With Roads, artist Marco Pavanello (publishing under Wolf on Superhive Market and on Gumroad) offers a deceptively simple Blender modifier setup for fast, procedural street generation. The tool lets users create complete, textured roads by extruding vertices from any mesh object.

Once a vertex is extruded, a full road mesh appears. Move the vertex, and the path curves dynamically—no additional modifiers or manual UV mapping needed. As the developer describes it: “Extrude a vertex and you’ll get a road, move it and you will create a curve, everything else is magic.” The implementation is built entirely on Blender’s native modifier stack and geometry nodes, meaning no compiled code or scripts are required.

Procedural by Design

Every aspect of the setup is procedural, from the geometry to the surface texturing. The included textures adapt automatically to the mesh deformation, maintaining consistent line markings and edge detail along curves. The system is designed to keep roads planar (flat), which simplifies viewport editing and avoids unexpected Z-offsets during extrusion. Users are reminded that vertical road modelling is unsupported—the surface will always remain level. The asset works in Blender 4.5 and is compatible with both Cycles and Eevee render engines. The creator explicitly recommends linking the asset library rather than appending, ensuring procedural dependencies remain intact when reused across projects.

Junctions and Lanes on Demand

One of the more technical features of Roads is its procedural junction generator. The setup automatically creates intersections for three-, four-, or five-way road crossings. The underlying node graph analyses connecting edges and merges topology to maintain correct lane and marking alignment. Lane count is also controlled via a single slider. Adding or removing lanes dynamically adjusts the overall width and marking patterns without breaking the underlying mesh continuity. All parameters are exposed in Blender’s Modifiers panel, allowing for live adjustments while modelling.

Workflow and Installation

Installation follows Blender’s current Asset Browser workflow. After extracting the Roads ZIP, users must register the folder in Edit → Preferences → File Paths → Asset Libraries, and set the import method to Link. In a new scene, a basic mesh (such as a plane) can serve as a starting object. Once all but one edge are deleted, dragging a Roads asset from the Asset Browser onto that edge instantiates the setup.

The developer suggests adjusting the Clip Start in the View panel to 1 metre for better visibility of painted lane markings. After setup, new roads are created simply by extruding the object’s vertices. Modifying parameters in the Modifiers panel allows fine-tuning of width, lane count, and material properties in real time.

License, Price, and Distribution

Roads is priced at $10 and distributed under a Royalty-Free licence through Superhive Market. The pluugin was authored in Blender 4.5, tested in Cycles and Eevee, and is classified under the platform’s Modifier Setups category. There is no external dependency, no installation script, and no Python component, which means the asset can be shared or version-controlled within production pipelines without modification.

Use Cases in Production

The tool is positioned for environment artists, level designers, and visualisation professionals who need rapid road layouts without external CAD or terrain plugins. Because geometry remains procedural, layout changes can be made interactively without reimporting or rebuilding the mesh.

However, since the asset enforces planarity, it’s best suited for flat terrains like urban scenes, car commercials, or realtime game prototypes where roads do not require elevation changes. The fully procedural texturing can reduce lookdev overhead, particularly in previs or real-time workflows where consistent UV alignment is required but manual texture painting is impractical.

What It Isn’t

Roads is not a terrain conformer, traffic simulator, or spline-based road network generator. It operates strictly within the Blender modifier system. The description on Superhive does not indicate automatic terrain adaptation or decal projection features. All intersections are handled within the node graph and remain 2D. As of publication, there is no mention of bridges, tunnels, or height-based modifiers. These limitations are inherent to its procedural design and must be considered during layout planning.

Testing Recommended

As with any procedural setup, users should test the modifier within their pipeline before committing to production scenes. Modifier behaviour can vary between Blender subversions, and procedural node setups occasionally differ when linked across projects. The developer’s documentation does not specify backward compatibility or version migration procedures.

