LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:
Character Animation Enhancements
New Hair and Fur System
Enhanced IK and Animation Systems
* New Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O
* New IK Calculation Options for Faster Performance
* New Bone Type - Joints
* New Objective Options for IK
* IK/FK blending
* Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation
Modeler
* UV Unwrap/UV Relax
* Symmetry Tolerance
Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements
All New Lighting System
* New Light API
* IES Lights
* New Spherical Light
* Area and Linear Lights Enhanced
Renderer
* Faster Sampling System for GI
* Improved GI Quality
* New GI Controls to Customize the Render
* Disk-Based GI Cache
Node Editor Enhancements
* Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions
* Support for New Light API Functions
* Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
* Optimizations for Materials and Shaders
SDK and LScript Improvements
* New Light Plug-in Class for third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
* SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
* SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
* Set Surface Properties Through the Surface Global
UI and Workflow Enhancements
* Enhanced Scene Limits
* Updated Scene File Format
* EXIF Metadata Support
* OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
* Image Viewer Consolidation
In addition to the new capabilities in LightWave v9.5, the LightWave v9 series has delivered enhanced performance in a number of areas including improved global illumination with higher quality and faster rendering, expanded OpenGL capabilities with new depth of field preview, advancements in the new camera tools and the node and materials editing system. Further, there are now over 24 hours of free LightWave training available online at www.lightwave3d.com.