For those who don’t know the tool: Houdini is SideFX software for procedural modelling, animation, VFX, look development and rendering. Houdini Engine connects its assets with Maya, 3ds Max, Unity and Unreal Engine.

Before anyone updates the farm

Houdini 22 has appeared in a maddeningly short sneak peek video. That sentence contains nearly everything we can state with confidence. The footage moves quickly through Gaussian Splats, character work, Copernicus, Terrain, USD, Unreal, rendering and simulation. It supplies very little explanation and what follows is therefore guesswork.

Think of it as fanboys pausing a teaser frame by frame and attempting to identify the nodes before the compression artefacts win. A longer presentation is scheduled for June 22, 2026. Until that arrives, every interpretation deserves a large bucket of salt.

The Splats look suspiciously useful

The loudest section of the teaser concerns Gaussian Splats. The video appears to show Splats created inside Houdini, processed through procedural networks, rendered in Karma and manipulated as scene data. It also appears to show a Splat-based creature being rigged and animated. Thank you, SideFX, for picking the absolutely worst animal to trigger all my personal creepy-crawly shrieks. Why not do that with a cat, or a dino, or something …l nice?

But back to the topic: That sounds substantial. It may be substantial. The animated creature suggests that Houdini 22 may support deformation or motion workflows for Gaussian Splat data. The footage also appears to show training or generation through TOPs. So, the Gaussian Splat Machine Learning for Radiance fields directly within Houdini.

Copernicus keeps spreading

Copernicus appears throughout the teaser. The footage shows procedural pattern generation, a UV Shape node, Neural Cellular Automata and image-driven effects moving across geometry. One shot appears to use adjacency data and time shifting to move ripples across a statue. That could indicate tighter links between image processing and surface topology.

Could is doing heavy work in that sentence. Copernicus also appears beside terrain tools and Unreal Engine integration. A Houdini Digital Asset seems to expose COP controls inside the engine. That could become a practical authoring workflow for procedural textures and effects. It could also depend on prepared assets, restricted nodes or specific outputs.

The teaser does not say.

Character tools get a few seconds

The KineFX section appears to include IK Limits and Set Driven Keys. Both concepts are familiar in character rigging. IK Limits restrict joint movement. Set Driven Keys connect one animated value with another. Their apparent arrival in Houdini could simplify common rigging tasks.

Motion Mixer also appears to gain nested clips. The current reading is that animation clips can be nested within larger clip structures. That seems useful for assembling longer motion sequences.

None of these sections lasts long enough to answer the questions a character department will actually ask.

USD wanders into SOPs

The teaser appears to show USD data authored through SOPs. That could give geometry artists another route into scene description without moving immediately into Solaris. The idea makes sense. SOPs already provide a familiar procedural environment for asset construction. Adding USD authoring there could reduce context switching during asset preparation.

The footage does not explain supported schemas, composition arcs, variants, references, payloads or layer management. It does not establish whether SOP-based USD authoring handles complete production assets or a narrower set of preparation tasks.

Quad Remesh may get more rectangular

Quad Remesh appears to gain a Rectangular method. The visual result suggests a more regular grid-like topology. That may help with surfaces that benefit from cleaner directional flow. Automatic retopology demos usually begin with cooperative geometry. Production begins when the mesh has teeth, holes, overlapping parts and a history of questionable decisions. The new mode looks promising.

Terrain enters the Copernicus fog

Terrain tools appear to move closer to Copernicus. The teaser seems to show a unified heightfield workflow inside the image-processing framework. Since heightfields already behave like grid-based image data, the combination is technically plausible.

Effects get recipes and speed claims

The video appears to show prepared recipes for fireworks and magic effects. Recipes can package node arrangements for repeated tasks. That could help artists reach a usable starting point faster.

Voronoi fracturing also appears faster. Faster than what, on which hardware, with what geometry and under which settings remains unknown.

Disclaimer: This is a teaser, not documentation

Hints are not specifications. Several interpretations may turn out to be accurate. Others may describe internal experiments, partial workflows or features that behave differently from the way the teaser suggests. The video is simply too short to support definitive conclusions.

For now, SideFX Houdini 22 looks interesting. That conclusion is safe. Everything more detailed remains guesswork until the manuals arrive.

YouTube Houdini 22 Sneak Peek

The post Houdini 22 Teaser Fuels Guesswork first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Shapelab is Leopoly’s hybrid desktop and VR sculpting app for artists who prefer to get their hands virtually dirty. It runs on Windows and PCVR headsets and mixes voxel sketching with polygon sculpting. Users can block out rough forms like digital clay, then refine them with precise brushes, remeshing tools and PBR vertex painting. The Max edition is the full version for professional desktop and VR use, distinct from the Lite or Vision Pro releases.

Gizmo re-engineering

The 2026 release completely rebuilds the transform gizmo. Artists now get non-uniform scaling and improved local-to-world switching. Movement, rotation and scale transformations share a consistent logic between desktop and VR, reducing accidental distortions. The update also expands keyboard shortcuts and controller bindings for transform tools, though Leopoly has not published the full shortcut list.

Elastic Move deformation

The new Elastic Move tool is based on a real-time elastic deformation model first developed at Pixar. It lets artists grab and bend meshes as though they were made of rubber, maintaining volume and continuity. The tool is designed for quick posing of characters or broad shape changes without breaking form.

Symmetry and topology

Shapelab Max 2026 unifies symmetry operations into one coordinate reference, meaning mirrored sculpting behaves consistently across all axes and tools. Voxel remeshing has been rewritten for better speed and quality, though Leopoly has not disclosed specific algorithmic changes. The hybrid engine still supports both voxel and polygon workflows, so artists can sculpt freely between detail stages.

Workflow and modelling tools

Brushes include Clay, Standard, Mask, Crease, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Snakehook, Flatten, Trim, Regularise and 3D Stamp. Multiresolution sculpting and dynamic tessellation support high-detail workflows. Remeshing and topology tools cover subdivide, decimate, regularise, mirror, weld, fill holes, merge vertices and quad remesh. The workspace can be customised with HDRI environments, ambient lighting and floor visibility toggles. Built-in and user-defined primitives simplify kitbashing and prototyping. Grid and angle snapping, constraints, grouping, cloning and boolean operations aid accurate layout. Scene hierarchy management now allows multiselect and grouping for cleaner scene organisation.

VR and interface upgrades

VR interaction receives controller haptics for interface feedback and adjustable viewport momentum for smoother navigation. Pen and tablet users gain tilt, twist and pressure support via both Wintab and Windows Ink drivers. Vertex painting now supports PBR parameters such as colour, roughness, metalness and emission. Texture export options include normal maps and vertex colours. Materials include PBR and MatCap shading for real-time visualisation. Import and export formats cover FBX, OBJ, GLB and STL. Project scenes are saved in the SL3D format, preserving geometry and shading data.

Platform, pricing and compatibility

Shapelab Max 2026 runs on Windows 10 or later and supports tethered PCVR systems including HTC Vive, Valve Index, Oculus Rift, Quest (via Link) and Windows Mixed Reality. Licences cost 69.99 US dollars for perpetual use or 49.99 US dollars per year by subscription. The price marks a five-dollar increase over the 2025 version. Some bundle offers include standalone Quest editions until early 2026.

Studios should test Shapelab Max 2026 on in-house hardware before adopting it in production.

The post Shapelab Max 2026 bends reality with Elastic Move first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The developer Nevercenter has released version Silo 2026.0, introducing a significant new feature: the Silo Blender Bridge plugin, linking Silo with the open-source 3D tool Blender.

The new bridge

The Silo Blender Bridge enables users to select one or more objects in Blender, send them to Silo for editing, and automatically see updates back in Blender whenever they save. It also supports creating new objects in Silo that instantly appear inside Blender. The workflow provides Blender users access to Silo’s responsive and lightweight modelling environment, while Silo users gain easier entry into Blender’s full suite of rigging, animation, and rendering tools.

At present, the bridge exchanges geometry using temporary FBX files, which both programs can read and write. Nevercenter notes this may limit certain Blender-specific features, such as modifiers, but the company plans to evaluate more direct communication in future versions depending on user feedback. Installation can be done directly from within Silo via the “Silo Blender Bridge” menu, which automatically installs the plugin to Blender’s add-ons folder. Alternatively, users can download and install it manually. Once installed, it must be enabled under Edit → Preferences → Add-ons inside Blender.

Platform support and licensing

Silo 2026.0 runs on Windows 10 (64-bit) and macOS 12.0 or newer, supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon systems. The perpetual licence is priced at USD 159, covering both Silo and the Milo real-time renderer. The update is free for anyone who purchased Silo within the past year from Nevercenter’s website. Existing users can check or renew their licence at nevercenter.com/upgrade.

The update can be downloaded directly from nevercenter.com/silo/download, with a free trial available for new users. Nevercenter encourages artists to share feedback through email, social channels, or the official Silo User Forums on Discord, where the team collects feature requests and user experiences for future improvements.

