Two New Global Illumination Render Engines
LightWave, long known for the beauty of its render engine, gains new advancements in LightWave 2020 with the redesign of the Global Illumination rendering engine, bringing two versions for artists: Brute Force, an unbiased radiosity engine, and Irradiance Cache, an interpolated radiosity engine. Using the new render engines independently or in concert will assure you get the real-world render results you seek, with higher quality and more control.

 

Two New Shaders in FiberFX
The new hair shaders in LightWave 2020 deliver more realistic hair leveraging the physical based renderer. Principled Hair Material is based on the Principled BSDF settings. The five inputs: Color, Cutical Tilt, Roughness, Radial Roughness and Index of Refraction provide a simple interface for spectacular results. With AFC Hair Shader (Artist Friendly Control — a simplified approach) the specular settings are divided into two sections: Primary, for reflection of the front side of the stroke and Secondary for the reflection bounced off the backside of the stroke. Now, you have the option to select a simple artist friendly shading option or complete control for the look you desire.

OpenVDB Gets New Set of Production Tools
Leading the pack in the LightWave OpenVDB roster is support for Partio particle objects. What you gain is the power of Houdini particles with the simplicity of the LightWave interface. Also included in the new OpenVDB toolset is:
Advect Point Node – Advect particles by velocity grid
Analysis Node – Grid creation Gradient, Curvature, Laplacian, Closest Point, Divergence, Curl, Magnitude, Normalize
Combine Math Node – Combines grids using math operators
Level Set Morph – Morph between level set grids
Partio Node – Load Houdini.HClassic particle files
VectorGrid Split and Merge – Split and merge Vector grids for further experimentation
Visualize Node – Grid viewer with options

Redesigned Motion System
LightWave 2020 provides the ability to change Rotation Order per item and is saved with the scene file. This allows for an easier transition from other applications to LightWave. Additionally, instances of Gimbal lock can be avoided and items you are animating can be allowed to follow a more natural rotation order.

Local Action Center
LightWave Modeler allows you to impact a group of items all at once in the Local Action Center. Select disparate edges or polygons in your model and act on them as one, locally. The Local Action Center works on multiple layers at a time for fast and easy changes.

Tone Mappings
Gain greater control over the look of your render with the new Pixel Filter in LightWave 2020. Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map one set of colors to another to approximate the appearance of high - dynamic - range images in a medium that has a more limited dynamic range. Further, as a Pixel Filter it can be used in VPR for quick results.

Shedding New Light
In LightWave 2020 the Environment Light has taken on new importance. Now, Environment Lights are connected directly to the environment, adding the direct sampling of the backdrop. The updated Environment Light opens as part of the default scene in Layout, and the new light results in the streamlining of environmental systems.

Scene Editor
Improved workflow in Scene Editor allows you to manage large, complex and layered scenes with ease.

FBX Interchange
LightWave 2020 provides enhanced pipeline support, increasing access to motion capture for auto - rigging. More features are support in the FBX format, which provides greater flexibility when working with other animation tools.

Instancing
Processing time for third party render engines is improved with the added ability to set Surface instances to static to stop evaluation at render time

OpenGL
Updated shaders deliver visualization in the viewport that is closer than ever to the final render.

Improved SSS
Better subsurface scattering algorithm delivers fast, better SSS for your renders.

Untethered
LightWave 2020 allows you to monitor render progress on your mobile device with new applications for iOS and Android.