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NewTek Lightwave 3D: Quick Start Video: Move, Rotate, Scale Objects in LightWave 3D Modeler

Deuce Bennett gets you up and running on how to move, rotate, and scale objects in LightWave 3D Modeler

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Looping Waves with LightWave 3D

If you’re like me, dreaming of warm weather and beaches, this tutorial is tempting! Simon Smalley created this lovely animated scene in LightWave 3D, and rendered in Octane, and he explains how he did it!

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Spreadsheet software is important for homes, students and businesses, so we’ve put together a lineup with something for all these arenas. We chose good-quality spreadsheet software, with a solid mix of paid-for and free products. To avoid oversimplifying things, we opted not to include very basic models that don’t provide anything other than a basic grid, and we haven’t included programs that aren’t secure, as spreadsheets often deal with sensitive or important data.

We looked at compatibility, versatility, features and available support to determine which spreadsheets deserved a spot on our lineup. If you need a complete office suite, take a look at our office software guide, where you’ll find a nice mix of free and priced options. On this site you will find articles related to spreadsheets as well as reviews of spreadsheet software.

Best Spreadsheet Software for Businesses

Microsoft Excel is our choice for the best spreadsheet software for businesses because of its versatility and functionality. Businesses need software they can rely on, and Excel fits the bill, helping you stay on track with simple or complex spreadsheets. There is an extensive range of formulas that you can use to make calculations or perform specific functions, and you can filter data according to your business needs.

This professional-grade software isn’t free, but it is available with a reasonable monthly subscription, and even after several decades, it’s still the most respected office spreadsheet solution. This software works across PC, Mac and mobile devices. With OneDrive, you can share and access your spreadsheets in the cloud from anywhere and work on them collaboratively. The majority of other file formats are compatible with Excel files, so should someone send you a file in another file format, Excel should be able to open it and render the contents correctly.

Microsoft Excel

Excel is part of the Microsoft Office suite and works well in conjunction with the other programs in the bundle. You can purchase Excel as a stand-alone product, as part of a desktop suite or as part of Office 365. It’s most functional and most cost-effective as part of the Microsoft Office desktop suite or as part of Office 365.

Read more here

Best Spreadsheet Software for Students

Many of these spreadsheet programs would serve schools and students well. However, LibreOffice Calc stands out because it’s free and open source, so there are no licensing restrictions. This means that schools can provide students with copies of the software and install the software across multiple PCs and laptops without significant expense, and without breaching any licensing terms that may be associated with similar software. Choosing a well-rounded free program also means that any student with a computer can access the software, so it puts every student on a level playing field. Additionally, because it’s open source, LibreOffice, including its Calc software, is a great educational tool for students working on digital and programming skills.

This spreadsheet software has plenty of features and is versatile enough to equal its biggest premium-cost rivals. It has an impressive selection of templates and allows students to create their own or import them from third-party sources. Students and teachers can also use extensions or add-ons designed to increase Calc’s versatility as an educational tool.

LibreOffice Calc

Calc is the spreadsheet software included with LibreOffice. It’s a popular choice for academic, home and business users looking for an inexpensive spreadsheet program because it’s open source. The whole office suite it comes in is free and doesn’t have any licensing restrictions.

Read more here

Best Spreadsheet Software for Home Users

For home users, Google Sheets is our first choice. Part of the Google Apps suite and connected to Google Drive, this spreadsheet software is versatile, free to use and user-friendly. You can easily create to-do lists, schedules and holiday shopping lists, then access them from any computer or mobile device with the Google Drive app. Because it has an array of formulas ready for use, along with a huge number of commonly used templates, this spreadsheet application makes it easy to keep track of home or business finances and to create budgets, calendars, planners, invoices and time sheets.

This is a web-based spreadsheet application, making it easy to access, and you get a generous amount of free cloud storage when you sign up. With its free, easy accessibility and simple usage, Google Sheets is attractive to all kinds of users. It’s easy to share your spreadsheets via email invitation or a link, as well as to set read-only, comment or edit permissions for each person you share with.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is part of the Google Apps suite. Like the rest of the suite's productivity applications, it has a focus on easy collaboration and a simple, user-friendly interface. While it’s not available as a stand-alone application, you’ll likely find yourself using at least some of the other apps on a regular basis.

Read more here

Compatibility

Compatibility with Microsoft Excel files is key for any spreadsheet software, simply because so many people use that program to create spreadsheets. Therefore, the spreadsheet software you choose should be able to read and write XLS and XLSX files and render them correctly. Choose software that allows you to easily convert your files into PDF format if you want to ensure your spreadsheets cannot be easily altered without leaving an electronic footprint. Creating PDF files also reduces file sizes and lets you easily add password protection. If you create spreadsheets that you want to publish online, choose a program that lets you easily convert spreadsheets into HTML.

Versatility

How versatile your spreadsheet software should be depends entirely on what you want to use it for. If you’re a student or a professional wanting to impress with your presentation or data collation, you need to be able to integrate graphics and alter the fonts, colors and other aesthetic qualities. If you want simple visual representations of your collected data, you need to be able to easily create charts from your entries.

Consider whether you need remote or mobile access to your spreadsheets. If so, you need an easily shareable or cloud-compatible application. For those who work collaboratively, it’s important to have spreadsheet software that allows simultaneous editing and multi-user functionality. If all you want to do is save, email and print spreadsheets, a desktop-only program will suffice.

Features

The best spreadsheet software programs have extensive formula selections that are easily accessible. Your software should also have a variety of templates on hand for common spreadsheets so you don’t have to lay out budget sheets, calendars and planners from scratch every time. If you’re sharing or collaborating with other people, make sure you can lock or freeze specific columns so others can’t accidentally edit or overwrite them.

Also note how many rows and columns a spreadsheet can accommodate. Some are unlimited, while others restrict you to just 250. If you deal with complex or large quantities of data, choosing a spreadsheet application that features pivot tables makes sense, as they provide an easy way of summarizing data.

Support

Lightwave Free Software Download

Whether you’re an advanced user or a novice, it's invaluable for your software to have a solid support system, including plenty of tutorials, step-by-step instructions and FAQs pages. Having email, phone and forum support at your disposal helps to ensure you don’t get stuck without a solution.