Verdict

For ten dollars, Roads provides an elegant, minimalist solution for planar road generation in Blender. Its vertex-based extrusion workflow is immediately intuitive, while its reliance on procedural geometry and materials keeps files lightweight and editable. It won’t replace more advanced road tools that support vertical topology or terrain matching, but for quick previs, layout, or stylised city builds, Roads offers remarkable speed for minimal setup. As always, verify compatibility within your current Blender environment before use in production.

The post Procedural Roads Ahead: Blender Add-on “Roads” Lays Asphalt with Vertices first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Former Meta engineer Daniel Habib has presented a new approach to 3D viewing that runs directly on everyday devices. His project, called True3D, uses head tracking via a front-facing camera to deliver motion parallax on flat screens. The result is a depth effect that requires neither stereoscopic glasses nor a headset.

The system estimates the viewer’s head position in six degrees of freedom, then reprojects the video accordingly. This makes the display behave like a “window” into the scene: shifting one’s head shifts the perspective of the content.

Head-tracked “Window Mode.”

Your front camera finds your head. The view reprojects in real time so the screen feels like a window into the 3D scene.

True3D, no glasses. pic.twitter.com/NonyvtzTKl

— daniel habib (@DannyHabibs) October 1, 2025

No Glasses, No Joysticks

Traditional 3D formats either collapse into flat video or ask users to manually “steer” the camera via drag-and-pan gestures. Habib argues that this mismatches how most people consume media, since viewers usually prefer passive, lean-back experiences. True3D removes that barrier. The viewer does not interact directly with the content, but the system continuously adjusts perspective based on natural head movement. This yields a convincing impression of depth from parallax, perspective, and occlusion, without stereoscopy.

Window Mode: The Old Idea Made Practical

Habib calls this approach Window Mode. The method was first demonstrated 17 years ago by Johnny Lee, who used a Nintendo Wii Remote to track head position. What makes True3D notable is that modern facial landmark detection, iris tracking, and mobile GPUs now make the concept usable on consumer hardware.

Low latency is critical. If the reprojection lags behind head movement, the illusion breaks and the scene feels unstable. True3D applies temporal smoothing to minimise jitter, rejects outlier data points, and processes face data on-device to avoid privacy issues.

A Working Demo, Plus Tools

A live demo is available via True3D’s lab page. The player requests access to the front-facing camera, then applies head-coupled perspective in real time. Habib reports that informal testing with nearly 100 people showed that users intuitively understood the effect without explanation.

In addition to pre-made examples, users can upload their own MP4 files to generate Window Mode clips. True3D also offers an API and a player component that can be integrated into web applications, games, or renders exported from Unity or Blender.

Under the hood, the pipeline relies on volumetric representations, including voxels and Gaussian splats, to render view-dependent video efficiently. The service runs entirely on True3D’s own APIs.

Tried in the Lab

We tested the live demo with True3D’s calibration targets. Tracking was surprisingly stable, and the parallax effect produced a convincing sense of depth with minimal setup. For artists in animation and compositing, such responsive head-coupled viewing could become a practical aid when working with layered scenes or depth-rich shots.

What you feel:

A sense of presence on a flat screen. The view responds like real objects do when you move, so motion parallax sells depth without glasses.

Here’s a favorite:

Steamboat Willie in 3D with Window Mode on. pic.twitter.com/OVL4aT11QA

— daniel habib (@DannyHabibs) October 1, 2025

The Steamboat Willie sample demonstrates both the promise and the limitations. While the shifting perspective makes the clip feel anchored in space, it also highlights that parallax requires more source content. You cannot “look around” objects unless that visual data exists, which becomes evident when foreground occlusions reveal missing detail. Even with those limits, the technology feels like a welcome change from 3D approaches that only push for new and more expensive display hardware. True3D instead leverages the cameras and GPUs that most devices already carry.

