Achieving new levels in animation, illumination, hair and fur, rendering and workflow

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – August 7, 2008 – NewTek Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced the release of LightWave® v9.5 for Windows®, a major update to its award-winning 3D application, LightWave 3D®. LightWave v9.5's new capabilities include FiberFX, a complete hair and fur solution, a new lighting system and many improvements to animation, rendering and workflow. The update is available to registered owners of LightWave v9 series at no charge. SIGGRAPH attendees can see LightWave v9.5 demonstrations at NewTek booth #159.

"With so many features and enhancements in LightWave v9.5, users suggested that we could release it as v10. Customer feedback has been positive," said Jay Roth, president of 3D division, NewTek. "LightWave is the application choice of Emmy® winners, and is seeing increasing use in feature film projects. With this new version, the LightWave community is experiencing a renaissance."

A highlight of LightWave v9.5 is FiberFX, a proprietary polygonal fiber modeler for creating realistic hair, fur and feathers. It provides artists with a full suite of tools to model and style each fiber, create volumetric shadows, render-in reflection and refraction and more.

LightWave v9.5 also offers improved rendering quality and speed, with major upgrades to the radiosity sampling system and interpolated modes. Also, there are new disk-based caches for radiosity: the Static Cache, for animations where only the camera moves; and the Animated Cache, where any element of the scene can move. Both types allow the user to pre-render the cache and apply the solution when doing the full scene render – either locally or across a render farm. LightWave radiosity can now be rendered at reduced resolution and applied to the full size final render, providing a higher quality output with even faster render times, a huge benefit for today's time-pressured production environment.

LightWave v9.5's IK and animation system includes numerous improved character animation controls. Adding to LightWave's z-axis bones, artists now have joint-type bones, which is more familiar for users of other programs with joint-based metaphors. It also adds a "stretchy bones" capability to LightWave.

The lighting system is now a plug-in API, allowing third parties to create custom lights and lighting plug-ins. IES lights have been added with a thumbnail preview of the luminaire with other information and controls. Also available are new size-selectable spherical lights and dome lights.

LightWave v9.5 allows the import and export of FBX and Collada scenes and objects. This greatly improves compatibility with other 3D applications, as you can now seamlessly transfer meshes, rigs, materials and animation information. The LightWave OBJ I/O plug-in now provides extended import capability for this file type.

LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:

Character Animation Enhancements

• Hair and Fur System
  
• Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O support
  
• Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements

• Lighting System is now an API
  
• IES, Spherical and Dome Light types
  
• Enhanced Area and Linear Lights
  
• Faster and higher quality GI Rendering
  
• Disk-Based GI Caching
  
  Static Cache (only the Camera moves)
  Animated Cache (anything moves)
  
  
• Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions for Node-base surfacing
  
• Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
  
• Optimized Materials and Shaders

SDK and LScript Improvements

• Light Plug-in Class for Third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
  
• SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
  
• SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities

UI and Workflow Enhancements

• Composition Tool Overlays in Camera View
  
• OpenGL GLSL Enhanced View for New Lighting System
  
• Audio Waveform in the Graph Editor

NewTek will be providing a free trial edition of LightWave v9.5 on disc and by download. Artists should note that there are now more than 24 hours of free LightWave training at www.lightwave3d.com, in addition to an extensive library of printable tutorials.

Numerous visual effects projects benefited from LightWave's world-class capabilities such as "Iron Man," "The Dark Knight," "Hancock," "Jumper," "The Ruins," "300," "The Guardian," and Visual Effects Emmy-winning "Battlestar Galactica." LightWave has been used in other hit shows, including, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "Jericho," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "CSI Miami," and "Dogfights."

Pricing and Availability

LightWave v9.5 for Windows is available now as a free update to registered LightWave v9 owners. The LightWave v9.5 Mac open beta program is currently available until upcoming final release. LightWave v9 owners can participate by registering at: http://register.newtek.com/. LightWave v9 is available now at the suggested retail price of US$895. Registered owners of LightWave v8 or earlier can upgrade to LightWave v9 for US$395. For more information or to purchase, please visit newtek.com or call NewTek Sales at 800-368-5441, for international inquiries dial +1-210-370-8000.

