LightWave 11 is out now (as a pre-release, anyway)

We were just getting used to the improved stereoscopic camera rig and VPR in LightWave 10.1, and now the busy developer bods at NewTek have gone and announced version 11!

While it won't actually hit shelves until the end of the year, the new LightWave is now available as a 'pre-release' advanced beta. Any impatient users who own a licence for 10 or 10.1 can upgrade to the latest version before the rest of the public, meaning they get to try out all the new features first.

It's a clever play from NewTek as this means they get to both please their current users with an exclusive first look, and also hear about any bugs that might need to be fixed before it goes public.

What to look out for in 11

LightWave 11 takes the powerful 3D modelling, animation and rendering tools of the previous version (see our '5 best features of LightWave 10' for a rundown) and applies a liberal sprinkling of brand new features and improvements.

One of our favourite tools in the previous version of LightWave was the Bullet Dynamics, so we'll be looking forward to the new improvements to the engine in version 11. NewTek says Bullet will now run directly in Layout so it can be used in conjunction with the new Fracture tool to create animations with more natural, random fracturing and collapsing.

Another addition to look out for is Instancing. This creates mass duplication of objects in a scene with virtual polygon counts, without huge amounts of virtual memory overhead and drawn-out render times. If you're animating herds of animals, you'll also be very interested in the new Flock controller, which creates realistic natural motion across flocks by letting you set paramters for crowd avoidance, target alignment and avoidance.

Among the other updates is Virtual Studio Tools, which lets you naturally animate your scenes using third-party controllers. In version 11 you can now configure more controller types, even including the Playstation Move control.

Depending on when users registered version 10 or 10.1, NewTek is charging between about $400 and $700 to upgrade to the Pre-Release version of LightWave 11. We'll have full UK pricing when it becomes available to the general public at the end of the year.

For more information on NewTek Lightwave, call 03332 409 306 or email 3D@Jigsaw24.com. You can also keep up with more of our 3D news and offers by following @Jigsaw243D on Twitter and 'Like'-ing our Facebook page.