Context: Not VR, Not AR, Just a Screen

Habib positions True3D as a middle ground between traditional video and VR. It avoids the isolating form factor of headsets, but delivers presence through subtle automatic interaction. Users do not give up editorial control to interactivity, and content still plays out as authored. Unlike 360-degree video or interactive VR scenes, Window Mode preserves the passive nature of screen-based viewing while layering in a perceptual trick that makes the content appear anchored in physical space.

Availability and Limitations

The demo is freely accessible in browsers that support camera access. Privacy-sensitive users should note that the system requires constant face tracking, though Habib states that processing is done on-device and discarded per frame.

Performance depends heavily on latency. Slow cameras or underpowered devices may produce a lagging, unstable effect. At press time, no benchmarks or system requirements were officially published.

The post Your Screen, Now a Window: Former Meta Engineer Revives Head-Coupled 3D first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Wacom has announced the MovinkPad Pro 14, the newest member of its portable creative pad lineup. Building on the earlier MovinkPad 11, the Pro model introduces a 14-inch OLED display, stronger performance, and extended creative applications. It is designed for illustrators, designers, animators, and 3D artists who need a mobile all-in-one device that can also integrate into desktop workflows.

Positioning in Wacom’s Lineup

Wacom’s product portfolio spans pen tablets (Intuos, Intuos Pro), pen displays (Cintiq, Cintiq Pro, Movink), and fully portable creative devices. The MovinkPad series represents the company’s push into the standalone creative pad category. The new MovinkPad Pro 14 sits at the top of this segment. Unlike the smaller MovinkPad 11, the Pro version is aimed squarely at professional users: it is a tablet, a pen display, and a mobile workstation rolled into one. Thanks to its Instant Pen Display mode, it blurs the line between portable pads and traditional pen displays, functioning as both.

Display and Pen Performance

The Pro 14 features a 14-inch OLED panel with 2880 × 1800 resolution, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and full coverage of sRGB 100% (CIE1931) and DCI-P3 100% (CIE1931). With Wacom Premium Textured Glass, anti-glare and anti-fingerprint coating, and direct bonding to minimize parallax, the device aims to replicate the tactile feel of pen on paper. Bundled with the Wacom Pro Pen 3, artists have access to 8192 pressure levels, tilt support, and a battery-free design. Palm rejection and three programmable side switches make it adaptable for illustration, painting, and compositing workflows.

Creative Workflow

The Quick Draw function wakes the device instantly at pen touch. Wacom Canvas has been updated with new pen variants and multi-touch zoom, while the new Wacom Shelf organizes projects efficiently. For software integration, a one-year Clip Studio Paint DEBUT license and a three-month EX license are included. A highlight is Wacom Lab, a pre-release platform for experimental functions. Its Instant Pen Display mode turns the MovinkPad Pro 14 into an interactive pen display for Windows or macOS, connected via USB-C or wireless. This hybrid role lets users switch between standalone mobile sketching and full desktop workflows.

Performance and Mobility

The device runs Android 15 on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage, expandable via microSD. With integrated Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, dual microphones, stereo speakers, and GPS/GNSS, the Pro 14 is more than a pen device: it is a fully equipped tablet. At only 5.9 mm thin and weighing 699 g, it is designed for portability. A 10,000 mAh battery provides up to 10.5 hours of operation, depending on workload and brightness.

Accessories and Compatibility

In addition to the Pro Pen 3, the MovinkPad Pro 14 supports digital pens from brands such as LAMY, STAEDTLER, and Dr. Grip. Optional accessories include a magnetically attached protective cover, a foldable stand, replacement grips and nibs, and power adapters.