About NewTek

With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is an Emmy® Award-winning and leading provider of full-featured animation and special effects tools, video editing, live production and presentation, including LightWave 3D®, LightWave Rendition^TM for Adobe® Photoshop®, TriCaster^TM, TriCaster PRO^TM, TriCaster STUDIO^TM, TriCaster BROADCAST^TM, VT[5]^TM, SpeedEDIT^TM and 3D Arsenal.^TM

Labels: LightWave, NewTek, public beta

Update to award-winning 3D animation system includes addition of hair and fur along with new real-world lighting system and advancements in global illuminationSan Antonio, TX - February 20, 2008 - NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading video and 3D animation products, today announced LightWave® v9.5, a major update to its award-winning 3D application, LightWave 3D®. LightWave® v9.5 new capabilities include a complete hair and fur solution, new lighting system and many improvements to animation, global illumination, rendering and workflow. The update will be available to registered owners of the LightWave v9 series at no charge. The LightWave v9.5 Open Beta program is scheduled to begin early March; LightWave v9 owners who wish to participate may register now by visiting: http://register.newtek.com/.

"As promised with the LightWave v9 series we've added major capabilities with each of the updates we've delivered so far and LightWave v9.5 is certainly no exception,"said Jay Roth, president, NewTek 3D Division. "With the addition of a complete hair and fur solution, all new real-world lighting system and GI that is significantly faster with even more beautiful results, LightWave v9.5 has something to offer the 3D community regardless of the specialty - from game developers to character animation to architectural visualization."

LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:

Character Animation Enhancements
New Hair and Fur System

Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

• New Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O
  
• New IK Calculation Options for Faster Performance
  
• New Bone Type - Joints
  
• New Objective Options for IK
  
• IK/FK blending
  
• Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation
  

Modeler

• UV Unwrap/UV Relax
  
• Symmetry Tolerance

Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements

All New Lighting System

• New Light API
  
• IES Lights
  
• New Spherical Light
  
• Area and Linear Lights Enhanced

Renderer

• Faster Sampling System for GI
  
• Improved GI Quality
  
• New GI Controls to Customize the Render
  
• Disk-Based GI Cache

Node Editor Enhancements

• Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions
  
• Support for New Light API Functions
  
• Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
  
• Optimizations for Materials and Shaders

SDK and LScript Improvements

• New Light Plug-in Class for third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
  
• SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
  
• SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
  
• Set Surface Properties Through the Surface Global

UI and Workflow Enhancements

• Enhanced Scene Limits
  
• Updated Scene File Format
  
• EXIF Metadata Support
  
• OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
  
• Image Viewer Consolidation

In addition to the new capabilities in LightWave v9.5, the LightWave v9 series has delivered enhanced performance in a number of areas including improved global illumination with higher quality and faster rendering, expanded OpenGL capabilities with new depth of field preview, advancements in the new camera tools and the node and materials editing system. Further, there are now over 24 hours of free LightWave training available online at www.lightwave3d.com. Visual effects artists who used LightWave's world-class rendering system and other capabilities in recent major projects such as Jumper, The Ruins, 300, The Guardian, VFX Emmy®-winning Battlestar Galactica and other hit series, such as The Sarah Connor Chronicles, CSI, CSI Miami, The History Channel's Dogfights and the up and coming high definition game, WarDevil, depend on LightWave to produce state of the art visual effects on time and on budget.

Pricing and Availability

LightWave® v9 is available now at suggested retail price of $895US. LightWave v9.5 will be available as a free update to registered LightWave v9 owners. Registered owners of LightWave 3D® [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US.

About NewTek

With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is an Emmy® Award-winning and leading provider of full-featured video editing, live production, presentation, animation and special effects tools including TriCaster^TM, TriCaster PRO^TM, TriCaster PRO FX^TM, TriCaster STUDIO^TM, VT[5]^TM, SpeedEDIT^TM, 3D Arsenal^TM, and LightWave 3D®.

