LW9 info (Status Update on LightWave v9) - 21-04-2006

[ed209]

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49791


Status Update on LightWave v9, from Jay Roth, President, NewTek 3D Division
Dear LightWavers,

It’s been a while since I have checked in with you, though if you have been participating in the Open Beta program, you may have seen me post there from time to time. There is much anticipation about LightWave v9, the Open Beta program, and so on. We are getting close to our release date, and I know that many of you have a lot of questions, so let’s get right to it.

I want to say upfront that we won’t ship until we think LightWave v9.0 is ready. We are getting much closer, but we are not there just yet. We still need to do some polishing up. As a result, we are extending the Open Beta period until the end of May, 2006. Open Beta customers will soon receive information that allows them to extend their beta licenses.

For those of you who have yet to participate in the program, please do so. It has been so rewarding for us, and we see so many ways that we can improve the process for future releases, that we have decided to standardize on the Open Beta concept from this release forward. The Open Beta program is such a success that 87% of participants surveyed said that they would want us to do this again -- and over 50% of the participants replied to the survey!

LightWave v9.0 is now in code freeze, and that will be evident with the next Open Beta build, which the Open Beta group will receive early next week. With that build all of the features that we plan to ship in 9.0 will be active. With the exception of bug fixes and performance tuning, no new features will be added. For the next several weeks, we will be concentrating heavily on fixing bugs and optimizing the performance of our existing features (like Catmull-Clark).

Bugs are being prosecuted vigorously. Many bugs have been reported in the Open Beta process, and we view this is a success, as we want to catch as many bugs as we can before we get to final release. As of this writing, over 800 bugs have met their demise since version 8.5.

Our primary goal with LightWave v9.0 has been to rebuild the foundation of the application into something strong that can carry us into the next decade and beyond. I have already written about our development philosophy for the v9 series. If you haven’t seen that, or would like a refresher, try this link: >>> LightWave's Future Development <<<

LightWave v9.0 development needed to concentrate on the foundation of LightWave itself. We chose to address the features that would affect almost every LightWave user out there as our first target. LightWave v9.0 reflects that approach. That’s not to say we have hit everything for this release – we have not. This is a first step. But we think it’s a doozy.

We focused on power, by offering a completely new node system for displacements in Object Properties; you can now render ZBrush-style displacements and normal maps, a previously unannounced feature. The new Node Editor for surfaces allows you to create virtually any type of look that you can imagine. Hundreds of node choices give you the power to mimic the original LightWave procedural textures, as well as create completely new looks from scratch. New nodes give you the power of sub-surface scattering and other shading models, another unannounced feature. New Modeler features such as Catmull-Clark Sub-division Surfaces, edges, and more refined tools give you even more power.

We focused on performance, by significantly improving OpenGL speed in Layout by an order of magnitude. Rendering speeds have improved by as much as 20 times faster, and the more you throw at the rendering engine, the faster it gets. You can tweak models in Layout without the absolute need to go back to Modeler – we will be constantly upgrading this ability as we continue through the LightWave v9.x development cycle, and we will be adding our OpenGL improvements to Modeler in a subsequent version of LightWave v9.x.

We focused on value, by improving the LightWave staples such as HyperVoxels, which now require 40 times less RAM than previously. We killed almost all of the HyperVoxel bugs that have been reported for the last several years in this single release. For those of you using renderfarms, the increased rendering throughput means that we have effectively multiplied your renderfarm capabilties by an order of magnitude or more in many cases, with the simple cost of an upgrade, or a very reasonable MSRP, as we announced back at SIGGRAPH.

We focused on reliability. Here’s an illustration: LightWave v9 has become so reliable, even in its beta state (where there is still room for improvement) that almost all of our production studio participants have standardized on LightWave v9 as their working platform of choice. That’s Beta software, folks.

We have made improvements to workflows, and many more improvements will come throughout the v9.x cycle. LightWave v9 now includes a studio production configuration, generously supplied by Richard Morton, with many, many LightWave credits to his name. His configs have been known by a variety of names over the years, and are now standard in LightWave v9. You can use the default configs or the studio configs out of the box (I would choose the studio configs myself, and we will standardize on them as the default in subsequent releases) or, you are free to make your own, of course.

We have made improvements to our documentation and educational materials in LightWave. The new manual has been an effective rewrite, and has been reformatted to better reflect the workflows of today. We still have many improvements that we want to make to the documentation, and like the source code, this is only the beginning. Also, the help system for LightWave has received similar attention, and currently weighs in at over 250MB of quality information.

