[Kurtis]

Dear LightWavers,

I am very happy to report that the LightWave v9 Open Beta program we started one month ago has been a great success. We are on Open Beta build number 4 as of today and have made great headway in further improving and advancing the software based upon the feedback we received from the Open Beta team.

As was our desire, the Open Beta participants have given LightWave v9 a great workout, and helped to identify a few things that we had not managed to catch. Fortunately, we were able to quickly deal with most of the issues, but we still have a bit further to go. We want to make sure that we ship a strong, quality product, and as a result, we are going to take a few more weeks to really tighten things up.

I’m proud to say that LightWave v9 is truly the result of the combined efforts of NewTek development and the LightWave community. In the beginning, our first priority was your comments and requests as to how we could improve LightWave. Now, as we are nearing completion it is again your participation in testing and feedback that make this version of LightWave one of the best, most thoroughly tested ever.

The LightWave team is gratified to see the exciting things that our Open Beta participants are creating with the new features of LightWave v9, and we'll be sharing some of those with the community at large as examples in our videos, and images in our feature information pages on the website. The new shading models in the Node Editor, in particular, are helping folks create an amazing range of images, and participants are creating and sharing node networks with great enthusiasm and great results.

For those of you who have yet to take advantage of the Open Beta program, now is your chance. Each release gets better and faster. We have real world customer data that shows rendering improvements as much as 20 times faster than LightWave 8.5 in some scenes. Your experience will range from a small improvement to orders of magnitude depending upon what you are doing.

On behalf of the LightWave development team, thank you for all of your hard work to date. You are the critical link in making LightWave v9 the best upgrade ever.

Best regards,

Jay Roth
President NewTek 3D Division

[Johnny9ball]

Thanks Kurtis! Come join us in the Beta people!