I’ve talked extensively about WaveFilter products in earlier installments of Taming The Wave prior to coming to 3D Artist, so I won’t go into extensive detail here now. I’ve included this in the
list because I still feel it is one of the most useful plug-ins on the market. Consisting of 18 plug-ins, WaveFilter ImageMagic allows you to adjust almost any aspect of your final rendered image, including color, midtone and brightness adjustment, noise, and contrast. It even offers top-notch antialiasing and a depth-of-field plug-in, both of which take a fraction of the time compared with LightWave’s own versions.

    One of my favorite WaveFilter tools is being able to parent a DOF focal point to a moving object in a scene. You have to see this to believe it. Add to all of this null-based, animatable controls in the Layout window, and surface-based areas of effect using the Shaders plug-ins, and you’ve got one heck of a tool. This is the only plug-in I’ve found that I use in one way or another in every scene I make.