Peter what's the 411 on this software? I know it is very popular in the film industry.

John,
If the question was referring to me, I use Autocad and Solidworks. Rhino didn't cut it for me as it's Nurbs based approach had a decided lack of flexibility and edit-ability. Whether we like it or not, stunt is basically engineering design and development, and sooner or later, it always seems to come back to engineering class horsepower.

Peter is using Lightwave 3-D software that is used for 3-D modelling for movies and animation rather than for most CAD work. I use Blender 3D to do the same type of thing. It just costs less.......as in free. It is open source. You can import the files into programs like Autocad and Solid Works. Programs like Solid Works are incredibly good, but at that sort of price, they should be.

Most of the time to make a neat set of plans, 2-D drawing packages are good enough. To model a 3-D airplane is a lot of work in any software. I have used Corel Draw for many years, but these days, I just use an open source program like Inkscape to do the same thing. It is also a vector graphic program and can even import some pdf drawings. Either way, neat job Peter!

Keith R

Peter what's the 411 on this software? I know it is very popular in the film industry.

Alrighty then.

As you noted Lightwave 3D is a 3D application designed primarily for use in motion pictures and television, It also has broad use in architectural modeling. The tools and workflow are optimised for 3D animation and object creation to be used in movies and TV shows. Autocad, and Solidworks etc, are designed with tools and workflow for creating 2D or @D objects for the manufacturing process. What is easy to do in one type of application is more difficult in the other and vice versa. Solidworks and Acad work great if you want to draw up 2D plans or create a file for a CNC machining process, typically they are strict and regimented applications which is required for mechanical engineering projects requiring a great degree of accuracy.

Lightwave and other such products focus more on the creative aspect, making it easier to quickly create a object and then sculpt or fine tune it but not necessarily to one thousands of an inch detail. I mean who really cares if a ogre is 7 foot tall or just 6 foot 11. While great accuracy is possible in the Hollywood 3D packages it is just more cumbersome to achieve it. But hen you can not simulate a building exploding into a billion pieces with debris and flame while making it look like it's the real thing easily in Acad or Solidworks.

You can achieve the same results but it would be a lot more involved.

I am prejudiced as far as LightWave goes. It is the first application I learned and I am the most proficient in it. I have and use 3D Max by AUtodesk but I find it labyrinthian.

Lightwave comes with two applications called Modeler and Layout. Modeler is the one you see in the images. This is the environment where you create objects. As you can see all of the tools and operations are Named and tabbed in text. This is what really differentiates the application from the others. To perform a action you select the tool by the intuitive name. Other applications force you to learn sometimes cryptic symbols that represent actions or functions. I find it far easier to click on a tab that clearly says "Make Polygon" than hunt through and find the symbol icon to do the same. I already know how to read English, it gets in the way when you also have to learn how to translate icons into the action you wish to perform.

Splitting the process into two separate applications also reduces a ton of clutter on the desktop, as only the commands and functions dedicated to the creation of objects are on screen. Other applications lump everything together in numerous tool bars and drop downs, that can consume much of your work area. Typically you want to be looking at your model and not have to move tool bars or other elements out of the way.

Someone mentioned Nurbs modeling, Lightwave is primarily a polygon modeler, where you create objects by creating polygons, or using primitives and then subdividing the polygon to add detail or shape objects. This is call subdivision modeling. Lightwave however also allows you to model in nurbs, and spline patching which is very much like Autocad works with skinning, and line segments or curves. In lightwave you can mix, match and combine all of the modeling types to get what you are after. There are some rules that mus be followed but otherwise it is pretty open. For instance the Wing in the images shown was created by first making a 24 sided disk. Then the disk was stretched into a oval. Finally by moving the points where the sides of the disk connected I manipulated the oval into the airfoil shape. Then it was a simple operation of extruding the flat airfoil shape out to create the wing.

Finally by subdividing the object and applying the bevel tool I created the Filleted wing root. The elevator is the wing copied and shrunk, and the flaps will be the same with a few minor size and shape changes. In modeler you apply your surface materials as well. It is like applying the finish and graphics on a real model, how ever you are not committed to the outcome, you can change and redesign the finish scheme as often as you want.

The Layout application is where you open the model you created in Modeler and make movies, print images, create special effects, in other word you rule the world! It is actually cool working in Layout because there you get to play Movie Mogul Super Honcho. You are the director, art department, SFX guy, Lighting manager, and GOD over all your creations. This application has all of the animation tools, where Acad and Solidworks leave off, you are GOD and can do anything, create day, and night, make you plane fly, retract landing gear, leave a smoke trail, have the pilot eject, get it riddled with bullets and burst into flame the crash into the ocean. Or you can just capture a single image and print it as a nice wall paper for your PC or as a rudimentary blueprint for plans, Or just for highlighting some of the stuff you can do like I did earlier in this post.

Note the number of tools available in Lightwave 3D is staggering, Just the surface materials and shading options with the shader node editor is many layers deep. And the same goes for every other aspect from camera type and selection to Lighting management. IMHO Lightwave is easier to learn the basics so you can create fairly quickly, and if that's not enough there are thousands of already created models available for free and for sale that you can download and use immediately. But to understand it and use it thoroughly and well is a very high learning curve, as is any professional CAD type package. I've been using Lightwave since 1997 and there are still tools and functions that I have not touched within the software.

If you are furgal, then there is Blender for free, and it is a great little package. While its renderer is not up to the quality and speed of the professional packages it is great for making 3D objects quickly. It's file format can be imported by just about any of the professional packages, and just about all the professional packages export a file format Blender can open.

The draw back to Blender is that it is little used in the professional community, so time invested learning how to work in that package is largely nontransferable to the professional packages. The basic concepts are the same but the User Interface is Blenders own and does not translate well.

For more info go to http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/

Just want to mention that,using older,long discontinued versions of software, can often times save you a bundle. While it may not be state of the art for say, designing nuclear reactors, it can kick ass on some of our applications. This Lightwave software looks very similar to Rhino accept that, when you get into the movie part, it obviously leaves everything else in the dust.

The other main difference, is that it is not a nurbs (organic) based modeler, it is a polygon based modeler, which for many is easier to get a handle on and is native to creating man made objects. For example just about any TV show or Motion Picture produced in the past 20 years that had a space craft in it used "ightwave 3D in it's production pipeline.