Why this update matters

Silo has maintained a small but loyal user base since its first release in 2003 (Fuuuuuck, we are getting old!), appreciated for its speed and uncluttered approach to 3D modelling. By integrating with Blender, Nevercenter opens Silo to a much broader workflow context. The bridge allows production artists to model quickly in Silo’s clean environment and then hand off to Blender for layout, rigging, or rendering — all without repeated exporting and importing.

This integration marks a practical expansion rather than a reinvention: the bridge keeps Silo’s strengths intact while offering Blender users a new way to handle sub-D geometry editing. Nevercenter has explicitly framed this release as a first step, asking users to test the bridge and provide feedback before further development toward a deeper connection.

Workflow cautions

Since the plugin relies on FBX as an intermediary, certain limitations remain. Modifiers and Blender-specific data such as vertex groups or custom materials may not fully survive the round-trip. Users should also expect the bridge to handle static geometry best, rather than complex animated or rigged assets. As with all new integrations, Nevercenter advises testing the plugin thoroughly before relying on it for production work.

Community and feedback

The developer is actively soliciting user input, encouraging modelers to share their experiences on the Silo User Discord, as well as via Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube. This feedback will guide the next stage of development and possible refinements to the bridge’s internal communication system.

Bottom line

The Silo Blender Bridge in Silo 2026.0 offers a practical, lightweight link between Silo’s modelling environment and Blender’s broader toolset. The workflow is not yet a live-sync system, but it substantially reduces friction between the two applications. For modelers seeking Silo’s fast, focused interface without leaving their Blender pipeline, this release provides a simple but effective bridge, literally and figuratively. As always, test the workflow on sample scenes before using it in production.

The post Here comes Silo 2026.0 with Blender bridge first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

3ds Max 2026.3 from Autodesk is now available as a subscription-only release for Windows 10 and later. It delivers incremental but practical enhancements to modelling, materials, USD support and rendering pipelines.

Conform modifier gains distance & fall-off

The Conform modifier, used to project one mesh onto the surface of another, now offers dedicated distance and fall-off parameters when using the Shrink Wrap projection method. This gives users finer control over how far the modifier searches for the target surface and how the influence decays. It results in more predictable deformations when wrapping geometry—helpful for architectural visualisation, game asset prep, or surface-fitting tasks. As always, test in your own scenes before deploying in production.

Materials: animated index in the Material Switcher

The Material Switcher, which lets artists manage variant materials on assets, now supports an animatable material index. This allows dynamic switching between up to 9,999 different materials during animation or scene changes. It is particularly useful for large asset libraries, scene variants or motion graphics work that requires frequent material swaps. The “up to 9,999” figure is vendor-supplied and should be tested for performance impact in real-world scenes.

USD plugin enhancements

The USD for 3ds Max plugin, now at version 0.13, introduces several workflow improvements. A new Asset Resolver allows users to set custom search paths and tokens to reduce “asset not found” errors. The viewport now supports duplicating prims using the Shift-drag shortcut, and artists can rename, delete and re-parent prims directly. The USD Importer now supports MaterialX materials referenced in USD files, while the USD Exporter adds support for Shell materials. For studios using USD pipelines across DCC applications, these changes improve interoperability and scene organisation. Nonetheless, compatibility with downstream tools should be verified before adoption.

Arnold integration updates

The Arnold for 3ds Max plugin (MAXtoA 5.8.3.2) updates to the Arnold 7.4.3 core. It introduces a new Inference Imager, allowing image-to-image machine-learning models via the ONNX framework to stylise rendered output. There are also performance improvements in global light sampling and GPU volume rendering. The ML-based Inference Imager is potentially interesting for stylised render pipelines, though users should evaluate render time and output quality within their colour-management setup.

Fixes and workflow polish

Several workflow refinements improve day-to-day usability. The Slate Material Editor’s thumbnail cache now holds unique thumbnails for different colour-management settings, avoiding unnecessary re-renders when toggling view transforms. Users can disable “Update Browser Samples” to speed up interaction when preview accuracy is less critical. Stability fixes address Biped crashes when keyframing twist bones or setting IK keys with sub-animations enabled. In the Skin modifier, weight changes made using the Remove Zero Weights tool are now properly committed when switching bones. Cloth simulation behaviour has also been restored to match results from previous versions after inconsistencies in 2026.0–2026.2.

Licensing, system requirements & pricing

3ds Max 2026.3 runs on Windows 10 or later and is available exclusively via subscription. Pricing is set at 255 USD per month or 2,010 USD per year. In many regions, artists earning under 100,000 USD annually and working on projects valued under that amount qualify for the Indie subscription at 330 USD per year. Always verify eligibility and regional pricing before purchase.

Editorial verdict

3ds Max 2026.3 is not a major overhaul but a purposeful iteration. It strengthens modelling precision, improves material management, expands USD interoperability and introduces an ML-based stylisation tool in Arnold. For production artists in arch-viz, motion graphics and real-time asset pipelines, these modest but thoughtful refinements can streamline daily work.

The Inference Imager’s machine-learning workflow should be evaluated for integration stability and render-time overhead. The “up to 9,999 materials” limit on the Material Switcher may vary depending on scene complexity. USD enhancements look promising but must be validated against existing DCCs and pipeline tools.

As with any version upgrade, test the new tools and modifiers in a controlled environment before deploying across your pipeline.

The post Autodesk 3ds Max 2026.3: A modest update with key workflow tweaks first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mike Kuhn.

The Camera Array Tool for Blender, developed by ToppiNappi (Olli Huttunen), generates camera rigs directly from 3D geometry. The add-on places virtual cameras at the centre of each polygon on a selected mesh and orients them according to the surface normal.

Users can decide whether the cameras face inward, outward, or in both directions. The tool allows the creation of custom rigs as well as prebuilt configurations, including grids, spheres, and cylinders. Once generated, the camera positions remain linked to the surface, meaning scaling or editing the underlying mesh automatically updates the rig.

Built for image-based reconstruction

Each camera in an array can render still images or animation sequences, stored in user-defined folders. The output data includes COLMAP text files—cameras.txt, images.txt, and points3D.txt—enabling direct use in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) or neural rendering workflows without the usual Structure-from-Motion reconstruction step. Point cloud exports can include colour data, accelerating later training phases in external applications. A density slider helps control file size when generating point clouds.

4DGS and animated datasets

Version 3.2.0 introduces 4DGS (Four-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting) data export for animated scenes. The add-on can render each frame from all cameras while generating corresponding COLMAP data per frame. This update fixes a previous COLMAP issue: files are now written immediately after each frame, preventing data loss if rendering is interrupted. A new “Animated Camera” feature enables rendering the same array setup through a single moving camera—an alternative method for producing dataset sequences.

Compatibility and workflow integration

Image series from the Camera Array Tool can be trained into Gaussian Splatting models using external software such as Postshot, NeRF Studio, Brush, or ToppiNappi’s free Postshot Batch Trainer. According to the developer, the add-on is particularly useful for synthetic dataset creation, virtual production, or academic experiments with neural rendering and multi-view reconstruction.

Simplicity over spectacle

Despite its experimental applications, the add-on’s concept remains simple: turn a mesh into a camera grid and render from every face. This direct approach makes it accessible for both research and practical visualisation tasks. The tool costs €36 and is available through Gumroad. The “Virtual Camera Bundle” combines the Camera Array Tool with the 360 Extractor add-on at a discounted rate.

As with all Blender extensions, users are advised to test the plug-in within their own pipeline before committing to production use.

The post Camera Arrays for the Gaussian Age first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The developer Kushiro has released a free modelling add-on for Blender named Outset Boundary, available on Gumroad. The tool adds an “outset” function, which expands face boundaries outward — effectively acting as the inverse of Blender’s native Inset operation. The developer describes it simply: “Outset Boundary is a simple tool for outset (reverse of Blender Inset) boundary edges.”

Key features and workflow

Outset Boundary allows artists to increase the margin of selected faces quickly while automatically handling overlaps. When expanded faces collide, the add-on intelligently merges and connects them to maintain clean geometry. The tool correctly handles right-angled corners by inserting quads at intersections, ensuring a stable topology even during aggressive outsets. It also supports limited use on curved or non-flat surfaces, extending its usefulness beyond basic planar modelling.

A rotation parameter lets users rotate the newly created geometry around the original edge, which helps when working on curved or angled hard-surface components. A threshold distance setting defines how close faces can get before the merge behaviour triggers, giving finer control over geometry intersections.

In use, the workflow is straightforward: in Edit Mode, switch to Edge Mode, select one or several boundary edges, then right-click in the viewport context menu and choose “OutSet Boundary.” The tool then expands the selection outward according to the chosen parameters.

