The key customer for LightWave is someone who is both storyteller and hands-on artist. “It does everything you need to do – to get your story told,” Powers explains. LightWave is for the person who wants to do it themselves – rather than be part of a vast highly compartmentalized specialist pipeline. LightWave has always been strong in the one man shop business. And while the company has reached out to products like ZBrush (as LightWave does not have a comparable sculpting tool), Powers says the focus for the product has to be as a tool for smaller shops or single operators – who want to run the entire pipeline. When asked who the product is targeted at, Powers describes someone who wants ownership of the image, someone who likes to see the image from start to finish. “It means that all the LightWave resources go into one focus out of Burbank,” says Powers. The restructuring has led to increased staffing and increased funding, the company has not been restructured as a cost cutting exercise. I don’t know the future of everything, but I know I speak to the owner Tim Jenison regularly and the CEO, and we are like minded in that we love having the freedom of being an independent company.” There are great things about a company being privately owned. “That has nothing to do with reality, we are very strongly interested in keeping the independence of the company. Companies are often packaged like this prior to sale, a point we put to Powers, who emphatically denied the rumor. Some have wondered if the restructure was a precursor to a sell-off – especially in light of the Luxology (Modo)/Foundry merger. “I think Andy Warhol even used (NewTek tools),” says Powers. In 1985 when NewTek first appeared at NAB with the Video Toaster it was unbelievably affordable and created an enormous storm. NewTek was founded in 1985, actually in Kansas by Tim Jenison, a pioneer of desktop video, who Powers admires greatly for his vision in putting technology into the hands of a wider audience. is however based in San Antonio, Texas and LightWave will now be headquartered in California (but with developers in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, France, Finland, and Austria – in addition to the US). The new company that has been formed is still owned fully by NewTek. “Being onstage for three days took a lot of energy, but I wanted to articulate all of the great things about LightWave because they had not been particularly articulated well prior, and I wanted the online viewers watching our live stream to see the great work from our studio users and hear first-hand why LightWave is a tool that they rely on for their projects.” he replied. We started by asking about the new much stronger presence at SIGGRAPH and his tour de force on the booth each day. He worked on Disney’s Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Jet Li’s The One, and interestingly, he was the lead animator of the famous 3D dancing baby on Ally McBeal! Powers also worked with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson as virtual art department supervisor for The Adventures of Tintin. Prior to joining NewTek, Powers worked with James Cameron, serving as animation technical director and virtual art department supervisor for Avatar, and as CG supervisor for Aliens of the Deep. The company is relying on a new marketing team (such as Dominick Spina, ex-NVIDIA) coupled with a host of new features such as VPR (Virtual Preview Renderer), anaglyph stereoscopic 3D preview, advanced flocking, instancing, workflow improvements and interchange support such as with ZBrush. He was and is a one man act of nature when it comes to getting LightWave out and into a wider audience.įor more than two years, Powers has lead the development and implementation of many new features in NewTek LightWave, first in version 10 and then this year in version 11 (11.5 is in beta now). At SIGGRAPH in LA the NewTek booth was at the front of the main hall and one could not help but notice the sheer unrelenting energy of Powers – on the booth every day – discussing LightWave. There is no doubt Powers has an amazing energy and passion for LightWave. We decided to sit down with Powers and discuss his view on the company and the product moving forward. The former NewTek VP and Head of 3D Development Rob Powers was promoted to President of that new LightWave 3D Group. The new division was tasked with focusing on delivering visualization and 3D products for a range of industries from architecture, CAD and product development to advertising, game development and feature films. NewTek announced in August that it had created a new LightWave division based in Burbank, California. Rob Powers is the new head of the restructured LightWave 3D Group.
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