LightWave 3D
LightWave is the oldest 3D graphics application still with its original creator (NewTek) and with the same name it started with (LightWave 1.0, part of the original Amiga Video Toaster came out in 1990). It currently exists on three platforms (Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit and Mac OS X) and will soon be available as a universal binary in order to support new Macintosh hardware and once OS X caters for full 64-bit operation so will LightWave on the Mac. A single licence of LightWave entitles users to all three platforms, plus network rendering for a further 999 render nodes.
One of the principal reasons for LightWave's continued success other than its low cost and system requirements is the community that supports it. Many hundred, if not thousands, of plug-ins are available to extend its capabilities most of which are free. The presence of web-based forums and mailing lists has also brought LightWave users close together and means that if a user has a question he or she will often receive several answers within minutes. It is also seen as being an easy application to learn, although the most recent version adds so many new features trying to keep up with things is harder than ever. Even so, its clear interface and text-based buttons are praised by many.
Unusual to LightWave is the fact that the program is split into two parts - one for modelling, one for animation, texturing, lighting and rendering. Users are split about 50:50 on whether LightWave should remain like this, or merge the two applications into one and NewTek has started down a third path with LightWave 3D v9 by offering the start of modelling tools inside Layout. Historically, the reason for LightWave's split into two applications comes down to two things. The first is that the origin of LightWave is two separate applications - one called VideoScape, one called Modeler on the Amiga computer. The second reason is that these machines often had only 4MB ram and so the ability to only have one portion of a memory-hungry program loaded at once was a boon.
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