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Andrew Cross has left VizRt (NewTek/LightWave 3D)

Professor Moriarty

Professor Moriarty

Rice Admiral
Premium Member
At this point, LightWave 3D is no longer pining for the fjords. It’s just plain dead.

Latest sign of necrosis: Dr. Andrew Cross, one of the last remaining champions of LightWave at Vizrt (the company that bought NewTek and then allowed LightWave to die from neglect) has left the company:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewc2

So if it wasn’t clear when OTOY announced the end of development for their LightWave plugin, this latest blow may be the final deathstroke. LightWave 3D is not resting. It has passed. The plumage don’t enter into it.
 
This whole drawn-out expiration has been supremely annoying. I'm still trying to decide where I'm going to go from here. From an employability, skate-to-where-the-puck-is-going perspective, I should get into real-time stuff (probably Unreal, even though Epic is a lousy corporate citizen, and I'll get started on that when the production version 5 comes out soon), but I'll still need something to model in, at least. Blender seems like the obvious choice, but I'm also interested in whichever 3D programs conspicuously and enthusiastically support Apple Silicon, which appears to be Blender and C4D. Based on the five minutes I've used each of them recently, Blender seemed more comprehensible (there's a sentence I never would've expected to write).

Of course, if I didn't have to worry about... continuing to get jobs in the future... I'd be content to wring every year and month I could out of Lightwave. I was hoping for a miracle, but I guess it's not 1996 and, no matter how shouty he is, Kat Meyers isn't Steve Jobs.
 
My main concern at this point (now that OTOY has stopped Octane development) is that a driver update will render (pun unintended) Octane unusable.

For the past couple of months I've been "auditioning" two DCCs: Maxon Cinema 4D R25 and Blender 3.0. Blender 3.1 just came out a couple of weeks ago and I haven't had a chance to evaluate it yet--I auditioned Cinema 4D first, and was almost four weeks into learning Blender when version 3.1 came out.

I am honestly torn between the two right now.

Cinema 4D:
  • PRO: User interface is a bit more intuitive than Blender, but keep in mind I haven't looked at 3.1 yet
  • PRO: A wealth of plugins available to do just about anything I need to do (but at a cost, literally...!)
  • PRO: Octane (my GPU renderer of choice) works great with C4D and has the most up-to-date documentation of all of the plugins OTOY supports
  • CON: Expen$ive, and not just C4D, the plugins too (Turbulence FD is about $500... FumeFX is $845!)
Blender:
  • PRO: FREE
  • PRO: FREE
  • PRO: Seems like even more plugins available than C4D, but haven't had a chance to really investigate
  • PRO: Best friend is about 6 months ahead of me learning Blender and is eager to provide help
  • CON: Confusing as hell. @scifieric's and Udemy's tutorials have helped but yikes what a mess compared to C4D
  • CON: Octane is a lot more buggy on Blender than C4D (documentation isn't as good either)
  • PRO: FREE
If anyone has any experience with both of these applications, I'd love to hear your thoughts pro/con.
 
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Disconcerting = I wanted to throw my computer through the window at some points.

I'm not a professional like @David cgc so this is not a decision I need to make from an employability standpoint. This is my hobby. My hobby is supposed to relax me and be enjoyable. The evaluation of Blender 3.0 has not been either of those things, and I keep finding myself wanting to just head over to the Maxon site and whip out the credit card. Am I giving up too soon? Is Blender 3.1 that much better than 3.0?
 
As someone who moved from 3DS Max to Blender, and who then helped a bunch other modelers migrate, I fully stand by it and actually defend its UX, which is geared towards shortcuts and is one of the fastest to use in the industry once you're used to it (plus after 3.0 it got a fresh coat of paint which helps). Plus its open source meaning that huge risk that both LW and 3DS Max had is completely gone, even if the Blender Foundation suddenly stopped existing, the work can just be forked and continued by a new group of interested developers.

I do agree that Octane's a bit of a problem, working for OTOY now there are certainly bugs in that plugin. I know other folks high up at OTOY do use Blender though so it's an active area of development. Then again you can always use the fantastic Cycles renderer which comes standard with Blender, is far more intuitive and very powerful (and faster, at least in my hardware).
 
Professor Moriarty said:
My main concern at this point (now that OTOY has stopped Octane development) is that a driver update will render (pun unintended) Octane unusable.

For the past couple of months I've been "auditioning" two DCCs: Maxon Cinema 4D R25 and Blender 3.0. Blender 3.1 just came out a couple of weeks ago and I haven't had a chance to evaluate it yet--I auditioned Cinema 4D first, and was almost four weeks into learning Blender when version 3.1 came out.

I am honestly torn between the two right now.

Cinema 4D:
  • PRO: User interface is a bit more intuitive than Blender, but keep in mind I haven't looked at 3.1 yet
  • PRO: A wealth of plugins available to do just about anything I need to do (but at a cost, literally...!)
  • PRO: Octane (my GPU renderer of choice) works great with C4D and has the most up-to-date documentation of all of the plugins OTOY supports
  • CON: Expen$ive, and not just C4D, the plugins too (Turbulence FD is about $500... FumeFX is $845!)
Blender:
  • PRO: FREE
  • PRO: FREE
  • PRO: Seems like even more plugins available than C4D, but haven't had a chance to really investigate
  • PRO: Best friend is about 6 months ahead of me learning Blender and is eager to provide help
  • CON: Confusing as hell. @scifieric's and Udemy's tutorials have helped but yikes what a mess compared to C4D
  • CON: Octane is a lot more buggy on Blender than C4D (documentation isn't as good either)
  • PRO: FREE
If anyone has any experience with both of these applications, I'd love to hear your thoughts pro/con.
Click to expand...

