LightWave 3D 5.0 Plug-Ins

This site contains information and software for writing plug-ins for NewTek's LightWave 3D versions 4.0 and 5.0. Plug-ins (or servers) are external program modules that can access the internal state of the LightWave 3D modeling, rendering and animation package, and alter that state programmatically.

Documentation

Documentation is available in the following formats:

• On-Line HTML Documentation
• MS Word Document (with thanks to Chris Alexander)
• AmigaGuide Documentation
• Flat Text Documentation

Server Developer Kit

The SDK consists of the C headers and libraries needed to build plug-ins on the target system. It also includes samples for some of the major types of plug-in servers.

• Win32 SDK
• AmigaOS SDK
• MacOS/CodeWarrior SDK

LightWave Global Plug-ins

The 5.0 release of LightWave includes some global-class plug-ins which can provide information and services to other plug-ins. The following archives contain documentation and sample code for each of the new globals.

• Equation String Evaluator
• Panels and GUI Services
• HIIP Image Saver
• Object Loader Services

Developer Mailing List

Developer support is through the lwplugin-l mailing list. To subscribe, send mail to listserv@netcom.com with the body text:

subscribe lwplugin-l <optional-email-address>

The message subject is ignored.

Additional Information

• LightWave Object File Format (HTML) (MS Word - thanks to Chris Alexander)
• LightWave Layered Object File Format
• LightWave Scene File Format (HTML) (MS Word - thanks to Chris Alexander)
• Visual C Project files for SDK samples
• Commands for ScreamerNet II rendering protocol (HTML) (MS Word - thanks to Chris Alexander)
• C-code fragments for texture coordinates
• C-code fragments for motion path interpolation