The new Clothy3D tool promises to make character pipelines more flexible, at no cost, at least for now. The software is designed to auto-fit and rig clothing models across a wide range of 3D characters and platforms, offering a set of converters that could connect otherwise separate workflows.

What It Does

Clothy3D can auto-fit and rig clothes from sources like Marvelous Designer, Daz3D, or iClone Character Creator, and also supports 18 body types of Metahuman. It transfers skeletons and skin weights between characters, rigs static meshes with existing skeletons, and even wraps mesh topology and textures from one character to another. Input and output are handled in FBX, and the devs mention support for OBJ and DXF in converters.

Why It’s Interesting

The tool effectively acts as a universal adapter: skeleton transfers, mesh wrapping, and skin-weight conversions could be used to move assets across different ecosystems without tedious manual setup. For pipelines that juggle assets between Unreal Engine, Daz, or Marvelous Designer, that flexibility might save hours.

On top of that, there’s a marketplace attached, where assets can be discovered, bought, and sold. Right now, content is sparse, but the structure is in place and depending on adoption, this could grow into a useful exchange hub.

Caveats

All of this comes with a big asterisk: Clothy3D is brand new and still in a beta-like state. It’s free to use at the moment, but untested in production environments. While the promise of “fit anything to anything” is tempting, reliability across real-world projects remains to be seen. If you’re looking for a weekend experiment or if your pipeline involves a lot of cross-platform character work, Clothy3D might be worth a spin. Just don’t expect the stability of a battle-tested DCC plugin yet.

Interface, Scenes & Exports

Clothy3D’s UI is built around a three-scene viewport layout: left, middle, and right scenes all sharing a synchronized camera view so you always see from the same angle. The left scene acts as a composite view, reflecting the combination of whatever is imported in the middle and right scenes; the right and middle scenes remain independent and each can host its own models or assets. Depending on which tool you’re using (Cloth Convertor, Character Convertor, etc.), the roles of these scenes adapt accordingly. For example, the middle may show cloth, the right the base character, and the left their merged result.

In terms of the UI controls: it features a layered tool-button system, so choosing a top-level action shows context-sensitive button sets beneath it. Hovering on a tool button triggers a tooltip after a moment, helping with discoverability. You can also control viewing options such as whether faces are rendered front/back, or switch the “Color Mode” (normal color, black, or white) to enforce consistent visibility, especially useful for transparent meshes or to show stitching faces.

Mouse navigation is standard: left-drag orbits, middle-drag pans, mouse wheel zooms; the right button largely is reserved for editing mesh elements (faces, vertices, edges) in the middle and right scenes, or for panning in the left view.

Regarding import/export: the middle and right scenes can each independently import and export their own models or assets. The left scene doesn’t allow direct imports (it’s purely an aggregation), but whenever something is loaded into middle or right, it also appears in left. In the “Account & Import/Export” section, you can also see your user account info (e-mail, remaining monthly exports). Export is capped, users get a limited number of exports per month.

Thus the interface is designed to provide parallel views (source / target / result) in lockstep, while keeping editing tools, visibility toggles, and import/export flows relatively consistent across the different modules.

Character Convertor

The Character Convertor tool lets you ingest an arbitrary rigged tetrapod base character (in FBX or DAE format) and produce a standardized interchangeable base character asset. First, you import your rigged base character into the middle scene. Optionally, you can clean up or edit that character, for example, delete unused meshes like clothes or weapons, duplicate or align meshes, hide faces, adjust vertex positions, or even tweak skeletons and skin weights.

Then you wrap a target interchangeable base character (in the right scene) to match the imported rig. Two wrapping approaches exist: applying an existing deformer template (faster, if one matches the character topology) or manually deforming via point/face matching (with a Character Builder or import of partial shapes, then matching points/faces). As you wrap, you can iteratively adjust both source and target geometry to improve the match. After wrapping, you configure parameters in the processing flow, run automatic steps, and finally export your new interchangeable base character to disk.