Version history and updates

The Gumroad release notes list a number of updates. Version 1.3.1 improved the merge algorithm for overlapping faces and added a “Reset Rotation” option. Version 1.3.0 introduced a “Select Boundary” function that allows repeated runs of the tool using the Ctrl + R shortcut in Blender. Version 1.2.0 refined the algorithm and fixed several bugs. Earlier, version 1.1.0 had added the rotation and threshold-distance options, improving precision when working on complex meshes.

These updates suggest that the developer is actively refining the tool based on user feedback and ongoing testing, although no roadmap for future releases is provided.

Licensing and cost

Outset Boundary is distributed under a pay-what-you-want model (“$0+”) on Gumroad, making it effectively free to download. The developer notes that the tool is still under improvement but already stable enough for use. No explicit licence terms are stated regarding commercial use or redistribution, so users should verify conditions directly on the Gumroad page before deploying it in commercial projects.

Why it matters for production artists

In hard-surface modelling, the ability to expand face boundaries outward rather than only inward is useful when building shells, adding frame edges, or constructing offset geometry. Outset Boundary directly fills that gap in Blender’s standard toolkit. Its ability to merge overlapping faces is particularly helpful when maintaining clean topology across connected panels or modular assets. By simplifying the expansion process and offering quick iterative controls, the tool could save time in environment, prop, and mechanical modelling workflows. However, as with all community add-ons, production artists should confirm its behaviour on large meshes, non-planar geometry and complex Boolean structures before integrating it into studio pipelines.

Limitations and caveats

While the developer states that Outset Boundary supports curved and non-flat surfaces, there are no detailed test results for highly complex geometry such as multi-material meshes or dense subdivided surfaces. The ongoing-development note suggests that the feature set may change or expand over time, meaning version consistency across team environments should be monitored carefully.

Verdict

For those interested, the tool is currently available for download from Kushiro’s Gumroad page. As always, any newly released add-on should be tested thoroughly in production-like conditions before being used on deliverables.

Outset Boundary (Blender add-on) – Gumroad by Kushiro

The post Free Blender add-on “Outset Boundary” lets you expand faces with one click first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Halloween is around the corner, and while most people are stockpiling fake blood and rubber masks, VK Gamedev has decided to make gore fully procedural. The new 250+ Wounds & Scars Brush Pack for Blender puts a complete collection of cuts, stitches, cracks and gouges at the fingertips of digital sculptors.

The pack is delivered as a set of 4K alphas, organised for immediate use in Blender Sculpt Mode. With Asset Browser integration, artists can drag and drop wound details directly into a sculpt. No hidden menus, no guesswork—just instant damage.

What’s in the box: 250 brushes, neatly categorised

The collection isn’t a random heap of gore. VK Gamedev has arranged the 250+ brushes into functional subsets. The package contains:

• 26 Pores Brushes: Fine surface detail for skin realism. Useful when characters are seen in close-up and every pore counts.
• 75 Scars Brushes: Includes both fresh cuts and healed marks, with stitched options for Frankenstein’s monster or the classic “stitched mouth” trope.
• 42 Skin Damage Brushes: Scratches, cracks and surface degradation. Equally valid for human skin, decayed creatures or weathered props.
• 121 Wounds Brushes: Deep cuts, torn flesh and brutal slash marks. The majority of the set, and likely the most popular category in October.

Why October loves this pack

On a normal production schedule, a library like this saves time. Around Halloween, it saves reputations. Nobody has time to hand-sculpt a zombie horde from scratch when a deadline calls for 40 minutes of gore-ridden screen time. With wounds and scars packaged as brushes, artists can focus on overall design and composition rather than repeating the same torn skin geometry across multiple assets.

For horror characters, the pack covers the spectrum:

• Subtle healed scars for vampires, who may prefer elegance over rot.
• Stitches for the Frankenstein archetype.
• Torn flesh and gouges for zombies, demons and background corpses.

For props and sets, the brushes add instant age and distress. Tombstones, coffins, pumpkins and gravestones all benefit from cracks, scratches and surface damage.

Stylised horror vs. clinical gore

The brushes are suitable for both realistic and stylised workflows. This matters. Horror is not always splatter. A cracked porcelain doll, for instance, uses the same skin damage brushes as a rotting ghoul. Stylisation comes from the sculptor’s restraint, or lack of it. In a Halloween context, that flexibility is valuable. Production artists can match the tone of a project, whether it’s a blood-drenched short film or a PG-13 haunted house ride.

Technical notes: drag, drop, test

All brushes are provided as alphas at 4K resolution. This ensures sufficient detail for close camera work, but also makes them suitable for generating displacement or normal maps for real-time engines. Because the pack is fully integrated into the Blender Asset Browser, applying them is a drag-and-drop operation. For artists used to external file browsing or legacy brush loading, this removes a layer of friction.

As always, test brushes in context before locking them into production assets. Resolution mismatches, topology issues and shader setups can all affect how wounds appear under final lighting.

Beyond Halloween: other production uses

While the seasonal use cases are obvious, the brushes are not confined to October. VK Gamedev lists several intended applications:

• Character design: Adding micro-detail and narrative marks to digital humans.
• Creature sculpting: Monsters, aliens and anything that benefits from unnatural skin surfaces.
• Concept art and cinematic assets: Quick iteration of designs without rebuilding damage detail every time.
• 3D printing: Creating physical props and prosthetics with real geometry rather than painted illusions.

That said, it’s hard to ignore the October timing. For production artists rushing to finish horror shorts, haunted experiences or Halloween marketing campaigns, the timing is ideal.

Verdict: a tidy library of pain

VK Gamedev’s brush pack is not groundbreaking. It is organised, functional, and given the season timely. Halloween productions that require digital damage can benefit immediately. Those who prefer untouched skin may safely wait until November.

The post 50 Digital Scars: Halloween Comes to Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Iman Shirani} has released the Material Assets Browser, a free plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max now available as a public beta. The tool is designed for 3ds Max 2025 and later and addresses a long-standing gap in the software: dedicated management of large material libraries.

Where Autodesk’s own Slate Material Editor focuses on authoring and node-based adjustments, Shirani’s tool provides a structured, persistent way to store, preview, and reuse materials. Its feature set revolves around automation and standardisation rather than design, making it a complementary tool rather than a replacement for Slate.

Renderer integration

The Material Assets Browser is renderer-agnostic and supports V-Ray, Arnold, Corona Renderer, OctaneRender, RedShift and FStorm. It does so by generating materials with renderer-specific shaders rather than relying on generic Standard materials. This ensures that previews and assignments correspond accurately to the engine used in production. The inclusion of multiple engines in one interface makes the tool useful in mixed-pipeline environments where a single studio project may require both offline rendering and GPU acceleration, or where assets must be tested across engines for look development.

MaterialX handling

MaterialX integration is presented as one of the most important technical aspects of the tool. MaterialX files, typically with the .mtlx extension, describe materials in a structured XML format that can represent complex shading networks. The browser can ingest these files and translate them into native 3ds Max .mat libraries. In practice, this means that a MaterialX definition can be imported and stored directly alongside existing Max materials, ready for assignment.

A common pain point when working with external material definitions is broken texture paths. Shirani’s tool attempts to avoid this by automatically parsing texture references from the MaterialX file and appending the relevant directories to 3ds Max’s configuration paths. This ensures that any linked images will resolve correctly in the viewport and during rendering, eliminating the need for manual path correction.

The translation is not described as a perfect one-to-one mapping of MaterialX nodes into 3ds Max shading networks, since different render engines interpret MaterialX differently. Instead, the browser focuses on producing usable, renderer-ready results inside Max while still keeping the original MaterialX structure intact at the library level.

MatCap generation

The browser also includes a MatCap generator. MatCaps, or Material Capture shaders, are widely used in sculpting software such as ZBrush to provide fast, fake shading based on a single image. In the context of 3ds Max, MatCaps are useful for previewing models and for sculpting workflows that rely on quick feedback rather than physical accuracy.

The plugin allows any image to be converted into a MatCap shader. The process wraps the image around a lighting model, assigning it to a 3ds Max material with all necessary parameters preconfigured. This avoids manual node setup and allows rapid creation of a library of preview shaders, which can then be applied from the same thumbnail-based interface as physically based materials.

Interface design

The Material Assets Browser uses a thumbnail-driven interface to present materials. Each material is displayed as a small rendered preview, making the selection process faster and more intuitive than navigating lists of material names. Thumbnails are generated automatically when a new material is added to the library, and they can be regenerated at any time. Unlike 3ds Max’s Material Editor, which is primarily built for editing, the browser’s interface is built for retrieval and assignment. It treats materials as finished assets to be indexed, stored, and recalled quickly.

Persistent configuration

All preferences are saved into a JSON configuration file. This includes the location of the root directory, user interface settings, and library information. Using JSON rather than the Windows registry makes the settings both portable and human-readable. An artist can copy their configuration to another workstation simply by duplicating the JSON file, ensuring that large teams can maintain consistent material library paths across different environments. This persistence means that once a library is set up, it remains intact across sessions. There is no need to reconfigure paths or regenerate basic settings every time 3ds Max is restarted.

