Attached Link: http://www.worley.com/media/examples/sas/Gallery/insideLW.jpg

Attached Link: http://www.worley.com/sasquatch/gallery.html#gallery1top

That model is super hi-res, it's Apples & Oranges...

Yeah, but imagine your bank account looking like THIS: (Though I'd need to find a picture of a black hole to show a bank account after buying Maya or 3DSMax...)

There are a lot of reasons to get Lightwave 6.5, I have it and I'm learning it. But there are also a LOT of people here that are creating some amazing stuff using Poser and painting programs. I think Poser stands on it's own, and it's a GREAT program, don't slam it by putting a picture of Annanova in here to compare. You need to also post the pictures in the book that explain HOW she came to be, and how much work she is, compared to being able to start with a complete model and work from there. I intend to use Poser with Lightwave, but I will also use it alone, it's one of my favorite programs. 8^) Marque

Oh..and the plugin at the site you gave isn't cheap by any means....I think it's about $500, so you have to add that to the cost of Lightwave. Marque

I'm not against Poser, as I have used it for years, and it is an integral part of assembling characters. But if you are an accomplished actor or musician, you eventually want to "move up" to a level where your skills get "rewarded". Lightwave 6.5 is the "reward" as far as I am concerned. Poser is great for setting up clothes, animations, etc. but LW gives them the chance to "star". Why do you think Curious Labs made Pro-Pack? It's all about MOVING UP to a Professional Level... Some people may gasp at paying $500 for a plug-in, but when those nice big checks arrive that you must lug down to the bank- that have you on the beach on Maui sipping a drink, you will understand what a good investment you made...

This is true, and that is why I bought Lightwave, C4D, Truespace 4, and Hash, to name a few, and I am waiting impatiently for my Poser Pro pack that I ordered this morning. I'm just saying don't make people who can't afford to pick up these programs feel bad by coming in and showing pics from Lightwave. I want to see some stuff that you've done in Lightwave, then I'll be more impressed. 8^) Marque

man wish we had a plug in like that hair thing for poser or even photoshop. If anyone gets that plug in for light wave can you start makeing wigs for us? LOL.

Unfortunately Sasquatch is a "procedural" type of thing. It doesn't make an exportable model in OBJ or 3DS (at least not that I am aware of). It is sort of like a special Bryce MAT, you can only get the effect in a specific program. In theory, you could do it in Poser, if they made lots of changes and added Plug-In support to Poser. Instead, Curious Labs is saying- take your Poser characters into high-end 3D programs where all these plug-ins already work. I will be posting Poser stuff I've done in Lightwave 6.5, which I only just got a couple of weeks ago. I am still assembling some plug-ins, like the awesome but inexpensive Terragen to Lightwave plug-in (only $55) and getting the "Inside Lightwave" book. Stay tuned...

I think you might want to look at the Character Animation in Lightwave 6 too Fox. It'll blow your bangs back. 8^) I have the other hair plugin for Lightwave, got it with the lip sync program I picked up,it's called Shave and a Haircut. If I remember correctly you can create objects with it and bring them into Poser. I'm busy with a project right now, but as soon as it's out the door I'm going to get busy with the Lightwave and start paying back renderosity for all the stuffage I've downloaded from freestuff....lol I can't wait to see what you do with Lightwave Fox, you'll be ahead of me so expect LOTS of questions! Marque

Marque my own personal interest actually is in HDR (High Dynamic Range) renders. Both Lightwave 6.5 and Terragen support HDR. So I am visualizing not hairy Poser characters but photo-realistic characters roaming terrains as real as Jurassic Park or Titanic movies. Dinosaurs, Eagles in the Rockies, Elephants in Africa, that kind of stuff turns me on... Of course hairy Lions and Wolves would be great, so when I spring for a hair plug-in I'm going with Sasquatch, which all reviewers rate as the best hair plug-in...

That character on the book is not actually "super high res". Its actually a low density cage mesh thats just been metaNurbed. I myself work in LW to create my figures, however it has been a chore to bring them into Poser because LW export didn't support transfer of Parts to Groups, and no UV data is exported. But thats probably a non-issue as of the Poser Pro Pack's new figure setup ease, and the fact that I've become so found of UVmapper that I use it over even 6.5s built in mapping tools. Sigh.. Curious Labs are gonna put us figure creators out of business. heh ;) The main reason I would think everyone should have LW is the modelling ease, and the renderer. There is no beating the radiosity, caustics, and IBL lighting for realism. The procedurals materials are great, and can even make sloping materials to mimic bryce terrains i.e certain textures based on poly slopes. There are a billion free plugins floating around; velvet shaders, fresnel, ect. There are the very fast built in volumetrics that can simulate solids or gaseous volumes. Make a plane chop it up a bit, shape it to a rolling landscape, select some of the points, and you can turn lay volumetric thick snow on top of it. Rambles off... And the subdivison surfaces (metaNurbs) in LW are the best out there imo. Extremely controllable. I could go on... Simple IBL samples of Z's Michael... http://clients.unimatrix.com/mlane/iblhuman.jpg http://clients.unimatrix.com/mlane/iblhuman2.jpg Same exact scene. No lights in the scene. All I did was change the background image thats being used to light it. Can create a completely different time of day, mood, ect. All by changing the background image. ML

