Lightwave 2018, those who purchased it, what are your reasons ?

[Bracer]

If you find it, you better sell it off while you still can to get the latest because the days where you render with NON PBR materials are OVER !

[Lemon Wolf]

Originally Posted by WesChilton

So in the end I only spent about $7,400 and am still getting one hell of a machine. I'm pretty excited!

"Only" 7400$ for a machine with only 10 cores?

Originally Posted by WesChilton

Well, I split the difference and went for the 10-core... its the best bang for the buck performance wise ......

That is by far not the best bang for the buck.
I spent less than 2000$ for a 16 core AMD Threadripper PC. You could buy 3 of those machines for 7400$ and if you link them together those 48 cores would vastly outperform the 27.000$ 32 core Linux machine you mentioned.
You could even buy 2 AMD Epyc Server CPUs with 32 cores each, an appropriate dual socket mainboard, ram, graphics card etc and you would still have some money left of those 7400$.

[Alec Trevelyan]

Originally Posted by Bracer

If you find it, you better sell it off while you still can to get the latest because the days where you render with NON PBR materials are OVER !

Well there's a reason I haven't touched it in a long time. Had an interest but not really much aptitude, or maybe it was time. And with two small kids and a commute I really don't have the time!

[Alec Trevelyan]

But I now work somewhere where I get to see plenty of cool 3d shit on a regular basis, so there is that.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by Aggi

Both, remodel and retexture. There are minor errors on the old model that you don't see in LW 9.6, but coming out as big errors in Lightwave 2018. You can see it in the left image below. The rear part of the secondary hull has in this image a visible error, but they are spread all over the model.
The second image shows the Enterprise almost reworked. Most of the errors are done and the model has been almost retextured. The ship lights have to be updated.

That re-worked version for 2018 looks beautiful. Are all the surfaces on this mesh now done with the Principled BSDF shader?

[WesChilton]

Originally Posted by Lemon Wolf

"Only" 7400$ for a machine with only 10 cores?


That is by far not the best bang for the buck.
I spent less than 2000$ for a 16 core AMD Threadripper PC. You could buy 3 of those machines for 7400$ and if you link them together those 48 cores would vastly outperform the 27.000$ 32 core Linux machine you mentioned.
You could even buy 2 AMD Epyc Server CPUs with 32 cores each, an appropriate dual socket mainboard, ram, graphics card etc and you would still have some money left of those 7400$.

LOL, I am SO not getting into an argument with a username on the internet... you clearly have no idea what a workstation class machine is, so I'll just giggle and move on.

[Lemon Wolf]

Originally Posted by WesChilton

LOL, I am SO not getting into an argument with a username on the internet... you clearly have no idea what a workstation class machine is, so I'll just giggle and move on.

Oh excuse me your majesty and i am not getting into an argument with someone who claims that a 10 core machine for 7400$ is the best bang for the bucks.
This could have been a productive discussion, you chose to be conceited and arrogant.

[Jedi2016]

PC ≠ Workstation, Lemon.

[Lemon Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

PC ≠ Workstation, Lemon.

I gave specific examples with server grade hardware, maybe you didn't notice.
Besides the apple device which was mentioned is using a plain Intel Xeon CPU which has the same architecture as the Intel Core line of CPUs. The performance is the same.
If you pick your components wisely you can build yourself a machine with way more than 32 cores for a fraction of the mentioned 27.000$ using the AMD Epcy platform. And no this is not pc grade hardware.

[Jedi2016]

Servers aren't workstations, either.

[Lemon Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

Servers aren't workstations, either.

They do however share most of the hardware components.
Workstation, Servers thats just ways of using hardware. You have to look at the big picture here about which components are being used.
It doesnt matter if you are using for example a Core-i9 CPU, An Intel Xeon W or an Intel Xeon Platinum CPU. They are all based on the same architecture. The only major difference is that Xeon platforms offer support for ECC memory and have more memory channels.
Even the most expensive Xeon has the same FPU units, the same support for stuff like AVX, SSE2 etc as the plain consumer versions. And if both are clocked the same speed you wouldnt notice any difference during rendering.

[Alec Trevelyan]

[Lemon Wolf]

Heres some additional information on the subject.
I just found an interesting article on AnandTech about recommended CPUs and platforms for workstations.
This is really an interesting read.

