The Macintosh Resource Page

Bits & Bobs

16th October 2003

In this thread on Newtek's forums, Bruno, an ATi employee, comments on ATi's renewed commitment to fixing Lightwave-related driver bugs and video card choices for the G5.

James has released an Image Filter LScript, Unpremultiply, that unpremultiplies a Lightwave rendered image, building an alpha channel from the luminance of the image if no alpha exists (like in a lens flare). Works well with semi-transparent objects and amorphous stuff like glows & light bursts. James says, "It's dog-slow, but that's the nature of an Image Filter, I guess."

James has also moved his Mode 3 render controller, LW Sequencer, here.

3rd October 2003

ATi have released a fix for Modeler crashing in OSX 10.2.5 to 10.2.8. You can download it here.

Fujio has ported his XYDrift plugin to OSX. Drift is a deformation plugin that turns polylines into lightning-style sparks and waves. It's here.

If you'd like to see an OSX port of Amleto, a network rendering controller, vote for it here.

25th September 2003

After a concerted campaign by many Radeon owners on Newtek's discussion forums, Apple's Support forum and via direct email campaigns to Apple, ATi and Newtek, ATi have promised a specific fix to their Radeon drivers to resolve the crash problem with Modeler that has afflicted 10.2.5-8. It's the first time I've ever seen ATi react directly like this to issues with their drivers and Lightwave. Kudos to all involved. You can glean most of the information from this thread.

Darth Mole has posted a full set of benchmarks here. Whilst not trashing the dual Xeons as Steve Jobs had suggested, the G5 is certainly firmly at the top end of available LW workstations and at a price point that makes it very competitive indeed.

8th August 2003

David Ikeda has ported his excellent set of free modeling plugins to the Mac. You can download the tools here.

Fujio has ported Bezier Bend to OSX with help from Shin-ichi Abe. You can download Bezier Bend here.

It's hard to draw firm conclusions from the many posts on this subject over at Newtek's Discussion Forums, but it looks like OSX versions higher than 10.2.4 introduced some new ATi Radeon drivers which cause Modeler to fail when rotating objects. Whether this is also directly linked with the 7.5b/c updates is slightly vague, but it seems that, as a rule of thumb, if you have an ATi card of any description you're better off sticking with 10.2.4. Users of nVidia cards can upgrade to 10.2.6 with impunity, apparently. I, for one, have become archly conservative about upgrading my OS now that I've found an uber stable setup - 10.2.4...

Michael Linde has started an excellent thread on Newtek's Discussion Forums for reporting bugs with 7.5x here; there's a lengthy and interesting discussion on the new G5s here; Zarathustra offers an additional tip on how to get Screamernet up and running within this thread if the current crop of tutorials are still not helping; Michael also has a tip for creating a hybrid version of 7.5/7.5c if you're having issues with certain features in 7.5c.

Althugh I've only futzed with the demo, there's a new commercial expression builder for OSX from Rayserver. Looks very simple and intuitive to use. Richard Brak handled the port.

I've been working freelance away from home for the past five months so site updates have been (ahem) thin to say the least. Normal service should be resumed shortly.

It finally looks like Luxology's plans are coming into sharper focus with the announcement of Modo - a subdivision surface Modeler. The level of Mac orientation from Luxology (from appearing with Steve at MacWorld; justifying their G5 benchmarks and demoing Modo on OSX) all bodes extremely well for the Mac community.

26th April 2003

Users of BRDF in 7.5 will know that it can cause odd coloured artifacts which often make it unusable. Gordon Miller has found a workaround:

"Well I needed to use BRDF in a project and kept getting that bloody awful fancy colour bug that we all love so much. A few observations:

1) It only ever happens when Raytraced Relections is ON , and there is a lot of Reflection Recursion on one object (the one with BRDF applied). The recursion count in the render panel makes no difference.

2) If I have nothing else running on the system but Lightwave everything is ok....but the minute I move the mouse or a window etc etc, the bug comes back to haunt me.

This makes me think that there is a bug in the Reflection Recursion Stack in the BRDF routine. Maybe the memory there is being corrupted.

This made me think..'my diffused reflection plug [currently unreleased - Ed] calculates its own reflections, so what happens if I put that in front of BRDF and set the raycount to one to mimic Lightwave's single ray reflection..?' BINGO! no corruption at all, it renders a little slower but what the hell. This also means that we can use BRDF with diffused raytrace reflections.

I did not test to see if any other plugs have the same effect, that's up to the readers.

The Shades Soft Reflection should also work." Gordon has kindly let me host Shades OSX 2.3 from my site here for some time.

So, for users seeking to take advantage of BRDF without the erratic corruption, it looks like using environment reflection maps with raytrace reflection off or any plugin that calculates the surface's reflections (rather than leaving it to Lightwave) may be a solution. (Thanks Gordon).

It looks like there are several video driver/OGL problems which affect Modeler for users with Radeon cards in the new 10.2.5 update. The full skinny is in this thread here on Newtek's discussion forums. For now, the safest option, if you have one of the affected cards, is to remain with 10.2.4 or below. Rumours abound that a 10.2.6 update is in the works which will address many of the issues.

14th April 2003

Richard Brak has announced the release of Rounder - a superb, low cost, edge rounding, filleting and chamfering tool that lets you pick the edges you want rounded. What's so unique about Rounder is a) the ability to define the edges you want affected and b) the fact that it'll work on points only. Unlike traditional bevelling tools, you don't have to pick the whole poly or group of polys - just the edges. Richard has posted some excellent documentation and a demo movie on his site - the demo movie clearly shows the numerous applications for rounder and the level of interactive control. Excellent stuff. The Mac version comes out a week earlier than the PC version. (How cool is that for a change!?). I'm already in the queue.

David Todman has rewritten his original and excellent Screamernet tutorial for OSX. The new tutorial is available here and is a fully comprehensive guide to setting up Screamernet in OSX. The tutorial is part of a new website David has set up - the Worms of Art - offering high quality Lightwave surface presets and associated utilities. Take a look - there's some great looking stuff there.

You can't load Mac Type 1 postscript fonts into Modeler 7.5 OSX- this bug was introduced in 7.x a long time ago. However, Grey Reyna noted on Yahoogroups that you can load PC Type 1 fonts (like those shipped on Newtek's CDs). Useful to know although you're still going to need a translator like Fontographer or Transtype.

As these pictures of Matt Craig, Joe Angell, Eric Soulvie, Mark Brown and Brad Peebler show, the guys at Luxology - whatever they're working on - are indisputably pro Mac! (Kudos to Ade for asking).

