LightWave 3D 4.0 Plug-In Documentation

The LightWave SDK documentation is available in on-line HTML form and can be read directly from this page. The information in divided into four documents:

Plug-In Basics

This document is a prerequsite to all the others. It covers the basic terms, concepts and theory of the plug-in server scheme employed by LightWave 4.0. Read at least the first three sections before proceding to the more specific documents.

Image Input/Output

This covers the methods used by LightWave to load and save bitmap images in different formats.

File Selection

The user interface used by for selecting files can be replaced by a plug-in. This is the plug-in specification for such a selector.

Modeling and Animation

This final document covers all the ways in which external plug-ins can control the modeling, animation and rendering in LightWave. Those interested in the real meat of the system without the details can start here.