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- Path: col.hp.com!dkm
- From: dkm@col.hp.com (David K Martin)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
- Subject: I received my LightWave 4.0 Upgrade
- Date: 19 Jan 1996 15:09:22 GMT
- Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division
- Message-ID: <4doc72$ndl@nonews.col.hp.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: jello4.cs.itc.hp.com
- X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
-
- For all you NewTek doubters...
-
- I have it! Received my Amiga LightWave 4.0 upgrade package yesterday
- (Jan 18)! Not bad for having ordered it last June I guess. In the
- package were one CD-ROM and three manuals.
-
- The manuals are:
- Systems Guide and Installation,
- A short (25 page) installation guide for Amigas and PCs. Also
- has overviews of how to use Layout, modeler and whats new in 4.0.
-
- LightWave 3D User Guide
- A 410 page users guide and tutorials for using Layout and Modeler.
- Looks like it has been considerably enhanced over the LW 3.1
- manual. At 410 pages verses 230 pages for the old manual, it
- should be enhanced. Even has a tutorial section.
-
- LightWave 3D Reference Manual
- A 360 page reference manual with detailed discussions of what
- each button does.
-
- Pennello Lite User Guide
- A short pamphlet describing "The Special Effects Brushing
- Engine Plug-in for LightWave 3D". Looks like this can create
- some cool effects.
-
- The CD-ROM is labeled LightWave 3D Amiga version 4.0, rev A.
-
- The minimum Amiga system requirements listed in the installation
- guide are:
-
- CPU : A 68030 or later
- (CPU must have an FPU installed.)
- Operating system : Workbench 2.04 or later
- Recommended minimum RAM: 16 MB
- Minimum available hard : 10 MB
- drive space
- CD-ROM Drive : Recommended
-
- The CD-ROM has almost 88 megs of stuff on it and installation is
- done from the CD-ROM using Commodore's install program. During the
- install, you can select which items you want to copy from the CD-ROM.
- The choices are:
-
- Programs 5000K
- Envelopes 0K
- Images 58900K
- Motions 0K
- Objects 21000K
- Plug-ins 550K
- Previews 0K
- PS Fonts 3800K
- Scenes 650K
- Surfaces 17K
-
- All files are installed to a new directory called NewTek. Installing
- everything except the 58M of images used a little over 30M of hard disk
- space. A lot of this seems to be duplicates of what came with LW 3.5
- but there is a lot of new stuff also.
-
- I installed LW 4.0 on an A4000 with 4040 Warp Engine, WB 3.1 and
- 22M of ram. The parallel port dongle from my LW 3.5 was required
- to run LW after installation. So far I've only loaded a couple
- of the example scenes from the CD ROM, haven't had a chance yet to
- try any of the new features in 4.0. Seems pretty stable though,
- no problems noticed.
-
- I also tried LW 4.0 on my A2000 with a GVP '030, 33MHz Combo card,
- WB 2.1, 16M of fast ram and a Picasso-II card. After switching
- the dongle over, LW seemed to run ok. It looks like the Picasso
- support has been improved, Layout and Modeler in 800x600 looked
- very nice. When using the Picasso under LW 3.5, wireframe objects
- wouldn't display properly. This appears to have been fixed with 4.0.
- This may make for a tough decision. do I want the rendering speed
- of the 4000 or the extra nice display modes of the 2000 ;)
-
- From the systems guide, here is a short list of the new features:
-
- Cross-platform operations
- Plug-ins
- Inverse kinematics
- Surface examples
- Multiple undo on Modeler
- Content directory
- Flyer upport
- Other Additions
- Objects can be unseen by rays when rendering
- Choose the output image format (IFF, Targa, etc)
- HIIP plug ins
- The influence region of bones can be shown
- Several addiononal lens flare controls
-
-
- Anyway, these are my first impressions of LW 4.0 on the Amiga. Now
- I'm going to quit writing because I have some serious playing to do ;)
-
- Dave Martin - dkm@col.hp.com
-