New to 2019
Last modified: 10 March 2025note
This page is a part of continuing efforts to make the LightWave documentation complete. If a link takes you back to the main page, it leads to a page that hasn't yet been created. Let us know if you find one!
A lot has changed in LightWave. Here is a curated list in alphabetical order with links to pages that describe the features:
Layout
Use Empty Volumes for creating procedural volumetric shapes or converting meshes to volumes and vice versa.
The new Interchange bridge brings far more control over FBX assets including takes and animation from multiple FBX files.
Realtime-optimized bone system version for better interchange with Game engines.
Animated sculpting, weight mapping and vertex painting in Layout.
Physical Sky and SunLight (Hosek-Wilkie)
A backdrop shader for creating amazing skies with a new Light Type, simulating a physical sun.
Stepping back changes for more than just transformations in LightWave is now possible. Revert changes made in Dopetrack, the Scene Editors, the Graph Editor, and server panes throughout LightWave.
Realtime content created by Tony Prohl for the VR/AR Industry Smooth real-time conversion to the Unreal games engine for presentations or game design is now possible.
Rotofix
RotoFix is a Layout generic LScript, added to 2019.0.2, that adjusts the rotation keyframes of a selected item, in order to correct for rotation value wrap-around (e.g. heading jumping from 179 degrees to -179 degrees, instead of going from 179 degrees to 181 degrees). This is important for correct interpolation (e.g. 179 degrees to -179 degrees is a change of 358 degrees, while 179 degrees to 181 degrees is a change of only 2 degrees, even though the initial and final orientation of the item is the same in both cases).
It does this by minimizing the change in rotation values between keyframes while keeping the resulting orientation of the item unaffected.
Surfacing
Shade edges to give an impression of additional rounding geometry without needing to model it, and create shading based on wear and dirt with the Patina node.
Material Tools Nodes for splitting and combining custom materials to create the surface you want.
Procedural Node Node to allow access to all of LightWave's considerable non-nodal procedural texture collection.
Renderer
Despike New Despike algorithm to soften images to help cure hotspots.
Image Caching Massively reduces memory use for images in-scene at render time.
Leverages NVidia graphics card to remove noise from still renders using artificial intelligence.
Rho New Rho buffer to extract lighting and shading information from the direct and indirect buffers.
Shading Models
The ability to pull materials apart and build them to your tastes is new to LightWave 2019. There is access to Fresnel Functions, Material Components, Material Integrators, and Material Tools has been updated with new nodes.
Modeler
New Genoma 2 rig from Studio IKIF+ in Japan.
Industry standard Smoothing Groups have been added for more control over the look of geometry.
New tools and workflows to make Modeler more capable of managing UV maps.
Documentation
Responsive Layout
The LightWave documentation now fits on any device you care to use it on.
General
LightWave now works correctly on screens with resolutions larger than HD (1920x1080) by scaling interface elements for a more readable display.
Use mouse wheel, keyboard, regexp and filtering in LightWave menus.
New snapping grid and keyboard shortcuts added.
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Contributed by Richard Feeney