17th March 2003

James Burns has now released LW Sequencer - a free utility that will render a scene using LWSN in Mode 3. I had a chance to use LW Sequencer recently and it's a very convenient way of firing off renders in the background, manipulating the output file types and frame ranges if you need to. James has full details of the application on his site. Coming in the same week that Michael Linde's excellent Launch Mode 3 LScript was released, and with Jonathan Baker's Mode 2 Controller (Screamernet Controller) going from strength to strength, there have never been more options available for background or network rendering with Lightwave OSX.

13th March 2003

As usual, I was out of town when a significant Mac release was made available. By the time I got back to the UK, the 7.5b update had been pulled. Newtek are currently working on a fixed version although no timescale has been given. Errors with the diffuse, translucent and glow calculations have all been cited. Let's hope they take the time to get it right.

Ever feel like you'd just like to drag a scene file onto an application that would just get on and render it? Well, James Burns is working on a Mode 3 LWSN controller called LW Sequencer that will let you do just that. You can either select or drag and drop a scene file and LW Sequencer will pass all the relevant data to LWSN for rendering. It stores information about your last render so that the next time you fire it up it's pointing at your Content Directory, your current Preference files and the last scene you rendered. You just need to hit one button and off it goes. No messy cmdline files. No syntax errors. If you want to tweak any of the parameters associated with the render then you can manually specify Content Directory, Config Directory, Output Path, File Type and Frame Range. In the sneak peek I've had it's looking very nice indeed. The utility will be released soon and will be free of charge. Yes, free.

James was frustrated with the lack of such a utility and decided to code it himself, although he'd be the first to tell you he's not a programmer. Apple's application development framework AppleScript Studio made it relatively easy for him to code the application in OS X. He has plans to refine the program to allow for multiple renders to be queued up for renders. If you like the sound of it, have questions or want to just voice your support for the project contact James here: jpburns@jamesburnsdesign.com.

This is what Michael says: "This script saves the current scene, clears Layout, and begins rendering the current scene in LWSN Mode 3. For more information on Mode 3, see the section in the documentation included with Lightwave called "Rendering Without
Lightwave".

You can read Michael's article here and go to the download page here.

Michael has also developed an LScript which will detect the current status of the Hub and offer to turn it either on or off depending on whether it's active or not. If you load the script as a menu option it becomes ultra handy. Once you've run the script you simply need to quit all Lightwave-related applications and restart them.

You can go to the download page here.

27th February 2003

It looks like the issues with Screamernet in 10.2.0/1/2 have been fixed by Apple in 10.2.3 and 10.2.4. This was a file read/write error identified by Jon Baker that allowed LWSN to read files before they were completely written. The confirmation is here on Newtek's new discussion board.

Jon Baker has updated ScreamerNet Controller to 3.2. The new version allows for rendering logged on to the server as a guest instead of having to share the whole drive; checks the scene file for the Spreadsheet Plugin, which may cause the nodes to crash when rendering and removes this from the scene; opens files that do not have the Lightwave file type, but do have the .lws extension; when you load a scene, you are given a dialog to change the start, end, and step frames, change the file output, and change some other options.

This upgrade is a free upgrade for current users of version 3.x. It still controls one node for free.

Jon's update reminded me that it's worth reinforcing the tip that multiple spreadsheet master plugin entries in the top of the scene file (open it in a text editor) can cause LWSN to stall. I have found scene files with over 100k of duplicate master plugin entries in them.

Michael Linde has posted a simple solution to LSCommander issues which were resulting in crashes. Migrate back to the version of LScript that shipped with 7.5 (i.e. LScript 2.5 not the later 2.5.1 that was distributed a while back but is currently unavailable). Although a few scripts require the newer 2.5.1, it's a simple solution. For information: you can easily check your version of LScript by selecting the LScript menu option and looking at the top of the Open dialogue box in OSX.

Pensart posted this really useful story on Newtek's new Bulletin Board that indicates that Daz Productions do have beta versions of the plugins listed here for OSX. You need to email Josh at Daz directly if you'd like to get hold of copies. Kudos to Daz for making these available.

31st January 2003

kenneth has found some time to update his port of mkhdr to Beta 2. You can download it here.

Jack Davis had this to say about Alex's image saver problems: "I consistently render out hi res images for print on my machine and have no problems on ONE of my machines. the images range from 30 to 100 mb and even more if i've got a long weekend to let it go. the machine is a DP G4 533 with 1.5 Gb RAM running OS X.2.1. i also FAIRLY consistently render on another machine (DP G4 500 with 1 Gb RAM running OS X.1.5). i say only fairly consistently, because i have had some problems with very large files with this machine. i won't go beyond about 4000X4000 on this one, while the other i have no problem going much higher. this leads me to believe it isn't a bug really, but there may be other issues involved, such as RAM, OS etc. hope this helps. oh, and before i forget the format i've always rendered to is the psd32. Check it out." (Thanks, Jack)

23rd January 2003

Jim, a longstanding contributor to this site, has launched his new company site replete with some terrific free LW models. Check it out.

Michael Linde has been following up problems that some users have had with JPGs causing Lightwave 7.5 to crash under OSX. In the process he's discovered that the problem may be related to machines with low VRAM (16Mb or less). The solution to the problem is to remove the JPEG.p plugin and to allow QTTools.p (the Quicktime plugin) to handle JPGs. (Thanks Michael).

Marvin has launched 7.5 versions of qemLOSS3 for OSX and OS9. Details about obtaining and using the plugin, as well as tutorials covering the new features can be found on the qemLOSS3 web page: http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss3.html

Richard Brak handled the port. Who else? :-)

As Jonathan says: "This version now controls PC nodes as well as Mac nodes. (Not even Lightwave can do that... :-)"

Download it here

Missing from my roundup of plugin developers a few weeks ago was this site by Shinichi Abe (the author of DStorm's LWSN Controller) which kenneth highlighted on Newtek's Discussion Forums recently. The downloads include an OSX version of Rest on Ground - a plugin sorely missed from OSX release.

This from Alex: "I know that your lightwave/mac page isn't really a forum for bugs, but I've become aware of something that is a mac only issue and thought your readers should be aware of this.

When rendering hi resolution images for print on MacOSX 10.2 (earlier OSX versions as well) the image saver plug-ins will fail. TIFF, TARGA, and PSD32 are the formats that I've tried and all will fail to save any output. On OS 9 I could turn on virtual memory to add and push the memory requirments of Lightwave and would be able to save hi res images. It would take longer of course, but it did the job.