Key Specifications

• Display: 14.0″ OLED, 2880 × 1800, 120 Hz, 100% sRGB (CIE1931), 100% DCI-P3 (CIE1931)
• Brightness: 400 cd/m² typical, 900 cd/m² peak
• Contrast ratio: 100,000:1
• Pen: Wacom Pro Pen 3, 8192 pressure levels, tilt 60°, EMR battery-free, 3 side switches
• Multi-touch: 10-finger support
• Processor: Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC
• Memory: 12 GB RAM
• Storage: 256 GB, expandable via microSD
• Operating system: Android 15
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, USB-C (USB 2.0)
• Sensors: Accelerometer, compass, ambient light sensor, GPS/GNSS
• Audio: Stereo speakers, dual microphones
• Battery: 10,000 mAh, up to 10.5 hours runtime
• Dimensions: 323.3 × 210 × 5.9 mm
• Weight: 699 g

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths:

• Full-gamut OLED display with professional-grade color
• Slim and lightweight design for mobile use
• Hybrid usability: standalone Android tablet or tethered pen display
• Strong pen performance with tilt, pressure, and low latency
• Tablet-class features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, audio, sensors
• Expandable storage and bundled software

Limitations:

• USB-C port limited to USB 2.0 speeds
• No built-in camera
• Battery life depends heavily on workload
• Instant Pen Display mode is still a Wacom Lab pre-release feature

Conclusion

The MovinkPad Pro 14 is Wacom’s strongest step yet toward bridging mobility and professional creative workflows. It combines the color fidelity of a high-end display, the precision of the Pro Pen 3, and the portability of a lightweight tablet. For digital artists who want one device that can sketch ideas on the go, refine them in a studio, and integrate seamlessly with a desktop workflow, this represents Wacom’s most ambitious portable hardware to date.

The post Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14: OLED Power for Mobile Creativity first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Some time has passed since our first report on “The Element” – at least in the fast-moving world of software. But now version 2.0 is available for download – and here is an excerpt of the latest features – whether it was worth the wait or whether you should simply switch your asset management to this system now is up to you.

Together what belongs together!

The outstanding feature of the 2.0 release is that the element now brings together all parts of a 3D asset – not just the geometry, but also textures. In everyday life, this means that searching for textures and their maps is now done in seconds.

Even if assets from other sources are used, they can be organised and found in a clear standard – and nobody has to try to assign sloppily named folders any more! But not only textures – render layers, normals and roughness files are also combined, categorised and made searchable.

And just to remind you: the element manages, indexes, analyses, searches and presents images, icons, image sequences, 3D assets, 3D SceneFiles (Houdini, Maya, Blender …), project files (Nuke, After Effects, Photoshop …), HDRI images, 360° videos and even PDFs.

Infinite scroller

In principle, there are not “too many assets” – but it can be difficult to find them. The new element offers a corresponding view for this: In the “infinite window” you can simply browse through everything without distraction – also good if you don’t know exactly what you want yet and just want to have a look at what’s available in the library.

As everything is AI-based nowadays, the element naturally also includes this – here in the variant that similar assets are found – be it to tidy up the database, for variations of a shot or simply because you can’t get enough of a motif, it’s up to you!

Users who have footage and plates with different elements that are similar in their initial state – I’m just saying explosions – will find the new video player handy. Within the element, you can see what happens beyond the preview frame – and rotate, flip or fold the image with just one click – and see whether the plate is suitable for the special “upside down” application.

Anyone who collects HDR spheres – and let’s be honest, who doesn’t – needs a preview where you can see exactly what is happening – which is why there is now an exposure slider for quickly adjusting the brightness. Handy for everyday use, but why don’t the other tools have this too?

Other features, such as an enhanced ingest for all possible formats, a tidier (or customisable by you!) interface, as well as better error descriptions for ingest and pipeline, and lots of bug fixes and minor adjustments are of course also included.

