Okay, back to your story.

I actually started working for the company as an underground services design technician, using the CAD application MicroStation. I was given the opportunity to introduce my 3D knowledge into the pipeline, and became reasonably expert in most aspects of that program. Eventually we introduced LightWave to allow us to develop the visualisation aspects and requirements of design.

It proved to be far more effective and productive from a design interaction point of view to produce those requirements within. Previously we would contract out our needs to studios but LightWave gave us an in-house option (and all of the natural advantages that come with it) without having to set up the usual 2 or 3 person team because of its relatively shallow learning curve and comprehensive feature set.

We are now using LightWave for all kinds of digital content production: from traffic simulations, training materials, safety awareness campaign literature and so on, through to architectural visualisation and also for multimedia presentations (as I have a personal mission to accelerate the decline and extinction of those awful slideshow presentations from all the offices of the world!) and we are still far from tapping into the full potential that rich digital media production can bring and of what LightWave itself has to offer.

When did you see LightWave for the first time?

I was walking through my local bookstore and noticed a certain magazine on the shelf called 3DWorld; I thought I'd pick it up and give it a read - for a laugh you know, because I was such an expert on 3D with MicroStation. I was blown away by the whole new world that had been opened up to me, I really had no idea of the things that could be done in 3D. That magazine had a demo version of LightWave 7.0 and a review or a tutorial inside — hook, line and sinker is a phrase that comes to mind.

When I was a kid, I had been fascinated by Morph on Tony Hart, and always dreamed of being an animator, but even at that age when I found out the process involved I realised it would always be out of my reach and gave up on it. Then, here sitting in front of my face, was a complete solution to pick up that dream again. That was a very happy day.

When did you first start using it?

I started using the Discovery Edition immediately, the transition from fully dimension-driven, parametric, vector modelling to straight-through polygon modelling was very tough at first. That combined with the birth of my son Erik at the same time, stopped me in my tracks. When home life settled down again I came across www.3Dfightclub.com and found the perfect medium for accelerated learning, a fun atmosphere where you are actually championed for crappy models and poor renders, with a new bite-size challenge every day.

It was at www.3Dfightclub.com, I won my first 3D award - some special taffy, a glass commemorative trophy, Eki's plugpak and self-proclaimed title of "World's greatest 3D speed modeller"!

Then about a year and a half ago I was speaking with our Senior Architect, and I mentioned LightWave in conversation, he was already familiar with it and was interested in doing some architectural visualisation in-house. Soon after it arrived to the office and I started using it in earnest and finally without the restrictions of a demo version!

What do you like about the package?

In a broad sense I love having the confidence that if I can imagine something, I can produce it in LightWave somehow, even if I don't know the technical methods, between tech-support and the community it is always within my grasp. In a more direct sense applied to LightWave there are many things: the license structure, the cost, the ease of learning and intuitive workflow, the extensive tool and feature sets, the renderer, but most of all the modeller. I have to say as well, for some reason LightWave seems to have attracted a huge amount of very generous and helpful users to its world-wide community.

The fact that I was able to pick up LightWave and produce a highly detailed and accurate model of a modern tram, then learn and apply a pretty decent IK rig to it... all in the first week, speaks volumes for the software.