Preview generation

Preview rendering is handled internally by 3ds Max. When a thumbnail is generated, the plugin instructs Max to render a simplified representation of the material on a test object. This produces an image that can be cached and displayed in the browser’s gallery. The same process can be repeated for entire folders, allowing artists to update their preview library in batch after a round of edits.

Because the previews are renderer-specific, they display the material as it will appear under the chosen engine. This avoids the common issue of misleading previews when working with multi-renderer setups. The result is a visual catalogue that reflects production-ready materials, not approximations.

Installation and workflow integration

Installation is intentionally simple. The plugin is distributed as a MaxScript package. Users download the release from GitHub, extract the archive, and copy the files into 3ds Max’s scripts or plugins directory. After restarting Max, the Material Assets Browser becomes available as a menu or toolbar command. In practice, workflow integration involves setting a root folder for the material library, populating it with .mat or .mtlx files, and letting the browser handle the rest. Because settings are persistent, the library remains accessible across projects, making the tool useful both for individual artists and for teams maintaining shared repositories.

Development status

The Material Assets Browser is in active development and is labelled as a public beta. Stability is not guaranteed, and the developer encourages bug reports and feature requests through the GitHub issue tracker. The open beta release suggests that the project is not locked down in terms of design, and further functionality may be added depending on community feedback.

Licensing

The tool is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. This ensures that the code will remain open and that derivative works must remain under the same license. Users are free to modify and redistribute the plugin, making it suitable for pipeline integration and customisation at the studio level.

Official page: Material Assets Browser on GitHub

The post Free Material Assets Browser for 3ds Max enters public beta first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Blender, the famously open-source 3D application, has landed on Android tablets—just not with any official fanfare, and certainly not with production-ready stability. Developer epai recently released an unofficial port of Blender for Android, with tests running on hardware like the Xiaomi Pad 7 and Samsung tablets. While it boots and basic modeling is possible, feature completeness is a distant dream.

Rendering: Black Holes for Material Spheres

According to epai’s technical logs on the Blender devtalk forum, this Android port boots and can handle simple modeling and animation tasks. However, material previews in the shading workspace are visually broken: only small portions of the preview sphere are lit, while the rest are black. The root cause is incomplete support for OpenGL ES—specifically, textures for probes such as probeHdr, probeDepth, and probeCubes do not display as intended.

This is not a trivial bug. As Sergey, a Blender core developer, points out in the same thread, OpenGL ES is not fully supported by Blender’s rendering engine. The upcoming Vulkan backend, currently in beta for Blender 4.3, is likely the only realistic path toward better compatibility and future mobile support.

Still a Hobby Project

The port remains a one-person, experimental project. There is no official support or endorsement from the Blender Foundation. Current releases are not linked on blender.org, and users looking for APKs or source code must hunt through developer forums for the latest builds. epai has stated his intention to improve input handling (touch, keyboard shortcuts), but stable releases or user support are not available.

Input: Stylus, Touch, and Basic Shortcuts

Early builds can register touch input and basic shortcuts, and epai notes limited success with modeling and simple animation creation on Android devices. Advanced input—such as pressure-sensitive stylus support or multi-touch gestures—is not mentioned in any available logs. If you like your 3D work with an extra side of beta-testing, you’ll feel at home here.

Blender on android test
byu/notrealadnan inblender

Hardware: Can Android Keep Up?

Anecdotal commentary from the r/blender Reddit thread suggests that today’s Android tablets are “almost as fast and way more efficient” than the laptops Blender ran on fifteen years ago. While this points to decent baseline performance, it says nothing about stability, feature parity, or support for complex production scenes. No benchmarks, stress tests, or comparative statistics are available.

Vulkan or Bust

The consensus, both from epai and Blender’s own developers, is clear: don’t expect reliable rendering or full feature support until Blender’s Vulkan backend is both finished and well-supported on Android devices. Vulkan is actively being developed for Blender 4.3+, but Android drivers and device support remain variable and unpredictable.

Download If You Dare

Anyone brave enough to test this Android port should expect instability, major rendering bugs, and missing features. As always, experimental builds must be thoroughly tested before risking them on live productions.

The post Blender on Android: Ported, Not Polished Yet first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Wrap Gen is a procedural wrapping tool for Blender, created by Hodgson3D. It allows users to wrap custom geometry around objects using guide curves and geometry nodes. The tool supports both poly and bezier curves as guides, enabling users to define the path of the wrap. Users can choose to array objects along the wrap or wrap single objects along the curve. An internal shrinkwrap/convex hull system ensures that the wrap conforms to the contours of the target mesh, behaving like a tight rope or strap over concave and convex areas.

Key Features

• Custom Geometry Wrapping: Assign your own geometry to be wrapped around the target mesh.
• Wrap Count Control: Set the desired number of wraps. For individual control, set the wrap count to “1” and duplicate the guide curve in edit mode.
• Curve Radius Adjustment: Dial in where the wraps interact with the target mesh by adjusting the curve radius.
• Target Mesh or Collection: Choose to wrap around a single mesh or a collection of objects.
• Array Option: Decide whether to array the wrap mesh along the curve or wrap a single object.
• Randomization Settings: Add randomness to offset, rotation, and spin with exposed seed parameters for quick iterations.
• Scatter Meshes: Scatter objects along the wraps to add knots or imperfections, enhancing the organic look.
• Self-Collision Detection: Enable self-collision to generate more realistic layering of wraps.
• Convex Hull Normals: Convert the target mesh to a convex hull to sample normals from, aiding in wrap alignment.
• Alignment to Normals: Align wraps to the normals of the target mesh for non-uniform objects like straps.
• Merge Threshold: Adjust the merge threshold to control the merging of vertices after deformation.
• Default Wrap Settings: Use default settings for profile radius, resolution, and curve resolution when no custom wrap mesh is assigned.

Usage Steps

1. Draw out a guide curve (poly or bezier).
2. Set the desired number of wraps.
3. Adjust the curve radius to define interaction with the target
4. Assign your target mesh or collection and the wrap mesh.
5. Customize settings for randomness, alignment, and more.

Compatibility and Availability

Wrap Gen is compatible with Blender versions 4.1 through 4.4. It is available for purchase at Superhive Market for $10.99, currently discounted to $8.24.

Final Thoughts

Wrap Gen offers a procedural approach to wrapping geometry in Blender, streamlining the process and providing extensive customization options. As with any new tool, it’s advisable to test its integration within your specific pipeline before full-scale implementation.

モデルに複数のケーブルなどを巻き付けるのに便利なBlender用モディファイアのWrap Genが現在セール中です。https://t.co/sXobyzoxa4… pic.twitter.com/73DPdowVBL

— ModelingHappy (@happy_modeling) May 21, 2025

The post Wrap Gen: Because Your Mesh Deserves a Hug first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Maxon has officially announced the end of ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini, the two simplified versions of its professional sculpting software ZBrush. According to the official FAQ, both products will enter Limited Maintenance Mode on May 30, 2025. From this date, ZBrushCore will no longer be available for purchase, and ZBrushCoreMini will not be available for download. Existing users may continue to use the software; however, no new enhancements will be released.

Monthly subscription licenses of ZBrushCore will renew until September 30, 2025. Technical support for ZBrushCore will be provided until the same date. After that, no further updates or installations will be possible. Users are advised to back up their installers and documentation before the deadline.

Shift in Focus: All Roads Lead to ZBrush

With the departure of Core and Mini, Maxon is focusing all development and support efforts on the full version of ZBrush. According to Maxon, this move is intended to align the Desktop and iPad versions of ZBrush. A new Freemium version of ZBrush Desktop is on its way, aiming to provide a free entry point for users. Details about this upcoming version are yet to be announced.

For anyone still using ZBrushCore or ZBrushCoreMini in training contexts, classrooms, or budget-limited workflows, this change likely requires a significant pipeline reevaluation. There is no mention of any transition offers or pricing discounts for Core users looking to upgrade to ZBrush. As of now, pricing information for ZBrush is only available directly via Maxon.

What’s Next?

Maxon’s discontinuation of ZBrushCore and Mini is part of a broader product consolidation strategy. While this simplifies the product line on paper, it also removes low-cost entry points for students, hobbyists, and studios who preferred using stripped-down tools for quick sculpting tasks or prototyping.

Whether this strategy pays off for Maxon will depend on how many users are willing to jump to the fully-featured version of ZBrush, with its deeper learning curve and steeper cost. For production artists, it’s important to note that any ZTool (ZTL), ZProject (ZPR), or other related ZBrushCore or ZBrushCoreMini files can be loaded into the current full version of ZBrush. But as with any workflow change, stability and usability should be tested thoroughly before adjusting pipelines or onboarding new licenses.

Final Reminder

ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini are still accessible for current users – but only until September 30, 2025. After that, the lights go out. No more downloads, no more installs, no more support. So if you’ve got a favorite sculpting file from 2019 or an installer buried in your downloads folder, now’s the time to back it up.

