For those who don’t know the tool: Blackmagic Camera turns an iPhone into a manual camera app that can feed directly into Resolve workflows, now with wrist control via Apple Watch on iOS. Or the other professional controllers you might have.

A wrist remote for phone rigs

Phone cameras already live in all the inconvenient places. High on a stand. Gaffer-taped to a car. Wedged into a tiny corner for a cheat shot. The update to Blackmagic Camera targets that exact pain point with a companion app for Apple Watch that can control and monitor the iPhone camera remotely.

The Watch companion focuses on practical set tasks. It can start and stop recording, show framing, and display audio levels. It also exposes key controls from the wrist, including exposure, focus, and LUT selection. The whole point is simple: keep all hands off the phone when a touch would wobble the shot, it is too far away, or the camera’s protection against the environment (Animals, Art Directors, the Public) is already in place. The Watch companion installs through the Watch app on the iPhone, and it pairs up as a remote control surface for the camera app. If you want to see it in action, have a look at this video from 9 to 5 Mac:

New hooks for studio style control

This update also adds support for ATEM camera control when you use Blackmagic Camera with ATEM workflows. That matters for anyone building iPhone based multicam setups that need consistent shading and control.

The same update adds support for Blackmagic Focus and Zoom demands when used with Blackmagic Camera ProDock. That pairs the app with physical lens style controls, aimed at a more traditional camera operating feel on a phone rig. Those demands already exist as hardware controls for compatible lenses in Blackmagic’s camera ecosystem. Here, they extend into the phone rig world when you connect through the ProDock.

HDMI portrait output and other workflow fixes

The App Store release notes for the current version list several production-facing additions and fixes beyond the Watch comanion.

The update adds support for full-screen portrait mode HDMI output. That targets vertical capture pipelines where you still want proper monitoring on external displays, without awkward letterboxing or UI clutter.

Pricing and availability

Blackmagic Camera on the App Store is free. Hardware mentioned in the update, including Blackmagic Camera ProDock, carries its own pricing and availability outside the app listing. But you know that, don’t you?

The boring advice that saves shoots

New features feel exciting right up until they meet real world constraints like wireless congestion, rigging compromises, heat, storage, and a director who wants the fifth take to roll instantly. Treat the companion like any other control surface: test it, rehearse it, and build a fallback plan before you rely on it in production.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccamera

The post Apple Watch control for the Blackmagic Camera? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Neat Video runs as a denoise plug-in inside apps like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve, and Foundry Nuke. It cleans up shots without making you leave your host, which is the nicest kind of cleaning.

What 6.1.2 actually changes

Neat Video 6.1.2 shipped on 9 April 2026. The update targets three very practical areas: support for new Apple Silicon graphics hardware, compatibility with newly released host versions, and small workflow and stability improvements across plug-ins and platforms.

Boris FX welcomes Vegas Pro

The headline compatibility additions are support for Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max GPUs on macOS, support for Nuke 17 on Windows, macOS, and Linux, support for Nuke Studio 17 and Nuke Indie 17 on Windows, macOS, and Linux, plus support for Vegas Pro 2026 on Windows.

If your pipeline depends on host upgrades staying unblocked, that list matters more than any marketing adjective. A denoiser that falls behind host compatibility turns into the most expensive bypass node you never wanted.

Vegas Pro 2026 support on Windows

6.1.2 adds support for Vegas Pro 2026 on Windows. What is clear is the intent: the update aligns the plug-in with the newest Vegas Pro release line, so editors on that host can update without losing access to the denoise plug-in. If your finishing workflow includes cuts or conform work in Vegas Pro, this update keeps that lane open. And, if you think that EWgas is getting a second wind, you don’t have to miss your favourite denoiser.

Nuke 17, Nuke Studio 17, Nuke Indie 17 compatibility

6.1.2 adds support for Nuke 17 across Windows, macOS, and Linux, and adds support for Nuke Studio 17 and Nuke Indie 17 across the same trio of platforms. In a mixed facility where artists jump between OS builds or where show work crosses between Linux workstations and macOS laptops, that cross-platform statement carries scheduling weight.

Some teams will care about this update purely because it removes friction around moving to Nuke 17. Others will care because they have already moved and need the denoise step to catch up. Either way, the result is the same: one less reason to keep an older host version installed just to keep a plug-in alive.

Apple Silicon M5 Pro and M5 Max support

Version 6.1.2 adds support for Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max GPUs on macOS. The practical promise is simple: GPU-accelerated processing for faster renders on Apple Silicon M5 Pro and M5 Max machines.

Updating, licensing, and what costs money

6.1.2 is described as the latest update improving compatibility and support for new software and hardware, and it is free for licensed users of version 6 of the product.

To update, the release directs users to the My Products page. The My Products page requires login access through the vendor site, so you should expect the usual account-based download flow rather than a public direct installer link for licensed builds, or a line of smooth WinGet.