Labels: Beta Test, LightWave, NewTek

Winning Software Solution Will be Announced October 25 in London

San Antonio, Texas - October 24, 2007 - NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading video and 3D animation products, announced today that its LightWave v9 has been nominated as one of five finalists for the 3D Software of the Year Award by MacUser, a leading European computer trade publication. The latest version of LightWave 3D, designed to provide optimized speed and 3D graphics performance to users of the latest generation of Intel®-based Macs as well as PCs, takes full advantage of the advancements in Apple's operating system and development environment. The 3D Software of the Year will be determined by the publication's readers and unveiled at a gala event at The Hurlingham Club in Ranelagh Gardens in London on October 25.

"This recognition by the editorial staff of MacUser reflects the overall positive response we've received among the Mac audience for the faster rendering speeds, multi-core support and overall increased performance of our Universal application of LightWave v9 offers," said Jay Roth, President, NewTek 3D Division. "Mac users are at the forefront of pushing the limits, and setting new standards, for graphics hardware and software. We're confident we'll do well in the end-user voting for this award."

Pricing and Availability
LightWave v9 is available now from resellers and distributors worldwide for a suggested retail price of $895US for full units and $395US for upgrades from previous versions of LightWave. The Universal Binary version of LightWave is available to registered owners of LightWave v9 at no additional charge.

About NewTek
With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is an Emmy® Award-winning and leading provider of full-featured video editing, live production, presentation, animation and special effects tools including TriCaster, TriCaster PRO, TriCaster STUDIO, VT[4], SpeedEDIT, 3D Arsenal, and LightWave 3D®.

About MacUser
For 22 years MacUser has dominated the Macintosh publishing sector, and it is now the longest-standing Apple title in the world. Its unique fortnightly frequency allows MacUser to be first to market with the latest, and frequently exclusive, news and reviews. The magazine boasts the largest and most experienced editorial team in the UK market, and its rigorous approach to product-testing ensures the highest-quality Mac product reviews available anywhere in the UK. MacUser educates its professional readers to make the right buying decisions and inspires them to stretch their knowledge and enjoyment of Mac computing.

Labels: Apple, LightWave, NewTek

LightWave v9.3 Delivers Further Enhancements to New Camera Tools, Node Editor and Global Illumination

NewTek, manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced the availability of LightWave v9.3. This is the second in a series of free updates to the Emmy-award winning 3D application. LightWave v9.3 provides improvements in rendering technology, including: the ability to render lines with photorealistic motion blur; two new sub-surface scattering shaders that are significantly faster than earlier shaders, and higher quality as well; various performance enhancements throughout the product; as well as numerous maintenance improvements. Other improvements in LightWave v9.3 include advancements in the LightWave software developer’s kit and scripting language to provide greater access to third parties and artists for creation of custom plug-ins and effects. LightWave v9.3 is available free to all registered owners of LightWave v9.

"LightWave v9.3 represents the continuation of the course we established with the initial release of LightWave v9" said Jay Roth, President, NewTek 3D Division. "We envisioned a course for the development of LightWave v9, providing continual updates, improvements and enhancements to 3D artists throughout the process. We’re delivering free updates frequently and openly so that LightWave artists do not have to wait for the next major product release to enjoy the benefits of our development efforts."

NewTek's 3D Division delivered LightWave v9.3 closely after the release of LightWave v9.2, which offered enhanced performance in a number of areas including improved global illumination with higher quality and faster rendering, expanded OpenGL capabilities with new depth of field preview, advancements in the new camera tools and the node and materials editing system. Visual effects artists made use of LightWave's world-class rendering system and other capabilities in recent major film projects such as 300, The Guardian, The Da Vinci Code and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Among television productions VFX Emmy-nominated Battlestar Galactica and other hit series' such as CSI, CSI Miami, The 4400 and more depend on LightWave to produce state of the art visual effects on time and on budget.

Pricing and Availability
LightWave v9 with SpeedEDIT is available starting today worldwide through October 31, 2007 at suggested retail price of $895US, a savings of $495US. Registered owners of LightWave 3D [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US including SpeedEDIT, a savings of $495US.