If you’re feeling nostalgic or want to get an overview, you can download the first article from DP 22:02 as a free PDF here . And if you want to give it a try, have a look here: das-element.com

The post A new element is here! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Victoria Nece ist seit sieben Jahren Principal Product Manager für Motion Graphics bei Adobe. Davor war sie Motion Designer und Director of Animation bei “The Documentary Group”(thedocumentarygroup.com) und leitete Grafik, Animation und Design für Dutzende von Produktionen in den Bereichen Rundfunk, Theater und Bildungsprojekte. Und auf der IBC haben wir mit Victoria über die Updates in Adobe After Effects gesprochen und sie hat uns einen Einblick in die neuesten Features gegeben – hier ein Auszug aus dem Interview auf Englisch, welches Ihr vollständig in unserer nächsten Ausgabe lesen könnt.

DP: What is going to happen with After Effects next?

Victoria Nece: We have some really exciting things on the way. We spent the last couple of years rebuilding the core and enabling multi-frame rendering – so you can really take advantage of the full power of the machine our artists have today. And the “even more power” you’ll have tomorrow – we have that foundation in place. Especially if you’re on Mac with the M1 releases. It’s just “night and day difference” faster with preview and export and even the first launch is like seven times faster now.

We are working to speed up every piece of the users “waiting time”. Another thing we want to speed up is workflows – not just with processing power, but making it so that there are fewer repetitive tasks. The boring stuff can get taken care of by things like Adobe Sensei, so you’re not spending your time on the set-up, but you’re able to get to the creative parts more quickly. Our key focus is giving people more time to be creative. And going forward, a lot of that is about getting the tedious things out of the way.

DP: Do you have an example for that?

Victoria Nece: One of the things we have coming (that I’m excited to be able to sneak at IBC) is native support for OpencolorIO and ACES. We’re really going to streamline colour management, which is going to streamline interoperability – so spending less time on setting things up, and you can get right where you want to change creative things, and not just converting from A to B to C.

DP: ACES in AE?

Victoria Nece: We’re starting with native support in After Effects. Obviously, that’s something we’d like to extend, but I can’t really talk about a timeline for anything beyond after effects so far – but we know that’s the direction where we want to get to. However, inside After Effects we’re going to make it very simple. You have your files and a couple of things you need to set up, but it’s no longer “spend half an hour just getting there”. You’re able to set things on individual clips as well as on exported media. It’s a much simpler way of working in color and we can handle a lot of things automatically.

DP: How would someone get their hands on that release of After Effects?

Victoria Nece: If you are here at IBC, you can go up to our booth and see it in action – for everybody else, it’s going to be really soon (This interview was on September 9th). We’re really excited and it is coming into our public beta.

If you didn’t know that: Our public beta program has the daily developer builds and everyone who has the Creative Cloud Subscription gets access. You can update every day and see the “latest and greatest” – there’s always new stuff. Part of what’s so great about it is that in Beta you can give us feedback on features while they’re in development, and tell us if they’re working for you, the artists – or if you’d like them to work in a different way.

If you’re running into issues or if it is meeting your needs, we really want users to help shape the future of the tool! Particularly with something like Aces, where we know that there are lots of different interop workflows, we want to make sure that what we’ve built is going to work for you. If you want to have that conversation: Visit Adobe MAX, our conference in two weeks – a lot of the developers will be there, and the speakers are also showing interesting, new ways to work.

(…)

DP: And what are you currently playing around with in AE?

Victoria Nece: I love just playing around with After Effects – it’s an infinite toolbox and it’s so open minded about how you use it. We don’t give people a lightsaber effect, but we give people a beam effect and a motion tracker and a glow effect. And you get to assemble these things in new ways. This stacking of different features in ways that they’ve never been used before -and that’s the fun part. I love seeing tutorials where someone makes animation with text animators, but they’re using shapes and using the text animation tools like a procedural shape animation system. I love it when people misuse the tools. I saw someone on Reddit who said, “The paradox of After Effects is that it was built to do things that it was never meant to do”. And we’ve really taken that to heart and that’s something we really want to maintain going forward. Is the idea that after effects, the place where you can do anything.