Upgrading from older major versions gets described in two ways across the official materials provided. Owners of versions 1 through 5 can upgrade to the new major version 6 with a discount. Another official upgrade page adds extra detail: version 6 can coexist with version 5 or older and does not replace it in current projects, a v6 demo is available to try before upgrading, and users who purchased version 5 within the last 12 months receive an additional discount.

Pricing of a single-copy license price is €72.90 for the Home edition and €136.90 for the Pro edition on several host categories. The same page also shows discounted bundle pricing for certain host combinations, but the exact bundles and discount figures vary by host section on that page. If you buy based on a specific host, verify the exact host row you plan to license, because the page layout presents pricing per host family.

https://www.neatvideo.com/news/nv612

The post Neat Video 6.1.2 adds Vegas 2026 and Nuke 17 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Nature Generator is a procedural asset library add-on that lives inside Blender via the Asset Browser and an N-panel, sold on Superhive Market, so you can kitbash nature without leaving your DCC.

The whole point is staying in your scene

Nature Generator builds natural assets directly inside Blender. Rocks, terrains, plants, water, and other environment bits all come in as editable, generated assets rather than fixed meshes. You drag an asset into the scene, the side panel recognizes it, and the controls you need show up without a detour to another app. The comparison to Quixel Megascans is obvious, being fully procedural and customizable.

The minimum version requirement is Blender 4.1 or higher. Hardware requirements call for a modern GPU from NVIDIA, AMD, or Apple Silicon. There is an optional texture options folder with 1K, 2K, and 4K texture resolutions. By default, the add-on uses low resolution preview textures, and the guidance recommends keeping the texture folder on a fast local SSD because it affects performance.

Installation stays simple. You drag and drop the zip into Blender, click OK, and the library sets up inside the Asset Browser. The Nature Gen panel appears in the side panel and opens with the N key. From there, drag and drop assets into the scene and start tweaking.

Geometry controls that reward restraint

Every asset follows a similar structure: shader settings and geometry settings, with slightly unique controls per asset. Geometry includes a resolution section, and most assets support a low-poly option. Viewport and render resolution can be controlled separately, and resolution can be subdivided or voxelized depending on the asset.

The documentation also includes the most honest feature statement possible: resolution can go infinitely high, and every asset can crash Blender if you push it too far. That makes the control powerful, but it also makes self-control part of the user interface.

Base shapes come from primitive forms you can alter in edit mode. Some assets follow the structure of a mesh and react to topology. Some are planes. Some are driven by curves. Displacement settings include multiple texture and noise displacement controls, with patterns such as noise breakup, stratification lines, and crack patterns. Many categories expose basic settings and an advanced subcategory for deeper tuning.

At around the moment you start dialing prcoedural detail like it is free, that crash warning stops reading like documentation and starts reading like prophecy.

Custom shaping can use a gradient with its own displacement, falloff, location, and scale settings, with viewport gizmos available when the modifier is selected. Alternatively, a custom curve object can influence the terrain, with a radius setting and a distance based falloff where farther from the curve means weaker influence. A secondary custom shape can be added, such as one curve for valleys and another for mountains.

Scatter was rebuilt to be more direct

The latest update changes how the scattering system works. If you have an older version, the update workflow shown is to download the new version from Blender Market and drag and drop it into the scene so it overrides the old version.

The new scatter setup aims to be simpler with fewer settings. The key change is the import flow. You import the specific assets you want to scatter, then assign them into the scatter collection. After importing, you can toggle an exclude option so the collection does not sit visibly in the scene, while still being used by the scattering system.

Core scatter behavior remains familiar. You can adjust density, and you can still use slope based scattering, altitude based scattering, and noise based scattering. Scatter zones remain part of the tool, controlled by empties with viewport gizmos so you can define a local area for scattering.

The update also introduces threshold softness controls across settings. The stated purpose is scaling down scattered assets toward the edges of masks. That creates a smoother falloff where a hard cutoff would look like a stamp.

Draw where the scatter goes

A major addition in the update is a scatter curve or grease pencil option. You can assign a curve or a Grease Pencil object and use it to decide where scattering appears and where it does not.

The workflow shown is straightforward: create a blank Grease Pencil object, draw directly on the surface, then select that drawing as the scatter guide. The same idea works with a curve object. You get controls for draw radius and radius softness, and the falloff scales down scattered assets toward the edges. There is also a noise option to distort the shape and avoid a too clean, too perfect outline.

Remove the draw object, and scattering returns to the default behavior. That makes the feature easy to test and easy to abandon if a shot changes direction.

Viewport survival mode, now with choices

Scatter can get heavy. The update adds a display mode control in the instance settings. You can display instances as originals, as boxes, or as wire box. Instance scale stays, but the update adds a secondary scale and a secondary scale probability. That lets a minority of instances become much larger than the rest, adding variation without requiring a second scatter layer. Rotation controls remain.