As always, try before you trust: don’t adopt new workflows or retire old ones without rigorous testing, especially in a production context.

Source: Maxon

The post Core Dump: Maxon Terminates ZBrushCore & ZBrushCoreMini first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Hair Cards Tool for 3ds Max is aimed at artists handling haircard-based grooming setups. The tool introduces a non-destructive, modifier-based workflow for creating and editing haircards, while keeping the original splines untouched.

Haircards can be generated from splines with a single button click, and the result remains editable thanks to modifiers like symmetry, skewing and AO baking – all of which stay linked to the source. That makes it easy to iterate on style and structure without having to redo layouts. Existing splines can be preserved and reused, keeping base elements intact during adjustments.

AO baking, batch UVs and card editing

A major feature is Ambient Occlusion baking, which can be applied either to selected elements or all cards at once. AO maps are baked directly into vertex color, useful for preview shading or export. There’s also batch UV layout generation with options for packing based on length, area or vertical alignment. The UV system supports real-time feedback while adjusting card shapes.

Cards themselves can be mirrored, rotated, edited or reshaped – with visual handles in the viewport. You can also brush the UVs for finer control. Cards can be sorted by width or length and split into left/right groups automatically for mirrored hair setups.

Linkable and non-destructive workflow

One core idea behind the tool is that it avoids destructive modeling steps: instead of flattening geometry or collapsing modifiers, Hair Cards Tool keeps everything parametric. Artists can toggle between multiple configurations and edit the same haircards from different spline sources, using multiple object sets as input.

To support large-scale grooming, the tool also includes an “Edit Cards” modifier, which enables quick alignment and snapping without altering the spline setup. That allows riggers and grooming artists to work in parallel without breaking the scene structure.

For 3ds Max users, not Blender

This release is strictly for 3ds Max. It does not support other DCCs like Blender or Maya. The tool is delivered as a MaxScript-based package and runs within the 3ds Max environment. Hair Cards Tool for 3ds Max is available on ArtStation Marketplace for 39.90€ As with any grooming or rigging tool, it’s recommended to test the Hair Cards Tool in a non-critical environment before introducing it into production scenes. Compatibility, speed, and usability under real-world constraints may differ from the advertised workflow.

The post Hair Today, Cards Tomorrow: New 3ds Max Tool for Haircard Workflows first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

If your next real-time or game project is missing a stable, saloon or sheriff’s office, this drop is worth a stop: 260 modular Wild West-style 3D assets for Unreal Engine are now available via Fab—the 3D asset platform now fully integrated into Epic’s pipeline, following the merging of Sketchfab, Quixel, and ArtStation. The pack is free and includes environment-building tools suitable for real-time scenes, level design, virtual production, and layout workflows.

All the Dust, None of the Rust

The assets in the pack are modular, meaning they’re built to snap together for custom buildings—allowing flexibility without the need for additional modeling. The aesthetic sticks to the classic Western tropes: weathered timber, dry textures, and rickety charm. There’s everything you need for a rootin’ tootin’ street scene: cabins, saloons, stores, stables, fences, wagons, water towers, windmills, and even cactus models. Though it doesn’t include rigged characters or animations, it does cover the architectural backbone of a full frontier town.

Unreal-Ready, No Rigging Required

The models are optimized for Unreal Engine, and as part of the Fab collection, they’re accessible directly via Unreal Engine 5’s content browser—which now integrates Fab’s content natively. No additional download fuss. Just open, search, and drop them into your project like a bottle in a bar brawl. For those doing previs, layout, or worldbuilding for cutscenes, the assets support non-destructive level prototyping.

Note: Fab’s new ecosystem also includes licensing management and unified asset search—though those broader features are not detailed for this specific asset pack.

Price and Availability

The pack is free, and you can download it now via Fab’s Wild West Modular Asset Pack page. No registration required beyond what Fab already needs. While these assets are useful for real-time visualisation and layout, any use in full production pipelines should be evaluated for stability, scalability, and visual fidelity. No LOD or texture resolution specs are mentioned, so test before riding them into production.

The post Saddle Up Your Scene: 260 Wild West Assets Ride Freely into Unreal first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Excerpt:

Weight painting in Blender is a critical process that assigns influence values to vertices, determining how much a bone affects them during animation. This technique is essential for creating smooth and natural deformations in character rigs. However, achieving precise weight distribution can be labor-intensive, often requiring meticulous manual adjustments.

Introducing Robust Weight Transfer by Sent From Space

To alleviate the challenges of weight painting, Sent From Space has developed the Robust Weight Transfer add-on for Blender. This tool is designed to streamline the weight transfer process, enabling artists to achieve smooth results with minimal effort.

Key Features of Robust Weight Transfer

The Robust Weight Transfer add-on offers a one-click solution for transferring weights from one mesh to another. This functionality is particularly beneficial when working with complex models or when integrating new mesh components into existing rigs. By automating the weight transfer process, the add-on reduces the need for extensive manual weight painting, thereby enhancing workflow efficiency.

Availability and Compatibility

The Robust Weight Transfer add-on is available as a free download, with a pay-what-you-want pricing model, allowing users to support the developer if they choose. It is compatible with Blender versions ranging from 2.9 to 4.1, accommodating a wide range of users. The download package includes versions tailored for different Blender releases, ensuring optimal performance across various setups.

Conclusion

In the realm of 3D modeling and animation, tools that enhance efficiency without compromising quality are invaluable. Sent From Space’s Robust Weight Transfer add-on for Blender exemplifies this by offering a streamlined solution to the often cumbersome task of weight painting. As with any new tool, it is advisable to test it thoroughly before integrating it into your production pipeline to ensure it meets your specific requirements.

The post Weight No More: Streamlining Blender’s Weight Painting with Robust Weight Transfer first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Zen Masters has released Zen UV 5.0, the latest iteration of its acclaimed UV unwrapping add-on for Blender. This update introduces the Zen UV Touch Tool, a universal transformation tool for manipulating UV islands. Artists can now move, scale, and rotate UV elements directly inside Blender’s UV Editor with enhanced precision and control. The tool integrates seamlessly with Blender’s existing UV workflow, reducing the need for multiple operators and streamlining the unwrapping process.

The Auto Unwrap operator, another key addition, provides a direct link to Ministry of Flat, an external automatic unwrapping application. This allows users to generate UV maps with minimal manual input, making it especially useful for handling complex meshes where traditional unwrapping methods can be tedious.

Enhanced Selection and Syncing Features

Zen UV 5.0 introduces the Zen Sync operator, which ensures that edge and face selections remain consistent when switching between different working modes. This prevents loss of selection data when transitioning between modeling and UV editing, improving workflow efficiency.

Additional selection features now allow users to identify and select intersecting or stretched UV faces. This is particularly useful for detecting potential texture distortions, helping artists refine their UV layouts before moving to texturing. These improvements make it easier to maintain clean, optimized UV maps with fewer artifacts.

Advanced Trimsheet and Unwrapping Enhancements

For those working with trimsheets, Zen UV 5.0 expands its trimsheet management tools, offering improved alignment and snapping functions. This ensures more precise placement of UV islands on trimsheets, benefiting game artists and environment designers who rely on efficient texture mapping techniques.

The update also refines Zen UV’s native unwrapping algorithm, optimizing the way UV seams are handled and reducing stretching in generated maps. The goal is to provide a smoother, more predictable unwrapping experience without requiring external applications.

Compatibility and Pricing

Zen UV 5.0 is compatible with Blender 3.6 LTS and newer official versions. A single-user license costs $39, with free updates available for users upgrading from version 4.x. More details and purchasing options can be found on the official Blender Market page.

As with any new software release, it is advisable to test Zen UV 5.0’s new features on non-critical projects before integrating them into your primary production pipeline.

The post Zen UV 5.0: Unwrapping the Future of UV Mapping in Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The MakeHuman team has released MPFB 2, an open-source Blender plugin that brings advanced character generation directly into Blender. Building upon the legacy of the standalone MakeHuman application, MPFB 2 offers a suite of features tailored for 3D artists and developers.

One-Click Humanoid Creation

MPFB 2 introduces a “one-click-create” functionality, allowing users to swiftly generate a basic humanoid mesh. This feature provides a foundation for further customization, streamlining the character creation process.

Parametric Modeling Within Blender

Artists can now perform parametric modeling directly within Blender, adjusting body features dynamically in the viewport. This integration eliminates the need for external applications, offering a more cohesive workflow.

Compatibility with Existing Assets

MPFB 2 supports the direct opening of MHM files within Blender, ensuring compatibility with assets created in earlier versions of MakeHuman. Additionally, all parametric settings are stored as shape keys, facilitating non-destructive editing.

Dynamic Asset Library Integration

The plugin allows for dynamic loading from an asset library, enabling users to incorporate various assets seamlessly into their projects.

