Tell me a bit about yourself.

My name is Jacques Defontaine and I live near Brussels in Belgium. I worked for several years as a digital artist for various companies like Casterman and Grid. My principle tasks were modelling, texturing and lighting.

After working for them I co-authored a book on Photorealism published by Eyrolles (in French).

Since the start of 2004, I've been a full-time freelancer.

How did you discover LightWave?

I discovered LightWave at the start of the nineties by accident in a computer magazine. I was drawn by the quality of its render immediately.

When did you first start using it?

In 1996, Casterman Publications was looking for LightWave artists for an ambitious project launched by comic book artist Benoît Sokal. After two years in intensive production, Amerzone (a PC adventure game) was a great success.

What do you particularly like in LightWave?

This is a question that isn't going to be easy to answer succinctly and briefly considering the sheer amount of things I like. I'll try to be concise:

MetaNURBS and weightmaps and endomorphs are essential when deforming objects and organic modelling.

The render quality is very high and remains competitive, even with the new generation of render engine in the market.

I think first and foremost like an artist and the fact that LightWave is both easy to use and very powerful is exactly what I look for in a 3D package.

To sum up, for me, LightWave is a very complete package with a great ratio for price/performance.

For you, which is the best tool in LightWave?

Modeler is for me one of the best modelling packages on the market. In working for several different companies, I've had the chance to test other applications. Even with their relatively complete feature set in terms of common tasks that need performing, such as selection or display, using them can become a real nightmare.
In any case, I always come back to LightWave bringing with me users of other 3D apps who have become convinced of the power of LightWave!

In your opinion, what could be done to improve LightWave?

I think that there are certain little things that could be improved or added - certainly there's nothing right now that stops you from completing a project without these things!

For Layout, here are some of my personal ideas: the ability to add soft shadows to other light types (distant, point, etc.); a single direction for linear or area lights, rather than two; better tools for using endomorphs along with the fact that they should automatically be applied after bone deformation; better anti-aliasing and the saving of radiosity solutions...