How old are you both?

Stijn: Michiel is 29, and I'm 28, but I will turn 29 the 16th June 2003. We're both from '74.

Woohoo! Happy birthday for today! Are you expecting to get anything nice as a present?

Stijn: Cheers! I'm getting a cool interview for starters.. :P

Are there more than two of you in Lemonade (I'm not forgetting anyone am I?)

Stijn: Nope. Lemonade Animation is Michiel and Stijn. Lemonade stems from the Amiga Demo group Lemon, which has more members, but they are all busy elsewhere now.

Aha! So more Amiga history! Is that where you first saw LightWave?

Michiel: Indeed. We began with Imagine, but switched to LightWave as soon as we saw it - because of the motion blur and the lens flares ;) This was back in school, with version 3.5 or 4.0, we can't remember… We were doing tunnels and spaceships, mostly...

Were you using LightWave on the Amiga when it first came out as a separate package, or did you carry on using Imagine until the PC version came out?

Michiel: No, Imagine was just an intro to 3D for us. As soon as we started with LightWave I never opened Imagine ever again. There was just so much more at my disposal, and it was all so much easier to work with...

But was it on the Amiga?

Michiel: Yep. I stayed with the platform until it was dead beyond reanimation. I traded in my 4000/40 for a Pentium at 150 MHz, same price, four times the performance, although I lost the ability to easily shoot to video...

What do you like best about LightWave?

Michiel: I like the workflow best, still... its so easy to get things done in LightWave, compared to other packages. Speedy Metanurbs since the dawn of times is cool, too.

I love Modeler. It's like playing with clay. I started on a character this morning, and I'm almost done already! it's neatly done, too, edge loops and everything.

Stijn: Like Michiel, I'm a very big fan of Modeler; I can get things done quickly and with maximum control.

What's also excellent is the amount of handy plug-ins, the LW community is very helpful and there's hardly a problem that you cannot fix by finding some plug-in or getting some advice on the various mailing lists and forums.

I also LOVE the render engine. Only a few buttons, but big results...

What could be improved for you in LightWave?

Stijn: For me, the rigging tools could be improved. I'm using Irrational Number's Orthopack now, and that saves me a lot of time, but that functionality should have been in LW already...

Also, I'd like an intuitive way to interactively paint weight maps. I think the weight mapping is cool but not as user friendly as the rest of the package. Animation tools: I'd like a dope sheet, and the ability to move and edit keyframes in the timeline without opening the graph editor. Also, the expressions could be more user-friendly, but then I'm mathematically challenged ;-)

Oh yeah, multiple undo? :D

Michiel: I'd like to see the TCB curves replaced by tangent splines. I know we got hermite splines now, but they don't work! TCB is still the weapon of choice, but it lacks some things when compared to other packages. For any kind of animation, this is a definite MUST.