Click



As mentioned before the terms "consumer platform, workstation, server" dont mean a lot when you look at the components being used in these machines.
Consider this the iMacPro is advertised as a workstation but its using a server grade Intel Xeon CPU.
Heres a screenshot directly from the Intel Product page.


Further this Intel Xeon W-2150B 10 core CPU inside the iMacPro workstation is based on the Skylake microarchitecture which is the same one being used in the IntelCore i9-7900X 10 core CPU. The only difference is added ECC memory support for the Xeon. One is a server product the other a desktop product, yet they deliver the same performance.
So whats a server, workstation, desktop pc? Is it what brands like Apple say it is? No it depends on what you put in it ,if you are assemble it yourself. These days the boundaries between all of these categories is rather fluid and the reason why it doesnt make sense to limit oneself to these.
Btw heres some other thing to consider when owning an iMacPro.
Apple refused to fix an iMacPro

[Starbase1]

I'm currently re-assessing my options.

I'm kind of disappointed LW went for surface and render changes in a big way, I was hoping for some major modeller TLC to tempt me to upgrade from 11.6

How difficult is it to change models for the new system? And is there the option of using the old one?

I make very heavy use of IFW 2 shaders, and would hate to lose access to it.

I also think I'm about the try again to make the jump to Modo for modelling, via an upgrade to version 8.01 which I bought but never got to grips with. But thinking about it, I'd probably still want to use LW for rendering.

I'm also wondering if I should look again at landscape software. I felt I made good progress with Vue last year, but their content store has been off the air for ages, and I'm somewhat dependent on bought content.

So right now it feels like pretty much my whole tool-set is up in the air,

Nick

[mattc]

Originally Posted by Starbase1

I'm currently re-assessing my options.

I'm kind of disappointed LW went for surface and render changes in a big way, I was hoping for some major modeller TLC to tempt me to upgrade from 11.6

How difficult is it to change models for the new system? And is there the option of using the old one?

I make very heavy use of IFW 2 shaders, and would hate to lose access to it.

I also think I'm about the try again to make the jump to Modo for modelling, via an upgrade to version 8.01 which I bought but never got to grips with. But thinking about it, I'd probably still want to use LW for rendering.

I'm also wondering if I should look again at landscape software. I felt I made good progress with Vue last year, but their content store has been off the air for ages, and I'm somewhat dependent on bought content.

So right now it feels like pretty much my whole tool-set is up in the air,

Nick

You can load old stuff with no problem and it'll look the same, except of course that the new engine is energy conserving so you may have to adjust the spec/reflections down as they work a bit differently (correctly, instead the original hack).

Changing stuff to the new PBR engine isn't that hard once you get the hang of it. Some stuff transfers so easily with a far simplified node network (which, in 2015.3 was trying to simulate PBR).

One thing to remember, is that 2018 uses a new object format (LWO3) to address the original 16-bit IFF chunk limit present in LWO2. It had to be done. There is, however, a LWO3 loader for 2015.3 (and possibly earlier versions, I haven't tried it).

IFW nodal shaders won't work as the new shading/rendering system requires nodes to be re-compiled. IIRC, the normal IFW procedurals will work in the 'Layer nodes'.

AS for Modeler love, well, yes, we all know that. There was a survey about it recently if you look on the NT forum so there is movement. Updating Modeler without breaking everything is not an easy task. Ikeda used to complain about it constantly. A better bet is to get point/edge/poly selections inside layout and have a unified application. I don't know what they're going to do about it, but a lot of under the hood work went on in layout. There's a lot of things possible now that just weren't before. Hence the proliferation of Oliver Hotz's tools (which are amazing) and some other stuff (like the morph correction/sculpting tool plugin that just came out).

Hopefully that makes some sense. I'm no NT fan-boy (I was banned from their forum for about 3 years. Long story).

M.

[Starbase1]

Thanks for such a detailed reply. I tend to use the non-nodal IFW2 so that should be OK.

But I think my first port of call will be Modo. Just looking at an intro view reminded me what a pain it is aligning to surfaces and curves in LW...

[mattc]

Originally Posted by Starbase1

Thanks for such a detailed reply. I tend to use the non-nodal IFW2 so that should be OK.

But I think my first port of call will be Modo. Just looking at an intro view reminded me what a pain it is aligning to surfaces and curves in LW...

Not a problem. If there's anything you want to know, just ask. Should be interesting to see what comes next.