What could be improved for you?

Again, lots of things; my chief hope is that FPrime gets full support and Worley Labs can jump into bed with Newtek and start producing more stuff to blow us away. Aside from that, I'd love to see loads of advanced per-object render and lighting setting, an unlimited universe, camera support in Modeler, undos on the Surface Editor, better *.psd export, and so on. Oh yeah, and Instancing too please!

What spec machine(s) are you using it on at the moment?

Promise not to laugh? 1 GHz Intel, Matrox G550 32 MB video, but it was once upgraded to a whopping 512MB of RAM! I did use dual 21 inch monitors for the CAD work, but the video card was not too happy supporting them both with LW, so I'm only using one now.

At home I use a Dell 2 GHz Pentium, with 1 GB ram and a 128 MB NVidia graphics card, it has been able to cope sufficiently with almost all of my projects, but I'm going to need a faster renderer soon so that'll be getting demoted to a Screamernet node I think.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

So many I couldn't mention them all. Of the commercial ones: FPrime obviously, Eki's Plugpak and hopefully HD Instance when FPrime can see volumetrics. Then there's a sweet little custom plug-in that Al Street wrote for me called Mimi (multiple item motion import, or fzp2lw for short). I use it for converting data from a traffic simulation program called VISSIM into motion data for LightWave. With the combination we can accurately simulate and animate the most complex of traffic junctions and traffic movements, then by inputting real traffic counts, prove or disprove a junction's design layout, signal timing and sequence. Fairly specialised stuff, but without the plug-in — impossible to do in LightWave alone from a practical point of view and it's impossible to produce high quality rendered animation from VISSIM.

Why is it fzp2lw for short, when Mimi is much shorter? :)

I always prefer Mimi, but I suppose as the plug developed, it became very specific and fzp is the motion output file from VISSIM, maybe Al is keeping Mimi all for himself...

In your opinion: Integrated or Separated? :)

As I push my projects more and more, I'm starting to see the necessity for integration (for me — memory consumption and the ability to model from camera perspective). But if introducing it meant any detriment to the current workflow, I'd have to think twice.

What are you working on now?

At work, more of the same, we're pre-visualising some Car/Bus/Tram 'kiss and ride' interchange layouts and kiosk design concepts. At home, in between the nappy-changing and potty-training I'm writing an extensive character modelling video tutorial series for beginners, you can catch a sneak preview here.

There'll be a character rigging tutorial from the excellent French games animator jeanphi, translated by Samuel Kvaalen to follow.

I'm also working on the obligatory short, a Chaplin-esque story about the secret life of office writing equipment and the dangers of trying too hard to impress pens of the opposite sex. It stars an updated version of my first ever polygonal 3D object. It will be delivered with cartoon style animation in a realistic environment.

What was your first ever 3D object then?

You'll have to wait and see won't you? Actually it was a highlighter pen, I think everyone does the Pen, Coffee Cup, spaceship combo when they start. I never got around to the spaceship...

Let me know when you get onto the spaceship Colin! Thanks for talking to us and people interested in seeing more of Colin's private work, including tutorials should visit his site.