What spec machines are you using it on at the moment?

Ohhhh.... I have 17 PCs running here in my little one-man-studio. I saw early that if I were to compete with the best 3D out there I needed to speed up LightWave's standard renderer on one machine, so Screamernet was the obvious solution for that, a good one I might add. The machine hosting the LightWave application is a 3.2GHz all-Intel PC with a pair of 1G memory sticks and a GeForce graphics card. The other 16 machines are the cheapest Pentium 4s you can get today at just 3000,- NOK per machine (or roughly 365€ or £250).

For video-editing I trust my Velocity hardware. For film work I work in different software for compositing and so on. With my LightWave host machine I get over 1.5 minutes of sustained rate and that is actually enough for special effects - you do not need to watch the whole movie, it will be put out to film anyway...

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

FPrime is also of the most important in order to work efficiently. The real-time feedback is awesome, but as a stand-alone renderer it can't match LightWave 3D Screamernet, as long as you have 5-10 render-nodes... Fprime version 2 is now available and features all the power of the G2 plugin (also from Worley) - a real blast for the LightWave scene. I can not think of any other plug-in combinations that will be as useful as these two.

"Thomas4d Rigging Tools" is absolutely the best plug-in one can buy today. It is absolutely awesome and it cost only $60 US Dollars, a better value for the buck can't be found, and the author is among the nicest people in the whole of the 3D scene, regardless the platform. The cool thing about this plug-in is that you can send your work to another machine and it will still work in a LightWave without the plug-ins.

Sasquatch is also important for me, and in companion with Vue 5 Infinite it rocks. Vue with its plain solid landscape generator features is together with Sasquatch one of the best companion to LightWave 3D, just make the landscape, the vegetation and export it into LightWave 3D and the other way around make something in LightWave 3D and put it inside Vue. The final render of Vue is impressive, but again, put up against LightWave, it can not compete in the long run - as far as render times are concerned... LightWave is faster even with maximum render passes... It is nice to get Vue because of a lot of cool features that can save days of work to put together a natural-looking scene... with flowers, trees and the lot... but as with LightWave, they have a development team making OpenGL for Mac, PC and Unix - these divisions should be made so that we (the artists) get the optimal performance for each platform. I hope the integration between Vue and LightWave will be even better in the future, maybe totally integrated? It would be a ultimate software for all kind of animation and illustration tasks.

I have tried a lot of plug-ins in my time, but the fact remains, if one think a bit different about the things one is about to create there aren't that many plug-ins that you really need. If you make the stuff in native LightWave it is regularly better, and often takes less time in my opinion.

Remember to use the right software for the right task, and have in mind that LightWave 3D is a perfect central output regardless of what you want to create. That is a tip from me, to all of you.

In your opinion, should LightWave 3D stay separated or become integrated?

SEPARATED! There is no question about it, it should be the way it is now. I just love the fact that first I am in model creation software and then I am in animation or scene set-up software. Just like I use Photoshop for some advanced texture work and then I use InDesign for page layout work. Keep the different tasks separated is best in my mind, it is so logical in that way, and one can concentrate on the thing you are doing rather than being distracted by something that is the next or following task.

Tell me about your extraordinary animation?

It's a six-screen-wide animation for Norman Anti Virus. I made a presentation that is animated in full PAL resolution over six screens. As a total resolution that is 4320x576 pixels at 25 frames per second, and the animation is 52 seconds long. We developed a solution that synchronises the different screens. The solution uses n player machines all connected via a d-link hub. So the next time I want to make a 12-screen presentation featuring even better 3D animation, and with LightWave as a tool... Well, it is like a computer game, you get better every time, so I am ready for the next level.

How long did you work on the crash animation?

It took me three weeks of hard work. I use a lot of time making it the right way for my customers. I find it hard to use a day or two on a project these days, I want to give my clients the best I can deliver, and with LightWave and help from Peter Thomas I am able to do so.

Was it you that came up with the idea of running it across six screens?

Well, it was a process, the ad-agency Langholm Design that I work closely with came up with the concept together with me after we had made some ads with stills taken from a live footage film clips of crashing cars. We first decided to make a solution with a PC as a timer and streaming engine but after talking with my partners at Headline.TV. I wanted to use all the PCs for playback, they made the software work real nice! Contact me for this kind of solution as we can do it!