[Kurtis]

We're very excited to report that the LightWave v9 Open Beta program will begin on February 14th. This will be your first opportunity to experience all of the power and capabilities that the new development team has introduced into LightWave.

There is an entirely new node-based materials editing system, the amazing new APS system that got rave reviews at SIGGRAPH, powerful new camera tools, and Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces along with edges in Modeler. Long-time users of LightWave will appreciate the significant increase in rendering speed and faster and more robust OpenGL support in Layout, not to mention that the new LightWave team has squashed many long-standing bugs that some thought might never be addressed.

And you'll have a surprise that was not among the preliminary features we mentioned - the new LightWave team has taken LightWave's beautiful photo-real renderer away from its single-shader-model past and on to a whole new level of flexibility and power. Now, as with other top-end renderers, you will be able to apply and even mix different shading models on a per-material basis. Shading models offered in the Node Editor include Blinn-Phong, Lambert, Phong, Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayar, Sub-Surface Scattering (SSS), and Anisotropic. These new models and functionality bring artists a greatly expanded range of flexibility and control over the render, making it easier than ever for LightWave to provide precisely the look you want at render time for every element of your scene.

You can see that, as promised, LightWave is being rebuilt from the ground up, one well-designed step at a time. LightWave v9 is just the first manifestation of this effort. The new team has listened carefully to the needs of LightWave users and 3D artists with a wide range of expertise.

The Open Beta program will also be the first opportunity for you to review the new LightWave v9 documentation. The LightWave v9 manuals are the most comprehensive in the history of the product. Not only are the new features and capabilities well-documented, the manual has been restructured to address the creative process as opposed to the strictly top-down button-by-button approach of the past. Further, care has been taken to provide expanded explanations of some of the under-documented features that have been in LightWave for some time.

LightWave v9 is just the first in a series of updates to LightWave that will be available throughout the 9 cycle. We recognize that there are additional components of the software that deserve our attention and those changes will be forthcoming quickly. LightWave v9 provides the stable foundation that we need to build a powerful new 3D system.

The process to participate is simple. You will need to visit the NewTek corporate site if your product is registered through NewTek US. For those of you registered through NewTek Europe you will access the download from the NewTek Europe site. Follow the links to the download. You will be asked to confirm your understanding that participation requires acknowledgement of a non-disclosure/license agreement electronically prior to receiving access to the download. With that process complete you will have access to the LightWave v9 Open Beta software and PDF manual downloads.

Throughout the Open Beta period NewTek will provide a discussion forum at the NewTek website for discussions regarding all aspects of Open Beta.You will also have access to additional Open Beta builds as they become available. Notice of availability of these new builds will be posted in the Open Beta forum on the NewTek website. Again, for these updates you will access them from the website location where you received your original download.

We are very excited about the advances we have made in LightWave v9 and are looking forward to your participation in making this upgrade even better!

The LightWave Team

[nemac4]

Looking forward to the beta! :attn:

Thanks Kurtis!

[Fallenswordsman]

Mmmmm beta! Granny always told me not to play around with betas, but in this case I'm going to have to throw caution to the wind