There is a work around, but I don't trust it 100%. Using F9 to display the image in lightwave's built in image viewer works. For very hi resolution images, the image viewer will not display the image (it will just display black, at 100% or the scaled down image at lower resolutions). From the F9 image viewer it is possible to save the final output in any format.

It seems like lightwave doesn't pass the image data to the image saver plugin very well. By "buffering" it in the image viewer and then saving it works.

It's important to always close the image viewer so that the previous images aren't buffered. I wouldn't trust the image viewer to juggle too many hi resolution images at once.

I was wondering if anyone else might have noticed this? Is there a work around. It would be nice to be able to LWSN several hires scenes overnight and not have to sit around for hours to manually save images from the image viewer.

p.s. PC lightwave users don't appear to have this problem."

Interestingly, the advice I've always given for users trying to output high resolution images is specifically not to output to the Imageviewer because of the high RAM overhead. In talking to Arnie and compiling my information page on managing memory in OS9 (the same principles apply to OSX) he did mention that some of the image savers required a lot of memory although he wasn't sure which ones. Possibly TIFFS, Targas and PSD32s require much more memory than other output formats. Even so, it's surprising that buffering it into Imageviewer (even if it is black) and then saving it out works since that would require the Imageviewer buffer to be added to the output plugin's requirements. If any other users have experienced this please let me know. Sounds like a bug in the output plugins....(Thanks Alex).

Beam Tracer has posted another excellent article on FilmGimp here on Newtek's discussion forums. (I'm not sure how much longer links to Newtek's forums will be valid as they're updating their forum software but hopefully the archive will continue to be linkable.)

Interesting stuff on Mac/PC LW render performance here and more general performance discussion on Macintouch here. Disappearing grid problems with the ATI9000 are reported here.

3rd January 2003

Angel Nieves has written an Applescript to automatically delete the Command Windows Prefs file: "Hi Julian I posted an AppleScript in my web site so Mac OSX users can run to automatically trash the LScommander preference file so ACS3 can be used. I thought you might want to know." (Thanks Angel). Here is the URL:

http://www.motionblurstudio.com/downloads/angel_script.sit

As reported earlier, the existence of this prefs file can cause LScript commander to behave oddly. The file is created everytime you use LS Commander and quit Lightwave. Angel's script locates the file and deletes it so that you can run LS Commander with impunity. Sadly however, there may be other issues with LS Commander as Michael Linde pointed out a month or so ago on YahooGroups - using the LScript 2.5.1 update (currently unavailable from Lightwave Outpost) LS Commander will crash Layout when you try and create an LScript.

This from Arthur: "Kevin Schmitt came out with an excellent article on installing GIMP (as opposed to film GIMP) on the mac. It also mentions the necessity to install the developer's CD included with Mac OSX. You may want to point your readers to the link below...

http://www.creativemac.com/2002/12_dec/tutorials/thegimp021231.htm

While it parallels some of what I mentioned for FilmGIMP people, I think its very useful to post additional resources, especially for novice mac users.. it also offers instructions for a complete installation of Xwindows for mac users." (Thanks Arthur)

Although I don't normally duplicate Flay by reporting all new Mac plugins and LScripts, I thought a quick roundup of the most notable one's would be useful. As ever, the number of Mac plugin ports is dependent on good sales and therefore the following new(ish) commercial and free offerings are noteworthy. Sending the authors letters of encouragement and, better still, hard cash has to make long term sense. In rooting these out, I noted that Richard Brak has been working fiendishly behind the scenes to port plugins to OSX on behalf of some of these developers. Many thanks to him for his efforts.

Worely Laboratories (Commercial)

The Daddy of all plugin developers is on the verge of releasing G2 for OSX - one of the most revolutionary plugins I've ever seen. Turns Lightwave into a different application.

Pawel Olas (Commercial)

Pawel has recently developed OSX versions of the following plugins. (Bridge Tool looks especially cool to me).

Fire and Smoke Generator
Trees Designer
Leaves Generator
Grass Generator
Random Cloner
Bridge Tool

Fujio Ichikawa (Free)

Fujio has recently released Mac versions of his hugely powerful plugins.

FIs Jigsaw
FIs Wrinkle
FIs Open Edge Extender
FIs Clear Zero Entries in Weight Maps

Pictrix (Free, Commercial and Shareware)

Pictrix has recently released the Select Point Chain LScript which finally provides OSX users with point rail selection (Matthew Baldwin spotted this one a while back). Check out Pictrix's other scripts, too.

FaulknerMano (Free)

Like Pictrix, Lernie Ang is a fantastic LScript developer and is continually pumping out new and hugely useful scripts. The latest gems include a non-linear morph script and Perspicacious Quads.

Miscellaneous

A couple of interesting shader Lscripts have surfaced recently:

Coffee
WizzyWax

Whilst Blochi launched this rather nifty looking thickner plugin for Modeler:

Thickener

It goes without saying that many other plugin and LScript developers are churning out excellent stuff. Here's a selection of my favourite ones: Richard Brak, Carl Merritt, Al Street, David Ikeda, Steve Hurley, Mark Brown, Terry Ford, Daz, Yahma and last, but not least, Prem and Dynamic Realities.

23rd December 2002

Arthur Argote sent me this great information on Mac Film Gimp:

"Similar to the Gimp image processing system, this one is designed for motion pictures with 16 bit support. If anything, its a great carrot to hang over mac users to expose them to the world of Xwindows... which may help serve as a bridge to port software without the deep pockets to support a full aqua port. This is also a great little exercise for the unix novice to get acquainted to the unix roots of their mac.

This is the film gimp site:

http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/

The actual order for novice mac users to acquaint themselves with Xwindows, and installation guides are as follows:

Resources for explaining Xwindows, X11,Xfree86, the server app:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/x11/index.php

http://www.xfree86.org/

Resources and explanation of FINK, the aid for distributing and installing Xwindow aps on darwin:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/about.php

https://sourceforge.net/pom_1102.php

http://fink.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php

http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/index.php

Finaly, FilmGimp itself:

http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/mac/install.mac.filmgimp.html

Once the user is up to speed as to what exactly they are installing on their system, they should install it in the following order... (this is for a 10.2.2 OS.)

FINK. All of the instructions are at the link:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php

Xwindows:

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=18034

In this order:

XInstall_10.1.sit, XFree86_4.2.0.1-10.2.zip, XFree86_4.2.1.1.zip

The file labels can be confusing, so be careful. the installation is just point and click.