If you have visited our website at all in the last few months, you will have seen that we have constantly been adding videos that showcase the new features. Some are rather mundane, and give it to you in a “just the facts, ma’am” style. Others go into more depth on the theories behind some of the new features. We intend to keep producing those videos on up through product shipment, so please stop by every few days to check out the latest. By the way, the videos have proven so popular, as have our forums, that we have had to significantly upgrade our servers and bandwidth!

Future work we still have to do will focus much more attention on Modeler: we will continue to consolidate similar tools, and include more modeling functions in Layout. This will require changes to the way that Layout handles selection, as well as giving Layout the ability to make sub-object selections. This turned out to be a much bigger task than we thought, which is why the v9.0 implementation is limited.

We have a ton of work ahead for character animation, and everything related to that. We are going to beef up the scripting engine, which should make many people happy, especially you TDs out there. In an effort to continue our pledge to have LightWave “play nice” with other applications, we are going to put a lot of work into data interchange and standardization. And, of course, we are going to continue our work on core reliability improvements. Things may not occur in the order I have listed here, and likely won’t occur in a single release, however, I can tell you that we have some very cool new stuff planned for SIGGRAPH (hint-hint). Don’t forget, LightWave v9 licensees get free upgrades throughout the lifespan of the product, unlike any of our competitors.

So, there you have it! In short, with LightWave v9, you can do much more for much less, in a shorter period of time. And we accomplished all of this in one release. We still have much to do, and this will take time. We have many areas to improve, and many of you have helped us to prioritize what those should be, and for that, we thank you.

We also thank you for your incredible support, especially during some particularly difficult times in LightWave’s history. I believe those times are over, and I will let LightWave v9 speak for itself.

Sincerely,


Jay Roth
3D Division President
NewTek, Inc.
__________________
Chuck Baker
NewTek, Inc.
http://www.newtek.com/

[moc]

Build 9 Released
NewTek is pleased to announce that the ninth build for
Open Beta is now ready for download in Registration!
Welcome to the first feature-complete build of
LightWave v9.0! Edge Weighting is now present for
Catmull-Clark SDS, with a tool available in Modeler to
set the weights. We are also introducing you to the
new Render Globals feature, which adds the concept of
global camera and rendering options to Layout! We look
forward to your reactions to this new concept and to
the changes in panels and controls we've made to
account for this and to improve workflow in this area.


And as you may notice, a few fixes have been achieved
as well!


Reminder: New License Keys Ready
The new license keys for the extension period are also
ready. The new keys are good through May 31st, 2006.
Users who are registered with the US Office can
retrieve the new keys just by logging into their
registration account. The former key has now been
replaced with the new key.

NewTek Europe has provided the new keys to their
registered users via email. If you have not received
your email, just contact the NewTek Europe office and
they will assist you.


Instructions For 9th Build Release:

Just a reminder - since this is beta and the
installers themselves are being tested in each build,
please bear with us with a procedure that is more
complicated than you would usually expect with either
a new or an upgrade install. In order to test as
though each build is a first time install of the v9
software, we do ask that you remove the previous
version and store important files as well as any
content that you have created in a safe location.

1) First, if LightWave v9 is running on your system,
shut it down, including the Hub.

2) Locate the license.key file in your current folder
for LightWave v9 Open Beta, and copy the file to a
safe location.

3) If you have created and saved any presets or unique
content in your LightWave v9 Open Beta folder, copy
those files to a safe location. These can include the
Plugins folder, the Presets folder, and any content
folders.

4) Uninstall your current build of LightWave v9 Open
Beta.

5) After the uninstall, locate and delete the config
files for LightWave v9. If you have redirected the
config files, remove them from the folder where you
have redirected them. If you have not redirected them,
the will be in the default locations for your
platform.

Default locations for Windows configuration files
"LW9.CFG", "LWM9.CFG", "LWEXT9.CFG", "LWHUB9.CFG",
"LWMASTERS9.CFG":
Win2K: <yourdrive>:\Documents And Settings\<username>
WinXP: <yourdrive>:\Documents And Settings\<username>

Default locations for Mac configuration files
"LightWave Layout 9 Prefs", "LightWave Modeler 9
Prefs", "LightWave Extensions 9 Prefs", ightWave Hub
9 Prefs?, "LightWave Masters 9 Prefs":
OS X: <yourdrive>/users/<username>/Library/Preferences


6) Install the new build. Please note the installer no
longer tries to create initial configuration files.

7) Place your license.key file back in the Programs
folder, and return any content you removed for
safekeeping, if it is not still present.

