Welcome to the support website of the LightForge Render Network. You are seeing this page because you are part of a select group of beta testers pulled from the LightWave3D community who have volunteered, in some cases, drafted by me personally, to participate in our beta testing launch of the LightForge Render Network: Closing the Gap on the Creative Triangle, world-wide.
This support website will be in flux with heavy changes made to it during the testing period and beyond. Some information may seem incomplete or slightly out of date during this time. Please keep this in mind and let us know if we miss something along the way that causes you an issue or needs to be corrected for clarity and ease of use.
It is our desire to work with you while this is in progress and to provide basic guidance on how to make use of the system so that it is ready for full launch. While we know how it works, we need you to verify that and hopefully catch anything we have missed or can improve on. Our goal is to provide the best quality of information using your real-world testing and resulting feedback, to improve any aspects of the entire platform. This makes it easier to use by all LightWave3D artists, new or old, once we complete the closed beta testing cycle implementing or correcting anything that you may discover along the way. Working together with this goal in mind, we can provide the best experience for all LightWave3D users going forward, including yourselves.
We built this as LightWave users, for LightWave users. Even though we may support other applications in the future, we will always have LightWave3D at the very center of the LightForge Render Network. Futhermore, the things we have been working on that extend from it being in place, are designed and planned for specifically to benefit LightWave3D artists first. And we are going to do it in a very interesting way, that starts here.
To some, the appearance of the LightForge Render Network may be a bit of a surprise but it has long been planned for in the back of my head. The trigger for it though to start going from thinking to doing and getting it done came about three and a half years ago. The exact reasons why I can’t get into but but in large part is related to the fact that for 29 years, having first been sat in front of LightWave3D at the age of 15 where almost immediately I started to make use of to make money; that I decided that it was time to take bigger steps towards bigger things, to benefit the software I have fought hard for over the years. Timing, seemingly working out somewhat favorable with the resources coming available to do it.
Again, I have decided in a way, if not compelled in another, to further draw upon myself just as I had with the founding of Liberty3d.com 9 years ago just as it was before, to act and to execute.
Back then with Liberty3d.com the goal was to ensure the continuation and growth of the amount of quality LightWave3D training. Today the LightForge Render Network also stems in large part, from my own personal experiences as a LightWave3D artist working inside the major Film/TV studio system as well as out side the system as a freelancer for projects including independent feature films, sci-fact TV series, games and more. On practically every project I have worked on for commercial or independent clients as a LightWave3D artist, the process of rendering the work done on my own or with a team, has been my responsibility, since May of 2005. That was the date when signed on with the TV series that Time Magazine would later declare as “The Best Show on Television.”
While I always have had a somewhat… extreme work ethic, it was on Battle Star Galactica that it was forever to be burned into my mind and remains as a main driver for me today. Told in no uncertain terms, that no matter what the cost, regardless of a production’s budget, to get it done. I did.
Only later would I find out what that really meant. It really meant human cost. Eventually my understanding of that would become a major force behind everything I do, with LightWave3D at the center of it.
Money or little to no money, sometimes working in order to secure money to keep a production funded and the staff around me employed, I have always been able to deliver with LightWave3D. I’ve won awards with it working as a Visual Effects Consultant/Artist and CG Supervisor. That you probably know. But what you don’t likely know is that every step of the way, I have done so in order to gain knowledge and experience along with establishing and maintaining many relationships in the background, working with some of you in the LightWave3D community as well as those entirely outside of it so as to enable me to do what I do, understanding the value of Human Cost in our industry. It’s now time to do something about it, and get it done.
Today, with the establishment of the LightForge Render Network, many of those relationships have now come to fruition. But it doesn’t end here or when we turn everything on because there is more coming and more to do. It exists for the purpose of setting things in motion that will in time, come to light and with your help; warp speed!
For now, know one thing to keep in mind and once we complete our testing phase that I would hope you will pass on to the rest of the community and beyond when the time comes is as follows:
“The LightForge Network was built for you. It is my hope it can save a LightWave artist out there from having to stay late at work or suffer even worse. Remember, get your clients to pay for it, not you. It’s the one thing they kind of expect to not be able to talk you down on anyway.
Be bold. Go big. It’s here to be used and I want to see you push it to the brink. If you can.
“She’ll fly a part!”- Helmsman
“Fly her a part then!” – Capt. Sulu
Lines from Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country
Do this to so you can land yourselves a big, high paying gig and grow a business bringing on more artists using LightWave3D. Perhaps even secure another Galactic. More of that means more new users, having their attention drawn to LightWave3D, and ultimately all the desired benefits to us and to the software itself as a result. With the LightForge Render Network, you have that kind of power. Use it wisely.
Those of you testing with us over the next few days, will be working with barely a drop of that power, from a ‘compute’ stand point due to the nature of the costs involved that could quickly get out of hand with a single render job. Right now the power you will be using is on me. It’s limited yes, but should be rock solid. We will find out.
But if you poke around the site a bit you will find out roughly how accurate the use of the term drop is when I say that full on commercial launch capacity is going to an ocean. No tricks. No slight of hand. I can confidently tell you, it’s there. Now. Waiting for us to do our part with this testing cycle which will be brief, so we can get onto making the future we want into a reality we can all benefit from. And unlike the writers of the BSG that I worked on along their cylons featured in the series recently admitted to the fact that they didn’t actually have a plan – which seems to be going around a lot these days – this creator has one.
With all that said I want to thank you as a closed beta tester right now and will do so again at the conclusion of this test.
Also, for the people who have been working with me to achieve this goal, from those of you over at Liberty3d.com as well as those instrumental in the creation of the LightForge Render Network itself and the technology that makes it possible…
Thank you.
And while they won’t see this message for now, to LightWave3D users around the world, the 3rd party tools developers who support it with fantastic plug-ins and the primary team of developers of LightWave3D and the company that has kept it alive all these years, Newtek Inc.,
Thank you.
Sincerely and on behalf of the rest of the LightForms.cc Group LLc.,
Kelly “Kat” Myers
Founder
LightForms.cc Group LLc.