FilmGIMP

http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/mac/install.mac.filmgimp.html.

See instruction, then go to link below for files:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57007

The latest MacFilmGimp is 0.10-4 I believe.

(Thanks Arthur!)

24th November 2002

Jonathan Baker, the author of Screamernet Controller, has finally solved the conundrum involving Jaguar and Screamernet. Many users reported that they could not get Screamer to work in Mode 2 with a 10.2 host and 10.2 node. According to Jonathan, 10.2 has introduced a facility for a file to be read whilst it is still being written - thus, the commands from Layout being sent to LWSN are only half-complete before LWSN tries to enact them. This only seems to happen in a situation where you have remote hosts. It does not happen on a single machine or with OS9 hosts. To fix the problem Jonathan has written a little application that intercepts the job files on each node and rewrites them making sure they're fully written before LWSN continues. This involves launching the application on each node, targeting it at the 'normal' job file and getting it to rename it. The full instructions are included with the download of the application here. Excellent work. I would guess that if it's a new OS feature in Jaguar then LWSN will have to be rewritten.

Ladd Ehlinger Jr, President of Respower, contacted me to let me know that the Respower Internet renderfarm was Mac-compatible. If I'd known about the service a few months back, I'd have been sorely tempted to use it. Using the calculator on the site, renders that were taking my three Macs over 3 days to churn out via Screamernet would have taken a matter of hours at a total cost of $35-$40. Sounds like a deal to me.

I'm sure that most of you have been checking Flay religiously, but I thought I'd note the release of Icarus for OSX. I'd had the opportunity to use Icarus on a PC a few weeks back and was impressed that such a sophisticated free piece of software was available at all. Now it's available for OSX. As Chris Weyers and Adam Stern note here it's slightly buggy but well worth investigating if you're trying to match camera moves from background plates, correct lens distortion or remove objects.

Michael Linde has discovered that the make LScript function in LS Commander is broken if you update to LScript 2.5.1. The story and workaround is here on YahooGroups.

Michael has discovered that julienne creates larger than requested divisions on certain axes. The story is here on YahooGroups.

Richard Brak has been offering a free mac plugin compiling service for quite some time now. If any Intel plugin authors need a Mac port, Richard is certainly the man to contact. Whilst you're at Richard's site check out the new plugins he's developing. A new version of dynamic parenter has been released and there are previews of an exciting new modeling tool called Rounder. The site is here. (Thanks to Arthur Argote for the tip on Richard's compiling service).

16th October 2002

Prem has made a demo version of Relativity 2 available for Mac users here.

Tim Anderson has discovered that LS Commander seems to be broken in 7.5 OSX. The tool writes a preference file called Command Window Prefs to your preference file location when you quit Lightwave. If this file exists then the next time you use LS Commander you're likely to experience a serious degree of bugginess. If, however, you delete the prefs file before you launch Layout LS Commander seems to behave properly. (Thanks Tim).

14th October 2002

Both Tim Anderson and Carlos Rodriguez wrote in to let me know that the Clone Hierarchy LScript which was broken under OS9 (and prevented earlier versions of Auto Character Setup from working) is also broken under OSX. As an alternative, Lernie Ang's Family Clone should do the trick.

Jonathan Baker has launched Version 3 of Screamernet Controller for OSX which inludes a host of functionality updates and a radical new pricing model which includes an option to allow you to control one node for free. Excellent news.

7th October 2002

Arthur Argote has been communicating with the CEO of Idruna in order to persuade him to port the Photogenics High Dynamic Range Image editor to the Mac. So far there is a Windows version available but no OSX version. Arthur points out that you can run the Windows demo under Virtual PC. The gist of the discussions is here on Newtek's Discussion Forums.

The crux of the question is how many Mac Lightwavers would buy a $999 piece of software for editing HDR Images and will Idruna recoup the development cost? Email Idruna directly if you are interested or, at least, to outline what sort of price you would be prepared to pay for such a piece of software. There is the possibility of an XDarwin port which would be easier for the developer. As Arthur says: "..Paul Nolan mentioned that a port to XDarwin, as opposed to mac OS specifically, is a quick and dirty way to do it. He pointed me to the link here for a sample of how the bare bones interface would look. So a grand for a nonstandard interface, non photoshop interface, and no native scanning support according to Paul. Thats a bumpy proposition, however i know I can use that functionality. Anybody with LW on their mac I think would, at least to take advantage of LW potential. I just wonder how many are out there?" (Thanks Arthur).

Arthur's also written an excellent article on how to get HDR images out of Lightwave and into Combustion. Up until this point, with the exception of the ultra high-end Shake, I hadn't been able to find a way to composite HDR on the Mac. Arthur's article outlines the steps you should take to be able to manipulate HDR images output from Lightwave Mac into Combustion.

This all, obviously, begs the question "Why?" and for a good explanation of the benefits of HDR output take a look at kenneth's article here. In essence, HDR images give you many more options for manipulating your final output - so, outputting all of your Image Sequences in an HDR format and then compressing them down to an 8-bit format as and when is a much more flexible approach than going straight to 8-bit from the beginning. Remember, too, that even without an HDR compositor/editor, Lightwave can load an HDR sequence as a camera backdrop and render it out to any format you require after the initial sequence has been rendered. Why throw away data? and why not use one of the most unique features of Lightwave to the full?

Matthew Baldwin wrote to me with this plea about the reduce polygons plugin which is missing from OSX: "I'm an osX user of Lightwave and have been trying to compel Newtek to provide this much-needed functionality for the LW osX version of Modeler. As you know, the plug is missing, among other plug-ins for OSX. The trouble is, that while there are 3rd party sollutions to replace functionality of the rotation.p suite of plugs, there is no usable work-around to the reduce polygon command.

How can you help? please correspond with Chuck Baker and others at Newtek about this matter. And, if possible, make that same request for Mac OS visitors to do the same on your site. I would greatly appreciate it." (Thanks Matthew)

As always, emailing Newtek directly with your requests is the best way to get some movement on this issue. The more Mac users that express a need for reduce.p the better - and the more pressure it puts on the development team to provide a solution. The same applies to any plugins that are 'missing'.

Chris Weyers sent me a link to a great article on arstechnica which might explain why OGL window overlaps cause performance degradation. The article details the exact way in which Quartz Extreme works and pros and cons of Apple's approach in a very even-handed way. The article is here. Chris has also written an excellent comparison of Lightwave and Maya here. (Thanks Chris).