Enhanced Rigging and Animation Support

MPFB 2 offers support for Rigify meta rigs and introduces new inverse kinematics (IK) helpers, simplifying the rigging process. Users can also store poses, enhancing animation workflows.

Procedural Eye Shader

A new procedural eye shader has been introduced, allowing for the creation of realistic eye materials without relying on image textures.

System Requirements and Availability

MPFB 2 requires Blender version 4.2 or higher. The plugin is free to download and is available under a GPLv3 license. For more information and to access the plugin, visit the official MPFB page.

Note: While MPFB 2 offers a robust set of features, it’s advisable to thoroughly test the plugin within your specific production pipeline to ensure compatibility and stability.

For a visual guide on getting started with MPFB 2, you can watch the following tutorial:

The post MPFB 2: Blender’s New Character Generation Sidekick first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In the middle of last year, I received a request from a film production company to reconstruct the Art Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa. With the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, the museum’s paintings were moved to a secret emergency storage facility and are now entering into a dialogue in Berlin with works from the Berlin collections. This encounter was to be documented in order to bring the history of the museum closer to the public.

However, the work on site proved to be extremely difficult due to the ongoing war, which comes as no surprise to anyone. Photographs of the building were only possible to a limited extent and frequent power cuts hindered both communication and data exchange. As no floor plans or technical drawings of the building were available, the decision was made to create a complete digital 3D reconstruction of the building and its interiors based solely on image templates – so that virtual insights could still be created. Digital tracking shots were to be created and used in the documentary as a visual introduction to the scenes. For me, this request was a perfect example of the sensible use of 3D visualisation – my ambition was immediately awakened.

Defining the level of detail

The architecture of the museum reflects the neoclassical style, known for its detailed ornamentation and stucco work. Together with the producers and the authors of the film, I considered how detailed the model should be, which areas could be simplified while still retaining the recognition value. For the construction of the façades, we decided to rely entirely on the images from Google Maps. These were up-to-date and we were able to use the image data to define the proportions and dimensions of the building.

My first approach was to use the OSM add-on in Blender to import the street map and create the visualisation on this basis. The Blender OSM addon allows you to import OpenStreetMap data into Blender, including buildings, streets, rivers and terrain. It allows the automatic creation of 3D city models with real elevation data and can optionally use satellite images as textures. A disadvantage and final criterion for the final use is that detailed OSM files in Blender lead to a high number of polygons. In addition, the models often only contain basic shapes without façade details or textures, so these have to be added manually. Not all cities have equally good OSM data, which is why some buildings are only imported as simple 2D contours without height information. I therefore only used the standard 3D view of Google Maps as the starting point for my image template.

Creating the assets with Rhino

Based on the previously defined requirements regarding the level of detail and the elements that should definitely be visible, I was able to start working. I analysed the facades of the model for recurring features and gained an overview of which and how many assets were needed to realistically represent the facade of the museum.

The windows on the ground floor and first floor differ only in height and frame. There were three different types of columns – but the capitals of the columns are the same for almost all of them, despite the different column shapes.

What initially looked like a multitude of different assets became more manageable on closer inspection and I began to better understand the architecture of the museum. Assets that are exposed and would probably also be seen in close-up due to the camera movements, I worked out more precisely to avoid sharp corners and thus create more realism. I only stylised stucco mouldings and frames to their basic geometric shapes. A good balance between detail and simplification still creates realism and saves render time.

I had agreed in advance with the production team on a level of detail that would show the most important elements of the building, but exclude elaborate areas such as stucco decorations and ornaments. It was therefore particularly important to make the assets shown as true to the original as possible. After brief research on the usual asset exchanges such as TurboSquid and KitBash, we quickly realised that we had to manage without external assets in order to achieve a high recognition value. I therefore created all the required assets myself in Rhino.

Defining the camera movements with Autodesk Viewer

I imported the Rhino file into Autodesk’s 3D viewer so that the production team and, above all, the film’s director could specify which camera movements should be created. Now it was possible to move virtually through the model and specify which areas of the building should be shown.

In this way, we agreed on several journeys that would end in the interior. This type of agreement allowed both sides to plan well. We didn’t have to re-render any rides afterwards and stayed on schedule. We deliberately decided to create the textures in the next step so that we could render test drives in advance without risking long rendering times.

To explain briefly: the Autodesk Viewer is a web-based viewer that allows CAD, BIM and 3D models to be viewed and commented on directly in the browser – without any special software installation. Instead of sending raw files, the viewer offers several advantages: Recipients do not need any special software to view models and can add comments, markups and measurements directly in the viewer. In addition, the original data remains protected as it is only accessed via the web. Large 3D files can be loaded more quickly without being rendered locally, and platform-independent use in the browser facilitates collaboration.

Texturing the model with Blender

Once the model was finalised in Rhino, I started creating the textures in Blender. I imported the entire model as an FBX file, which meant that the layers created in Rhino were available as a hierarchical structure in Blender. This made it easier to assign the shaders. I used the mapping node to adjust the size of the textures in the X, Y and Z dimensions.

I used the BlenderKit library as the basis for the textures, but customised and modified them as required. Together with the production team, we coordinated and defined the desired look and lighting mood. It was important to us to convey the striking features of the building via the textures in order to create a high recognition value.

Textures that were used as a basis
Fassade | Columns, windows and decorations | Metal | Glas

Textures used as the basis for the interiors
Mouldings | Fassade | Columns and decorations | Floor Ground Level | Floor Upper Level

Creating the tracking shots in Blender

The views for the camera movements were defined, now it was time to implement them in Blender. Blender offers the Track To Constraint function for this, with which the camera is aligned to a specific target object. I had previously created the path that the camera should take as a spline. Because the camera always remains focussed on a previously defined object, regardless of its position, I only had to determine the speed and start and end point of the camera movement using keyframes. Thanks to this approach, I was able to create the camera movements flexibly and edit them later if necessary.

Reconstruction of the interiors

By defining the tracking shots for the building, we decided to also provide insights into the interior. We chose the reception hall on the ground floor and the large gallery on the upper floor as the end point for some of the tracking shots. Unlike the exterior views, we were unable to use image data from Google Maps for this. The reconstruction of the interiors therefore had to be based on a few archive images. As the camera panning into the interior of the building is crucial for the atmosphere of the scenes, we also focussed on a simplified environment and placed the striking features of the rooms in the foreground. For the construction of the interiors, I used existing assets from my library or modified them to get as close as possible to the original image.

Assembly of the scenes

After the final rendering of the sequences in Blender, they were edited in Premiere Pro. Each tracking shot, which filmed the exterior of the building, ended in the interior of the museum and served as an introduction for a subsequent sequence in the documentary. The transitions combine architecture, light and movement and create an atmospheric bridge between the locations. The result will be shown as a contribution in the documentary Masterpieces from Odessa – A Museum between Art and War in the Arte media library from February 2025.

Who is Mimicry / Aljosha Apitzsch ?

I am a 3D generalist from Hamburg and founder of mimicry. My entry into the 3D world began with Cinema 4D R16. With an increasing focus on product visualisation, I also became more involved with Nurbs modelling in Rhino. Although I’m still a big fan of Cinema 4D and have occasionally tried my hand at LightWave, I now prefer to use Blender for visualisation and rendering – also because I think the open source concept is worth supporting. I use Rhino to create assets. LinkedIn | Instagram

CGI @ mimicry – for film, documentary and advertising.
Reconstruction | Visual Production
www.mimicry.team

The post Architectural visualisation in a war zone first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Under the direction of Barry Jenkins, MPC explored his unique style while bringing the Pride Lands to life. Combining artistry and technology, the team delivered detailed VFX that capture the essence of the story. Led by Production VFX Supervisor Adam Valdez, Animation Supervisor Daniel Fotheringham, VFX Producer Barry St. John, MPC VFX Supervisor Audrey Ferrara, and VFX Producer Georgie Duncan, more than 1,700 artists, production crew, and technologists at MPC created the visual effects for Mufasa: The Lion King.

A few notes on the scope of the project: More than 1,700 artists, supervisors, and production crew contributed to the making of “Mufasa: The Lion King” at MPC. Storage requirements hit 25 petabytes which is the equivalent storage of 5.6 million DVDs. Rendering the film in final quality took 150M hours. It would take a single computer 17,123 years to complete.

DP: How did you first join the project for Mufasa: The Lion King?
Audrey Ferrara: In summer 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, we received the first draft of “Mufasa: the Lion King” and I was asked to breakdown the environments part of the script. This was the first point of connection with the project. Later on, I was asked to supervise the post-production visual effects, MPC side, and I accepted. How can you not say yes to this story…… But I have to say, the challenges were big and it was my first time supervising such a massive project. September 2021, after working closely on the pre-production side with Mark Friedberg, the production designer, we headed to LA for the shoot!

