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News: daily production-facing updates across post, VFX, animation, real-time, and tools. Releases, patches, interviews, research notes, and industry moves, written for fast scanning with source links and practical context, without pretending every update is “game-changing”.
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Substance 3D Painter 12.1 bakes smarter
Painter 12.1 targets baking pain with skew maps, auto rebake, OpenPBR defaults and cleaner hard-surface UVs for asset teams.
RealityScan 2.2 Widens GPU Support
RealityScan 2.2 widens accelerated reconstruction, adds mixed GPU use, 360 camera workflow notes and scan-life fixes.
Adobe buys Topaz Labs
Adobe plans to acquire Topaz Labs, bringing AI upscale, denoise, restore and local model tech closer to Firefly and Creative Cloud.
Optics 2026.5 gets more photo hosts
Optics 2026.5 plugs into three more photo hosts and adds analog burns, face masks, particles and a Victorian pet preset pack.
Reallusion Unlocks Limitless Creation: iClone Personal Debuts Alongside AI Studio Official Launch
iClone Personal replaces the trial with free access, AI Studio goes public, and 500 AI Points sweeten the 3D-to-AI rabbit hole.
Arnold 7.5.2 Adds Gaussian Splats
Arnold 7.5.2 renders Gaussian Splats, adds relighting, NPR nodes and Flow Render tweaks. Nice, but test before splats bite.
Maxon turns 40, subs get lighter
Maxon celebrates 40 years with 40% off first-year annual subscriptions. Great for carts, less great for anyone remembering Amiga disks.
DaCaPo Opens DCP Authoring Beta
DaCaPo bundles DCP authoring, OV/VF versioning, subtitles, KDMs and verification into a desktop tool for cinema delivery. Give the Beta a Spin!
Asus ProArt 16 USV: A Laptop-Sized Production Monitor
The ASUS ProArt PA16USV LED-Monitor, a 15.6-inch 4K HDR portable display that incorporates a 12G-SDI marks a significant pivot for ASUS into hardware that explicitly targets on-set workflows and DIT (digital imaging technician) monitoring tasks rather than solely desktop creative use. But is it any good?
Here comes Houdini 22
2 hours and 18 minutes. That is almost exactly the runtime of the first Matrix film, and exactly the duration of the Houdini 22 release keynote. So yes, this promises a rather chunky package of new features and improvements.
Godot 4.7 turns up HDR
Godot 4.7 goes practical: HDR output, rectangular lights, mobile builds, XR work and editor polish. Less fireworks, more knobs.
Arri LUKA lights Unreal previs
ARRI LUKA puts virtual fixtures, camera logic and Lumen rendering inside Unreal Engine. Previs gets less guessy.
MetaHuman gets markerless mocap
Free markerless body capture lands for MetaHumans, using standard video, local processing, and Unreal Engine 5.8.
Beeble Canvas gets a Topaz split
Canvas now compares Topaz upscales in-node, adds 30 plus generation models, Markdown notes, magnetic snap, and describer updates.
QC Kitchen Brings Broadcast QC Online
Upload a master, choose a QC menu, get a report and a bill. QC Kitchen targets UK broadcast checks without booking a post house.
The Right Colours Without a Computer
SpyderPro exports a 33-point correction LUT, but you want one compact converter to apply it between SDI gear and an HDMI display.
Fridays for Fusion: ZDefocus Adds a More Practical Z-Depth Blur
Millolab’s ml_ZDefocus macro processes normalized Z-buffers, visualises the focus region and reduces edge artefacts in Fusion.
Unreal Engine 5.8 Tidies Up
Unreal Engine 5.8 brings production-ready rendering, virtual production and simulation tools, alongside experimental systems for digital crowds, terrain and character animation.
SMPTE Opens Its Standards Library
SMPTE has opened its complete standards catalogue, giving engineers and developers free access to current and future documents.
EDIUS 11.50 Patches Exports Faster
EDIUS 11.50 repairs parts of finished exports, transcribes locally and adds practical timeline tweaks. The new crossgrade even lowers the entry price.
RadialZ Gives ZBrush a Brush Wheel
RadialZ turns the ZBrush brush library into cursor-side wheels, reducing palette trips and keyboard gymnastics.
Blender Roadmap Puts Plans in One Place
Blender gets a central Roadmap for active projects and recent features, giving artists and studios a clearer view beyond release-note excavation.
O3DE 26.05 Gets Native Particles
O3DE 26.05 adds native particles, AgX, automatic LODs and PhysX 5 defaults. The particle Gem still carries a production warning.
Fifty Ultimate Generators Enter the Node Garden
Over 50 procedural contraptions tackle cities, fluids, fractures and magic trails. Manual library wrangling remains entirely optional.