Although there has been nothing concrete, several users have found issues with both Screamernet and the Hub with 10.2/10.2.1. I haven't seen anything yet and I'm waiting to see if anyone can duplicate or verify these issues. On my machine The Hub seems to work as it always since 7.x - i.e. fairly well most of the time :-) but with the odd loss of synchronisation every now and then - whilst I am unable to test OSX to OSX Screamernet under 10.2.x (although 10.2 to 9.1 in Mode 2 and standalone Mode 3 seem to work fine). In a proportion of these cases I'm sure the installation of OSX10.2 has overwritten preferences or caused some preference glitches that a quick InitConfig would restore. If anyone can reproduce these problems, please let me know.

I finally got round to updating my gallery here. Let me know if there's stuff I should be embarrassed about! :-)

30th September 2002

A while back, Arnie notified us of a problem with OGL performance if a viewport overlapped the Dock. Harlan Hill has found similar issues with overlapping palettes and windows:

"It seems that placing Windows too close together in LW on OSX results in degraded OpenGL performance. At least it does here on my systems; so I recommend maintaining a tiny gap between interface modules to prevent the slowdown. To test it out:

1. Open Lightwave
2. Scale the Main Interface down a little.
3. Open the Scene Editor (or any other panel) and place it above the Lightwave Viewport.
4. Rotate around in the Viewport. Is it clunky at all?
5. Place the Scene Editor as far away from the Main Interface as possible (or just close it)
6. Rotate around in the Viewport again. Faster?

It also seems to occur if you place the Lightwave window too close to the edge of the screen - or overlapping the edge of the screen."

I have certainly seen OGL performance drop with various windows open (e.g. spreadsheet and the scene editor). If you're getting slowdowns, this may be one to watch. (Thanks Harlan).

9th August 2002

Luxology, the company founded by Allen Hastings, Stuart Ferguson and Brad Peebler, who worked on LightWave 3D through 2001, has announced that Beth Loughney has joined their Board of Advisors. Beth is currently the president and general manager of Exluna. For more information, click here.

1st August 2002

Mark Brown, the genius behind Motion Mixer, has made more of his plugins available for OSX and OS9. The new set includes IK Blender which allows you to blend an IK chain into FK and Normal Move and Rotate which move and rotate (ahem) polys around their normals [wasn't that obvious from the name? - Ed]. Mark's plugin page is here.

Fredrik Martenson let me know a while back that the MD_Meta Plugin seems to be broken and gives an 'illegal cage object' message when you apply it. I can reproduce the problem here. If anyone has found a workaround for this please let me know. The plugin enables you to apply MD deformations calculated on a low-res cage to a higher res object. (Thanks Fredrik).

Jonathan Baker has updated his acclaimed Screamernet Controller for OSX which we've discussed before. The update provides increased error checking to ensure frames are actually rendered - no more skipped frames or rendering to 'nothing' which we've all come to know and love in a Zen-like way. The program itself replaces Layout as the network controller and allows you to stop and start nodes at will amongst many other features. In the accompanying documentation for the demo there is a full guide to setting up Screamernet under OSX. Screamernet Controller is shareware and is priced at $50.

In a similar vein, Trey Harrell has documented the set up of Screamernet for OSX in the Newtek Discussion Forum here. There now seem to be several tutorials that should enable you to get started including Dirk Van Sloten's one here.

There are still relatively few reports on the benefits of upgrading a to a GeForce 4600Ti over and above the existing batch of Mac cards. On the immediate horizon is an extremely powerful ATi 9700 card which has a significant (on paper) performance advantage over the GF46Ti and seems to support numerous highend features - including, amazingly, a kind of high dynamic range in OGL! If you're waiting for a card, this might be worth watching (until nVidia bring out their new cards around Christmas time, of course). Whether Lightwave will be able to take advantage of the card's power is a totally different story..

11th July 2002

It's already been noted that there seem to be issues with BRDF in OSX 7.5 and caustics. I've also experienced problems opening a surface in Modeler if BRDF is applied. Worse still, it looks like there are further problems with erratic discolouration with the effect. Jonathan Baker noted the effect on YahooGroups here and I keep running into it randomly. As BRDF is not a plugin, we'll need to wait on a full program update. 80% of the time, the shader *will* work, but it can have the tendency to bite you unexpectedly.

Several users are reporting problems with the Hub in OSX 7.5 and OSX 10.1.5. The reports are here on Newtek's Discussion Forums.

Bernard Brown notes disappointing performance of the GF4 Ti 4600 which seems to be using the GF3 drivers whilst Darthmole has been sampling Evasion's new reflection plugin, Hypersmooth, and reports lovely results but a lack of multithreading which could make hi-res renders painful.

10th June 2002

Dirk wrote to let me know that he has updated his Screamernet for OSX tutorials with a section on network rendering (as opposed to using Screamer on a single machine). (Thanks Dirk).

An updated version of LScript is available here for OSX.

28th May 2002

Eki wrote to let me know that Overcaster, Skygen, Refgen, Fakemetric Camera and a range of freebies are now fully compatible with Mac Lightwave 7.5. You can use the free version of the plugins (collectively known as PlugPak) with some random dialogues that encourage you to register, or buy the full product for $25. Given that Eki has slaved over these amazing plugins for at least a couple of years, I'd say that $25 was a steal - especially when you look at the amount of user support he throws in for free on the PlugPak mailing list on YahooGroups. Details on the plugins are here.

Paul Grant sent me this interesting note on JPG crashing with OS10.1.2 which Newtek has confirmed: "I don't know if you've come across this already but, after a lengthy discussion I've recently had confirmation from the Newtek tech guys. The bottom line is that I discovered that all Jpeg files will cause LW 7.5 on Osx to crash (I'm running 10.1.2). So any scene or model that has a Jpeg mapped to it can't be opened in 7.5 and any attempt to import a Jpeg will have the same result."

JPGs seem to be working fine in 10.1.4 here. If anyone else is experiencing this problem, please let me know.

6th May 2002

Paul Grant has let me know that updated Legacy Plugins for OSX are available here. (Thanks Paul).

5th May 2002

Newtek have a FAQ entry here for users whose 6.5 objects can erratically load into 7.5 without their associated image maps.

Many people have written to the site about the missing Legacy Plugins for OSX 7.5 - these should have shipped with the OSX 7.5 updater but didn't and are required for certain plugins like Shades v2.3 OSX and Tree Druid to work. According to Marvin Landis here on YahooGroups, Newtek will shortly make them available from their website. (Thanks to all those who wrote in).

