LightWave 11 has a notable pedigree in broadcast television and has been used to create many 3D sequences for popular TV shows. It is composed of two separate applications that work together: the layout and the modeler. The layout application is in charge of LightWave's high-powered renderer, and the modeler application is responsible for constructing objects for render. This package is famous for its awesome particle engine and high-quality rendering engine. It is less flexible for character modeling, but overall, we consider this 3D animation software to be one of the best available.

LightWave includes radiosity lighting, which produces photorealistic images by simulating bouncing light. It is also capable of standard lighting effects like refraction, reflection and complex light ripples (like those caused by water or glasses.) Unfortunately, it does not support NURBS modeling, so you'll have to be satisfied with the more traditional polygon and subdivision techniques. It is extensible via Lscript, which is a language unique to LightWave, or via C, C++ or C#.

LightWave features comprehensive rigid and soft body dynamics for simulating materials ranging from breakable ceramic to gelatin. These physics are made possible by Bullet, a physics simulator that is well known and has been used in many games and animation packages. Bullet physics also endow this 3D modeling software with great cloth-simulation capabilities. Your characters need not fear going to parties underdressed.

This application also features a unique particle system that uses hypervoxels. They are a fancy type of particle that you can render with unique surface and lighting properties. This makes them perfect for cloud-like effects, liquid effects, combustion effects and more.

LightWave is notably less powerful for building characters than our top-rated software, but it still has considerable and respectable depth. It is capable of building fully animated characters just like any other software package, but some users might find the process more difficult. As with most complicated 3D animation software, ease of use is largely a personal matter. If LightWave matches your workflow better than competing software, you will find it to be every bit as potent.

You can apply textures in LightWave with a visual node graph, which makes it easy to chain and layer textures, bump maps and other effects in whichever order you desire for maximum customizability. One of the features we like the most is the excellent preview renderer that allows you to see the appearance of your model as you work on it and perform needed tweaks and adjustments. This has a very positive effect on the production process.