LightWork Design releases LightWorks 8.0

SHEFFIELD, UK - LightWork Design, the world's leading supplier of rendering solutions for developers of advanced 3D computer graphics software, today announced the latest release of its flagship LightWorks product, LightWorks 8.0. Now in its 20th year, the Company continues to build on its LightWorks product to provide customers with improved performance and new technology. This release builds on previous versions and includes the release of some new, exciting features.

Key developments within LightWorks 8.0 include:

Progressive rendering
The aim in introducing this feature is to provide a more positive workflow experience within the rendering application. Previously, using OpenGL to preview final renders had limitations in terms of lighting and materials, in that it limited the number of lights possible as well as the representation of the materials. This meant that setting up a scene to get the final image became a very iterative process. LightWorks Progressive Rendering provides a solution to this by giving immediate feedback of the final image with a fast preview of the lighting and materials within the scene. This means that less iteration is required before reaching the desired image thus providing a more enhanced workflow and ultimately a better user experience.

‘View through walls’ feature
Users often need to have a complete view of an interior, but to get the optimum view it may be necessary to remove an entire wall from a scene. However, doing this allows light to flood in which ruins the accuracy and realism of the scene as the lighting and reflectance changes. Understanding these difficulties, LightWorks has introduced new functionality which provides the ability to view the room through the wall thereby maintaining the required accuracy. This is done by allowing the user to tag the relevant geometry in the scene and in effect look through the wall, with no degradation to the lighting and reflections inside. This ‘View through Walls’ feature also allows dynamic tagging which means that the room can be rotated.

Tone Mapping
Tone mapping has been optimised and developed to include a new white balance shader which gives a true representation of colours so that they remain more faithful to the original scene.

Complex Reflectance Shaders
LightWorks has added additional new shaders to this latest release which are aimed at providing users with the ability to create a wider range of more realistic effects. These new shaders are all supported by programmable shading in real-time and include: Glossy Glass, Glossy Mirror, Blurred Conductor and Blurred Dielectric.