30th April 2002

Dirk's written a really sound OSX Screamer tutorial here and is asking for feedback. Here's his message: "I wrote a quick tutorial on setting up Screamernet to batch render on OS X. I will write more (dual processor, network, etc) if there is enough
interest. But first I would like a few people to try out what I have so far, and give
me some feedback. The e-mail address at my site seems to malfunction currently, so for now users that want to contact me should e-mail me at dvs@uwm.edu.
Normally the address would be nonplanar@mac.com. But it is not certain right now that mail sent there will arrive." (Thanks Dirk)

Dirk's tutorial has also helped resolved one of the most baffling problems I've had with the Command Directory. It turns out that if you do not specify a Command Directory in the LWSN cmdline it will default to looking in the Content Directory ignoring whatever Command Directory you may have set in your Lightwave Layout 3 Prefs file. To force LWSN to use any other Command Directory e.g. Programs, you need to specifically point the job and ack files there directly in the LWSN cmdlines as Dirk's tutorial indicates.

Apologies for missing yet another major news week for Lightwave with the announcement of Luxology and the release of 7.5. I'll cover those later. Sadly, I'm leaving my current employer which will mean that the hosting of the site, my internet access and use of this DP800 will be finishing in a few days. I'm actively looking for another host and will be making parallel updates on http://www.exch.demon.co.uk although this location for the site has some heavy bandwidth restrictions. Because of the uncertainty over the next few weeks, I've set up a redirect account at: http://www.julianjohnson.co.uk which should always provide some sort of route into this resource page but is primarily intended to house my online resume. Sorry to be so vague at the moment but this will be sorted out soon :-). In the meantime, I'm available for immediate freelance or training work in the UK! (julian@exch.demon.co.uk).

Now that everyone's had a chance to digest 7.5 and work out where the new tools are and how to use them (!), it looks like a really solid usability and bug fix update with some great new features thrown in for free. Many users are reporting faster OGL performance.

On the usability front, I love the new render in progress window at 640x480; the dialogue that appears if you hit F9 and haven't selected an image viewing option; the Depth of Field OGL preview; and the obvious multibounce radiosity and shadow controls. It seems clear that RLA is now working (although I need to double check the Material buffer and am not sure if RLA is supposed to work with raytracing on); UV maps look fixed; tesselation spheres are fixed and, finally, 7.5 ships with a working Quicktime Plugin.

The PSD Export function has generated some good discussion and some great multipass rendering tips from Darthmole and Glen Hurd here. I think the conclusion is that the implementation could have been more user friendly. Having tried, myself, to use the resultant .psd file as an image sequence in AE5.5 I have to agree.

An erratic Gaffer glitch for 7.5 is documented in this thread by Arne Kaupang on Newtek's Discussion Forums.

Art Howe, who's recently left his product management job at Newtek, has confirmed that OSX ports of reduce.p and autopatcher.p are not likely (I think I'm understating wildly unless someone's prepared to go to the abyss and back) on YahooGroups here.

Luka reports (and I can confirm) that caustics and BDRF, which was not working in 7b, is still not working in 7.5 here.

Gregory D Moore asked me this question:

" I'm a rather green newbie trying to setup a LW network as I have a few extra
Macs lying around. On your Screamernet page, you mention Mode 2 and Mode 3
with LWSN Controller. However, you make no mention of ScreamerNet Controller
and I'm wondering why?

I was very confused at first because the names (LWSN Controller and
ScreamerNet Controller) were very similiar and I didn't even know there were
so many different ways to set up a LW Network. However, from what I have
been able to read so far, it seems that ScreamerNet Controller has the edge
in that you can turn nodes on and off without wrecking your entire network
render. This seems to be a major advantage yet, I'm curious as to why you
make no mention of it?

Should I not explore this path for some unknown reason? Aside from the $25
shareware fee, it looks good to me. Please let me know what you're thoughts
are regarding this."

The simple answer is that until yesterday, I hadn't tried ScreamerNet Controller but now that it's available in OSX format I've been taking a closer look and it looks like an excellent replacement for Layout itself as a network rendering controller in mode 2 specifically because, as Gregory says, you can start and stop nodes at will. It doesn't remove any of the initial setup requirements for making Screamernet work, but it does make network rendering far more flexible. Kudos to Jonathan.

The homepage is here. The download link for the OSX version is here.

If you've been reading the gossip, go here to get it straight.

25th April 2002

Kenneth has made a ported mkhdr to OSX. You can download it here. An introduction to the utility is here on Newtek's Discussion Forums.

Later on today, Newtek will take the wraps off Lightwave 7.5 in New York. Feature lists, beta software and even a pirated PDF have been circulating on the web for some time - most people seem to know what the major features are. Adam Stern articulated a lot of Mac users' hopes on Newtek's discussion forum here - fixed UV maps, fixed RLA, fixed tesselation spheres etc. We should know by tomorrow! I'm guessing the download will be quite congested for some time...

17th April 2002

Tony De Luca sent in this query: " I have noticed after installing the new ATI retail update that modeler leaves garbage on the screen wherever the cursor last was when you rotate the image in the top right view. You will also find this when you use the zoom tool in any view. I am running Os X 10.1.3 on a 500mhz g4, with a Radeon Mac Edition card. Has anybody else reported this?". If anyone else has seen this, let me know.

Jon asks: "I was wondering if you could post a request for help on your site. I'm trying to track down any info about any LW 2 RIB converters for Mac LW ONLY. I know of and have all the free PC versions. But what I'm really interested in is tracking down any info on Mac versions or attempts of versions that were never released. I'm toying with the idea of writing my own... freeware plugin. But I want more info first. This is all inspired by the release of 3Delight a renderman compliant render for OSX and an interface for this, 3Delighter. So please if you could post a request for me with any info going to me at this email address implanet@hotmail.com."

15th April 2002

Gordon Miller has compiled Shades v2.3 and CTBfproc for Lightwave OSX and, along with Marvin Landis, has kindly allowed me to distribute these OSX plugins from this site. You can download Shades v2.3 for OSX here and CTBfprocOSX here. Gordon has been running the Shades project since September 1999 having taken on the project from Marvin. The Shades plugin provides a huge range of spectacular surface shaders and is an essential download. Gordon notes a couple of minor issues: "A few issues to be aware of, the preview window does not always behave itself, and I had to disable the Wood 2 preview coz it crashes the app". You'll have to enable the common legacy plugins to use Shades v2.3 for OSX.

