Looks like they're having a one week sale. Lightwave full version unrestricted for $695. This is not an indie version or a rental b.s. or subscription software.

https://www.lightwave3d.com/crossgrade_promo/

The renderer is worth mentioning since its an award winning photoreal renderer used for shows like Battlestar Galactica, Terranova, etc. I've successfully exported characters from Iclone to lightwave easily and render in lightwave. Comes with 999 free rendernodes for studio on a budget.

@Hattori

I believe you worked with LightWave for sometime.

What's the major attraction for you to adopt ICLONE and then struggle with Indigo while you had great animation and rendering going with Lightwave ?

Coming from a studio that used mostly autodesk, now I'm more a consultant. I have more free time to work on stuff I want.
I needed tools that give me the same power without getting into subs or these rental schemes that even studios have a hard time maintaining. The industry is killing itself with rental.
Lightwave can fill the shoes of 3dmax, vray mostly. Had a hard time looking for a motionbuilder alternative though. Someone told me about Iclone. Never heard of it. Looked into what it can do. Focused for a month learning it. Now i have nearly the same power with a fraction of the cost. And I'm having fun again because Iclone is more fun to use than the other appz I've used. It doesn't feel clunky.
The bonus, the realtime renderer is good enough for non-photoreal projects. Realtime is fast at the cost of less flexibility.
But its still good to have both options, photoreal and realtime renderer. Lightwave and Iclone perfect combo.

Btw indigo is really worth it. It wasn't really a struggle
It took me a few days to test indigo and see the potential of using Iclone + indigo for some serious archiviz projects. Its a no brainer. One archiviz render costs a couple of hundred bucks for clients so you easily get back that 99usd for indigo for one project. A viz firm can pay a couple of thousand bucks more for a single billboard size render. Speedtree + Iclone + indigo = archiviz killer.
The renderer is very intuitive and fast. I like it more than octane, maxwell now honestly. I feel I should have invested in Indigo instead of those two.
Only the current implementation in Iclone is not so good compared to other exporters. They need to get rid of that frame by frame texture export.

i spotted Hattori's ubber coolness in like 2 posts ^.^

so happy to have a real pro's insight with us for a change!

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"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu

Looks like more or less, all of us have the same reasons for looking at ICLONE i.e Ease of use and Cost.

One feels reassured.

Is there any good Cel Shading possibilities in Lightwave ?

Apparently there are. This may be of interest:

I found this on their website where they have a series of videos explaining features.

EDIT: This you will like: While watching the video, I'm learning that there are various ways to control the appearance of the edges per object, including decreasing the width when an object moves away from the camera (mentioned around 10:28). Lots of tweakability!

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@animagic

Thank you for the link. The feature really looks great.

Do you also have interest in Toon Shading ?



If I have to do the hair like in the video, is Hexagon good for this ? Or, do we have any other simpler programme?

@prabathM

I have done some experiments in the past trying to convert 3D footage to cell shading, but that didn't work too well.

I've just read some books about Disney and learned about all the techniques that were developed under his watch and I was impressed with what they could accomplish at the time.

I'm not so interested in the "funny" cartoon look, but one recent film I enjoyed was "The Illusionist":

Using a program like LightWave may be an option to produce quality 2D-like animation and still keep costs reasonable. 

I don't necessarily agree with the statement in the video that your characters need to look like anime characters. That really depends on the style you are after. On the other hand, high-polygon hair may not work so well. There is older iClone hair that may be more suited.

It's in interesting question though: how to have dynamic hair for example that works for a 2D-like rendering. I have seen waving hair in 2D animation.

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@planetstardragon I just know that RL is doing a great job. Software development is not easy or cheap. They need our support.

@prabhatM Lightwave is node based. You can achieve many different types of toon shading and strokes
http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?89592-Bronto-Sketch-Render



A lot of anime studios use lightwave in japan.

[quote]hattori kun (2/17/2015)

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You can achieve many different types of toon shading and strokes
http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?89592-Bronto-Sketch-Render

Those are impressive results. On page 12 of the thread is a link to the original article explaining the technique. Unfortunately, the animated short created with it can only be shown in a private viewing. You have to travel to Orlando.

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