Lightwave Plugin Manual update?

[hdace]

The LightWave Manual doesn't appear to have been updated since 2013. It says 2017, but most of it is older. Almost all images of nodes are missing many "pins" and other elements that have been introduced in the intervening years.

There is nothing about Spectron & Vectron. Many other new plugin features are absent. I'm regularly having to read the standalone manual to find out how stuff works but trying to interpolate that information into LightWave is often hopeless.

I also have trouble searching the LightWave subforum. Most search results, both local and on google, are for standalone version or other plugins. This is all very frustrating.

[abledavid]

Although it may not solve Lightwave specific issues, I routinely reference the C4D Octane manual and have found it to be very helpful. Most of the information translates well enough.

[hdace]

Yes I've done the same. Thanks for the suggestion. The C4D manual can be helpful, but sometimes I can't translate at all. This is a problem and it needs to be fixed. I pay a lot of money for this software and I deserve a decent manual.

[scooternva]

You must be new here. I've been using OctaneRender for two years now and the help system was... well, it was two years less out of date back then than it is now. abledavid is right; the C4D manual is usually spot-on, but some things (e.g., establishing a proper linear workflow) are C4D-specific and unless someone here has run into your problem before, finding answers can be frustrating.

Otoy has obviously made the decision (but just hasn't officially announced it) that LightWave is on a watchlist. The owners of LightWave have essentially said that LW 2020 is the end of the road, so I can understand Otoy's POV--why spend limited resources updating the help docs for a plugin used by fewer and fewer users every year? Thanks to Otoy's licensing system, they know exactly who's using this plugin and how often. I'm already looking at moving over to C4D anyway... tired of dealing with decade-old bugs in Modeler and Layout, and who knows when Otoy will pull the plug?

[hdace]

Been using Octane since 2013. It's true I come and go.

I'm aware Lightwave's on the way out. A friend of mine switched to C4D and says he prefers LW. So I'm sticking with it for now.

It's still not fair that I'm paying for something and not getting a manual. Anyway, I guess I'm getting used to it.

[scooternva]

I hear you, believe me. I did a month-long C4D evaluation last year and could never get the hang of it, but I don't think I was really trying. Much as I hate LightWave, it's what I'm used to and it gets the job done on the Modeler side. Quite frankly though, if it hadn't been for OctaneRender I would have ditched LightWave back in 2019 when I dove back into this sideline of mine. Layout's CPU renderer is just too damn slow and its radiosity engine is a haven for fireflies and ugly rendering artifacts when rendering an animated scene, unless you're willing to spend hours (days? weeks?) experimenting and tweaking GI settings... and then waiting an hour per frame for your renders to finish. FEH! With OctaneRender I can leave the IPR open all day as I texture my models so there's never any doubt what the finished product is going to look like. A finished, quality image can be had in mere minutes, and my 4K animated scenes usually finish in a day or less. I put up with the lack of up-to-date OctaneRender documentation because honestly, it usually just works.

[LightwaveGuru]

The owners of LightWave have essentially said that LW 2020 is the end of the road...

Where was it said? As far as I know, this was not said anywhere by the "owners".

btw

Octane's manual for LW was always an incomplete documentation. Juanjo had promised several times here in the forum to update it. But it never happened! These promises are, by the way, older than LW 2020. He gave these promises already in 2017.

That the manual is incomplete can have nothing to do with the development of LW, because the problem is much older.

snip LWGuru

[dlvphoto]

It's not just Lightwave either. All of the plugin docs are anywhere from slightly to obscenely out of date, even the "big guns" are out of date. The only manual that's even close to staying up to date with the ***insane*** pace the devs have set with feature releases is the main Octane standalone manual. Study that, especially with the standalone open in front of you and next to Lightwave so you can see how things match up. Juango does a fantastic job keeping LW's plugin interface functionally as close to the native Octane functionality as you can; at least wtihin the SDK provided by the LW devs.

I've attempted a few times over the years to do a node by node update or blog or something, but paying work keeps getting in the way and my last two major projects were too big for my GPUs and were partical collabs with artists working without Octane.

I may try again with a bunch of youtube videos onece my current project goes to press. Five or ten minutes on each node's workings and quirkings. If anyone's interested, let me know.

(also, if *anyone* has any lightwave specific info, videos, smoke signals, talking ferrets to sit on my shoulder, to show me how in the blazes to use VDBs generated elsewhere in Ligtwave with Octane, I'll buy you a beer if we're eve in the same city at the same time.)

Scott

[hdace]

I'm interested but I really prefer text. Video tutorials take too long to watch. But if you do either please post here and let us know, thanks. There are at least a dozen nodes that I have questions about but am too busy to post here very often. Thanks!

[AndyM1969]

The manuals are so out of date it's now a joke. On top of that the plugin has changed so much in the last year that none of my old optimisation routines work for scenes, volumes take forever to render, scenes without volume take ages to render.