The Amiga LightWave 3D that helped make Babylon 5 is getting native RTG support

LightWave 3D on the Amiga was built for a very different kind of computer. Now LightWaveRTG is changing that, with work underway to make the classic 3D package run properly on RTG graphics hardware while adding 24-bit display support, updated previews and an interface better suited to high-resolution Amiga systems. It’s still in development. But this has already moved well beyond simply persuading an old application to open on a newer graphics card. Parts of LightWave are being pulled apart and reworked.

LightWave is learning to live without AGA

Classic Amiga software often assumes it’s talking directly to the machine’s original graphics hardware. LightWave is no exception. Its display routines were written around the Amiga chipsets available at the time, first OCS and later AGA.

That worked because those chips were simply part of the machine. RTG changed the situation. Retargetable Graphics systems such as Picasso96 and CyberGraphX allowed Amigas to use dedicated graphics cards with higher resolutions and true-colour displays. Software written around the original chipset, though, didn’t automatically know what to do with them.

LightWaveRTG is fixing that inside LightWave itself. Tolkien and Kikems have been progressively disassembling and modifying the Amiga version, replacing graphics routines that expect the original hardware and dealing with problems that appear on graphics-card systems and later Amiga configurations. The goal is straightforward: LightWave should use RTG directly. Getting there isn’t.

This is more than another screen mode

One of the obvious additions is a new utility for selecting and configuring RTG screen modes. Underneath that, much more has changed. Interface redraw routines have been updated for RTG screens, while option panels that previously expected fixed positions can now be moved around. That becomes useful pretty quickly when you’re running LightWave at resolutions its original interface designers never had to consider.

Colour handling gets a much bigger overhaul. LightWaveRTG introduces an internal 24-bit RTG rendering system covering surface previews, render feedback and animation previews. Layout and Modeler are also being updated to work with 24-bit images, backgrounds and image sequences.

Animation previews can now be saved and loaded, while datatype support expands the range of image formats LightWave can handle. PPC datatypes can also be used when they’re available. There’s less visible work too. Stack overflow problems between Layout and Modeler are being addressed alongside wider stability and performance fixes. If those improvements work properly, you shouldn’t really notice them. You’ll just notice LightWave behaving itself.

Before LightWave there were two programs

LightWave’s Amiga story starts before LightWave itself. Allen Hastings developed Videoscape 3D, while Stuart Ferguson created Modeler 3D. Those programs eventually formed the basis of the two-part workflow that became one of LightWave’s defining characteristics: build objects in Modeler, then handle scenes, cameras, animation and rendering in Layout.

NewTek brought the technology into its Amiga-based Video Toaster system, and LightWave 3D 1.0 appeared in 1990. At first, LightWave remained tied to Video Toaster hardware. That changed with LightWave 3.5 in 1994, the first official standalone Amiga release that didn’t require a Toaster.

LightWave 4.0 arrived in 1995 and expanded onto Windows and DEC Alpha systems. LightWave 5.0 followed, becoming the final version released for the Amiga as development increasingly shifted onto other platforms. But before that happened, LightWave had already landed one very visible job.

Babylon 5 put LightWave on television

Babylon 5 took a different approach to television visual effects. Rather than relying primarily on physical spaceship miniatures, its early exterior space sequences were created digitally. Foundation Imaging, led by Ron Thornton, produced the pilot and the first three seasons using LightWave 3D, initially running on Commodore Amiga systems equipped with NewTek Video Toaster hardware. That meant the Babylon 5 station, EarthForce ships, Starfuries and many of the huge fleet sequences existed as 3D models rather than physical studio miniatures.

A network of Amigas could divide rendering work between machines, producing frames that were then assembled into completed visual-effects sequences. As the production developed, faster PC and workstation hardware joined and eventually replaced the early Amiga rendering setup, but LightWave remained at the centre of the workflow.

The approach gave the effects team options that traditional model photography made considerably harder. Ships could rotate freely, fighters could move independently in large formations and cameras could pass through scenes without worrying about motion-control rigs or the physical size of a miniature stage.

Babylon 5 also leaned into spacecraft movement influenced by inertia rather than treating every ship like an aircraft in atmosphere. The CGI workflow made those manoeuvres practical without physically mounting, moving and photographing models for every shot.

Foundation Imaging’s work on the Babylon 5 pilot won an Emmy, and the series became one of LightWave’s most recognisable early television credits. Later Babylon 5 effects production moved in-house to Netter Digital, using a similar digital workflow.

RTG fixes an old limitation

There’s a useful connection between that history and LightWaveRTG. LightWave became associated with demanding 3D production at a time when the Amiga version still depended heavily on the machine’s native display architecture. Even LightWave 5.0 arrived while full RTG support remained a problem for Amiga graphics-card users.

That’s the gap this project is addressing. It doesn’t attempt to turn LightWave 5.0 into a modern LightWave release. It isn’t replacing the modeller, renderer or basic workflow with something completely different. Instead, it changes what kind of Amiga LightWave expects to find underneath it.

Native RTG screens, 24-bit rendering, updated Layout and Modeler image handling, movable panels, datatype support and quicker redraw routines all attack limitations that become obvious once the software leaves its original graphics environment.

There’s still development and testing ahead, so the final specification isn’t locked. But LightWaveRTG is already doing something more interesting than simply keeping an old application running. It’s taking the Amiga version of LightWave 3D and finishing a graphics-card transition that the original release never fully got to make.