Quote:
Originally Posted by visualasylum
just a general question, why would you still use Lightscape when the technology is included into 3dsmax?
|
That is a popular myth. The technology was not incorporated into Max. There are similar things, but it is not the same.
Lightscape's use of OpenGL is still the fastest I have ever used. I occasionally open a file in LS to check something, and transfer the model into C4D. Lightscape displays the same data faster.
Lightscape was slow to come to a lighting 'solution', but once it did, that lighting was wired into the model. It could almost pass for real-time GI. Now that processors and graphics cards are 100x faster than when LS was a current product, it can do some amazing things right on your screen just in OpenGL via its vertex-shaded model.
The raytracer in LS was exceptional both in speed and quality. I don't think anyone since has written a better one, or even one as good. That raytracer was used in a preview imager for one version of Viz or Max, I was told once by someone who knew the programs well. The raytracer was the work of one brilliant coder, and a few years ago I asked the head of the Max group and former owner of Lightscape, where that guy ended up working. He went to Pixar.
So on the one hand, Lightscape is dead. On the other, if you happen to still own a copy and can make it run under XP (which it doesn't like very much) then you are in for a treat any time you fire it up. And frustration--its missing a lot of things that you would want, like an 'undo'.