idea #204: Compare to Lightwave

I have some architect basic skill and wish to be an interior designer. I choose Lightwave 8.5 and played it for several months. It fit my needs and I became a serious lightwaver. But when I've decided to buy a licensed one, the Lightwave 3D 9.0 released. If I buy it, I must pay it again and again if they release a new version. And if I don't buy the lasted one I will be outdated, you know 3D technology is growing fast.

Now I'm a Blender user, just about 1 week. Here I want to share my experience using Lightwave, hope it can be useful for Blender improvement. Please correct me if I've said something wrong about Blender.

1. VERTEX SNAPPING
Using Lightwave + 3rd party plug-in, faces/points/edges can be snapped to any vertex. It's very handy if you've modeled a desk and want to put it (snap it exactly) to a corner of a room.

2. MEASURING TOOLS WITH SNAPPING ABILITY
Lightwave 3rd party tools can measure distance/angle with vertex snapping ability.

3. REAL LIFE DIMENSIONING
For architectural design, it will ease you so much if you can use mm, cm, meter, ...

4. AUTO SNAP RELATIVE TO GRID SIZE
Each object dragging on 3D window will move 1/10 of grid size. For example, if you drag (move) an object it will increase 1cm, you can zoom closer to gain a drag increase of 1mm.

5. MORE PARAMETER FOR OBJECT CREATION
In Lightwave if you want to create a table with the size of 100cm x 60cm x 70cm on a specific location, you just fill all the informations after click the add box button. All in one step.

6. INTERACTIVE DRAGABLE OBJECT CREATION
In Lightwave, almost all the object can be created with the size controllable on dragging it's borders. Even you can control the subdivision number by pressing +/- while creating an isosphere.

7. TRANSFORMATION WITH INFORMATION RELATIVE TO PREVIOUS STATE
Sometimes after finish rendering, your friend tells you the windows should be 8cm higher. Just select the windows, drag the transform handle until the Transformation Information show you the distance is 8cm. That's in Lightwave. In Blender you must calculate it position + 8 point (maybe 0.8 or 80, depend on the scale you use).

8. NGON SUPPORT
Blender doesn't NGon. It will be difficult to manage because there will be a lot of 3Gon if a wall has 2 holes (windows). Lightwave support Convex NGon and torelable with some Concave NGon. If a polygon is too concave it will show in black color, you can repair by splitting it into 2 polygons.

9. POWERFUL BOOLEAN OPERATION
Lightwave boolean operation is powerful and easy to use, it will try to produce NGons as possible as it can rather than 3Gons/FGons.

10. POWERFUL MODELING TOOLS
Lightwave has known as a powerful modeling application. Here are some of very useful tools: Select Connected, Invert Selection, Select Loop, Pen Tool, Set Value, PxSP Move (3rd party snap move), Rest On Ground, Absolute Size (3rd party resize), Point Normal Move, Extender, Smooth Shift, Edge Bevel, Rounder, TrueFillet (3rd party), Drill (2D version of boolean), Bridge, Berzier Bridge (3rd party bridge), Knife (very powerful compare to Blender's), Connect, Find Center, ...

11. GRADIENT MAP
Lightwave Textures had divided in 3 main categorizes. Image Map, Procedural Map and Gradient Map. Lightwave don't have fresnel (except using node or shader), but it's easy to simulate fresnel effect using gradient map with camera incident as parameter. Gradient map can be very useful sometimes.

12. MATERIAL/CAMERA/LIGHT LIBRARY
You know it is good idea to have it.

13. EASY MANAGE LIST OF MATERIAL/CAMERA/LIGHT
Lightwave have lists of material, camera, light and use keyboard to select it's item. Something similar in Blender I think is Outliner. But you can't use arrow up/down keys to select it's item, you must use mouse clicks. Believe me, using a key on list is easier than a mouse.

14. MORE INFORMATION ON RENDERING WINDOW
Lightwave rendering window shows information about quality setting, elapsed/estimated time, percent of completeness. You can always cancel, adjust the setting and try render again to get desired quality vs time.

15. POWERFUL RENDERING WINDOW
Lightwave will save each rendered images in memory until you close the rendering window. So you can compare each rendered image to decide which the best or to tweak the setting.

16. COMMAND HISTORY
In Lightwave, each command (keyboard or button pressed) acts like a macro and can be viewed in Command History windows. It make script learning easier.

17. CUSTOMABLE MENU AND LIST
Everyone use Blender for different situation, Blender only have one menu/button layout. It makes Blender inflexible.

Blender if very powerful compare to Lightwave, that's why I abandon Lightwave and start to learn Blender. It's just my small contribution, hope Blender will become better. Any comments/corrections/criti

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