LightWave Digital unveils LightWave 2026
LightWave Digital has unveiled LightWave 2026, the next major version of the veteran 3D animation and rendering software for VFX, motion graphics and visualization work.
New features include Advanced Placement, a physics-based shot layout and set dressing system, and MotoRig, a comprehensive vehicle rigging and animation toolkit.
VFX artists get a new Fracture tool for destruction effects, and dedicated plugins for creating lighting, snow and rain effects.
LightWave 2026 is due out in open beta today, with a full release in “three or four weeks”.
The release will be the fourth annual update put out by LightWave Digital, a team of LightWave veterans, which acquired the software from its previous owner in 2023.
Scene layout: new Advanced Placement system for physics-based object scattering
Major features in LightWave 2026 include Advanced Placement (AP), a physics-based system for scattering objects into a 3D scene in real time and having them settle naturally under gravity.
Although other DCC applications have similar functionality, an interesting feature of AP is that objects can be made to shatter automatically on contact with the ground.
The results can be rendered in real time in RIPR 2, the latest version of LightWave’s viewport preview system – also new in LightWave 2026 – or baked for offline rendering.
Rigging and animation: MotoRig creates sophisticated vehicle rigs
Other new features include MotoRig, a semi-automated vehicle rigging system.
It creates animation rigs for vehicle models, with users able to adjust the results via parameters for properties like mass, weight distribution and banking control.
It looks a pretty granular system, with support for anything from basic terrain following to “advanced suspension dynamics”, with presets for six different types of shock absorber.
As well as standard four-wheel vehicles, MotoRig can be used on six- or eight-wheel military vehicles.
VFX: New Fracture tool for destruction simulations
Visual effects artists get new options for creating destruction, snow and lightning effects.
Of them, the Fracture tool is the most conventional, pre-fracturing geometry for destruction simulations, in the same way as the equivalent toolsets in Maya or Houdini, or plugins like Pulldownit.
It works in real time, at least on relatively simple meshes, preserves materials and UVs, and supports a range of distribution patterns for the resulting shards.
VFX: THOR generates procedural lightning bolts as 3D geometry
Other, more unusual new VFX features include THOR, a “powerful object replacement plugin” for creating procedural lighting arcs between two objects in a 3D scene.
The lightning is generated as actual 3D geometry, with automatic thickness and heat weight maps for more precise control over the materials applied.
There are options to generate individual bolts, forked lighting or recursive branching, and the key parameters are animatable, to control how the lighting grows over time.
VFX: New Snow Falling 3D for adding snow and rain effects to shots
LightWave 2026 also introduces Snow Falling 3D, a “sophisticated mesh deformer plugin” for creating snow and rain effects faster – and faster to render – than with standard particles.
It generates snow only within a user-controlled volume or the shot camera’s field of view, with users able to replace the base particles with meshes or VDBs via instancing.
The snow can be affected by a range of effectors, including gravity, wind, updrift and turbulence, comes with a “rich” set of vertex maps for rendering, and supports motion blur.
Workflow: new LightWave asset browser
Workflow improvements include a new built-in asset browser for viewing and organizing assets, including 3D models, images, videos, HDRIs and IES lighting data.
It includes integrations with key third-party asset libraries, including Quixel Megascans and Maxtree libraries.
Other new features covered in last weekend’s livestream
LightWave Digital also showed off a number of other new features in LightWave in a livestream over the weekend, the recording of which is embedded above.
At the time of writing, the online documentation for LightWave 2026 isn’t publicly available, so we won’t list them here until they have been confirmed for the release.
However, you can find a list of the other features, including timestamps for the points at which they are shown off in the recording, on the LightWave Discord.
Price, system requirements and release date
LightWave is compatible with Windows 10+ and macOS 14.1+. New licenses cost £795 (around $1,078).
The open beta of LightWave 2026 is due out today, with the final release in “three or four weeks”.
Read an overview of the latest features in LightWave 2026 on the product website
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