In effect, the Character Convertor acts as a bridge: you bring in a rig you want to preserve or reuse, deform a canonical interchangeable skeleton mesh to match it, and output a version you can reliably use in downstream tools like cloth fitting, skeleton transfers, or asset marketplaces.

Tutorials

Clothy3D already comes with a sizeable set of tutorials to help users ramp up. There’s a Studio Quickstart that introduces the core UI and navigation, along with dedicated quickstarts for Character Convertor, Cloth Convertor, Dress3D, Skeleton Transfer, and Deform3D. Beyond the basics, workflow guides walk through Unreal Engine integration (UE5.4), building characters via the Character Builder, wrapping and matching meshes, and using deformer templates for quicker results.

The clothing workflow is covered extensively: tutorials explain converting standard garments, preparing clothes for Metahuman, simulating and rendering cloth, working with Marvelous Designer assets, managing double-sided or layered clothing, and fine-tuning shape control points. Other deep dives address transfer points for skin weights, keeping selected parts rigid, smoothing weights, or adding auxiliary bones. There are also lessons on editing and converting skeletons, rigging static characters, handling complex footwear like high-heel shoes, and preparing/publishing assets to the marketplace.

The post Clothy3D: New Tool for Clothing Auto-Fit, Rigging & Mesh Transfers first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Hold onto your graphics tablets, folks—Blender 4.4 has officially entered beta as of February 6, 2025. The development team is now focusing solely on bug fixes, while Blender 4.5 development kicks off. This beta phase invites users to test the new features and provide feedback to ensure a polished final release.

A Familiar Face on the Splash Screen

Upon launching Blender 4.4, users are greeted by a new splash screen featuring the protagonist from the Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning animated film Flow, created entirely with Blender. Director Gints Zilbalodis recently shared insights into his Blender experience, discussing his solo approach to lighting and rendering for Flow.

https://twitter.com/gintszilbalodis/status/1887201020452765741?mx=2

Animation Gets Organized with Slotted Actions

In the realm of animation and rigging, Blender 4.4 introduces Slotted Actions. This feature allows animators to store animations of multiple entities within the same Action, streamlining the management of complex scenes.

Compositor Enhancements: A Clearer Glare

The Compositor has received significant updates, notably a complete overhaul of the Glare node. These improvements aim to provide more control and better results in post-production workflows.

Grease Pencil and Geometry Nodes: More Power to the Pencil

Grease Pencil continues to evolve, with updates enhancing its functionality for 2D animation within the 3D environment. Geometry Nodes have also seen advancements, offering more flexibility for procedural modeling tasks.

Get Involved: Test and Provide Feedback

Blender 4.4 is in beta until March 12, 2025. Users are encouraged to download the beta version and test the new features, reporting any issues or feedback to help refine the final release. As always, it’s wise to thoroughly test new tools before integrating them into production projects.

For a detailed overview of the new features and to download the beta, visit the official Blender website. Stay tuned for more updates as Blender continues to push the boundaries of open-source 3D creation.

Note: All features mentioned are sourced directly from the official Blender 4.4 beta release nptes.

The post Blender 4.4 Beta Makes a Splash first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

3D-Info is a free, open-source and cross-platform tool that enables the visualisation of 3D scenes in USD format. It is aimed in particular at department heads in filming (camera, set decoration, staging etc.) and in the animation sector such as production management and direction. Other users who want to view USD 3D assets also benefit from the user-friendly interface, which does not require any additional dependencies.

With 3D Info, users can adjust and export cameras and images, take measurements on set, share notes or play animations. Props, animated characters or sets can also be opened. Technically, the tool allows you to view the hierarchy of “stages” and “layers”, which are specific concepts of the USD format.

Current limitations

The first beta version of 3D-Info currently offers limited functions. The focus was on ease of navigation and consistency of visualisation. The visual rendering in 3D-Info is identical to that in usdview and Nvidia’s Omniverse Composer, as the same Storm rendering engine from Pixar is used. The development process required considerable effort to implement the USD framework correctly. The developers prioritised the features requested by partner studios Loops Creative Studio and Plateau Virtuel, which already work with the USD format.