DP: What was the size and structure of the team involved in creating the visual effects for Mufasa?Audrey Ferrara: In total, we had a staggering team of 1700 artists who played some part on the project, coming from different sites across the world. We had to structure the project in multiple “departments”, not quite yet in the sense of a traditional company structure…. Think of it as an expert department dedicated to the movie. So we had a department for animation, itself split into 3 units, with 3 anim supervisors (Dan Blacker, El Sulliman, Ruth Bailey), due to the sheer volume of work. We had a sets department, supervised by 2 sets supervisors (Andrea Vincenti and Luca Bonatti), who were in charge of all the 77 environments: modelling, texturing, and also the greens library, used to set dress those sets. We had one character supervisor (Klaus Skovbo) in charge of all the animals (118 unique species), one FX supervisor (William Banti), dealing with the water work, snow, fire, clouds….. One techanim supervisor (Will Fife), in charge of animals and dynamic foliage. And one lighting supervisor (Francois de Villiers), who worked with James Laxton, the cinematographer, to understand his style and his typical light-rigs choices.

When it was time to gather everything in comp, we split all the shots in 3 comp units, with 6 comp supervisors (Luke Bigley, Adam Arnot, Anuj, Wineeth, Sandesh, Sourahb), so once again we could work in parallel, and deal with the volume. Lastly, we had one stereo department, supervised by Nicola Casanova, who set up eye divergence early on, at the layout process.

What is interesting is the structure of the show evolved during the 4 years it lasted, following its needs at certain times, so it changed along the way. We had to be flexible, for the schedule and anything else that we couldn’t foresee. For example, we didn’t start the show with 3 anim units straight away… We started with one, then the second one came along and finally the third one later on.

DP: Can you walk us through the technical pipeline for the movie? What software, tools, or workflows were critical to bringing these photorealistic animals to life?
Audrey Ferrara: On this film we start using Unreal Engine from Epic Games.  Using a game engine software creates several new kinds of workflows.  First, because we started the film during a pandemic, we had to figure out a way to start collaborating on full-cg world building while in different cities (London, New York & LA).  Unreal has a kind of “multi-player” function in its editor that facilitates several computers networking together to view the same content.  And then Unreal’s realtime performance allows for the use of VR headsets, which really helps immerse during the exploration process.

We also used Unreal to do our virtual shooting process.  Once our shoot is completed, we have a rough layout of our movie in this game-engine type state, and we download each take as data into the MPC main pipeline to start creating all the photo-realistic work.  We still use Autodesk Maya as a main workbench.  This is where animators do their job, and where a lot of shot construction happens.  We use Houdini for complex simulations for water and fur movement, as well as the procedural creation of very complex environments phenomena, to finish the 3D work on shots.  All of that then ends up in Renderman.  We have teams at MPC who are always updating material shader definitions based on the latest understandings, and we saw great improvements on the rendering of fur in particular for this show.  Lighting work in Katana for final lighting setups and pipeline.  Finally we use Nuke for the ability to really get into both the subtleties of how a photographic looks, but work on complex ideas like how the sun moves through atmosphere, or how a lion made of clouds changes over time.

All in all its a big chain of software, one for each specialist job.   Within each commercial software, of course there are years of MPC tools that aid in tasks, or create pipelines that flow the data along the chain.  At MPC there are so many pieces of software that complete the whole studio, it’s fairly mind boggling, but it’s a powerful system that sits on top of some very big infrastructural layers which gives us the ability to operate at scale, and globally.

DP: What were the biggest creative challenges on this project, and how did the team overcome them?
Audrey Ferrara: One of the first challenges was to make all the characters relatable and engaging emotionally: from intense emotion, to very subtle reactions. Iin order to offer the animation team all this range, the MPC character LAB supervisor, Klaus Skovbo, pushed the quality of the model to the next level. The models saw a dramatic increase in the detail, represented in geometry as more and more polygons, as well as the hair count on each character. MPC also reworked its fur pipeline from scratch and developing LOMA, a new fur system. For example: Each lion had over 30,000,000 hairs to achieve the realistic look
of fur. Mufasa’s mane alone had 16,995,454 hair curves.

DP: The environments in Mufasa look breathtakingly real. How did the team approach designing these spaces to feel immersive and expansive while staying faithful to the “original” Lion King aesthetic?
Audrey Ferrara: For quite a few years, and now quite a few films, MPC has developed a very complete approach to fully-Cg, 3D world building.  Production design is so important on any film, and here we own the responsibility to completely represent Africa, the designed spaces of the film that support camera, composition and photography, and ultimately bring a feeling and tone to each sequence via the look of the world of the film.  It’s really one of the single biggest jobs on the film next to the acting.   

We always scout and data-gather from real places.  We’d been to Africa before for “The Lion King” but this time the pandemic prevented us from making a trip as a team.  So we sent local scouts to various locations to data gather and collect our references.  This time many parts of Africa donated content for the journey portion of the story.

You can think of the world building in layers.  There is a library of objects like individual plants and trees and rocks.  But for any one location there is also a library of terrain pieces, like modules of the required landscape that allow for complexity near the camera.  The entire landscape is usually a sculpted thing, based on reference.  So you can think of a valley having an overall sculpt, with modular towers of rock that are resued and arranged, and then set dressing with library objects.  Finally, there are ways of combining textures in layers, and procedurally-generated maps for things like weathering and water flow and fine-object scatter distribution, that glue things together.

The team really pushed all of this to the next level for this film.  We had more sets, more space to cover, and more variety than ever.  For each eco-system, there is a whole period of look-development, balancing the shaders of the landscape for different looks.  Snow was a new challenge for this film, and we made an effort to represent the ice crystals and other complexities of icy sheen that builds up from snow that sits for a long time in a cold place.  The team really pushed themselves on the entire film. 

DP: Iterating on models and assets is often the backbone of a project like this. How much influence did the animated classic have, versus footage from “refrence settings” in reality?
Audrey Ferrara: We don’t really look to the animated films to have a big influence on the new films, other than understanding the mythology and legacy of them.  Those films work as animation, and this is supposed to look and feel and relate to the audiences as live-action.  Thus we don’t let things like design influence us too much.  That said, of course we are all personally influenced by those original animated films, and we love and respect them.  We know that they work by giving the audience a heightened sense of storytelling, a magical quality and a sense of beauty and awe, and we aspire to effect people in the same way. So in all our artists’ work, we are very aware of those original films and try to honor them, without copying them. 

DP: How did MPC and the director collaborate creatively on Mufasa? Was there room for experimentation, or was the process more about refining a clear vision from the start?
Audrey Ferrara: All filmmaking involves discovery along the way. Our script, and our director Barry Jenkins, have a strong starting point of view about what the movie is about, the feeling to create, and a kind of mode of storytelling.  Barry has more than a style, but a kind of voice, a way of telling you a story from a very intimate place close to the characters.  Sometimes the camera literally swirls close to their faces, as if you put the audience as close as possible to them. 

Barry was doing an animated film for the first time so we tried really hard to make the whole process flexible for him.  It’s not easy because it’s a huge machine and it takes so many months to go from the idea of a shot to finally seeing a shot become real.  But at the many steps of the process, you see more and more, and by mid-way through the making of the film, Barry was really an expert on the process and could tell if things were going to work in the long-run.  

Disney as a studio provides the schedule and budget to adapt to change over time.  They know the movie will slowly emerge, and that all of us won’t know precisely if it works or what might need improving, until midway.  So we are fortunate to have that kind of support and space to improve as we go.

DP: What role did concept art play in the pre-production phase? Did any early designs significantly evolve during production?
Audrey Ferrara: The pre-production phase was crucial in exploring the new environments needed for the story, and how extensive the journey would be for the heroes. Mark Friedberg’s art department did all the concept art for those environments and then proceeded to build them in unreal, in order to allow the director to scout them in VR. The collaboration between art department and MPC was important, so they could use the assets already built on the first movie, and be a starting point for the rest of the development phase. The art department also established the looks of the characters, almost building the genealogy tree of the lions, so they could define family features. 

The construction of the sets in unreal provided a high quality previz, that resolved almost every creative challenge early one on the show. In some sequences, the final shots are very close to the intentions in the previz, which shows how well thought the design and previz were.

DP: With your experience on The Lion King and the Jungle Book, what changed in the pipeline since the 2019-film?
Audrey Ferrara: I think when we started Jungle Book, the question was “can we do this today?”  Now, this kind of filmmaking is expected.  Films like Jungle Book open up how we think about making films, exploring more and more complex worlds to build, how photography and computer graphics mix, and being ambitious.  The pipeline in its basic way is roughly the same.  We make 3D content, we render it, and we comp it.  

I think world building has probably had the biggest evolution.  Many of those departments in the industry were called “3D DMP” a long time ago, because it was digital matte painting which was the main tool.  That evolved into projections and mixes of 3D and 2D in clever ways.  For a film like this, we now are like a hybrid between a game company and a vfx company in this area, because the approach to world building is so intensive and mostly 3D.  