CTBfproc information can be found on Marvin's site here but, in short, provides a very sophisticated interface into cellular procedural textures based on a paper by Steve Worley. On Marvin's site you'll find an OS9 version ported by Richard Brak and Matt Craig and an OSX version for 6.5 ported by Matt. The 6.5 version doesn't seem to work with 7b which is where Gordon's port comes in.

Many thanks to Gordon for the ports :-)

I had this fascinating note from Patrick. If other DP users have had similar experiences I'd like to know. "I've had the same problems on my DP800 machine, but they completely went away when I opened up the case. My theory was that maybe with both processors running all the time it was getting too hot, so I opened the case about 10 degrees and left it propped like that. All problems ceased. I got a dual gig machine this month. Same problem, same solution. I think that having both processors under full load for long periods of time heats them up more than Apple planned/tested, and more than the internal fan can handle. When I first opened the case the heat sink was almost too hot to touch; with the case open it feels comfortably warm. Ahhh . . " (Thanks Patrick).

10th April 2002

ATI has released what look like OSX and OS9 drivers for all their retail cards. There are reports that the drivers also work with OEM ATI cards. The driver update is here. Mike Breeden has compiled some excellent feedback on the driver updates here.

Apple has released 3.0 drivers for nVidia cards under OS9 but, sadly, the Graph Editor redraw problems are still there with the Geforce 3. The update is here.

For the past three to four weeks my DP800 has been freezing in both OS10.1.3 and OS9.2.2 - often in Lightwave because I have it open almost permanently. Initially, I spent ages trying to work out whether it was specific to Lightwave, other open applications or the OS - I reinstalled both systems and all my application software. The freezing increased. Having contacted Apple, and before they would consider sending out an engineer, I used Software Restore to reset my machine to it's factory-shipped state and pulled out all peripherals and cards - migrating right back to 10.0.4 in the process. The freezing continued. I went through a lengthy process of low level formatting my hard drive and isolating each individual RAM stick. An Apple engineer came, diagnosed it as a problem with the Geforce 3 card and brought back a new one the next day. The freezing continued. Today the engineer swapped out the dual processor component. The freezing has finally stopped.

A couple of weeks after I originally took delivery of the machine I received an error message saying that one of the processors had failed. At the time this was a fairly common report amongst DP800 users. After a reboot the error went away and did not return. I reported it to Apple to make sure it was on the record. Although the processor error has never reappeared it's clear in retrospect it was never right.

The lessons? Firstly, if you've had a processor error message on a DP800 don't dismiss it (like I did) as a one off glitch especially if you're getting random freezes. Secondly, the error was often provoked by Lightwave because, as the engineer commented, it really pounds both processors under OSX. It was all too easy to assume it was a software glitch in Lightwave. Gradually, however, it became clear that the error would happen in any application that really stretched the DP capability of the machine - Cleaner Pro, Lightwave, After Effects and Photoshop. With 'light' usage, the machine would not not crash and it was not apparent that there was a problem. It was only when both processors were near their maximums that freezes occurred.

26th March 2002

Ed Mag has convened a meeting of minds on Newtek's Discussion Forums between Adobe's Chris Cox (Altivec guru), Dean Dauger (ex Kai's Power Tools and Head of Dauger Research and Mac clustering guru) and Arnie (Lightwave programming guru) with the aim of a) encouraging and facilitating Newtek to further altivec-enhance its code and b) to take advantage of the possible multi-cpu Mac clustering work that Dean Dauger is pioneering under OSX. The thread is here.

Sam Easterling, who's been experiencing slow interface and OGL performance in 7b found the switching to tablet mode resulted in a significant speed up. The story is here on Newtek's Discussion Forums.

11th March 2002

If, like me, you keep various versions of Lightwave (7b, 7, 6.5b) on a single machine it's relatively easy, using cmdlines, to share resources like additional plugins and external LScripts across these versions. Up until now, however, it has been impossible to share your Preset Shelf - this has always had to sit in each version's Programs directory.

Richard Brak sent me this excellent OSX tip:

"I got very frustrated at constantly 'losing' my Presets [from version to version] so now I actually keep them outside the LW app directory so they don't get lost with each upgrade.

Thus, my LW 'Application' directory currently looks like:

LScriptsAdditional
LightWave 3D 6.5
LightWave 3D 7.0
PluginsAdditional
Presets

Where the Presets directory is a real directory containing all the Presets. Now, create another real Presets directory in the Programs directory of the latest version (if it's not already there), then, from the terminal, navigate to the Program/Presets directory and execute (this will destroy any real 'Surface Editor' presets that are already there, so move them out first):

ln -s '/Applications/LightWave/Presets/Surface Editor/' "Surface Editor"

Which, in my case, creates a symbolic link ( called 'Surface Editor') in the Program/Presets directory up to the real LightWave/Preset directory.

Repeat the symbolic linking for all the other Presets subdirectories. The great thing is that, once you have created the symbolic links you can now copy across the Program/Presets to any future (or past) build using Finder - no need to use the Terminal again. Thus the symbolic linking need only be done once, after that it is just copy and paste." (Thanks Richard)

Kenneth Woodruff has announced that he's leaving Newtek on March 13th. The story is here. Whilst it's hard to put a positive spin on one of Newtek's foremost Mac evangelists leaving the fray, it's clear that Kenneth will still be part of the Mac Lightwave community. For any 3D artist, it's surely a hard thing to decide which is better - helping develop Mac Lightwave from the inside or being 'out there' creating art commercially with the software. I wish Kenneth a lot of success with his new path.

Mike Breeden at Accelerate Your Mac is asking Lightwave 7 OSX users if they are having problems with nVidia cards - paticularly the 4MX. The GF3 that I use in my DP800 is pretty much perfect in OSX 7b but has problems in Graph Editor in OS9 (even with the 2.6 drive update).

Tesselation spheres seem to be broken in Lightwave 7b OSX. The full story is here.

26th February 2002

I've been working on the first draft of a tome which tries to explain how LWSN interacts with cmdline files and text strings to help people debug problems with LWSN. Let me know what you think.

25th February 2002

With the release of 10.1.3 there have been a variety of reports about increased rendering speed for the raytrace.lws benchmark on some machines, and a slowdown in overall Modeler OGL performance. Both issues are discussed in this thread on Newtek's Discussion Forums. As usual, it's hard to draw any firm conclusions :-). On my machines, a DP800 and a G4450, there have been no real differences in the raytrace.lws benchmark whilst OGL performance seems to be exactly the same (although I don't use the G4450 often enough to say with any certainty and I've been majoring in Layout since 10.1.3 came out).

