My Editorial..
Why Max And Not Lightwave???...
Duh...Cos Max Is Far Better Than Lightwave.
After A Vigorous Discusion With A (EX)-Buddy Of Mine I Decided To Write This Definitive Guide As To Why And How Max Kicks The Proverbial 'Crap' Out Of Lightwave.
First Some Admissions. I HAVE Owned An Amiga. And Would Rather Use Win98 Any Bloody Day. I have Also Only Used Lightwave A few Times.For A Number Of Projects. In All But One Of Them I Reverted Back To Max Within One Week Of Starting each project.So I Dont Have A Mega Understanding of Lightwave.(But Only Because It Was A Nightmare To Use)
Ten Very Good Reasons Why Max Rules The Roost.
1) Modifier Stack....This Alone makes Max Worth The Money.
2) Multiple Views....Switching View's (even If It Is Just A
Shortcut Away) is Time consuming and Just Plain Silly.
3) Intergrated Modeller & Scene Editor...Lightwave Employs An
Very Effective Memory Reduction Technique By Where It Almost
Forces You To Reuse Objets. This Would Have Been Great On An
Amiga With A 40meg Hard Drive But Nowdays Is A Bit Redundant And
Just Means Even More Time Wasting Switching Apps.
4) Asset Managment....As Far as i'm Aware Lightwave Has No Such
Thing....Whereas with max you can browse Your Harddrive And
Simply Drag&drop Your Maps&textures.
5) Track View....In Max I Can Overview All Of My Objects And The
Animations Attached To Them. Lightwave Has A Motion Graph Thingy
For Each Object But That Really Dosnt Cut The Mustard Im
Afraid....(more switching!!!!)
6) Speed...This One Is Confusing To Say The Least But Here Is My
Interpretation.I Created A Scene In Lightwave And The Duplicated
It In Max.
The Scene Was The Text 'Reel3d' Extruded And Placed On Front Of A
Curved Mirror. I Turned Antialising Onto low for lightwave. And
Rendered Them Both At 640*480. The Speed Difference Was Quite
Visible...Max Was Almost Twice As Fast.And personally Max Looked
Better.Just For Clarity For The Mirrors I Used A Nurb Surface
With A Raytrace Reflection Applied In max, And A High Polygon Box
(curved) With A Raytrace Reflection applied in Lightwave.as max
was using Nurbs I can Understand The Quality Improvements But
Nurbs Are Very Complex Compared To Polygon Objects And As Such
Should Have Taken A Whole Lot Longer To Render.
7) Multiple Undo's....Lightwaves Scene Editor Only Allows ONE
Level Of Undo!!!!....Imagine That!
8) Simple Boolean's...In Max To Create A boolean You Do Just
That....You Tell It Two Objects And Choose A Boolean Method
(union,subtract,intersect).In Light Wave You Have To Mess Around
With Layers(?) What The Hell Is That All About?.
9) Particle Systems...In Max Creating A Spray Of Particles is
done in three or four clicks.In Lightwave You Have To Create The
Particles (polygons) In Modeller, save the object, load the
object into The Scene Editor. then using another program (plugin)
You Have To Create A Motion For The Particles. Then You Save This
Motion,Then You Have To Go Into the particles deformations list
and choose Particles then Load the motion In.(Phew!)Do You Notice
Lightwave Likes to get you switching apps quite a bit.
10) Automatic Plugin Recognition...Not a Difficult Thing To
Program Into A Package (Yes I Know About This Stuff Too I Have
Been Programming For Over 10 Years) Max Does It...When You
Download a Plugin You Just Stick It In The plugins dir and away
you go. With Lightwave You Have To Tell It Each And Every Plugin
You Have...Including Standard Stuff.
In Short Max Is The Best....No Two Ways About It....Lightwave Does Have Some Great Things Too But Nowhere Near Enough To Get It Close To The Throne.Just In The Interest Of Fairness I Have Listed Lightwaves Best Features Below.....
1) Price....At Nearly Half The Price Of Max It Is A Much More
Affordable Solution For Companies On A Restricted Budget.
2) Shaders...Allowing For Endless Types of Rendering such as
Manga and cell Shaders.
3) Lower Demands....Can Run On Lower Spec Machines Than Max.
4) Organic....The Modeller Has A very Freehand Feel To It...Even
When You Are Creating Boxes And Spheres It Still Feels Very
Organic..As Opposed To Max's More Architectual Feel.
5) History...Not Only Has It Got A Great History It Keeps
Creating A New One Too.Plenty Of Companys Swear By Lightwave and
Have Produced Some Stunning Stuff With It....But I Just Dont
Understand How.
Let Me Know What Your Opinons Are on this or Any Other Topic My Email Is Just Below Simply Click On my Name.
P.S. If Any Of This Information Is Technically Wrong Please Feel Free To Email Me To Rub My Nose In It.