LightWave goes high-res and 24-bit!

After about 30 years of silence on the Amiga platform, killer-app "LightWave 3D" of "Babylon 5" and "seaQuest DSV" TV-series fame (and many more) has received an update. 

"Update" being a little bit of an understatement - it seems to be more like reverse-engineering and a rewrite. Original LightWave company NewTek stopped supporting the Amiga around 1995 (rumor has it that after the last public Amiga version 5.0, version 5.5 was developed, but never released), so it never got to see the shift to "retargetable graphics" aka RTG, let alone proper Full-HD screen resolutions as provided by modern FPGA-based Amiga systems. So despite outstanding functionality, speed and output quality, LightWave remained somewhat tied to the Amiga's built-in graphics chipset, which became a bit of a flaw over the last three decades.

Thanks to the effort of a team of Amiga and LightWave enthusiasts, this has now changed drastically. A couple of weeks ago, news popped up of a new release called LightWaveRTG, with an(other) update (1.1) following shortly after (Sept. 12th). It is more or less a re-implementation (in parts) of LightWave 5.0r and Modeler 5.0f, but with many limitations removed, and some modern features added. 

The biggest change may be that the GUI is now RTG, freed from Amiga-chipset screenmodes - now you can model and layout in 1920x1080 pixels, if you like. What a relief! Also, 24-bit color has been added to many previews, so you now get much more accurate feedback about what the final rendering will look like. Here are some more features of LightWaveRTG: 

- loading and saving of anim previews
- many bug fixes, improving program stability
- Datatypes support (includes PowerPC Datatypes)
- rendering speed improved by up to 20%
- run multiple instances of LightWaveRTG at the same time
- new icons
- ...and more

It's an amazing update that massively improves usability on more recent Amiga configurations. There appear to be no plans to further expand LightWaveRTG - but there is also talk of a LightWave (classic and RTG) add-on named "JumpGate3D" that is currently under development, said to be "the next step" for LightWave Amiga. That sure sounds exciting.

Check out the sources below for all the details:

It seems the news of the release showed up first on Amigatronics website (Spanish). 

https://amigatronics.com/2026/08/29/lightwavertg-el-iconico-lightwave-nativo-rtg-gracias-a-tolkien-y-kikems-amigawave/ 

Especially the English Amiga Board link is recommended, with English translation of the news, download link (updated for version 1.1) and some early user feedback.

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=123609 

LightWave Digital, the company holding the rights to the current official LightWave line of products (Windows and MacOS), has a very nice history page.

https://lightwave3d.com/documentation/lightwave-history/

Wikipedia has a lot of information about LightWave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightWave_3D 

And this is a YouTube video of LightWave user "Muadib 3D" checking out the new release (2026-09-14):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLtRhfPid6o

 

Muadib 3D 

 

Amiga in the movies: Fatal Frames (1996) - A3000T, CineMorph, ImageFX

The rarest, and one of the best Amiga models built, along with some Amiga image processing, can be seen in Italian thriller "Fatal Frames" ("Fotogrammi Mortali", 1996).

In this late giallo one of the characters reviews some video footage using an actual Amiga 3000T. It's not the most exciting movie ever, but this might be the only time this rare Amiga model has been put on film.

Can you already see it?

It's not perfectly clear what precisely is happening technically, the editing suite that can be seen in "Fatal Frames" has more pro-gear, genlocking might be involved, the footage on the screens might be edited for the movie, etc. But at least some of it is obviously genuine Amiga.

This keyboard...

...looks familiar, ...

...as does this GUI popping up from the bottom of the screen.

After watching a couple of scenes on the video screens there's confirmation: An Amiga 3000T can be seen briefly, standing on the right side of the editing desk.

There it is! An Amiga 3000T standing on the right side of the desk.

Then we get a little montage of actual Amiga action! CineMorph, with a file requester looking for files in "Work:ImageFX/pics", confirms the GUI we saw popping up before: It's Nova Design's ImageFX, probably version 2.0 or 2.1.

An Amiga 3000T and a "Deep ILBM" image loading progress-bar in a movie - epic stuff for the nostalgic and enthusiast! Actually it's a little surprising that this professional editing suite doesn't have a DraCo, which came out just two or three years before the movie and would've been the logical upgrade. But then, maybe it was a tad too expensive, or they used Amiga only for additional image processing and genlocking, or maybe it just wasn't available yet at the time of filming - and, of course, an A3000T isn't shabby at all.

* * *

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Frames

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116284/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBmTxYEIWDI
("Fatal Frames" full movie, Amiga scene at 1:42:58)

 

Amiga on MTV: "Shades" by House Of Usher (1992)

Another nice example of how the Amiga was used as a low-cost video production workhorse.