Also, it should be said that MPC has to do a lot of things internally to be ready and manage shows of this size and complexity.  There are a lot of standards and pipelines and inter-departmental things to help orchestrate it all.    

DP: Virtual production is becoming a game-changer. Did you use Unreal Engine or a similar tool for virtual sets, and how did this impact your workflow compared to traditional methods?
Audrey Ferrara: Mark Friedberg and his art department built all the sets in Unreal, so the filmmakers could do the scouts of sets in VR. After a set was approved, james Laxton, the cinematographer would spend time setting up his lights in the scenes, getting ready for the shoot. Unreal offered an incredible flexibility for the filmmakers, allowing them to walk the environments, art direct live the spaces or the action of the lions, thanks to the quadcap tool developed by MPC, or to change the lighting live if necessery. 
Any kind of reshoot was also easy to do, since we just had to bring up the desired scene in unreal, and shoot whatever was required.

DP: Expectations for photorealism are higher than ever. How did MPC approach creating assets in 2024, and what new techniques were implemented to make them even more believable?
Audrey Ferrara: Yeah, films like this have many kinds of assets, from props and ground-scatter items, 3D set components with multi-layered texture shaders that are very procedural, to the intensity that is a 3D character who can act and interact with its environment.  They all have to be unified by a quality and visual standard or they don’t render together, and that’s a huge challenge.  The teams at MPC attack the problem with a bunch of different techniques, but in the end it has to be art directed and CG-supervised by top talent who understand what ‘good enough’ is for these films, and have the artistry and techniques to back that up.  

For Mufasa, MPC developed a new fur pipeline called LOMA. It allowed the team to have more fur, better control of the curves of the hair, and more precise simulations. The different weather conditions throughout the movie resulted in new challenges for the techanim team: drenched fur, snow covered fur, close ups of lions fighting with their manes interacting with each other etc….. 

Mufasa has 600,000 hairs on his ears, 6.2 million hairs on his legs, and 9 million hairs covering the middle
portion of his body.

DP: The lighting and atmosphere in Mufasa are stunningly diverse across scenes. What was your approach to crafting the look and feel of the movie, and how much of this was driven by technical tools versus artistic intuition?
Audrey Ferrara: James Laxton, the DoP on the movie, spent long hours defining the lighting in every scene for the shoot, aided by the onset lighting supervisor Sam Maniscalco. He chose carefully each single sky, from an HDRI library provided by MPC, and set up all his lights. In parallel, MPC’s lighting supervisor, Francois De Villiers, explored test shots, in order to get familiar with James’ lens choices and style. This happened way before we received the sfirst turnover shots. It allowed us to do our homework with James, and be ready with the shots were coming our way. The continuity between pre-prod, shoot and post-prod really helped keeping the lighting team on brief throughout the production. 

One amazing thing about James’ style of lighting is that he very rarely “tweak” or moves around his set up. Which is an amazing advantage in post-production, when you have a consistent lighting throughout an entire scene. It really helped the MPC team to keep lightrigs clean and consistent .

DP: Motion capture was usedin creating the lifelike movements of Mufasa’s characters. How did you integrate mocap data into the pipeline to achieve something so natural-looking yet entirely digital? Audrey Ferrara: Motion capture was used for our “quadcap” new tool for the shoot: with this tool, the lion front legs would “snap” onto human legs, so Daniel Fotheringham, our client animation supervisor could act the lion part on stage. The rear end of the animal would be simulated to follow the front, and snap onto the ground. This was the part where motion capture helped for the shoot and blocking the action. But once the scenes were turned over to MPC, the animation team made each single frame of the movie by hand. Everything has been hand animated on the movie, after carefully studying and selecting references for the animals.

DP: You worked on “The lion King”, “Jungle Book” and now Mufasa: What is your asset library like, and how did you approach Mufasa versus something like Passengers or Alien:Covenant?
Audrey Ferrara: I would say the biggest difference between projects like “Mufasa” or “Jungle Book” and “Alien:covenant” or “Passengers” is the volume of work and time really.

Both types of shows can be extremely complex to achieve, but on a movie like “Mufasa”, you have to keep going for a long time. It’s a big marathon, with a lot of aspects to manage. Everything is bigger: the amount of time, the amount of work, the amount of people working on the show. And it can be daunting sometimes, to look at the mountain of work in front of you that you’re gonna have to climb, a way or another. 

I felt so overwhelmed with the work on “Jungle Book” that I had to breakdown everything, and take one task at the time, to make it manageable.

So, it is my first advice when a junior starts on a show like this: one step at the time, but keep the bigger picture in the back of your head, so you know where you’re going. And that they’re not alone in it. That’s what is great on big shows: there are a lot of people working on it, and you can always find someone that has the answers you need and help you. 

DP: Do you have a favorite shot or sequence in the movie?
Audrey Ferrara: My favorite shot ever in the movie is the one where Kiros chases Mufasa in the caves at the end: the shot switches to slow-motion, before resuming to normal speed. This shot is SO cool: the lighting, the animation, the camera, everything is great in this shot. Will definitely add it to my demoreel!

DP: If you could go back to the beginning of the project, what advice would you give yourself?
Audrey Ferrara: “Mufasa” was my first time as a VFX supervisor, on a project of that scale. I would tell myself to trust my instincts and the process, to avoid unnecessary stress. 

DP: Without breaking any NDAs, what’s next for you? Are there any new challenges or areas of exploration that you’re excited about?
Audrey Ferrara: Over time I have become more and more driven by design.  On this film I was lucky to participate fully in that phase, and I hope to do more and more of it. 

The post Mufasa heads to MPC first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

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Delta Quad is here to save you from messy topology headaches. This Blender add-on is designed to convert N-gons—those pesky multi-sided faces—into clean, quad-based topology with just a few clicks. Available for purchase on Gumroad, Delta Quad offers a streamlined solution for Blender users looking to tidy up their meshes and optimize their workflow.

What Does Delta Quad Do?

Delta Quad focuses on a specific problem in 3D modeling: N-gons can create issues in workflows requiring clean topology, like sculpting, rigging, and texturing. This add-on automates the conversion process, replacing N-gons with neatly tessellated quads while maintaining the original geometry’s overall structure. The result? Clean topology that works seamlessly across different stages of your 3D production pipeline.

Key Features:

• Automated N-Gon to Quad Conversion: Delta Quad analyzes your mesh and transforms N-gons into quad faces, making your topology clean and animation-ready.
• Preserves Geometry: The add-on ensures that the mesh structure remains intact during conversion, so your designs stay true to your original vision.
• Simple UI: With a minimalist interface, Delta Quad integrates seamlessly into Blender, allowing artists to work without interruption.

Pricing and Availability

Delta Quad is available for purchase on Gumroad for $10+ Dollars -you can support the creator if you want to.. At this price, it’s a no-brainer for Blender professionals and enthusiasts alike.

A Word of Caution

As with any new tool, it’s recommended to test Delta Quad on non-critical projects before integrating it into your primary production pipeline.

The post Delta Quad: The Add-On That Tames N-Gons in Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ShapeLab 2025, the latest iteration of the virtual reality sculpting tool, is now live, offering features aimed at VFX artists, game developers, and 3D creators who prefer to sculpt their digital assets directly in VR. Developed by Leopoly, ShapeLab focuses on VR-based workflows for crafting 3D models with precision, simplicity, and improved speed.

Improved User Experience

The ShapeLab 2025 update emphasizes usability and workflow efficiency for digital production professionals. According to the developers, the software now offers a cleaner, more intuitive interface for sculpting and modeling within a virtual reality space. Stability and smoother navigation have also been prioritized – good news for artists tired of juggling laggy VR tools mid-sculpt.

Sculpting Features for VFX and Game Development

ShapeLab is specifically tailored for high-detail model creation, particularly useful for VFX workflows and game development pipelines. Artists can mold organic or hard-surface 3D models directly in VR, giving them a more tactile, immersive modeling experience. Key tools include adaptive brushes for modeling, customizable sculpting parameters, and mesh refinements for high-resolution assets.

For workflows requiring VR-to-standard-pipeline integration, ShapeLab supports FBX and OBJ exports, making it easier to slot 3D assets into applications like Maya, Blender, or ZBrush for further texturing, rigging, or animation.

Virtual Reality Focus

The tool remains VR-first, with compatibility for leading virtual reality hardware like HTC Vive and Meta Quest (with tethered PC setups). The VR environment allows creators to freely manipulate their models in full three-dimensional space – no monitor-induced tunnel vision here. ShapeLab 2025 is now available for purchase directly from Leopoly. Pricing details can be found on the manufacturer’s website – currently there are discounts, the usual price for the yearly version is $64.99

A Note on Stability

As with any new software release, artists are advised to test ShapeLab 2025’s tools and features before integrating them into active production pipelines. Simplicity and stability matter when deadlines loom.

The post ShapeLab 2025: Sculpting in VR, Now Sharper Than Ever first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.