ArtVisualizer Press Media | Archie Visual Design & Art Review

LightWork Design is committed to providing customers with maximum performance, quality and cost-efficiency. As part of this on-going process, we have accelerated our development to provide our customers with new features, ahead of schedule to help them bring new functionality and technical benefits to their products faster. Our new release is LightWorks 8.1, which showcases the latest in LightWorks technology.

LightWorks technology is a key rendering technology used in dozens of Mac CAD and 3D software, from IMSI-Design’s TurboCAD and visualization software to the popular Vectorworks to the industrial strength MCAD/PLM software Siemens NX 6 for Mac.

LightWorks customers are already seeing the benefits of these product advancements. Roland Roeder from PTC GmbH commented: “The Real-Time Shadow Catcher support in 8.1 is good news for us and the Leather shaders work great! We're also finding that the added support for Real-Time Soft Shadows is making a big difference when we use LightWorks Real-Time Rendering."

The main focus of this release is the development of the LightWorks Real-time rendering product, alongside additional improvements to EPix output. Soft Shadows and Shadow Catching are now both supported by Real-time rendering, using programmable shading.

Programmable shading is now supported for more LightWorks material shaders, including new Multi-layer Paints and new Leathers, and this gives real-time support which is closer to the software implementation. Panoramic Environment Maps are now supported (with a OpenGL Shader Language supported Graphics card).

EPix RGB output can now be anti-aliased giving users more defined and accurate rendering. Sunlight direction vectors can also be output to the EPix file. EPix files can specify a DPI value, as well as absolute resolution. The visbility flag introduced in LightWorks 8.0 now also works with instanced geometry.