Tell us a bit about yourself.

I'm a photographer based in Germany, in my mid-thirties. I studied Visual Communications at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund and now work as a freelance photographer. I specialized in stills, interior and exterior photography and work for magazines and agencies in the U.S.A., France, the U.K., Japan and of course Germany. Among my clients are magazines like Wallpaper, L'Officiel, Numero, BIG, Brand Eins and agencies like TBWA-Paris, TBWA-Berlin, McCann-Erickson Frankfurt and Abbott Mead Vickers London. My main interest right now is the combination of traditional photography and CGI to create outstanding images.

When did you see LightWave 3D for the first time?

Way back in the 5.6 days. A new professor at our university arranged a compact seminar introducing students to the 3D world by using Strata Studio Pro 1.75. This was in 1996. I used Strata for quite a while, tried out Cinema 4D and at one point LightWave crossed my path. Still using Apple Macs, these were the only options in these days. Somehow C4D was a bit confusing to me and the clean separation between Layout and Modeler in LightWave looked convenient.

When did you first start using it?

I did have the opportunity to play around with it from time to time, but finally decided to jump on the train in 2002 with LightWave 3D 7.5.

What do you like about the package?

You are able to get things done pretty fast, even as a beginner. Instead of being confronted with loads of confusing icons, the text editor style in LightWave is quite self-explanatory and with a bit of experience you can go quite far. Creating a great model for a newbie is no problem. And while you get frustrated from time to time because you realise that you are working a bit inefficiently you discover that there is already a command doing exactly what you needed.

Your models or animations don't necessarily get better the longer you use LightWave (that depends on the individual), but your workflow improves. And that's one of the most important issues if you want to work professionally. But in general, I do like the Modeler and its capabilities.

What could be improved for you?

There are some simple things that could improve my workflow, like being able to use the Weld, Knife and Make Poly commands in a "real" mirror mode, I'd like to Triple polygons in Sub-Patch mode or change the Sub-Patch weight in only a certain direction, having both smooth and hard transitions in one point. Also SpinQuad should work on any kind of polygon.

On a larger scheme LW definitely needs a great SSS shader, skin shader and an easier to use fur plug in. As much as I do like Sasquatch, styling the short fur with nulls doesn't really work for me. One should be able to "brush" the fur. Although changing the length or density of the fur in real time by painting weights on your model is a "must". Also I'd love a BRDF shader that works properly with UV maps on a non-planar object.

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

I own several PCs to do the render jobs. There are 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz and 3GHz desktops and a 2.8GHz notebook. All of these are simple consumer products; no extras apart from 1GB RAM each.

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

FIsWMapBlur, SpinTris, TB_FakeSkin, Sasquatch, C_Bend and C_1stContact and Reknitter. There are a lot more free plug-ins which make life easier or sometimes even possible. I guess that's one reason why LightWave is such a popular program. You do have a lot of programmers contributing stuff on a free basis and several great forums with loads of help.