LIGHT WAVE
LightWave (or, more properly, LightWave 3D) is a computer graphics program for 3D modeling, animating and rendering. The original program was shipped with the Video Toaster, an expansion card for the Commodore Amiga 2000 computer. It was later sold as a standalone program for AmigaOS until the mid 1990s, when it was ported to the Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and SGI's IRIX operating systems. The rendering engine, ScreamerNet has also been ported to Linux platforms.
LightWave has rendering abilities and unusual user interface (for example, icons are not used; instead functions are all given descriptive titles).
LightWave was one of the first high profile industry standard 3D packages featuring a built-in radiosity render engine, complete with a complex light calculation model for support of caustics.
Some functions within LightWave are multi-threaded, which means that those components can simultaneously use multiple processors in the same machine when performing complex calculations.
Programmers can expand LightWave's capabilities using an included SDK and also a special scripting language called LScript. This SDK is based on the powerful C language and almost anything can be created, from a custom shader to a different scene format exporter. LightWave itself includes dozens of free plugins and many more can be obtained from different developers around the globe.
LightWave has rendering abilities and unusual user interface (for example, icons are not used; instead functions are all given descriptive titles).
LightWave was one of the first high profile industry standard 3D packages featuring a built-in radiosity render engine, complete with a complex light calculation model for support of caustics.
Some functions within LightWave are multi-threaded, which means that those components can simultaneously use multiple processors in the same machine when performing complex calculations.
Programmers can expand LightWave's capabilities using an included SDK and also a special scripting language called LScript. This SDK is based on the powerful C language and almost anything can be created, from a custom shader to a different scene format exporter. LightWave itself includes dozens of free plugins and many more can be obtained from different developers around the globe.