I had the pleasure of playing around with LightWave 7 on someone else's computer for a few days recently. I was extremely surprised....surprised at how incredibly difficult it was to get good, realistic renders out of it. You have to set the parameters for everything, it seems, such as specularity, reflection, and on and on. And I mean you have to do everything manually, over and over again...lots of trial and error. And previewing a render is time consuming and a pain in the *ss. Even once I began learning the program, everything still took twice as long as the same thing would in Vue. Not only is Vue easier to use, but it gives better results, IMHO, and even renders the same thing much faster. Now, I know LightWave's strength is in it's animation and modelling, and effects and such, and I'm definitely not knocking the program..it's awesome, really, and I loved using it. But IMHO, Vue 4 blows it away for still renders, and LW doesn't have any of the plants and skies and such. Now, if only Vue had Global Illumination/Radiosity..... :)

If you see in the general gallery, you will notice that good Lightwave pictures are very rare, compared with 3Dmax or cinema 4D. The difficulty you mentioned is the explanation why. But Lightwave has radiosity/GI as far as I know. The prices of the programs are not at all the same. I prefer to have Vue which is the most easy soft to use. ;=) Yves

Speaking of which. Isn't that what I'm always saying here? Price is no guarantee of success? Thing is you will not believe how many people I've met in the industry where they use lightwave and 3d studio where a bunch of people use Vue instead to make things up fast and easy. There is a lot of programs out there that could learn a lot from Vue. Simple is better because it's more productive. Adjusting everything has it's uses but you don't need that in the forground application. Hiding it works just fine too then if you need to tweek something you can go find that parameter. Mojoworld is like that more and more programs are becoming like that. TrueSpace has radiosity to and it's simpiler than lightwave and cheaper. Maybe not as powerfull but hey if you can't figure it out what good is it?

Well.... everyone has their own opinion. :) I've been a Vue user since v3.0 back in the summer of 2000. My boss wanted to sew together real images of our sky backdrops to create a cylindrical panorama for animation. I bought Vue 3 on my own and did some sky panoramas and the images blew away my fellow employees - needless to say we ended up using Vue skies for backdrops! My fellow employees couldn't have agreed more and our boss was outvoted! I've been a Lightwave user since v4.0. Lightwave DOES require alot more work than Vue 4 - initially. However. Lightwave renders will end up looking more like reality than any Vue 4 renders. Once you get used to Lightwave and create presets for your realistic surfaces, images get alot better alot quicker. And YES, you can get better images out of Vue4 right out of the box - not doubt about it. But when you want realism - the ability to create something that will be indistinguishable from reality... you will want Lightwave. And you're right YL and MightyPete - the price of a program doesn't have a great deal to do with the final result. Give me Maya and Vue and right away I'll be able to create something in Vue that will far surpass anything I'd be able too do with Maya right away. But... give me some time to learn Maya and I'll bet I'll be able to outdo Vue4! In the final analysis it has to do with the artist using the keyboard! For me, I can't do without either Lightwave OR Vue - and alot of other programs that make life alot easier and our workplace ALOT more productive. And trust me, I know. We've just finished up our second year in business and we saw a 30% increase in revenue from our first year. Our primary software is Lightwave, but we use MANY other programs and without them we wouldn't have been able to get where we are and do what we've done. Hell, we're looking forward to Poser6, Vue5, WorldBuilder4, etc....etc. For everyone who really wants to learn Lightwave and has a desire to create VERY realistic images - you can if you want to. But it's not just point and click and render. It takes time and dedication and effort. The more effort you put in, the better the end result! Best of Luck to everyone here and a Happy New Year to ALL! Dave Williams Virtual Renderings

See another happy company. I think a lot of companies don't want to admit they use vue. One thing for sure vue compliments these super powerfull programs. Making masks of anything and depth channels of anything. Endless simple and complex, textures, skies, terrains. It definatly is earning a place in the cg world. That's the thing thought the more programs you got the more valuable and powerfull the collection becomes. Even makes it easier to use some of them actually. I can't wait till Vue 5 also. I'm a happy customer. It was money well spent for me. I can't say that for all the software I've bought over the years.One thing if you look around at the animations that have been done in lightwave of course some of that would be impossible to ever create in Vue in a life time. Vue is holding it's ground though and that good. It hopfully will never replace them super powerfull programs cause then most people probibly will not be able to afford it.

Since Lightwave and skies are both mentioned here, Ill remind everyone that we do have a product called Ozone 2, which adds our volumetric sky technology to Lightwave as a plugin. Sure, you can work and work at Skytracer, but you'll find Ozone 2 is a real time saver and produces some excellent results that are really hard to achieve with Skytracer. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Well.... I made this really simplistic still life model. I modelled it in LW. It was just a jug and a glass and a few other simple things. I rendered it in LW and also exported it as a LW 5 .lwo model (so Vue could import it), and set up the materials very similarly---as closely as I could, considering the input methods. I rendered with both programs, and got similar results, but in all honesty, I thought the Vue version was better--it certainly was considerably easier and quicker to get good results. The LW version came out very good too, but with ALOT of trial and error. I certainly am not knocking LW... I really want to buy it, even moreso now since using it, but I guess I'm just saying I think Vue is far more user-friendly and intuitive. :)

Lynn, Actually... Ozone 2 is "on my wish list." We'd like to get it but can't justify $200 when we've already got Vue4 to do atmospheres. Maybe $149.... :) It's on hold for now - until we positively, absolutely have-to-have-it. I'd think it would be most useful for animations as opposed to stills. Thanks for the kick though! And I agree, Skytracer can be a real pain on more than one ocassion. MikeJ, Like I said above, Vue4 right out-of-the-box is much easier to learn than LW. We all know that the learning curve in LW is quite a bit steeper! :) You have MUCH MORE "tweaking power" in LW than Vue and can come up with photo-real in LW. For us, Vue4 is an indispensible tool and we WON'T do without it. Though once you really start learning LW, you'll never look back! Best of Luck! Dave Williams Virtual Renderings info@virtualrenderings.com