Lightwave 9 users?

A big factor in my decision on whether to purchase Unity is its support for Lightwave 9. Is anyone out there using Lightwave 9 with Unity? Are there any pitfalls, or is the integration between the two smooth? Any info is greatly appreciated.

TIA,

-Paul

 

i'm still on 8.5. have 9. just haven't installed yet. if the fbx exporter works you're good to go (pretty sure it does). the only downside is if you need to edit a model you've got to manually locate it and import it back into lightwave etc - as opposed to say maya where there's a tight integration with unity. hopefully we'll get native support eventually but really it's not that big of a deal.

 

Thanks Pete.

FYI, I installed the FBX 8.2 plugin on our Lightwave 9 installation, and the plugin seems to work correctly. Though we haven't tried exporting an animation yet. I'll let you know...

 

if you run into probs, scroll down on the thread below. i posted the exporter i'm using with 8.5 - not sure if it's same/older/newer than the one you have. Thought it was the most recent but haven't looked in a while.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1592&start=15

 

I also use LW9 and it works fine for Unity, but I haven't tried animations either, though I haven't done any anim. in LW yet for that matter

Jeff

 

I was able to export a walk cycle on a rigged character using the 8.2 plug-in and LW9. Unity read the FBX file without a problem and the walk cycle loops smoothly within Unity.

So, that's good, I guess I'll have to give OTEE all my money now. Unity folk may want to update their LW export page to mention that it works with LW9 though.

 

Impossible to export animation+bones into unity using LW 9. It's just a no go. We tried and tried and tried. David Helgason was with us and he was working the Unity end while we tried every trick in the book on the LW side. Ladies and gentlemen - it's completely futile for mere mortals to make this work. The mesh imports corectly into Unity, but once an animation is present it completly ruins the mesh and you get a monstrosity. Eventualy we used LW to do all the enviroments, lighting, texturing - what you would usually do and that works fine. For the character animation we used a combination of Poser content and BVH files, combined in Daz Studio and exported using Daz FBX Exporter for Daz Studio. Works like magic!

 

The problem is with the Autodesk FBX exporter. It doesn't take into account Lightwave's "Bone Rest Position" and "Rest Pivot Rotation".

You can work around it by manually adjusting your bone's rotation in Lightwave, but then it doesn't look right in Layout. In other words, your animations will either look right in Unity, or look right in Lightwave, but not both.

I played around a little writing a Lightwave script that would automatically record what the bone rotations should be, so I could reset them before and and after an export, but this is still no way to work.

I will have to give the DAZ Studio thing a try, thanks.

 

Thanx poetbeware
We kind'o got to definig the problem but couldn't do the trick - we will try it, though I am really happy with the Daz Studio solution. It looks good and it REALLY works!

 

Thread from the dead!

Any news on LightWave 9 and Unity in the past year? What's the latest status? Is the LW 8.2 FBX plugin pretty good?

(Download link: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/HOWTO-importObjectLightwave.html )

(I'm staying with LW 8 for now but it's not Universal.)

 

Yep. A lot of progress. As I understand in LW 9.5 Beta they rewrote the FBX plug-in from the grounds up. It works just great for us. Give it try.

 

Cool. Does that mean that I would use something that comes WITH LW 9.5b, and not the plugin download from this site?

 

Hi,

FWIW, Unity is one of the apps we're using to test our file exporters in LightWave 9.5.

-Chilton

 

Excellent! I think it's nearly time for me to dig out my LW dongle and upgrade

Thanks for the info.

 

I cant get 9.5s new FBX exporter to work well with animation i.e. the odd bone twitches into wrong rotations or in exporting 2 UV sets with a model!

 

hi all!
i'm trying to export a simple mesh from LW 9.5 64bit with the standard plugin.
no way...
the mesh in Unity look broken..
i've tried on a 2nd workstation with Lw 9.3 and the plugin downloaded from unity support site and it seems all right.
i can't install this plugin on the 1st machine with the 64bit version of LW.
i don't know if it's a compatibility problem with 64bit version of LW or the standard FBX exporter..

i need to export my models rigged from LW!
i don't want to make multiple steps using other software!
@#!%@#!!!

someone can help me?
someone has a trik to share?

thanks in advance

 

I'm also going through a Lightwave 9.5 (32bit) to Unity pipeline.

