Ciao a tutti … sono nuovo di questo forum che ho scoperto da poco. Mi è sembrata una buona idea iscrivermi e questo è il mio primo approccio a LwIta.

Siccome ho notato che qualche giorno fa si parlava della versione 8.2 ho deciso di farvi leggere qualcosa sperando che vi interessi. Qualche mese fa (quando stava per essere rilasciata la versione 8 di lw) mi è arrivata una mail da San Antonio Texas da uno dei programmatori mac di lightwave, che facendomi i complimenti mi chiedeva se era possibile mettere una mia scena (oggetti textures ecc…) all’interno del pacchetto Lw 8.0 come scena esempio. Io la mandai, firmai un paio di cose, ci scrivemmo un paio di volte e tutto andò per il meglio. Una settimana fa lo ricontattai per chiedergli delucidazioni sul software e per sapere quanto fosse roseo il futuro del nostro caro programma, siccome ultimamente le cose non sono andate proprio al massimo. Le risposte sono state molto rassicuranti, stanno cercando di creare un software che sia all’avanguardia per un po’ di anni e mi ha ricordato tutti i punti di forza di Lightwave che si regge da solo sulle sue gambe senza bisogno di 1000 plug in (vedi max). Intanto gli ho mandato anche un test della scena a cui sto lavorando ora, e lo faccio vedere anche a voi. Ci sono ancora un sacco di cose da modificare (marciapiede,colore di alcuni edifici, gli alberi, cartelloni e monitor giganti troppo\poco luminosi ecc..) quindi se giudicherete tenete conto che l’immagine è anora in lavorazione. Oltretutto il rendering è stato eseguito con FPrime solo fino al passaggio 30 mi pare, quindi fa proprio skifo.

Ok… ora incollo un po’ della mail e l’immagine. (Cmq non preoccupatevi… non scrivo sempre così tanto). Ciao



:-) Yes, I think LightWave's future is fine, and some people
are 'switching' and making a LOT of noise about it, but that
is normal. There is always another application to try! We have
tens of thousands of users around the world, our program
gets used on movies everyday. Big movies, like:

The Fifth Element (one of my favorite)
Jurrasic Park
The Last Samurai
Jimmy Neutron
Daredevil
Harry Potter
Finding Nemo
Titanic
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Matrix Reloaded
Mortal Kombat II
The Day After Tomorrow
etc., etc., etc.

And television, newspapers, corporate, *Architecture*!, cartoons,
hobbyists, engineers, churches, hospitals, ... on and on...

Our program is the ONLY program that gives you unlimited
render nodes, included in the base price!!! All the other charge
several hundred dollars a CPU! We give FREE technical support!
Just call us! No one else does that. We have thousands of users
in our user forums, and you can freely interact with them 24x7
and they are EXPERTS, they make movies, etc., and they are
glad to help. We give FREE minor updates! No maintenance fees,
just go download the patch! Etc. Did you know that when you
buy LightWave you get a 'duo-dongle'? And that you can use
BOTH the Macintosh AND the PC version of LightWave but
only have to pay ONCE! No other company does that (that
I know of...) Did you know there are hundreds of books and
tutorials for LightWave? Go to GOOGLE and type 'LightWave
Tutorials') and we have DOZENS on our website. Others
do not.

All of this (and more) makes us a popular program
for schools, studios, professionals, hobbyists, everyone! Our
program is available worldwide, we have offices in Asia, Europe,
and the US, of course.

But, you may know all of that, and you may see/hear five or six
people complaining about a specific bug, or how they want the
renderer to be faster, or how the interface is not the way they like
it... whatever... but... they often still use the program - day after
day - and some of them have been complaining for years! But, they
STILL use the program! We cannot make them use the tools,
but they get much value from them. We find that most of our
high end customers own three or more 3D programs. No single
program will ever meet all the needs of a user I guess. Some
tools require more training. Like Maya, there are people who
specialize just in Lighting or Modelling or Rendering or Animating,
etc.! With LightWave, it is easy enough that a SINGLE person
can do it all. Our renderer seems to be good enough for Hollywood,
so, even though we may not have all the latest algorithms, etc.,
it still makes great special effects! And even whole movies.

So... I think we will be around for a while! Do you?

Even *if* we never released another version of LIghtWave, it would
still be a GREAT program that you could use for 3-5 years
and not have to worry about whether you could create something
fantastic!

But, not to worry, we already have plans for making LightWave Version
9.0 *and* 10.0!! It will be a lot of work for us though!

I hope these things will help you see that we are still working on
LightWave
and making it even better every day. Version 8.2 will be released next,
and it will have lots of bug fixes, and some new features too. It will
be
free. I hope you will like it. :-)