When you run LightWave, it should now autoscan for
plugins, and should create the initial configuration
files. Please report any difficulties encountered, as
we are still refining this process.


Roster of Improvements for Open Beta Release 9 (Build
955):


Renderer:
- Fixed the problems with bump mapping. It should work
as it did previous to LW 9. The alpha from a bump map
no longer affects the bumps. The blending does work
correctly for bumps unlike in previous versions. This
can cause noticeable differences in some projects such
as the Texture benchmark (the cracked cube does not
appear bumped now due to a second copy of the texture
with zero ledge width placed on top in that scene).
- Motion vector blur now works for the perspective
camera mode. It won't work for the advanced camera
modes however.
- Implemented a potential fix for the FPrime
Hypervoxel problems. This one is still considered
experimental.
- Unseen by rays/unseen by camera now make use of the
raytrace transparency flag to determine whether a
transparent object should appear or not.


HyperVoxels:
- Implemented some optimizations to the Hypervoxel
code. This should speed up rendering time in certain
situations.


IK Booster
- Support fractional frames at make key for IKBooster
- Update Bake-able Match Goal Orientation for
IKBooster


Workflow and Configs:
- Implemented the "Render Globals" feature
- Set the maximum recent scenes and content
directories to 16.
- Made some minor control alignment adjustments to
account for the font differences on the Mac
- Added a "Create UVs" checkbox for the "Spline Draw"
tool, default off
- Load From Scene: Corrected the horizontal scrollbar,
and adjusted the list code to size the column width
based on the longest string


LScript:
- Added a "change log" entry for LScript v2.8


Modeler:

- Catmull-Clark SDS
Added support for edge weights and tool for setting
edge weights; under Utilities/Additional (if you have
properly refreshed your configs after the install),
this is called Set Map Value for the moment; however
this may change since the tool is designed to become
more general. (There is a tool for setting vertex map
weights on the Map Tab under General, also called Set
Map Value - that's not for edge weights, and please be
sure not to attempt to use it or remove it from the
interface. You'll need it when you get to setting
vertex weights.)
Partially sharp edges for CC subd. Caveat: there may
be differences in the edges with different subd
levels.
Fixed some float/double type confusion in CC subd.
Added "out of memory" exception handling to CC subd
genmesh.
CC subd edge sharpness: boolean sharpness. If the edge
weight == 0, edge is not sharp; if edge weight > 0,
edge is infinitely sharp.
Quite a lot of internal changes to the CC subd code.
The failure cases which were fixed previously should
be checked again to see if they have become unfixed.
Known Issues: With the addition of edge weights, the
mesh connectivity seems to be affected in some
situations, with models breaking apart. We are working
on that as we speak.
- Fix for edge corruption issues in repeatable bugs,
that should also fix a number of other crashes in
Modeler that users have been encountering from time to
time without being able to reproduce the exact steps.
- "Drop current tool" renamed to "Drop Current
Selection" since that is what that tool does


Plug-ins
- Pixiedust improvements and fix for a 64-bit crash
issue. Improvements include texturing particles on a
per particle basis with imagemaps, procedurals, etc.
- Pixiedust crash fix (pointers were invalidated on
array resize), and multithreading support.


Icons:

We're working on changing over the icons for v9; the
current test set has a known issue with the Hub icon
being transparent on most systems - we should have
that fixed by next build.


Summary of Additional Bugs Addressed:

Open Beta 40 : Node Editor - Cylindrical projection
Open Beta : Edgebevel and undo causes geometry
corruptions
Open Beta: UV interpolation w/ displacement
Open Beta : 176 : Clicking on a weight map in Scene
Editor -> crash
Open Beta 149 : L & M Beta3: Image editor image
filters
Open Beta : 50 Crash in Scene Editor
Open Beta : 73 Beta 2 (929) -
Open Beta: Opengl objects go black
Open Beta: applying a second expression to a graph and
then removing it = crash
Open Beta: deleting and re-applying ik booster custom
Object crashes Layout
Bump maps not rendering the same
Rendering crashes on pass 4 of 5, with memory read
0x00000010 error
Post Behavior button is clipped off bottom of Image
Editor
Add Directories button doesn't add them
Bump mapping different between nodal and standard
Loading lights using Load from Scene causes crash
Presets path doesn't work
Normal Displacement plugin strange behavior.
F9 Crash clearing viewport
Spline Tool Create Junk UVs in active Texture Maps
HyperVoxels don't reflect in one another unless
geometry is behind them.
Voxels not showing up in VIPER
HyperVoxels that are excluded from all lights turn
red.
Simple Wireframe Points, Point Size doesn't turn off
for selected points.
Mipmap setting to off crashes layout from Image Editor
2nd move command crashes Modeler
Replacing image looses it from Nodes
Alpha channels loosing info?
Moving of Discontinous UVs makes modeler
disappear/crash
The 'minimum evaluation spacing' parameter in the
Render Globals panel changes
The 'Volumetric Lights' box is always in a checked
state
The 'Shadow Maps' button is always in an on (checked)
state,
The 'Lens Flares' button is always in a checked state.
The 'noise reduction' flag can not be checked
Can't enter value for radiosity intensity
Modeler disappearing
Opening and closing graph editor crashes Layout
Removing envelope from Light properties crashes Layout
Overlay text field broken on Render Globals
Render Globals Limited Region popup broken.
Changing Global Resolution popup fails to change
resolution fields
Render Globals Panel hangs Layout
Instant crash - Render Globals
Layout crashing upon scene load. PFX.
Mac crashes on exit
With Global Camera On, selecting a resolution crashes
LW
Segment mem options can't be adjusted
Camera Panel UI issues
Render Globals panel UI issues
FX_Collision: Object-Subdiv collision not saved with
scene; reverts to Sphere
3D Underwater texture node doesn't animate
Rendering and Background images
Rendering crashes on pass 4 of 5, with memory read
0x00000010 error
Post Behavior button is clipped off bottom of Image
Editor
Load Items from Scene - Horizontal Scroll Bar does not
work
Modeler has crash when use 'copyundopaste' to complex
object.
Presets path doesn't work
Voxels clipping on render. Look different from 8.5
Point will be ghost
Layout Bounding Box Mode frame rate very slow for
large objects
Not suit commands on Studio Production Menu
Smooth Curves for Pro Menus mapped to the Smooth Poly
Separator issue in the default menu config
Bump strength doesn't match LW 8.5
Studio Menu Preset fails to switch third menu, Select
menu.
Selecting a Vertex Color map in the Scene Editor ->
crash.
Modeler isn't selecting the current item from layout
when syncing through the Hub
Dope Sheet frame ranges fail to update, out of sync
with display.
Removing an Envelope from Scene Editor -> crash
Fatal crash editing surfaces
Edge problem for 'hole' polygons
Scene Editor causes crash when deleting item.
Scene Editor Crash
Scene Editor causes crash when Hide selected
Jumpy numbers for colors when setting a key
Switching between List by Object/By Scene in Surfaces
crashes Layout every time
Drop Current Tool ('/' key) doesn't drop current tool
Scene editor text fields don't work properly on Mac
Sometimes the C+ doesn't appear in New scene editor
surface channels.
Node Displacement order not saved with scene
Background images don't render
OpenGL crash with viewports
Disabling the node editor for Displacements can erase
the nodes
Image selectors in reflection and refraction nodes are
ghosted
Nodes missing images will cause a crash on object save
Unseen By Rays only affects reflections, not
refraction
Unseen By Camera also makes objects unseen by rays.
Voxels Clip usage bug. No current work around.
FPrime HV reflection problem
Camera type not saved in scene file
Dynamic Linker Off By One Errors and FX Link
Properties Panel Unopenable
Applying IKB to a selected bone can crash LightWave
Bug causes a crash when same image sequence appears on
geometry
Image Sequences are affected by motion blur
Applying BoosterLink to IK_Booster-affected object's
graph crashes Layout
OpenGL crash with viewports
Front projection does not display correctly in OpenGL
Audio is one to 1.5 frames off
Graph Editor allows creation of invalid graphs
Display Edge Points in the Modeler Additional Menu
Displays code instead of inde
OpenGL crash on refresh.
Selecting edges of Catmull Clark - minor gui issue
Catmull Clark freezes/crashes Modeler.
Minor edge selection issue - shown on hidden polygons
Scene Saving broken
Scenes with Splinecontrol deformer don't re-open
correctly
Layout saves only the first layer of multiple layered
objects....
Modeler Crashes when launched from Layout if a null
object is in the scene
Crashing when switching between Layout and modeler
Cache Radiosity causes problems
Crash while rendering subpatches with Render Buffer
View set to show Motion
Traced transparency affects how fog is rendered in
surface
Reconstruction filter setting not saved
Another OpenGL crash - Light view

最後提供埋在別處抄過來的...
V9最新設定介面.........好像..把原來camera設定的.....
搬到render介面...同時改名叫Render Global
幾個設定介面.....改變很大........多了很多項.......

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