About vX ...

The original vX project started back in 2002, as an exercise in UI design for NewTek's LightWave 3D application, and was made public in February 2003.

The goals of the project were to suggest ideas that could help bring LightWave's interface up to date both visually, and more importantly, made it easier and faster to use for new and old users alike.

Until recently, the vX project was somewhat of a pipe dream as LightWave's architecture was far too old to allow such ideas.

LightWave CORE™

With the release of LightWave CORE, this situation has changed significantly. From a UI perspective, one exciting aspect of CORE is that it uses Nokia's Qt platform for its user interface protocol.

Qt allows custom styling of gadgets using CSS definitions, as can be seen in this interface done by NewTek themselves. Which means creating the vX2 look in CORE will now be possible.

Not every aspect of the UI can be customised using CSS within CORE, for example the physical locations of buttons inside panels are handled mainly by Qts built-in layout code.

The workflow of the application is also something that is to a large extent out of user control, as that has to be coded. Fortunately one of the mandates for CORE is to fully involve its users, so hopefully, this extremely important aspect of the user experience will be developed and shaped with the help the people who will actually be using the software.

We're not talking about simple feature requests here, but actually involving users in the very beginning of the development process.

Outside of open source software, this is pretty much unheard of for commercial applications, and NewTek should be applauded for taking this bold approach to software development.

The results should be pretty stunning.