Arrgghhh!!! Die, Lightwave, die!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

Have-to-release-pressure…
What a effing piece of crapware that program is!!!. Today I had enough with it. I´m working on a scene at the studio trying to figure out why, if I put 120 on the begin frame entry of the frigging chroma (a video filmed on a green background so the characters can later be merged into a 3D environment), it starts at 140. Here comes one of the directors, looks at my despair and says:

-“ahh yes… that bug”.
-WTF!?, what bug?
-Lightwave takes PAL (25 frames per second) videos and turns them into NTSC (30 FPS), you can´t change that.

  • NO WAY!!!

Another bloody bug!, whoa boy, this programs has bugs for everything! Got to make a character animation?, well it has a bug for it the Inverse Kinematics rigs (the skeletons) start shaking and trembling as soon as you move them from the center of the coordinates system; now get the picture, an animation program that turns all animations into a mess, wonderfull tool isn´t it? KILL THE PARKINSON! was the warcry of the animatiors after the first week here. Sure there are elaborate fixes for that, but honest, how can they release a program with such flagrant bug it´s beyond me, not only that, but they haven´t corrected it on the last, what 3 or 4 releases?

And now this crap about the PAL to NTSC, the mesh subdivition that throws the mapping coordinates down the toilet, and so on and so forth.
And don´t get me started on the Undo command, you never know if it will work untill you try, and then it let´s you down when you need it the most, give me a break! the F**** Word has a better Undo than this!
And don´t forget the many and variated [max-cynism]goofy[/max-cynism] behaviours, here I am, moving a pivot point of an object and for some unfatomable reason the object starts drifting away pretending I haven´t noticed. You stay there you %#"@!£!!! son of a ¬ã╚#!!! That button there says “Move Pivot” it doesn´t say: “Move Pivot and see what I do with the object, sucker. nya nya!!!” And of course the undo doesn´t work. :mad:
The whole program seems to have been patched more times than the knickers of a 70 year old whore, it just falls appart, it´s held together by code tape and a prayer and seems that the guys at Newtek don´t even have a clue on how to fix it, it´s a dead end; the workflow seems taken back from the stone age, it has a Modeler program and a Layout program WTF!!?? I can´t change objects on the scene, I have to work on them, isolated on a separate aplication, that´s friggin´brilliant! who´s the genious who thought about that!?
I can´t wait untill we switch to something decent, it´s a testimonial to the team´s dedication and the knowhow of the directors that we can push through projects this way; the program has some strong areas, but somedays I get so frustrated of having to waltz my way around bugs, absurd limitations and downright crappy work methods that I feel like going postal.

Whew… much better now.

2

Oy. It sounds like the pre-computer equivalent would be trying to draw while someone covers your eyes and knees your elbow at random intervals. It also sounds like one of those situations where the clueless management does not itself have to use the program in question and thinks you ought to just suck it up and deal with it. Bad, bad situation. Sorry for your pain.

3

Wow. I recently switched to lightwave after getting so pissed off with the bugs in a couple of other programs. I was thinking, Hey this is pretty wonderful. It doesn’t fuck up much at all.

I guess I’ve got a wake-up call coming somewhere in the future, huh?

4

Huh. I haven’t heard anything of Newtek in forever. I remember when they were badass.

Guess the Video Toaster days are over.

5

Exactly, I feel handicaped and unable to perform up my standard.
Sucks big time of course.

Not at all, the head director is also the top boss and creator of the studio, and he can mop the floor with any of the other CG guys around; he´s got more tricks than the devil and that is the reason that we keep using the darn program, he makes the magic so to speak. However, even him recognizes the need for changing the production software, heck, he´s well aware of all our (animators/modellers) pains and we have no problem in discussing about it.
That´s something that´s worth commenting by the way, this is a fantastic job, the work enviroment is almost unbelivable friendly, there´s absolutely zero friction between anyone belive it or not, so we can freely bitch about anything knowing that all is taken in good mood. Without a doubt this is the best job I ever had and I can´t think how it could get any better (well yes, more pay is always better :smiley: )

You don´t know how much, I just can´t understand people that praise, of all things, Lightwaves modelling process, for example. It´s awkward, lacking and breaks up the fundamental interactivity between modeling, rigging, texturing, etc… needed to produce good computer graphics, IMO.
By the way, which other programs were those you speak of? I don´t know programs without bugs, but some are more important than others, and the example of the Parkinson Inverse Kinematics Syndrome is much more than a bug, it´s a feature already! It´s like the difference between having a car that every now and then the engine quits and having a car that rattles, misfires and burns oil all the time… and the engine quits now and then.

Long gone, as I said, Lightwave is a dead end, it´s built upon the original source code (I think C) since the day it started, it has been patched ad nauseum to keep it up to modern times, but the basement is ancient, outdated and can´t be fixed without a complete rewriting of the code, something the people at Newtek seem to be either unwilling, or worse, unable to do. Which is a shame, Lightwave has a fantastic render engine, it wins hands down compared with anything else I´ve seen so far; but that alone is not enough to justify the hassle of dealing with the whole thing.

6

Oh, like a PROGRAM called Lightwave. I was going to remind you that light is a form of energy, and hence can’t be created or destroyed. Nevermind.

7

Wow, a program that’s even flakier than Quark Xpress. That’s rather amazing.