WTools3D ships LWCAD Lite for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D
Originally posted on 2 February 2017. Scroll down for news of the final release.
WTools3D – aka developer Viktor Veličko – has released the first beta of LWCAD Lite, the new version of its popular LightWave modelling toolset for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D users.
The beta, which is of version 5.2 of the software, but which does not yet contain all of the tools from the LightWave edition, actually came out in late December, but doesn’t seem to have been widely publicised.
A cut-down set of tools from the LightWave edition of LWCAD
A fixture of many LightWave artists’ toolboxes for over a decade, LWCAD provides a complete set of standard CAD tools within the software, including a powerful set of real-time Boolean and NURBS tools.
The new Lite edition – formerly known as Project FuturArch – contains an “introductory” set of tools from the LightWave edition.
These include dedicated architectural visualisation tools for creating parametric walls, floors, windows, roofing, doors and fences (shown in the video above), plus some of the more general modelling tools.
The release announcement describes these as a “set of tools for creating UV-mapped polygonal object primitives [that] can work in Real-Time Boolean or Drill mode”.
More tools will be ported to the Lite edition, which WTools3D describes as a “transition between the old LWCAD and [a] new multi-platform version [for] all major 3D applications”, in future.
Updated 10 July 2017: LWCAD Lite is officially shipping for 3ds Max 2013+, running on 64-bit Windows 7+; Cinema 4D R17+, running on 64-bit Windows 7+; and Cinema 4D R18 on macOS 10.12.
The plugin costs €119 (around $135), and is there is a free trial edition.