If you're having issues with Blender (I know I was) you could try Blender for Artists. I'm using Blender for Artists 2 and it was a much more natural transition from Truespace over to Blender that way. 90% of the plugins work as well as the tutorials and the environment feels more accessible to me. And it's built off Blender so the upgrades tend to run parallel.
 
I've tried a boatload of different software over the years, and I have to say that although Blender isn't perfect, since it was (kind of) started by Ton Roosendaal ... who has perpetuated the software, and I don't think he or Blender are going to ever go away. He's got the Blender organization and money put away for the continued improvement of the software.

Yes, everything ends, but I think Blender is still at mid-life at worst and will probably be around for a LONG time.

But the choice of software is more than "Will this still be here in a year?" type of questions. Since Blender is free, I'm hoping that it will continue to develop. Even the old version that I continue to use is capable of doing what I want, so I'm going to keep using it even if it goes away. But they haven't stopped and they don't even seem as if they are slowing down in development.

Still, I think the most important part of this is, "What are you comfortable with using?" That's THE question. Blender is only now (read that to be the 'last few years') starting to be used in professional settings, such as movies and television production. But I think it will continue. It is GOOD software that continues to be improved. So, with that in mind, I'm going to suggest: Blender.

But, Professor, I'm certain that you will EXCEL in whatever you choose. You're a TALENTED artist.
 
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FWIW, I've elected to go with Cinema 4D. At the end of the day it came down to a lack of time (and patience) to master Blender's better-than-it-used-to-be-but-still-confounding user interface. From my POV, Cinema 4D fits like a glove in comparison. But what sealed the deal for me was X-Particles, the particle system for Cinema 4D. The thing feels like it's a part of C4D, and it works pretty seamlessly with the GPU renderers supported by C4D (including my incumbent renderer of choice, Octane). What I have planned for the next year is going to require a lot of fire, smoke, clouds, and things that go kaboom, so the combo of X-Particles and C4D was too powerful to resist.
 
Professor Moriarty said:
FWIW, I've elected to go with Cinema 4D. At the end of the day it came down to a lack of time (and patience) to master Blender's better-than-it-used-to-be-but-still-confounding user interface. From my POV, Cinema 4D fits like a glove in comparison. But what sealed the deal for me was X-Particles, the particle system for Cinema 4D. The thing feels like it's a part of C4D, and it works pretty seamlessly with the GPU renderers supported by C4D (including my incumbent renderer of choice, Octane). What I have planned for the next year is going to require a lot of fire, smoke, clouds, and things that go kaboom, so the combo of X-Particles and C4D was too powerful to resist.
Click to expand...

Let me know if we can help in any way. Octane is C4D is stellar. For the Roddenberry archive, we are also using Octane for Blender and UE, and you have access to all of these too should you ever move between DCC’s.

Also - the 4K TMP DE Enterprise CG shots - rendered in Octane, very proud of that :)

Sad about LW too. Did all we could to support it.
 
Don't mind me; I'm just looking around for a suitable replacement for when SketchUp really gets unusable. Friend of mine mentioned something along the lines of Blender getting an inferencing engine akin to SU. Can anyone confirm? Also: a point towards a good tutorial for those used to SU and want to migrate to Blender would be most welcome too.

Honestly, C4D for me is out of the question. I can't throw down that amount of money for my hobby...
 
BorgMan said:
Don't mind me; I'm just looking around for a suitable replacement for when SketchUp really gets unusable. Friend of mine mentioned something along the lines of Blender getting an inferencing engine akin to SU. Can anyone confirm? Also: a point towards a good tutorial for those used to SU and want to migrate to Blender would be most welcome too.
Click to expand...

Do you mean this inferencing in Sketch Up? Some of the inferencing (midpoint, plane, face, etc) are common to different modeling actions/tools in most 3d programs. You'd still end up adjusting to whichever app you want to switch to though.
 
Jules, you guys (and especially Juanjo!) held on and supported that dumpster fire NewTek longer than any of us could reasonably expect. For years I was envious of the tutorials and manuals available for the C4D plugin—now I am taking full advantage of them (instead of trying to adapt them to LW, which didn’t always work so well).
 
Professor Moriarty said:
Jules, you guys (and especially Juanjo!) held on and supported that dumpster fire NewTek longer than any of us could reasonably expect. For years I was envious of the tutorials and manuals available for the C4D plugin—now I am taking full advantage of them (instead of trying to adapt them to LW, which didn’t always work so well).
Click to expand...

Thank you!

Juanjo has been incredible with the love and care he has put into supporting LW Octane. I really didn't expect a 2021 tribute build, that was an awesome thing he did for the community.

For legacy support, MacOS 11 at least has Octane X prime (free on 1 GPU) for LW which should run indefinitely on that OS. The 2020+ LW plug-in on PC should also work indefinitely on current hardware and drivers (at least through Ampere).

Most of the early LW assets in the Roddenberry Archive going back to 2002 (with a TOS Enterprise model built by OTOY for Roddenberry / CBS) , have been preserved via LW->ORBX packages, with further development migrated over to other DCCs going forward.

Jules
 
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