I use Lightwave extensively, and for most things it is an excellent package – easy to use, stable (on the whole) and very reasonably priced.

But there are several features it falls down on for games, and I certainly hope that these will be addressed with a future release:

• Texture Mapping; the tools are just too basic and it lacks a lot of the functionality of something like Max. Newtek just don’t appear to have considered the needs of game developers
• Texture Baking; always a little unstable and just lacking any finesse or power features. What a joy it would be to have simpler to set-up and much more effective ambient occlusion mapping for example
• Character Animation; this was always really bad in the past, and I must admit I haven’t used it for a while. But compared to something like Character Studio in Max it is just painful
• 3D Painting; really should be in there

So there are a few of the most pressing issues I’d like to see addressed. I love using Lightwave and want to stay with it, but sometimes I really do have my doubts about how long I can continue using it.