lol...ok...so I'll be bugging you for tips! I wasn't coming down on the Fox, I just remember not being able to afford a lot of programs and it really depressed me to hear about how great something was when there was no way on God's green earth I could afford it. 8^) It's better now but I still have to watch it on the money department big time. Haven't sold anything yet so it's all money out right now. Marque

oh and BTW. The HDRI stuff can be a bit confusing at first. (At least it was to me.) There are actual HDRI formatted images, that are made through a process of exposure ect. Two links here that I found while reading up on it. http://positron.cs.berkeley.edu/~gwlarson/pixformat/index.html http://graphics3.isi.edu/~debevec/Probes/ These tend to output a slight better output that using regular .jpgs and the such. But the two images in my previous post were done just by using a normal .jpg image with the Image Filter> HDR Expose That way you can turn Bryce images, or anything into a IBL source. Here is a second method completely, that was on Newteks site for producing the Global Illumination effect of Messiah:Render. http://www.users.space.net.au/%7Ephaedrus/phaedrus/radiosity.html You see LW can also do, object based lighting with its radiosity. For example, you set a ball over a box in a scene with no lights on ( turn off "affect difuse" and "affect specular"). Set the Balls Luminosity at say 300% (type it in, the slider won't let you go over 100%) and then render with global illumination on. The ball will cast light of its own. Put a texture on the ball, and it will cast light with colors based on the texture. Opens the door for real TV picture in a dark room, glowing signs, fancy light fixtures ect. Hope stuff wasn't too basic.. it kinda impressed me when I first got LW. ML

Mallenlane, the second JPG looks especially great. You are calling them IBL images. I assume this is the same as the HDR lighting setups? Marque, we've all been there I think. Not having much money in the beginning, but I know that never stopped any of us from drooling over movie special effects and high-end "SGI-Wavefront" software shown at tradeshows and demo reels. Not everyone can afford Lightwave right now but there has NEVER been a time in 3D software history where so much power is available for such as low price. It is much more in range of most people than ever before (back when high-end was a $50,000- $250,000 software investment) You can still spend that much, but LW is TREMENDOUS bang-for-the-buck. CL's Pro-Pack only adds more power and icing to the cake... (It's why I call LW 6.5 the Blair Witch Project of 3D software...)

High Dynamic Range Images (which is a format for storing light information in a image file, not a technique for lighting in 3D), are a way to produce IBL (Image Based Lighting) in 3D scenes. But you can just use a normal JPG image to light the scene. HDRI formatted images jsut produce slightly more accurate results. They also require considerably higher quality settings to not look grainy. LW's global illumination model is Photon Tracing based. Meaning it sends out point samples of light and they bounce around, and tolerance kinda fuzzes them. The higher your settings, the more point samples, the less grainy the output. Lower settings, the more grainy and dark it seems. And its unfortunate that based on another thread today, the Pro Pack wasn't designed to work with 6.5, but 5.0 and 5.5 = with a patch to come later. LW 6.5 added a lot of new tools to the bones and character setup to bring them up to snuff. (before they were rather mmm... bad) They will perhaps try to implement Bone weights in a patch? Would be nice... ML ML

lol I'm so excited, they just told me they're shipping me my pro pack today, so I "should" get it tomorrow, paid for next day shipping. Hard to work knowing it's on it's way. I only have Lightwave 6.5 though, and I know there is a question about it working for 5.6 only. Hope it works! Marque

The CL website shows Pro-Pack running under LW 6.5. Are you saying it doesn't work in 6.5?

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=223751 This is the email that someone got from CL when they asked. Given that the bones system was completely overhauled and improved in 6.0, I dunno. Maybe what they are showing on their site is a test version they are working on for the update. ML

It does work with 6.5. As it does with 6.0, 5.5, and 5.6. We recommend getting the free 6.5 upgrade if you have 6.0 because UV's were not properly supported prior to 6.5.If you do get the Pro pack take the time to look at the LW section of the Readme. We did our best to outline the differences in the LW versions as they related to Poser. BTW I'm the Poser Product Manager.

Glad you got to this- Hearing it from you makes me ready to place an order for Pro-Pack...