Again, if you want to see what’s happening, visit Adobe MAX, and the talks will go over a wide variety of industries, workflows, pipelines and everything. You’ll see a lot of creatives going deep into the “place where you can do anything”. And if you have questions: A lot of our certified instructors will be in attendance – if they don’t know how to, nobody does! (laughs)

DP: You’ve been working with AE for many years – what are your personal favourite extensions and Plugins? Or what would you wish for when you were an AE-artist?

Victoria Nece: There are so many plug-ins and scripts that I love – I can’t name just one! Picking one – or even my Top 5 would be unfair, because there are sooo many good ones!

What I would have wished for when I was a Motion Graphics designer were motion graphics templates. I come from the world of documentaries where there are a lot of things that you do again and again. Repetitive tasks like making lower thirds. There’s 80 people in a film and you need to put all of their names on screen.

That’s how I got into scripting and writing tools for After Effects, because I didn’t want to type in 80 people’s names. And with Motion templates, you design it once and then hand it off to the editors – where they just type in the name of the person. And then you don’t have to think about that as a motion designer and the editor doesn’t need to come back to you when they realise that somebody’s name is spelled wrong. It really streamlines workflows so that you can actually do the creative part. Just being able to make something once, make all your different variations, and when you have changes, make all those changes at once.

Oh, how I wish I would have had that in my artist days!

(…)

DP: What do you personally think After Effects will be like in 2040?

Victoria Nece: 2040, that’s very far in the future. We’ve always looked at After Effects as an “asset aggregation tool”. You can bring in anything from anywhere, all kinds of different formats and combine them all into one unified design. Whether that’s a composite or a motion design sequence – and really, it’s only about what formats we don’t support just yet.

There’s a lot of things in the works, but it’s also about “Can we use things like AI and Machine Learning to change how we visualize things to create new content that hasn’t been seen before?” And I think it’s going to be about aggregating all of those different creative components – After Effects is omnivorous and can take in anything and that is AEs superpower. From things that are in After Effects happening right now that will become more and more important, I see more and more people not doing only Video Export, but writing out animations as code – and getting more toward a real time dynamic format. But that’s the coming years.

When we think about 2040, let’s kill rendering. Nobody should ever wait for a progress bar ever again! And at Max, we will show you, how we can take the first steps toward that!

Und wie Victoria schon angekündigt hat – die Adobe MAX, die weltweit größte Kreativkonferenz, steht in den Startlöchern und wartet darauf, die Kreativen mit den neuesten Updates aus dem Adobe-Universum zu versorgen.

Nach zwei Jahren ist endlich wieder Adobe MAX – live in Los Angeles geben sich in zahlreichen Workshops und Vorträgen von über 300 namhaften Speaker*innen Kreative und Promis die Klinke in die Hand.

– Virtuell kann man kostenlos dabei sein – hier gehts zur Anmeldung! –

Vom 18.-20. Oktober wird Adobe im Rahmen der MAX eine Vielzahl spannender News und Sneak Peeks zu den neuesten Innovationen der Creative Cloud präsentieren – darunter natürlich auch Neuerungen für Premiere Pro. In diesem Jahr findet das wichtigste Event der Kreativbranche das erste Mal hybrid statt und wer es nicht nach L.A. schafft, kann die MAX kostenlos als virtuelle Online-Veranstaltung von überall aus verfolgen.

Wer sich die angeteaserten Neuigkeiten aus dem Interview anschauen will, der sollte sich die “Sneaks” zu Gemüte führen – Comedian Kevin Hart führt durchs Programm, wenn die neuen Technologien vorgestellt werden. Bei den Sessions gibt es eine eigenen Kategorie für “Video, Audio, Motion” – unter anderem mit Speaker*innen wie Valentina Vee, Ian Robinson (Creative 111), Hallease Narvaez (Creative Director, Stumblewell) und vielen mehr. Hier ein Überblick über die After Effects Sessions

The post News in After Effects? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.