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| Vassilios
Kontadimas, Foundation of the Hellenic World
Vassilios Kontadimas,
the head operator of LightWave 3D at the Foundation
of the Hellenic World, is recreating the past
for a real-time tour for 2004's Olympic games.
The wonders of ancient Greece will be brought
to life for visitors in the Foundation's proprietary
Extended VR system.
ìI first looked at LightWave
back in the summer of 1993,î says Vassilios.
ìIt had one particular difference from the
other programs I had seen at that time: it had
a more creative touch. It had the right tools
in the right place and its render quality was
the best I had seen.î
Vassilios came to make LightWave
his primary 3D tool, and now it has become a core
application in the Foundation's efforts. ìYou
get what you want, with better results than you
expect,î he says of LightWave, in comparison to
other programs. ìI have friends around here
that are working their heads off to produce on
other platforms what I can do with LightWave in
moments. It is a very creative package and it
truly lets you focus on the world you are building.
No more anxiety about the results. I know that
everything that I am building will work out. Also,
the flexibility, the quality of rendering and
the atmosphere are very difficult to compete with!
Today we use it almost for every need that we
have since it is the most flexible application
and produces great results quickly and easily.î
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"Some
of our best and most realistic animation projects
were created in LightWave. Its flexibility, speed
of modeling and quality of rendering are hard to
beat. In my experience, it is the best modeling
software available on the market today."
Anton
Davydov, frog design |
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"LightWave
makes it easy for me to isolate and render
any attribute of an object's surface. I can
render out lots of different passes (specular,
reflection, diffuse, glossy, beauty) and take
them all into my compositing program so that
other composite artists have complete control
over the final image."
Michael
Castro, Lead CG Developer, Sybilmedia |
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| Broadband
Internet is proliferating, computer systems
grow faster and more powerful, and whether
your target medium is CD, DVD, or the Web,
your graphics, video and animations now
must be produced to a level of quality approaching
broadcast, in this new high-bandwidth world
populated by sophisticated consumers. Digital
content is now targeted to a host of new
media, using a host of formats. LightWave
3D offers any resolution you need, whether
you are creating a motion picture for playback
on DVD or compact animations for a mobile
phone display, as well as support built-in
or via third party add-ons for virtually
all the formats you may need to use.
Shockwave3D
Exporter
NewTekís LightWave can export a scene, complete
with images, objects, surfaces, and animation,
as a Macromedia® Shockwave file, that
can be integrated into Macromedia Director®
as a Cast Member. This lets a user combine
the content creation toolset of LightWave
with the interactive functionality of Macromedia
Director for an integrated solution for
creating and distributing multimedia content.
QuickTime
VR
QuickTime Virtual Realityô is a special
kind of QuickTime movie that lets a user
view a 3D object from any angle, using the
mouse to control the point of view. Yes,
LightWave can make them!
File
Formats
Supported image formats: PSD, Alias, BMP,
Cineon FP, Flexible Image Format, IFF, JPEG,
PCX, PICT, PNG, Radiance, RLA, SGI, Sun,
TIFF, TIFF logluv, Targa, VBP, and YUV image
formats. Supported animation formats: AVI
(any installed codec), QuickTime, QuickTime
Stereo, NewTek RTV (VT), Flexible Image
Format, Storyboard, 4X Storyboard, Film
Expand. Supported Web 3D: QuickTimeVR, VRML
and Shockwave for export. Modeler imports
EPS, 3DS, OBJ, DXF, and FACT, and exports
3DS, OBJ, DXF, and VRML. |
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| Bill
Evans of MindComet
ìAdvergamesî is a new twist on marketing via new
media, and MindComet Corporation is a major player
letís rephrase that, a major developer in
this mad new method of putting fun for the consumer
into the marketing messages and purchase opportunities
that a vendor wishes to present. MindComet provides
a lot of other marketing and enterprise solutions
as well, and the client list includes the NHL,
Burger King, Nextel, UPS, Mercedes Benz, and a
host of other major corporations, worldwide.
Naturally, MindComet uses
NewTekís LightWave 3D as part of their arsenal
of creative tools. ìWe started using 3D in
the beginning to get more realism for our 2D games.
We really wanted to break away from the pack and
develop techniques that hadnít been done before,î
says Bill Evans, of MindComet. ìLightWave,
as it turned out, fit quite nicely into our pipeline
for this purpose. Weíre primarily a Mac shop,
but we have a couple PCs so the fact that itís
cross-platform is huge for us. We use some 3D
paint packages as well and it integrates into
those seamlessly.î
Asked which features of LightWave
MindComet uses most, Evans replies, ìWell,
itís not really a feature per se but the Modeler
is in my opinion the best modeler out there. Iíve
used most major 3D packages and none of their
modelers can touch LightWave. As for specific
features Iíd have to say Surface Baking is a great
help to us in creating great-looking real-time
assets. As you know the Shockwave® player
doesnít support bump mapping so with Surface Baker
we can bake things like bump maps and lighting
right into the assets.î
Asked about the future projects
MindComet has planned, Evans says, ìLetís just
say for now that it will be 3D, you havenít seen
anything like it, and weíll be using LightWave!î
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© 2003 Juan José
González |
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