The makers of Modo are the original Lightwave programmers. Long story
I didn't use Modo too.
For the one who are in icons in menu bars and so Lightwave can be irritating at first. There are no icons in the user interface.
For rendering animating and so you use the Layout program. For modeling you use the Modeler program . Some love this some hate it
If you search , you will in a way find some agreement that the Rendering is very good , modeling easy , but that it lacks in the character animation front .
But you can make anything you want with it if you are good enough . But then this is in all software the same !
When you buy Lightwave you can set up a render farm up to 999 cores for free.
But all of this may change this year if Lightwave Core comes out . This will be the new version of Lightwave. But this is another long story.
You can go directly to the Newtek forums . There are good topics with flaming posts(!) .
If you read some of them you would thing that Lightwave is doomed in the near future. I hope it is not.
I like Lightwave . And i will use it in the future too. in one form or another because it is the software i know since so many years ( 15 ?) .
After the new version of Blender i will learn it too . 1 software is sometimes not enough .
Download the demos of the programs you want to know and try them yourself , Calico . Do not trust us . This software likability is sometimes very subjective
Cheers.
Kadri.