According to an article in a 1993 issue of "Amiga Kickstart" magazine (see links below), the music video for House Of Usher's techno track "Shades" was created on an Amiga 500+, using DeluxePaint IV.

And you don't need glasses to immediately recognize somehow familiar colors and shapes. This looks very much like a production from the Amiga demo scene, only the sound quality is better, and the animation clips are more random. Nowadays, the visuals may seem a little naive. But at the time, this was pretty hip stuff, yeah, you would see something like this at a rave party. The music video in its entirety doesn't run on an Amiga 500 - there's some video editing, and obviously CD-quality audio. "Shades" was a little hit in the German techno scene, and the video was shown on MTV and some other channels.

Here's a capture of "Shades" by House Of Usher (1992) playing on MTV:

"Shades" by House Of Usher (1992) music video clip
video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7MC1oYzno

Amiga Kickstart 1993-01 article at archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/amiga-kickstart-93-01/page/100/mode/2up 

Amiga in the movies: Robot Ninja (1989)

An Amiga 500 was spotted in 1989 splatter-comic movie "Robot Ninja" - both on screen, and behind the scenes.

Robot Ninja (1989) poster artwork (see end of article)

The movie is a very gory, but also funny and slightly tragic low-budget sci-fi/horror production. If this fits your taste, it's really enjoyable, with a lot of handdrawn comic panels thrown in, goofy, but (very) rough characters, and some actually quite ambitious, visionary storytelling, complete with dream sequence, Terminator rip-off scene, and everything.

"Robot Ninja" was written, produced, directed, and edited by J. R. Bookwalter, who also supplied some of the music. 

The opening credits might look somehow familiar to longtime Amiga users.

A couple of frames from the opening credits

The comic panel sections of the opening sequence feature some animated text - could this be some Deluxe Paint animations that we're looking at?

A couple of frames from the opening sequence, with comic panels, and animation

Only a few minutes into the movie, we get a little news report that features some sort of artwork of the "Robot Ninja". 

Is Robot Ninja connected to the Ridgeway Murders... ?

So far, all of this feels very much like something Amiga. It wouldn't be surprising if one shows up in the movie... and indeed, soon a machine can be seen that looks remarkably like an Amiga 500.

Someone is playing a game...

...on a computer with some extra equipment...

...that looks very much like an Amiga 500...

...and runs a GUI with a blue background.

So after this character has played a round of "Lords of the Rising Sun", he returns to what seems to be AmigaOS Workbench 1.x.

More artwork shows up during the movie - isn't there a faint title bar, that maybe says "Deluxe Paint"? And there's another news report, that uses a font that just looks all familiar.

The "Robot Ninja" shown on the computer display - with title bar.

The font used by this TV station looks very familiar.

We get to see more of the computer equipment. There seems to be a dot matrix printer on the left side (maybe a Star LC-10?), and a floppy drive right next to the keyboard. And is there another, bigger printer, on the right side?

1989 computer workstation in "Robot Ninja"

In this sequence, the movie's anti-hero is in very bad shape after a heavy fight - he tries to decipher what's written on the computer display, but he's dizzy, and his vision is blurry.

Robot Ninja can't properly see the computer display.

But then, finally, all doubts are dispelled: Yes, this is an Amiga 500. With a red LED. 

It's really an Amiga 500, with PSU, 1010 floppy drive, and 1084 monitor!

The movie's ending credits feature some digitized images with a little bit of animation.

A couple of frames from the pictures during the ending credits.

When the credits' text (Topaz font? Opal font?) begins to roll, it gives more clues about Amiga usage during production, and some enthusiastic praise for the computer.

Amiga 500 in "Robot Ninja" ending credits

The titles, and we can pretty safely assume also the digital artwork in the movie, were indeed created on an Amiga 500, as was the music by Mr. Bookwalter. Maybe the entire editing was done with some gen-locking, VHS-recorder-controlling Amiga setup, at "The Imagination Industry" and Richard B. Perrine?

"Robot Ninja" is a very nice example of Amiga usage in movie production. Looking at its imaginative, bold style, it's a perfect tie-in with the idea of the allround-creative Amiga user. Mr. Bookwalter obviously is one such person. He felt he had to put the machine into the movie, give it big credit, and the fact that he did the work for "Robot Ninja" on an Amiga 500 is pretty cool in itself. It's proof that even the lowest-cost model, a literal bedroom-computer, can be a (low-res) film industry workhorse. 

Now, why isn't there a "Robot Ninja" game for the Amiga?

*

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100503/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Ninja

"Robot Ninja" poster image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Ninja#/media/File:Robot_Ninja_(1989)_poster.jpg
https://theschlockpit.com/2020/03/29/in-praise-of-robot-ninja-1989/