.LWO File Format

Introduction

LWOB is the original object format of LightWave 3D, written by LightWave up to version 5. It was documented by LightWave’s authors, Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson, whose description was last revised in November 1994. A file holds one object: its points, the polygons and curves made from them, and the surfaces that colour and shade them.

LightWave 6 replaced it with LWO2, which keeps the same extension but changes almost every chunk.

Structure

An LWOB file is an IFF file: one big-endian FORM chunk whose form type is LWOB, holding further chunks. It must contain a PNTS chunk (point positions), an SRFS chunk (surface names) and a POLS chunk (polygons), and may contain any number of SURF chunks (surface settings) and at most one CRVS chunk (spline curves). POLS and CRVS must come after PNTS and SRFS. A file holding only SURF chunks is a saved surface description.

In this reference

• Geometry chunks – the FORM, PNTS, SRFS, POLS with detail polygons, and CRVS, with an annotated example file
• Surfaces – the SURF chunk and every sub-chunk: colour, flags, shading levels, reflection, textures

Variants

• LightWave object (LWOB) – the original form, written by LightWave 5 and earlier
• LightWave object (LWO2) – the form from LightWave 6 on, with layers, vertex maps and surface blocks

Links