There is also a new wind animation option for scattered assets. Wind time is a value you animate, with an example workflow of adding a driver expression using hashtag frame and optionally dividing to slow it down. The update explains why this stays manual: using a scene time node inside node trees made performance drop sharply, including an example of frame rate dropping to around seven. Removing the time node restored smooth playback. With many scattered objects each carrying the scatter system, the update keeps wind time explicit to protect performance.

Terrains, water, and the new step look

Terrain and mountain assets use a separate X and Y resolution, because resolution on those axes influences the shape and form of erosion. Terrain maps include a random seed, and terrain can generate from noise or be influenced by a custom shape.

Noise displacement includes control over influence on X, Y, and Z, plus a noise seed and standard noise settings. Texture displacement adds rock detail. Erosion settings apply erosion from a selected height, with placement, falloff, and an option that can add mountains and inverted valleys. Boundary falloff can flatten edges.

Water effects add a cube with a procedural water shader. Controls include height and depth, and rivers can be created by combining a water effect value with custom curve shaping that pushes terrain down so water appears in selected areas. Water shader settings appear in the shader tab, including animated noise controls to create the illusion of moving water with separate speed controls on X and Y.

The update adds terrain presets, including a forest preset and a canyon preset. The forest preset uses the scattering system, and trees can default to box display for performance on lower-end systems, with the option to switch back to originals. The update also adds a terrain steps feature on some presets, described as a stepping effect. Controls include the number of steps, detail, strength, and blur, with noise-based selection and influence. Terrain steps can be found in erosion settings, in noise settings, and when drawing along a custom curve.

Trees arrive, and snow gets more physical

The update adds tree assets. Tree shaders follow the same structure as flowers, including leaf color controls and translucency. Leaves can be pushed toward an autumn look by changing colors. There is also a setting for a leaf mask, and leaf shapes are generated procedurally, with controls for scale and mask threshold.

Scatter categories shown include plants such as flowers, wheats, grass, ground cover, shrubs, plus rocks, snow, and trees. Scattered rocks are procedurally generated and have their own settings such as resolution, shape distortion, size ratio, and a seed.

Snow scattering gets a notable twist. Importing a snow object can be recognized and turned into a volume style approach for creating snow on objects rather than only shader based snow. Snow settings sit in the geometry tab, including resolution and displacement settings. Particle detail adds small particles with alpha textures, intended to improve realism for close-ups. The tool also notes that foamy snow detail may require higher transparency bounces.

Materials, uniqueness, and the new override option

Materials are shared by default. The tool includes Make Material Unique to create a new copy of a material for the selected object, and Revert to return to defaults. The update also adds a use custom material feature for the new scatter effect. The workflow shown duplicates a material and assigns it as an override for the scattered assets, so you can make unique changes without affecting the original material used elsewhere.

Scatter effects can stack, and the update shows renaming modifier labels to organize multiple scatter effects. This is the part where it starts feeling less like an asset pack and more like a small ecosystem.

Pricing and what is actually specified

Pricing is specified on the product page. A Personal License costs $99. A Commercial License costs $169. A Studio License costs $259.

https://superhivemarket.com/products/the-nature-generator?ref=586

The post Nature Generator update brings procedural nature to Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Placement in the Pipeline and the Ecosystem: For those who don’t know the tool: Apple Creator Studio is Apple’s new subscription bundle for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor and company. It collects the firm’s long-running apps under one roof, apparently to remind users they still exist.

Old tools, new subscription

Apple has announced Apple Creator Studio, a new subscription at 12.99 dollars per month (129 dollars per year) that combines the company’s creative and productivity apps into a single plan. The bundle launches on 28 January 2026 with a one-month free trial and discounted student pricing.

The offer includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage, along with premium templates for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Freeform will join later this year. Family Sharing allows up to six users. For those who prefer traditional ownership, Apple confirmed that all pro apps will remain available as one-time Mac App Store purchases, a wise reassurance given that some of these apps see updates about as often as Halley’s Comet.

AI headlines, unclear substance

The bundle carries the usual 2026-era headline, F***** AI everywhere. But Apple’s newsroom announcement remains vague on technical details, and none of the tools appear to have been rebuilt or meaningfully modernised.

Final Cut Pro adds Beat Detection, which uses an AI model from Logic Pro to mark beats on a timeline. Editors can align cuts to music, though this feature has been available in competing NLEs for years. Montage Maker auto-edits footage based on the best visual moments, and Auto Crop reformats clips for vertical output. A Transcript Search and a Visual Search are supposed to help locate shots, though Apple did not explain how the algorithms evaluate content.

