For those who do not know the tool: There is not much legacy history to unpack here, because Open Light is new. The more relevant context is the developer: Borja Rama is a lighting artist with feature and episodic credits including Spellbound, The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones and Carnival Row. That background suggests the tool was built from actual production irritation, which is usually a better starting point than “we disrupted light.”

Open Light is a small release with suspiciously practical ambitions. Instead of digging through old folders full of “final_light_v7_realfinal_02”, the standalone app generates HDR light textures procedurally, including softboxes, beauty dishes, gobos, Kino Flos and similar source patterns for lighting setups. According to Borja Rama, the tool came out of a very familiar problem: needing custom light textures and getting tired of hunting for them.

The useful part is that Open Light is not just a freebie texture pack with good intentions. It exposes controls for shape, falloff, surface imperfections, gels and grids, then exports the result as production-ready maps. Supported output formats include 32-bit EXR and HDR, with exports up to 4096 by 4096 pixels. Color space options include sRGB Linear and ACEScg.

Rama also lists 87 simulated Lee and Rosco gels, along with controls designed to mimic various real-world source characteristics. That makes Open Light potentially useful beyond straight lookdev. It could fit into compositing, product viz, motion design, virtual production tests, or any scene where a generic white rectangle is technically correct but spiritually depressing.

Open Light is currently available as a free standalone beta for Windows 10 and 11. The download is listed on Gumroad, and Rama’s tools page notes EXR and HDR export for use in “any DCC application”. A macOS build is in progress, but no release date is given.

Open Light on Gumroad: https://2583407267451.gumroad.com/l/openlight
Borja Rama tools: https://www.borjarama.com/tools

The post Open Light: Procedural HDR Lighting Without the Texture Archaeology first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know: Compositing Academy (Alex Hanneman – LinkedIn | IMDB) is a training and development hub created by professional compositors for compositors. The studio produces practical tools and VFX courses focused on real production use rather than theory.

A True Volume, Not a Trick

Compositing Academy has released Volumetric Noise, a fully three-dimensional procedural noise engine for Nuke. The plugin raymarches genuine 3D volumes in Nuke’s viewer, eliminating the need for 2D cheats to fake atmosphere, fog, or cloud layers. It runs on Windows and supports Nuke 16.0v6 through 17, with limited fallback for 15 if the Vectorise CPU option is disabled in the Blink node.

Raymarching is a rendering technique that steps a virtual camera through a 3D field to calculate light, density, and colour at each point, supposedly allowing realistic fog, smoke, and cloud depth.

Unlike card-based noise projections, Volumetric Noise works as a native volumetric renderer. It allows full control over shapes, erosion, and motion, functioning like a simplified 3D render engine embedded in Nuke. The plugin is aimed at compositors who want realistic parallax, light scattering, and shadowing without round-tripping to Houdini or another 3D package.

Real Depth, Real Shadows

The plugin supports one directional light source, providing reactive lighting, shading, and shadow steps for density control. Shadows can be biased and jittered for fine-tuning. Lighting intensity and scattering parameters emulate volumetric fall off, enabling backlit frog and soft illumination effects.

Density, gain, and gamma settings define softness and depth, while erosion and distortion layers introduce non-repetitive structure. These features enable art-directing density variation, wispy edges, and natural cloud breakup, effects usually reserved for full 3D simulations.

Occlusion and Parallax in Comp

Volumetric Noise supports Z-depth and P-pass occlusion. Volumes can be masked against 3D geometry or plate-derived depth data, enabling integration with live-action environments. Although the tool does not support deep compositing, it provides bias and contour softness controls to reduce aliasing in Z or P data.

Alex states that this approach covers around 60 to 70 per cent of typical atmospheric compositing tasks. Deep compositing remains necessary for complex holdouts, heavy motion blur, or fine geometry such as vegetation. Camera parallax and real 3D movement are fully supported. Artists can fly through volumes and preview them as point clouds in Nuke’s 3D viewer, which aids precise placement and occlusion alignment.