MPC Joins The Mill
MPC and The Mill become one global studio, combining commercial production and film VFX under The Mill name.
Using C4D’s Axis Tool in a Product Viz workflow
SilverwingVFX shows how he handles object axis in his Cinema 4D studio workflowthat ensures a fast and fluent process even with challenging and unoptimized computer aided design imports.
Cloud Paint Shapes Painterly 3D Skies
Casey Sheep and MeiU release a $12 Eevee-only cloud generator for Blender, with mesh conversion, ten presets and built-in sky assets.
Sneeze Brings a Browser Engine to Spatial 3D
Sneeze applies the browser-engine model to spatial services, combining multi-origin 3D scenes, WASM isolation and proximity discovery.
Adobe trims Premiere and After Effects
Premiere adds faster masks and timeline tools, while After Effects tackles roto, SVG and 3D work. Deadlines keep their poker face.
Filmtext-o-Mat Tames Timecodes
Filmtext-o-Mat 2.7 turns sequence lengths into automatic timecodes, keeps video beside the manuscript and exports practical handover files.
RealTransforms gives Unity props gravity
RealTransforms uses editor physics to drop, rotate and arrange props, with proxy colliders and a beta hull generator for difficult meshes.
NeXus Beta Lands in Blender
NeXus arrives in Blender with GPU particles, fluids, smoke, fire and live viewport feedback. The beta is paid, perpetual and already patched.
Free Komodo Rig for Fun
Free Komodo rig for portfolio work, plus paid tiers for commercial pipelines. Big lizard, small invoice, careful license.
Mocha Pro 2026.5 Tracks Through Trouble
Point Track ML tackles occlusions, shadows and drifting surfaces, while smarter matte tools and exports reduce routine cleanup.
DroneSiteBuilder adds Google 3D Tiles option
DroneSiteBuilder Enterprise v1.2 turns original drone DNG or JPEG folders into a 3ds Max site plus matched cameras, in one run.
Let’s Animate Splats in 3DGS Render?
3DGS Render 5.0 lets Blender artists drive Gaussian splats with proxy meshes, bake lighting and export animation as PLY sequences.
Free Sci-Fi Station Lands on Fab
Fab gives Unreal artists 147 modular sci-fi assets, 4K textures and LODs for free until 16 June. Space rent remains mercifully absent.
Cinema 4D 2026.3 Rebuilds UV Editing
Version 2026.3 rebuilds UV editing and adds practical tools for particles, rivets, edge cloning and UV-driven animation.
Imagen Video brings AI grading to timelines
Imagen Video applies AI-based colour correction to Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve timelines using AI Profiles or uploaded LUTs. The pitch is less Hollywood finishing suite, more high-volume editor.
BadFX Packs Assets Into Adobe Panels
BadFX puts stock media and adjustable animation presets inside Adobe timelines. The plugin is free, though an account is compulsory.
Houdini 22 Teaser Fuels Guesswork
Houdini 22 looks ambitious, but the teaser is maddeningly brief. Treat every feature reading as informed fan speculation, not documentation.
Splat happens: Volinga 3DGS workflow for Unreal
Volinga turns photo sets into Gaussian splats for Unreal, with local processing, PLY and NVOL export, cleanup tools, and relighting support. But what does that actually mean? Let's ask some questions!
Mush3D 3.0 Adds Soft Tissue Tools
Mush3D 3.0 adds pose-trained corrections and tetrahedral soft tissue simulation for artists polishing cached character animation.
NukeRef Adds References to Nuke
NukeRef lets compositors paste image references into Nuke’s Node Graph as interactive backdrops. Tiny script, big sanity gain.
3DCoat 2026 gets GPU nodes
3DCoat 2026 beta adds GPU node texturing, procedural smart materials and masks. Shiny, useful and still beta-shaped.
DaVinci Resolve 21 Leaves Beta
Resolve 21 turns four public betas into a final release and brings the Photo page, selected AI tools and wider grading controls to iPad.
These are the Bugs You Were Looking For (in Blender)
Flying Bugs Generator brings 10 insect types, three motion modes, and Asset Browser-ready drop-ins for fast and vast bug swarms in Blender.
Fridays for Fusion: Bend It
Bend It warps 2D in Fusion with bend, taper, twist, and shear plus optional lighting and materials. It needs Fusion 19.1+ and a strong sense of restraint.
Stair Builder brings parametric stairs to C4D
A €25 Cinema 4D generator for stairs and railings, with presets, UV handling, and all of it parametric.
Image Blaster turns images into Splats
image-blaster uses a single reference image to generate an SPZ Gaussian splat environment via Marble, written as local files you can inspect and iterate fast.
conform.tools’ Connected conform gets a desktop beta
A Resolve-connected desktop app enters public beta, while pricing spells out per-shot timeline exchange, per-GB transfer, and seat-based tiers.