Logic Pro, MainStage, and Pixelmator Pro each receive AI-branded updates too, with Apple promising enhanced creative tools. No performance data, model types, or reproducible benchmarks have been published.

Motion and Compressor are included in the bundle as if they had recently evolved, but even the most charitable user would struggle to find significant updates from this decade. Their interfaces and functions remain nearly identical to releases from the late 2010s.

Pixelmator and productivity perks

The more active development clearly comes from Pixelmator Pro, which finally arrives on iPad with Apple Pencil support. It gains a Warp tool and cross-platform compatibility. Apple also introduces a Content Hub offering stock-style assets across its apps. Subscribers to Pages, Keynote, and Numbers gain access to premium templates and beta tools such as Magic Fill for spreadsheet completion and a text generator for presentation outlines. Apple calls these AI-powered, though again, details are thin.

The audience question

Creator Studio’s real target appears to be users deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem, those who already own Apple hardware, sync files through iCloud, and occasionally edit or compose but do not rely on frequent software updates. For professional postproduction environments, the package’s low entry cost may seem attractive, yet its long-term reliability is uncertain. Update history for Motion and Compressor suggests Apple’s creative maintenance cycle is, at best, intermittent.

Services first, creatives second

Apple’s newsroom release ties Creator Studio to record-breaking 2025 services revenue. The company’s real strategy seems less about improving the apps and more about turning previously static tools into a recurring-revenue stream. The 13-dollar monthly price places it below Adobe Creative Cloud, though it is limited strictly to macOS and iPadOS devices. Some features require Apple Intelligence-capable hardware, further narrowing the audience. Apple has not disclosed regional rollout details or whether the AI models run on-device or in the cloud.

Verdict for production

Creator Studio simplifies access for hobbyists and educators who want Apple’s tools for occasional use. Working editors, compers, videeogrpahers and musicians expecting frequent feature releases or pipeline stability will likely stay with established platforms. As always, professionals should test any new Apple suite in a controlled environment before integrating it into live projects.

We’ll see when it is released, and how the update cycle will develop.

The post Apple Bundles Its Ageing Pro Apps in Subscription first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Cinebench by Maxon has long been the go-to CPU and GPU benchmark for 3D professionals. It’s based on the Redshift rendering engine that powers Cinema 4D, and its scores have quietly dictated workstation builds across postproduction, VFX, and colour suites for years.

Updated guts for a new generation

Maxon’s official release confirms that Cinebench 2026 has been rebuilt around the latest Redshift core, mirroring the renderer inside Cinema 4D 2026. The test scenes and compiler base have been modernised to reflect current rendering workloads. As a result, scores from Cinebench 2026 are not comparable with those from Cinebench 2024 or earlier. Cinebench 2026 runs natively on Windows x86-64, Windows ARM64, and macOS. It remains free to download from Maxon’s website.

GPU support: Blackwell, Hopper, and Apple M5

The new benchmark now fully supports Nvidia’s Blackwell-series GPUs, including GeForce 5000 and Hopper cards, and AMD’s Radeon 9000 series. For Mac users, Cinebench 2026 is compatible with Apple M4 and M5 chips, using Apple’s unified memory architecture. Intel GPUs remain unsupported, according to Maxon’s documentation. GPU tests require at least 8 GB of VRAM (or 16 GB of unified memory on Apple Silicon), and the CPU tests scale with available system memory.

New SMT test: threading laid bare

A new SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) test isolates logical-thread performance, showing how modern CPUs handle parallel workloads. This separates Cinebench 2026 from prior versions, which measured only total core performance. The result gives a clearer view of per-thread efficiency, especially relevant for render nodes and multi-core workstation CPUs.

Real-world alignment with Redshift

Maxon emphasises that Cinebench 2026 now uses the same Redshift code as Cinema 4D’s production renderer, making the benchmark a closer reflection of actual 3D rendering performance. This move should reduce the gap between synthetic test scores and real-world frame render times inside DCC applications.

That said, as always, benchmark results should be validated in actual production environments before being used for purchase or deployment decisions.

Availability and notes for cautious studios

Cinebench 2026 is available now, free of charge, from Maxon’s official site. The installer covers Windows 10/11 (x86-64 and ARM64) and macOS 14.7 or newer. While the tool’s interface remains largely unchanged, the new test scenes and threading evaluation mean you’ll need fresh baselines for every workstation in your pipeline. Studios that have not updated since Cinebench R23 or 2024 will find their old score sheets effectively obsolete.

Given the tight budgets and cautious upgrade cycles across post and VFX, this update serves both as a wake-up call and as free therapy for outdated benchmarking habits. Social media: Cinebench 2026 drops with GPU and SMT upgrades. Time to see if your workstation’s still earning its power bill.

Fact check reminder: Test new benchmarks on your own hardware before using results to guide workstation or render-node purchases.

The post Cinebench 2026: Benchmark therapy first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.