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Hey guys,

I've been a LightWave user since the Amiga days, working with it in several companies first and getting my own license as a freelance around the LightWave 7 days. It has been my main tool as artist for at least 15 or 20 years, and also the platform for some of my first external renderer plugins like Arnold and Octane for LightWave, projects that probably have opened the doors of my current job as a full-time software developer. I only can say a big thank you to all the LightWave users that have supported the plugin development with your purchases or subscriptions, and it has been great to see how many amazing projects have been done with Octane and LW in the past years. Also thanks to Otoy for giving me the opportunity to work on this project.

Leaving the Octane for LightWave plugin development has not been an easy decision, but please, don't blame Otoy or Jules for it. They didn't force me to leave the plugin development at all, it was my personal choice. The lack of enough time on my side to work on this project is of course part of this decision, but probably the main factor to leave the project is related to the fact that the LightWave development is dead. There is nobody on the other side working on it, nobody to add, fix or improve the multiple problems and limitations that LightWave has on the SDK and core sides to support such a complex renderer plugin like Octane is now. LightWave as dead software also means that there are fewer users working with the plugin each day, so well, personally it is hard to find the right motivation to spend so much time trying to find workarounds for problems sometimes near impossible to fix, or to try to improve/refactor the incredibly convoluted code that the plugin has to work in so old architecture and with so many limitations.

Also, I want to say that the people who paid a new subscription in advance are not fully wasting money. It is true that the plugin is not going to get the 2021 Octane core in the short term, but like happens with LightWave itself, you can still work with Octane in your projects, probably for a long time, and you can use your license with other applications, from Blender or Unreal to C4D or Houdini. In this case, thinking about your money, there is even a small but important difference, LightWave is fully abandonware, while I'm still here to at least partially support the current Octane for LightWave plugin build in my spare time. That means that a critical issue can still be fixed, and a question can still get an answer from the plugin developer. Try that with Newtek & VizRT and we can talk about wasting money

Anyway, thanks all again. I really hope that you can still work with LightWave/Octane for a long time, or at least you can find a good replacement for LightWave and use Octane with some of the other amazing supported applications out there.

-Juanjo

https://www.facebook.com/groups/OctaneR ... nt_mention

Regarding the refund, you will be denied this, since it is not the first year that we have been purchasing a subscription to all the plugins that Otoy releases at once.

Thanks for update Juan.

Thank you Juanjo for everything you did for LightWave, without you he would have died a long time ago !
VizRT does not deserve this software & its community ! I hope I'm wrong, the future will tell !
Beautiful continuation to you !
_

Thanks for the update Juan. It's not exactly surprising, but it's still incredibly sad to see the demise of Lightwave. Sure, LW was a creaky beast in some areas, but there's still so many unique features and workflows that exist in it that don't exist in other 3D apps (or not as well).

I wish there was some way to get the VIzRT overlords to pull their their heads out of their asses, and sell it off to another developer. But god knows what the hell those corporate drones think.

Anyway, best wishes for your future projects - and thank you for giving us a fantastically good implementation of Octane in Lightwave, that I've used on many, many jobs!

Don't get me wrong. I am thankfull for what we got with the development of the LW Octane Plugin. I love it. It is my tool of choice. But I am sure it could have been going on for a bit more time - I mean, it is 1,5 years after LW latest release. It is not like it is abandoned for 10 years (or 5).
I bought subscription (and a new GPU) just last year. Blender with Octane is free - So I bought the subscription for Lightwave alone. My license is still valid for 36 days - but updates are now canceled. I understand the reasons. I just would have liked to still get what I paid for (Updates), not only part of it ("a" working version).
Also, if it is technically doable, supporting LW as long as possible - I mean we are after all paying customers - would be good customer support.
This is not. I would have liked to hear about this a bit in advance (like before buying into the "latest" update of Octane). But instead we get confirmation only after the fact.
Just wish, you would reconsider.

Yo! This is my first time posting in ages! I actually saw a link to this thread on the blenderartist forum. (I have been a fully 100% Blender/E-Cycles guy for a couple years now.) My initial reaction for a minute or so was a tinge of sadness that LW and Octane LW is officially dead, per Juanjo, but this was quickly replaced with happiness for anyone who migrates to Blender, Houdini, Maya, Max, C4D, etc... You are all going to be far, far better off, and likely find your work/hobby much, much more enjoyable!

We had some good times Juanjo! You were such a kickass dev, who was always Johnny-on-the-effing-spot with support, and I thank you again for that. As a pro who works with deadlines, this was so very valued and appreciated! You do indeed rock, sir, and I wish you the very best of luck Juanjo!

I refuse to look backward and even spend a minute reminiscing about my LW & Octane past, because I have better things to do with my time, but I will just say further that it was not all bad, and there was a time, for a while at least, that I enjoyed Octane/LW and felt I was working on the cutting edge, even if in reality the LW part of it wasn't actually true. Octane gave LW the legs it needed to walk itself to a much-postponed death...

Take care guys! Nice knowing you! Maybe I will see some of you on the Blender forums.

I think Juanjo was referring to the point that the lack of support from Newtek means that sdk Lightwave is becoming an impenetrable forest and adding new features to Octane looks like an increasingly difficult quest.
If you recall, developer Kray also had problems with SDK, who never started working with Lightwave 2020.
From this point of view, I can understand Juanjo.
But I do not agree with his opinion that interest in Lightwave has greatly weakened, etc.

My week was already very rotten, but this is the highlight of the show ...
Lightwave is definitely dead, Octane was the last tool to still be able to give it a little life.

Thanks Juanjo for your job with LW.

Hope this isn't the last update for Lightwave...

I feel the floor crumble under my feet...
At 51 y.o. change the sw for me is very hard... I do with lw things that I'm sure I can't do with others sw... maybe I can do different, but I can forget the circus acts I used to make lightwave do (one above all the automatic transformation in the modeler, with customized scripts, of hundreds of objects into points centered on their single boundingboxes, to create, in layout, instances on the points obtained... but many other too, learned in 27 years of work). Lightwave was died, I know from months or years, but Octane (and lwcad) continued to keep it in life.
Now all is lost.
I will jump to blender, my fast productivity will be killed, but I haven't choise. For months I will continue to use lw, untill I will do something not so bad in blender, but now I see all black.
In any case I must say thank you Juanjo, for your work, for your willingness to answer all our questions and help us... but in the same time I'm very angry and sad.
I hope all will be wonderful for your works.
Goodbye.
Gianluca