Last Chance! Download Your Free 90-Day Trial of LightWave 2015

The LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc., is offering all 3D artists a unique opportunity.

Now for a limited time during Siggraph Week, artists can download their own, full featured 90-day trial version of LightWave 2015 3D – free.

There’s only one caveat – to completely unlock all the features of the 90-day LightWave 2015 trial, a user needs to register the software — and today is the last day of the download in the limited offer valid August 10-17.

It’s all part of the release of LightWave 2015 trial, and as part of the release, the LightWave 3D Group has created a series of Quick Start LightWave 2015 videos dedicated to the powerful features and user interface of LightWave 2015.

Tim Jenison, the founder of NewTek, is considered the visionary force behind the desktop video revolution. Jenison founded NewTek in 1985, and he led the way in the development of a series of highly successful products, including DigiView (the first video digitizer for a computer), DigiPaint, and the Amiga Video Toaster.

Jenison learned about technology and electrical equipment from his father, who ran an electrical engineering firm, and by the late 1970s, he recognized that the computer would become the integrating medium for his various passions: electronics, music, film and video.

His decision to form a company was the best way to fuel his desire to create sophisticated, yet affordable video software tools that everyone could use and enjoy led to creations like LightWave 3D.
Created by artists for artists, LightWave 3D is software that offers an end-to-end production pipeline for artists and designers which gives them the capability to model, animate, capture, retarget, render, and input and output to 3D.

LightWave 3D also includes the power to output files for 3D printing.

Rob Powers, the President of the NewTek LightWave Group and the leader of the LightWave 3D software development design team, was a member of the original “Malibu Five” Avatar concept design team. He was also the first CG artist to join James Cameron’s team as Animation Technical Director for that film.

He was also the Los Angeles-based Virtual Art Department Supervisor for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s animated film “Tintin,” a work based on the graphic novels by artist Hergé. Self-taught in digital filmmaking methodologies, Powers is a pioneer in of the CG revolution. His animation and effects work includes the stereoscopic IMAX film “Aliens of the Deep,” Disney’s “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” and Jet Li’s “The One.” He was the lead animator for the 3D dancing baby.

The company says LightWave 2015 is ideal for artists who need to take control of dynamic simulations, and a series of new Bullet constraint types are key to this latest release.

With functionality such as Point-to-Point, Hinge, Slider, Cone Twist, Spring and six degrees of freedom (DOF), LightWave 2015 also has Use Importance Sampling which greatly improves the quality of scenes lit by GI and HDR images or background lighting.

Users can take advantage of the Genoma 2 Character Rigging System – a rapid modular rigging system that at its base level is a complete rigging development kit (RDK) – to quickly rig characters for animation, and all without needing to set up those complex rigs from scratch. The feature also supports the use of Math Expressions and Scripts, and it includes new and improved human, feline, and arthropod preset rigs.

Have you ever used LightWave 3D in your 3D animation or character design work? Let us know in the LightWave 3D 2015 forum thread on 3DPB.com.