NVIDIA brings DLSS denoising to Blender 5.3
DLSS Ray Reconstruction lands in Blender 5.3 Cycles this fall, adding a new denoiser option built on the existing OptiX path. Expect faster lookdev, then test hard.
C4D Octane: 1.9.x Update Features Video
SilverwingVFX digs into the new juicy features delivered via the most recent Octane update for Cinema 4D. Learn what's improved so you can get the best out of Octane.
True Sky 3 brings planet-scale skies to Blender
True Sky 3 goes planet-scale in Blender, adds HDRI output and performance presets, and demands Blender 5.1 because Python moved.
Massive Crowd Sim gets a free 101-edition
Massive 101 goes free for non-commercial use, with watermarked renders and a forum-based license login. Great for learning, risky for deadlines.
Beeble Nuke plugin: relight with passes
Beeble’s Nuke plugin loads PBR pass sets and lets you relight with Directional, Point, and HDRI lights. Simple install, picky inputs, real control.
KZ_Tracker turns video into Maya curves
KZ_Tracker tracks 2D points in footage inside Maya and bakes curves to locators, aimed at quick blocking, timing, and rough spacing, not final mocap.
VOXIFY turns Blender Meshes to Voxels and animates
VOXIFY voxelizes any Blender mesh via Geometry Nodes, tries to keep your textures intact, and ships with animation and static mesh options.
Chaos puts Veras everywhere
Veras lands inside V-Ray, Corona, and Enscape, powered by Chaos Credits. Corona 15 adds faster animation parsing and 3D streaming.
Fridays for Fusion: Flow Looper animates stills in Resolve
Flow Looper targets seamless looping motion in stills inside Resolve Fusion, using spline corridors, pixel flow, and cross-fade looping.
Silhouette 2026 gets smarter roto and 3D heads
Silhouette 2026 upgrades AI mattes, adds Head Track ML and better tracking, boosts paint tools and performance, and finally gets serious about pipelines.
DaVinci Resolve 21 Public Beta 4 is out
Beta 4 tightens still-image FX, fixes Canon highlights, exposes Fusion motion paths in the keyframe editor, and refines Studio AI tools.
Free area light textures for Blender
A free 20 pack of area light textures for Blender aims at softer, less flat lighting, with a sample file and a Patreon free signup gate.
Levels cleans up alpha maps fast
Levels makes alpha masks from photos in your browser: channel mix, levels, crop, perspective warp, then copy or export PNG.
DreamWorks style mesh controls land in Maya
A free Maya plug-in adds surface pinning, mesh controls, and VP2 overlays, plus docs and an example scene. Now go break it safely in a test rig, just like the artists at Dreamworks who inspired it.
ZOZO Contact Solver gets Blender add-on
Official Blender add-on client for Contact Solver is out, open source, remote GPU friendly, and already shipping updates like armature deformable colliders.
Node Ninja builds Redshift materials from folders
Node Ninja is a free Cinema 4D plugin that builds Redshift PBR materials from texture folders, with color spaces, AO, and bulk import baked in.
Click Here If You’re a German video editor and have yelled “Why? Why? Why?” at your NLE
A short survey on video software needs, with gift card prizes and a the results will only be reported in aggregate.Time to air all the grievances!
Adobe Photoshop 27.7 runs Remove on device
Photoshop 27.7 adds optional on-device Remove, tighter Firefly Boards handoff, and a batch of small workflow fixes that add up in daily use.
Foundry launches free Mari Texture Library with 120+ assets
Foundry’s new Mari Texture Library offers more than 120 free assets, including Smart Materials, Smart Masks, textures, brushes and HDRIs for Mari and general DCC workflows.
Autodesk updates 3ds Max to 2027.1
3ds Max 2027.1 is a small update: cleaner Smart Bevel results, new Data Channel converters, and an Arnold refresh with cloud render experiments.
Maya 2027.1 adds OTIO to Sequencer
Maya 2027.1 lands with OTIO in Sequencer, LookdevX projection tools, and more Bifrost and USD housekeeping. Patch it, test it, then trust it.
If you yearn for the pines, go Blender
Stylized Tree update 2.0 adds pine trees, optimizes nodes, and bundles wind plus scatter tools, with pricing tiers from $12.50.
Caddis mixes layers with nodes per layer
Caddis shows a familiar timeline, then drops a node graph inside each layer, exports common formats, and launches in June with one-time pricing.
Boris FX Sapphire 2026.5 adds Advanced Defocus
Sapphire 2026.5 doubles down on lens looks with Advanced Defocus, new Texture Ridges, a rebuilt Glare, Builder updates, and fresh flares.