Lightweight and Fast

The developer reports near-real-time playback and rendering speeds of about 1 second per frame, depending on sampling and scene density. Built-in optimisation features include slicing, space skipping, and a heatmap visualiser showing where calculations occur in the volume. Empty space is automatically skipped, improving render efficiency. Motion blur is achieved by exporting motion vectors that combine camera and noise movement for use with Nuke’s VectorBlur node. Internal defocus is not supported; instead, users can split volumes and defocus externally.

Designed by a Compositor

Alex positions the plugin as an artist-friendly tool, just the controls you need, nothing more. Presets include base clouds, ground fog, backlit fog, wispy volumes, and world-space scalable cloudscapes. The developer emphasises that Volumetric Noise is procedural, not a pre-baked VDB loader, and aims to offer infinite variety for shot-specific art direction.

Pricing and Availability

Volumetric Noise is available now from Compositing Academy for USD 99. A free watermarked version is offered for testing, labelled as BETA. The plugin requires Nuke Indie or Nuke Commercial and is compatible with Windows systems. Future minor compatibility fixes are planned. A potential version 2 update may involve an upgrade fee. As with all new tools, users are advised to test the plugin in their own production environments before deployment.

The post No More 2D Smoke and Mirrors: Volumetric Noise for Nuke first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Pulldownit is a dynamics plug-in for Autodesk Maya used in VFX, game, and CG pipelines to simulate fractures, shattering, and rigid-body destruction. It bridges between artistic control and physically-based dynamics without forcing your workstation into meltdown.

Shattering without regrets

Thinkinetic has released Pulldownit 6.5 for Maya, introducing a non-destructive workflow for fracture simulation. Artists can now sculpt and iterate breakage directly on models, recomputing dynamics instantly without losing prior setups. Transforming or deforming the original mesh automatically updates the corresponding fracture body, and any shattering stage can be reverted or undone at any time.

The new workflow supports Maya mesh modifiers, with a few exceptions noted in the Maya Script Editor pane. This allows artists to combine procedural modelling tools with physical fracture setups, preserving flexibility throughout shot development.

Xrefs finally get to explode

Version 6.5 extends full support to Xref Objects, meaning referenced geometry can now participate in Pulldownit’s non-destructive shatter workflow. This enables studios using heavy referencing pipelines to keep destruction setups linked and editable across multiple scenes. Thinkinetic notes that inherent Maya Xref limitations still apply.

Clusters, cuts, and control

A new feature allows resizing fracture clusters directly inside the simulation panel, letting users increase or reduce cluster size interactively before recomputing dynamics. Combined with the Edge Fracture mode introduced previously, this gives more granular control over how geometry detaches or holds together under stress. A new Reshatter option, “Set Current as Base Breakage”, lets users define any fracture state as the new base. This means a destructive test can become the baseline for further work without starting over.

Interface tuned for production

Pulldownit’s “Shatter It” window has been redesigned to display only parameters relevant to the current shatter style, reducing clutter and simplifying navigation. A new SwatchDisplayPort shows the active cut material as an icon, giving quick visual feedback and one-click access to its properties.

Several new buttons streamline common operations: “Show/Hide Source Node” for mesh editing, “Refresh Breakage from Source” to update the fracture from the latest model changes, “Revert to Base Shape” to undo deformations, and “Update Base Shape” to set the current mesh as the new baseline.

Bug fixes and stability

The update addresses numerous long-standing issues, including broken undo behaviour across shatter groups, missing rigid bodies, and Maya crashes when faces lacked materials. Improvements also cover fractured clusters, jagginess application, and interactions between dynamic and static fragments. Several fixes target how Maya’s Undo system handles Pulldownit nodes, reportedly improving reliability in larger destruction scenes.

Production advice

As with all simulation plug-ins, users are advised to test Pulldownit 6.5 carefully in production environments, especially when combining it with complex mesh modifiers or Xref structures.

The post Pulldownit 6.5 for Maya cracks a new non-destructive workflow first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.