Featuring modeling, animation, and rendering tools, NewTek LightWave 3D 2020 Full Version is a complete 3D animation solution for creating photo-realistic renders, 3D animations, visual effects, motion graphics, video game graphics, architectural visualizations, and product and advertising designs. This is the educational version, which is available for institutions as well as students and faculty and requires proof of eligibility. LightWave 2020 is a flexible software solution that enables a single artist to create complete projects, or allow collaboration on a single project from multiple users (multiple licenses required) An intuitive workflow simplifies the learning curve and use of the application to provide a more efficient user-experience focused on the artistic aspect of design.
LightWave runs on both Windows 7 64-bit and later as well as Mac 10.12 or later, requiring at minimum a Core 2 processor. Your display needs a minimum resolution of 1289 x 1024, although 1920 x 1080 is recommended (requires GeForce 10, or Radeon HD 4000 graphics card). LightWave 3D 2020 uses a software activation key and does not require a dongle to function; however, you can request one from LightWave if your network requires it.
Educational Version
This is the educational version, which is available to institutions as well as faculty and students enrolled in an appropriate institution or class and requires verification. Please note: There is no upgrade path from the educational version to the non-educational version.
New Features to 2020
Some of the new features to LightWave 2020 include:
- Partio Node Simple: An open source C++ library created by the Walt Disney Animations Studio
- Level Set Morph Simple: Allows you to Morph between polygonal objects
- General Meta-Date System
- SDK to Full UNICODE
- Scene / Dope Editor Improvements: Improvements to pixel-level scrolling, using glyphs rather than bitmapped images and proper button elements will all speed up use
- Metamorphic: A multipurpose mesh sculpting and vertex map manipulation plug-in for LightWave 3D that works in LightWave's Layout, taking full advantage of the new capabilities of the modifier stack
- Advect Points Node
- Tone Mapping: Enables "massaging" the contents of a high dynamic range render to display them properly on a lower dynamic range monitor
- Brute Force and Irradiance Cache Radiosity Engines: Replace the previous Monte Carlo radiosity engine—scenes that previously used the Monte Carlo engine will automatically be updated upon loading
- Change Rotation Order: Allows changing the order of Heading, Pitch, and Bank to prevent the condition of Gimbal Lock and allows interchange with applications that use a different order than the native HPB order of LightWave
- Tone Mapping: is a way of taking the high dynamic range of a LightWave render and massaging the contents to display them to properly on a lower dynamic range monitor
- Portal: Allows you to place guides to concentrate and control environment lighting
- Shading Model: Includes Photoreal with alpha, reflection, refraction, and optimization as well as Cel, Shadow Catcher, and Sublimation CelShader
Features from Previous versions
- Real-time collaborative LightWave to Unreal Engine
- Metamorphic animated sculpting/painting
- Game development enhancements in Modeler
- Improved FBX Interchange
- OpenVDB creation
- New Primitive and Tools
- Shading and rendering enhancements
- Shading model customization tools
- Bone enhancements for game development
- Physical sky and sunlight
- Display scaling
- Workflow and UI enhancements
LightWave 3D Bridge to Unreal Engine
LightWave 3D features real-time 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 plug-in for use in all Unreal projects.
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.
Shading Model Customization Tools
In the program you can pull materials apart and build them to your taste. There is access to Fresnel functions, Material components, and Material integrators.
OpenVDB Content Creation
A set of node tools 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.
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
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 it engages real-time optimizations to more closely match the performance game engines expect from a rig.
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. An NVIDIA card is required.
Despike
This new Renderer option is a tool for reducing or removing "fireflies" in renders.
Physical Sky
An Environment plug-in 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.
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.
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.
Empty Volume Shape Primitive
Shape Primitive and Empty Volume 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), and SmoothMin, a soft blending node.
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, and many Layout navigation tools.
Pop-Up Menus
Menus can now be navigated via select keys and the mouse wheel. Large pop-up menus can be navigated with filtering and searches. Regular expressions can be used in filters. Also, 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 is a tool to make 'cluttered' node trees 'straight' and easier to read from left to right automatically. With Background Grid, you can adjust the brightness and color of the grid in the Node Editor. Snap to Grid allows you to make the nodes 'snap' to a user-settable grid size.
Online Documentation
The LightWave 3D documentation now fits on any device you care to use it on.