CST’s goal is to support the film industry. With the increasing use of virtual production, the need to validate 3D assets in pre-production is growing. 3D-Info is intended to remedy this situation and facilitate the use of 3D for everyone involved. The idea for 3D-Info was born when Frédéric Fermon, one of the main developers, was looking for a tool that could visualise 3D assets in an understandable way without having to open a DCC. After discussions with artists, TDs and virtual set designers, it became clear that an easily accessible viewer with annotation capabilities was needed.

Development challenges

The USD format documentation is extensive but scattered in places. The file format lacks a formal description, which makes development difficult. Different parts of the Pixar library were created by different people at different times, resulting in slightly different architectures. The choice fell on the Qt framework for the graphical interface, which facilitates the implementation of certain widgets. However, this also brings challenges, for example in the handling of keyboard events. Another issue is the evolution of the library versions. Currently the version used is frozen, but in the future it will be necessary to adapt to new versions.

Public roadmap and support

The developers are calling for the beta version to be tested and feedback to be provided. 3D-Info should at least be useful as a viewer for models or the hierarchy of USD stages and layers. Here you can find the Git, information, images and more: trello.com3d-info

The post CST-USD Viewer in beta first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.

In nuce: As Shawn Olson, product owner for 3ds Max at Autodesk, announced on 28 October this year , the USD implementation in 3ds Max has been enriched with an update (USD for 3ds Max). It is said that thanks to several new core functions of the public beta of this version 0.3, 3ds Max and USD (Universal Scene Description) will move closer together. In his message, Olson explains the advantages of USD – and that it is not just a new file format, but also a programming interface that allows non-destructive collaboration across software boundaries. Last but not least, Shawn sees time and cost savings as convincing advantages of the Universal Scene Description.

In toto: Below are some of the most interesting new features that come with the update for the USD implementation in 3ds Max. For a complete list, see Shawn Olson’s announcement at area.autodesk.com – or the almost 40-minute video linked there, which demonstrates what version 0.3 of USD for 3ds Max (USD for 3ds Max) offers.

• New USD Stage Object: This allows a USD file to be loaded directly into 3ds Max. According to the announcement, this differs significantly from the method of loading USDs into 3ds Max as before – because USD Stage Objects are to be loaded into 3ds Max in a similar way to XRef scenes, with the difference that the source data is not 3ds Max data.
• The ShaderWriter has also been added, which allows users to control how an object is exported – beyond the limitations imposed by the standard export.
• Updates for the USD SDK (Software Development Kit): Users can now work with C , Python and Maxscript.

Clicked further: The graphic in the lead image of this news item was created by Environment Artist Ethan Olson, who works as a New World Environment Artist at Amazon Games .

Sources: cgpress.org ( message from CGPress Staff), area.autodesk.com ( message from Shawn Olson)

The post USD for 3ds Max 0.3 released! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: KeenTools has released a new beta version of GeoTracker – GeoTracker 2022.2.2. GeoTracker is a plug-in for After Effects that can be used to track 3D objects and simplify match-moving tasks. The most important new features of the new version include support for After Effects 17.0 as well as various bug fixes and improvements. GeoTracker 2022.2.2 was released on 18 October. The plug-in is also available for Nuke .

In toto: A number of videos on GeoTracker were recently published on KeenTools’ YouTube page – including some that introduce the plug-in and its range of functions and help beginners to try out GeoTracker for the first time. Interested parties can find the videos on both points linked below.

Click further: The new GeoTracker beta can be downloaded from keentools.io. KeenTools’ range of software is not limited to GeoTracker. FaceBuilder, for example, is a plug-in for Blender and Nuke that can be used to create 3D heads based on photos (Digital Production reported on 11 August this year).

KeenTools GeoTracker for After Effects (Beta)

Basics of Geometry Tracking – GeoTracker for After Effects Tutoria

The post Release of the beta of GeoTracker 2022.2.2! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.