Labels: LightWave, NewTek

Special offer brings LightWave 3D® and SpeedEDIT^TM together for a limited time



San Diego, CA – SIGGRAPH – August 6, 2007 -- NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading video and 3D animation products, today announced a limited time offer of world-class LightWave 3D with NewTek’s award-winning SpeedEDIT nonlinear editing system. The combination of these powerful applications provide the 3D artist with amazing resources to create stunning 3D animations, visual effects and short films with the ability to storyboard, edit and deliver their work in a multitude of formats. LightWave full units and upgrades for current LightWave owners will be bundled with SpeedEDIT beginning today through October 31, 2007, a savings of up to sixty percent.

LightWave 3D, a perennial favorite among Hollywood artists, provides the perfect combination of power, speed and value. LightWave is easy to learn and use and versatile enough for any application. Complete with modeling, rendering and animation LightWave is used extensively in broadcast television production, film visual effects, video game development, print graphics and visualization.

SpeedEDIT is a resolution-independent nonlinear editor designed to get results quickly for a full range of video editing projects from web streams to hi-definition. The storyboard-style interface provides an intuitive environment within which 3D artists can quickly develop a project from early sketches through animatics to final output. Simple cut to music capabilities in SpeedEDIT provide the ability for artists to quickly assemble dynamic, compelling presentation reels of their work.

"The beauty of LightWave with SpeedEDIT is how quickly I can take my concepts from animatics, to early un-textured previews to final output," said Don McCoy, 3D Artist, Area 51. "We worked on a project for NASCAR where we edited the basic LightWave elements in SpeedEDIT to give the client a preview of how it would look. They were so blown away by what we could produce so quickly we used SpeedEDIT throughout the entire project and made the final delivery of the short film animated entirely in LightWave and edited in SpeedEDIT."

SpeedEDIT allows quick editing of animated projects as the software sees tga32 sequences automatically, making it possible to simply drag the first frame of the series into the editor where SpeedEDIT sees it as a clip of the entire sequence. Frames can be previewed and rendered right from the SpeedEDIT Filebin in any one of the most popular formats. Developing an entire project from pre-visualization to final edit is simple and straightforward in SpeedEDIT where hand drawn storyboards including music and audio can be edited to provide the first level of animatic. These original illustrations can then be replaced with test renders and ultimately the final 3D renders simply by using the "Inherit" function in SpeedEDIT. SpeedEDIT can then render the completed project in any desired format for streaming to the client for approval or final delivery.

3D artists will also find SpeedEDIT the perfect solution for creating project demonstration reels. Markers are set in an audio clip to the beat of the music, add LightWave animation clips to the SpeedEDIT storyboard and select "Perform," the result is a project demonstration reel edited to music. The SpeedEDIT "Slip and Slide" editing capability allows for the adjustments of in and out points to select the elements of each sequence you desire.

Pricing and Availability
LightWave® v9 with SpeedEDIT is available starting today worldwide through October 31, 2007 at suggested retail price of $895US, a savings of $495US.  Registered owners of LightWave 3D® [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US including SpeedEDIT, a savings of $495US.

About NewTek
With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured animation, special effects, video editing, live production and presentation systems including LightWave 3D®, winner of the 2003 Primetime Emmy® Engineering Award, 3D Arsenal, SpeedEDIT, TriCaster, TriCaster Pro, TriCaster STUDIO and VT[4]. The company's products are used worldwide on projects ranging from home video to feature film. Recent television and film projects using NewTek production tools include 300, The Guardian, Ant Bully, The DaVinci Code, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Serenity, Sin City, Fantastic Four, Drive, The 4400,Stargate: SG1, Stargate: Atlantis, Battlestar: Galactica, Prison Break, LOST, CSI, Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, Recent game titles includeShadow of the Colossus, Black, Ridge Racer 6, Burnout Revenge, Driver: Parallel Lines, Quake IV and Heroes of Might and Magic 6.

Labels: LightWave, NewTek, SpeedEDIT