I've currently successfully used the FBX plugin (new and old, the 2009 export option on the new FBX plug currently crashes Unity) to transfer Skinned meshes with their bone animation (baked IK), I have yet to get a mesh with 2 sets of UV maps to work as the FBX and OBJ exporter does not currently export them, Metal Fish has been helping out with this.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=14638

Interestingly the Import FBX plugin does not even import its its own models UVs correctly, however Unity does,but that didnt help when I lost a load of LWO files and had to bring them back in via the FBX importer. :x

I'm sorry I cant help on the 64bit Issue, I'd say Lightwaves FBX exporter is broken in many ways, maybe the 64bit more than 32, hopefully in the future this will be fixed.

kinl

 

hi,
i've just installed the 32bit version and the plugin for LW8 9.
it works smmothly..
my model with 3 test anims was imported in Unity with no errors..
so.. the 64bit version can't use fbxlw plugin and the native exporter is soooooooo broken!

great!
I can start to work now!

..waiting for iPhone extension

 

mmmm Iphone

Good Luck

kinl

 

I have just sent a bug report to lw-bugs(a)newtek.com with the subject: Multi UV export FBX/Collada IO

I suggest you join in to bump this bug/feature request up in the NewTek bug tracking system, as that's the best way to make it happen I have this from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

I also specified in the bug report that the desired use is for lightmapped models into Unity.

Go go go, before the window closes with the open beta!

 

Guys I had tons of issues until I used this FBX plugin for mac.

And this one works. Go figure the old FBX plugin works!!

Dbolto

 

Thanks!

 

Are you using the importers from the Open Beta or the official 9.5 release?

- DavidF

 

Offical, with a licenced to complain (for what good it'd do)

I do have baked animation working ok now, it was a mix of having my lightwave set to 25fps a relic of my tv past therefore calling the animations by the frame numbers in lightwave made them slightly out of sinc and a mix of not seeing that my IK was still turned on hiding the fact my bake had not worked right.

However 2 sets of UV coords still do not work even though that version of FBX is supposed to support them.

If you find a solution I'd love to know.

P.S. I'm working on a PC currently, I haven't got round to installing it on my Mac.

 

I've been using Windows Lightwave 9.5 for bone animations. I can confirm that bone rigs / animations are able to be imported to Unity without issue using the inbuilt Lightwave FBX exporter (Splashdown was made entirely with Lightwave).

 

I'm a long time LW'er who faced the same UV issues with FBX exports in the past. My solution was this: unwrap3d.com it's a $50 program which converts nearly any format under the sun. I would export 2 FBX models from LW. Each with one UV. I'd then copy the UV from one FBX model and apply it to the other FBX model in unwrap 3d. It's not ideal but it did alyways work.

 

I'm using LW 9.6 on Windows, and I'm getting the odd bone rest issue (resetting bone rest in LW works but imported into unity it's messed up).

Anyone else seeing this in 9.6 (Mac or Windows)? Did you guys download a different FBX exporter somewhere?

Thanks!

 

BTW -- when i use the "Export to FBX" in Lightwave, a dialog pops open and the title is "Export TO FBX 2005 08".

I believe this is the version number. Mac users, can you tell me what number yours is?

 

okay, sorry for all these posts.

reading up on FBX, apparently Lightwave 9.6 has a new exporter called Valkyrie.p:

From their website:

I checked File -> export but see no FBX export command there:



I checked my plug-ins and I see in fact Valkyrie.p is there:



Ugh. What's going on? Anyone know? Do I need to activate them or something?

I'm not a LW power user!

Any help would be appreciated.

~Hanford

 

hanford - in modeler it's in my export options. in layout it's under the utilities tab/additional plugins.

valkyrie on the mac requires OS 10.5. not sure how that equates on win. iirc, i no longer get a choice of which version to save it as. pretty sure it's the 2009 by default. these days, all of my stuff goes to blender first from a lwo before hitting unity. so memory is a tad fuzzy. here's to CORE!!!

 

I see Export > FBX Export in Layout 9.6 Mac UB. The Exporter has options for various versions, for Unity I use the default binary FBX200611 with frozen geometry and without scene scaling.

Utilities > Edit Plugins > Scan Directory should ensure you've loaded all necessary plugins.[/img]

 

Anyone have any updates? i'm having the same problem with the exporter ignoring the pivot rotations. i've tried all sorts of combinations, but apparntly i'm doing something wrong. I'm using 9.6

I see some people saying they've had successful exports, but are these people using pivot rotations? everything works fine except this part, and it's critical i use them to correct rotations.