PFTrack gets Hero Cloud
PFTrack 26.05.19 adds Hero Cloud for single shot point clouds, plus COLMAP export to Postshot and better USD point cloud export. Try it, then trust it.
Clip Studio Paint 5.0 with 3D hands
Clip Studio Paint 5.0 lands with Smart Shape cleanup, a poseable 3D hand model, faster tools, and a clearly spelled out license menu.
C4D Pyro Tutorial: Helicopter Kickup Dust
SilverwingVFX goes airborne: Cinema 4D Pyro can fake rotor wash the smart way: simulate air first, cache velocity, then spawn dust only where wind speed peaks.
MoonRay Renderer joins ASWF as hosted project
MoonRay lands at ASWF as a hosted project, keeps DreamWorks engineering support, and gets a July Open Source Days keynote slot in Los Angeles.
Beeble Canvas
Canvas arrives as a node based AI compositor plus automation, with SwitchX and SwitchLight under the hood and an API for pipeline integration.
Scene Auditor Pro targets Blender bloat
Scene Auditor Pro maps Blender datablock dependencies, flags orphans and duplicates, and pushes a safer cleanup workflow for big scenes.
PolygoFlow Dash asset manager goes free on Fab
Free Dash asset manager lands on Fab: browse local assets across UE5 projects, tag up to 1000 assets a month, and use smart collections.
Wacom Art Pen 2 does a barrel roll
Art Pen 2 revives 360 barrel rotation, adds new nib sets, and targets current Intuos Pro and Cintiq hardware. Price is $99.95.
Tangenten Puppet Pin brings mesh warping to Resolve
Puppet Pin for Resolve Fusion turns a cutout into a deformable mesh, adds pins, deformers, solvers, and locators, and even hooks into trackers.
Simple Tree Tools 3.0 goes procedural
Simple Tree Tools 3.0 targets Houdini 20.5+ with procedural trees, scan extension nodes, and one-time licenses from free to $1,299.
Blender Singularity lands in 4K HDR
Singularity drops as a 4K HDR short, with free downloads of assets and encodes. Also: painterly brushstrokes meet procedural crowds.
ProArt goes 12G-SDI portable
12G-SDI on a 15.6-inch 4K portable panel, plus calibration reports, presets, and a box that turns into a hood. Enjoy the set life
RS Node Tools speeds Redshift nodes
RS Node Tools targets the most repetitive Redshift node chores in Cinema 4D, aiming for faster PBR hookups and fewer manual clicks.
Boris FX Continuum 2026.5 tunes AI and FX Editor
Continuum 2026.5 stacks AI deinterlacing, sharper ML masks, saner FX Editor isolation, refreshed warps and wipes, and tighter Particle Illusion linking.
Unreal Engine 5.8 Preview rolls in
UE 5.8 Preview adds experimental Mesh Terrain, editable PCG results, a juiced-up vegetation tool, MetaHuman crowds, and more. Test first.
EditingTools.io Resolve Collect copies media
Resolve Collect scans Resolve and Premiere projects, finds used sources, and copies them into one place with options like trimming and symbolic links.
Artineering Flair 1.2 for Maya hits macOS
macOS support lands for Maya 2024+, licensing expands to floating and perpetual, and lines get darker with negative light response. Also: Unreal beta.
Foundry expands Nuke Stage for LED walls
Nuke Stage now plays NotchLC, handles Gaussian Splats, logs on-set metadata in a Vault, and pushes USD scene edits into real time LED wall playback.
ZEISS CinCraft LensCore targets Nuke lens looks
LensCore brings lens profiles, ray-traced lens behavior, and physics-driven controls to Nuke, aiming for fast, repeatable lens looks across sequences.
Blender 5.2 LTS targets texture-heavy renders
Blender 5.2 LTS adds a Cycles texture cache that builds .tx tiles and loads only what the render needs. Less VRAM waste, more scene headroom.
Poly Hammer brings MetaHumans to Blender Rigify
Character Control Rig targets MetaHuman animation in Blender with Rigify controls, UE roundtrips, and multi character handling. Test it first.
Autodesk launches Project Falcon
Project Falcon is a free, browser-based kitbashing tool that exports USD and STL, aiming to speed up hard-surface blockouts and handoffs.
PlayCanvas updates SplatTransform to 2.0
SplatTransform 2.0 brings sparse voxel grids, new GPU cleanup filters, URL inputs, and a new coplanar merge path. Less splat chaos, more control.
Autograph, now free for teams
Autograph turns free for teams, commercial included, no output limits. You get USD, ACES, OpenFX, and training, so the trial budget can retire.
CrumplePop 2026.5 adds ARA, and that’s interesting
CrumplePop 2026.5 adds SoundApp ARA for full clip processing in DAWs, plus a processed audio cache, faster model loading, and updated pricing tiers.