Interestingly, here on Postforum, Frederik and Dan have both reinstalled 10.1.2 because of a slowdown in Modeler with 10.1.3.

I don't know whether it helps, but I've had a couple of OGL benchmark scenes on the site for a while which have the Frame Rate Meter already applied if you want to try and check on OGL performance in Layout (although, in this instance, the problem seems to affect Modeler).

Finally, on the subject of slowdowns, Arnie wrote to me with the news that Combustion, too, seems to slowdown when its viewport sits in the area that the Dock occupies even with Hiding on. On my machine, Layout does not slow down when part of its viewport is in the same area. However, if Hiding is turned off and the Dock obscures a viewport I lose 10-15fps.

Prem has announced the immediate availability of full versions of OSX and OS9 Relativity 1.1 and pre-release versions of Relativity 2 for the same platforms. An article on Yahoo Groups here explains the pricing structure.

Shadowblatt, a utility for dissolving Shadow Maps in and out, is now available for Mac from the same stable.

5th February 2002

Chris Cox, one of Adobe's Photoshop engineers, discusses Altivec optimisations in Lightwave on Newtek's Discussion Forums here. In the course of the post, he offers to sit down and discuss the issues with Newtek's coders over a drink :-).

I'll leave the time for you to find out yourself by visiting Chris's cool site. However, from the notes on the benchmark it was done with 8 threads and 4 segments. I have a feeling that some more time could be shaved off with 4 threads and 1 segment. (On the DP800 this reduces the raytrace.lws time by 6s).

It's becoming clear that the GF4MX card is, as with all nVidia's MX cards, a 'budget' card based on the NV17 chipset. The GF3 is based on the NV20 and the top end G4Ti is based on the NV25. Although the GF4MX seems to offer good performance increases over the GF2MX it's not quite as speedy as a GF3 and seems to offer similar performance to a Radeon 7500 judging from the reports at Accelerate Your Mac. The new GF4 Titanium details are available here.

30th January 2002

Following the announcement of the latest speed-bumped Macs, the burning question on most people's minds is how fast the Geforce 4MX card is. Mike Breeden has been doing great work on Accelerate Your Mac to quantify Quake framerates and other data. So far, it looks like the GF3 is faster but that could be down to the relative immaturity of the GF4 drivers. As usual, until someone has actually used this card with Lightwave, it's impossible to say how good the card will be. The same is true for the Radeon 8500. (One of many 'Holy Grails' for Mac Lightwavers is some way of accurately comparing the relative performance of Mac video cards in both Layout and Modeler. I posted up a small story and some scenes to attempt to quantify cards' performance on Newtek's Discussion Forums here).

This thread on Newtek's discussion forums points to continued problems with the Bodypaint plugin.

In this thread on Newtek's Discussion Forum, Eki discusses issues with OC5 and requests that anyone interested in the current work in progress contact him.

The note on Modeler 7b OSX missing plugins is here.

11th January 2002

Mike sent me this: "I did a job recently in Lightwave 7. When the animation was rendered out, I noticed that the UV textures (no bump maps) in certain frames distorted on several different objects. The effect was as if someone had smeared the texture. The problem was specific to OSX; the exact same scene rendered perfectly under 9.2. It seems that there is a problem with UVs even without bump maps in 7b/OSX. I sent an example object to Newtek, I can get you a scene file as well." (Thanks Mike).

10th January 2002

I finally managed to borrow a G4 to test out OSX Screamer Mode 2 under 7b across two OSX machines. Here's the story so far. Additional information is welcome. In the process I stumbled on a neat trick which avoids having to set up mulitple node folders.

Jim John sent me this note:"I have been struggling with the problems with bump maps in lw 7b on OS9 for some months now. The problem is certainly not limited to OSX Lightwave. In 7 bump mapping has become a complete mess of arbitrary nonsense, in both terms of how strength/opacity is expressed and from what I could glean from George's thread on NewTek's site, in terms of quality. Sadly i just cannot be bothered to fully wade through this enormous thread about this and NewTek tech staff being in a state of near-denial about the problem as usual. I have wrote in 2 or 3 threads about this on Postforum recently but no one really responds."

I've asked Jim to send me a scene, if possible, that duplicates the issue. If other users have seen similar problems, please let me know.

8th January 2002

George Krauter sent me this note: "I had some trouble with Bump Maps in Lightwave 7.0b; they don't seem to work at all as UV Maps and intermittently won't work for other mapping types. Newtek informed me today that they have the same results as I did, and that it also looks like the 7.0b renderer is the problem. And it happens only with the OS 10.X version of 7.0b Anyway, here is a thread outlining the whole story: I think other people should be warned, Newtek indicated an update may follow." (Thanks George).

The thread above includes some good illustrations of the issue.

Ingo sent me this note: "just read on your site about the duo upgrade. I've got an email in mid december about this special upgrade, availability only up to december 21. The only strange thing is that the email has the date of march 11, not a very good sign for Newtek Europe's competence." (Thanks Ingo).

2nd January 2002

Newtek Europe seem to be offering a 'Duo' dongle which will allow a user to have both the PC and Mac version of Lightwave. The slightly ambiguous details are here but it's starting to look real enough...

Taking time off from compiling a list of usability issues and glitches with 7b, Riki Cox has engaged Joe Angell, the author of Spreadsheet, in an interesting discussion of features and issues with Spreadsheet.

Tim Anderson sent me this link confirming that older stock Apple cards are not and will not be optimised for OSX. (Thanks Tim).

20th December 2001

Although I haven't had a chance to try it yet, Jonathan Baker has released this useful-looking shareware Mode 2 controller. The major benefit over using Layout as a controller is that you can add or remove nodes during rendering. Built for 6.5 under OS9, it looks like it should work under 7. Jonathan is asking for feedback here on Yahoo Groups.

iwalk sent me this link to a review of Mac Lightwave. (Thanks iwalk!)

Older News (Nov 2000 - December 2001) is here.

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This site is for users of Mac Lightwave and provides an edited resource for advice and information (in the tradition of Macfixit and Macintouch reports). Its remit doesn't cover technique or usage although submissions in those areas are welcome. You can email me at julian@exch.demon.co.uk. It's edited in Surrey, UK. Emails to the Mac Lightwave Resource Page will be treated as publishable unless marked otherwise.

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