Bullet Dynamics
Bullet is a fast, production-proven, open-source physics engine that is used in many high profiles, effects-driven films, and real-time game engines. Bullet features 3D rigid body dynamics originally created by Erwin Coumans.
LightWave 11 features the Bullet dynamics engine directly in Layout so that it can be used with the new Fracture tool in Modeler to create compelling physics-based animation. Things like collapsing buildings, explosions, and even natural placement of items in a random pattern, would otherwise be difficult to do by hand.
HyperVoxels
Hypervoxels allows you to create beautiful smoke, flame, liquids, explosions, nebulas, clouds or any other volumetric effect that you can imagine. With real-time interactive support within LightWave's VPR, you can experiment and adjust volumetric effects to your heart's content. All calculated at beautiful, final render quality directly within the LightWave interface.
ParticleFX
It is a robust, fully-featured particle engine within LightWave. The flexibility of ParticleFX allows a wide variety of looks; from explosive effects to slow-moving smoke-like behaviors. Particle emitters can be stand-alone, or attached to objects to emit particles from their vertices, polygon normals or surfaces.
ParticleFX works seamlessly with HyperVoxels to allow the rendering of particles in any way imaginable.
FiberFX
If you need hair, fur, feathers, or scales then the FiberFX tools included with LightWave are just what you are looking for. Styling and guide creation tools are included so that you can get your fibers looking just as you envision. FiberFX is known for its visual quality and its consistent look in various different lighting environments. FiberFX includes a beautiful and speedy pixel shader mode and for complex scenes where you need fibers to be ray traced in reflections or refractions you have the option of a more detailed volumetric mode.
Flocking
LightWave’s flocking system is based on 3D computer models of coordinated animal motion, things like flocks of birds, herds of animals or schools of fish. It can be used with LightWave’s instancing system or HyperVoxels.
Use the Flock controller, which calculates crowd avoidance of neighbors, target alignment, and cohesive attractions, to create realistic natural motions, with ease.
Classic examples of flocking motion are:
- Flocks of Birds
- Schools of Fish
- Swarms of Insects
- Animal Herd Behaviors
- Craft Maneuvers (planes, alien ships, etc)