Godot 4.5 Dev 5: Shaders, Colors & Abstracts Galore
Godot 4.5 Dev 5 introduces visionOS support, GDScript abstract classes, shader baking, WebAssembly SIMD, and inline color pickers.
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Rendering
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The (further) development of Fusion.
Fusion, the compositing tool in and out of Resolve, has got a big update - and we asked BMD's Simon Hall, what it all means and what the future holds..
Fibric: Stitching Curves into Cloth—Procedurally
Fibric introduces a Houdini SOP-based toolset for procedural clothing creation using curves, featuring UV-ready, quad-based geometry and real-time rendering with Karma XPU.
LuxCoreRender 2.10: Back on Track with Cross-Platform Support and Python Integration
LuxCoreRender 2.10 reintroduces support for Linux, Windows, MacOS Intel, and now MacOS ARM, with updated dependencies and Python bindings for seamless integration.
Lumion 2025: Rendering Realism Gets a Ray-Traced Makeover
Lumion 2025 introduces AI-powered upscaling, enhanced ray-traced water and fog, and a new Scene Inspector for streamlined workflows.
Corona 12 Update 2: Sunlight, Static Meshes & Setups
Corona 12 Update 2 adds support for Sun Directionality, static mesh export from Chaos Scatter, and a unified setup for the Corona Sky in 3ds Max and C4D.
Unity 6.1: Surfing Waves and Shading Smarter
Unity 6.1 introduces 3D water deformation, Deferred+ rendering in URP, Variable Rate Shading, bicubic lightmap sampling, and experimental WebGPU support.
LightWave 2025!
LightWave 2025 introduces RIPR for real-time HDR previews, enhanced rigging tools like Steppit, Handdit, and Pickkit, and new modeling features including SuperPatcher and Construct.
Eevee Enlightenment: Blender Guru’s New Course Shines Bright
Andrew Price releases a comprehensive course on mastering Blender's Eevee renderer, covering fundamentals, troubleshooting, and scene optimization.
ZibraVDB: Shrinking Volumes, Expanding Possibilities
ZibraVDB compresses OpenVDB files up to 100x, enabling real-time volumetric effects in Unreal Engine and Houdini for virtual production and game development.
Blender’s Vulkan Venture: Community Call to Arms
Blender seeks community assistance to test its experimental Vulkan backend with a detailed supported platforms table included.
finalRender Free: A Renderer That Costs Nothing but Demands Something
cebas offers finalRender Free for 3ds Max users, featuring single-device rendering with CPU or GPU. Commercial use permitted; registration required.
Nuke Stage: Foundry Introduces a Virtual Production Tool
Foundry introduces Nuke Stage, a virtual production tool designed for real-time playback, live compositing, and integration with industry-standard formats.
OctaneRender 2025.1
OTOY’s OctaneRender 2025.1 introduces robust rest attributes, advanced Vectron displacement, native decals, a realistic lens camera, and an experimental server node for technical rendering workflows.
Lumion View: Real-Time Rendering Now Inside SketchUp
Lumion introduces Lumion View, a real-time visualization plugin for SketchUp, enabling photorealistic 4K renders directly within the modeling environment. Now in early access.
Arnold 7.4.1: Now with GPU Toon Shading and a Dash of HTML
Autodesk's Arnold 7.4.1 introduces GPU-accelerated toon shading, enhanced procedural instancing performance, and a new interactive HTML-based render statistics viewer.
Unity 6.1: Rendering the Future, One Pixel at a Time
Unity 6.1, set for release in April 2025, introduces Deferred+ rendering, Variable Rate Shading, and enhanced DirectX 12 ray tracing.
D5 Render 2.10: Path Tracing in Real-Time—No, You’re Not Dreaming
D5 Render 2.10 introduces real-time path tracing, an automated City Generator, enhanced night skies, weather effects, and new AI features.
Good News!
Because the world is the way it is (Gesturing at ... everything), here is a collection of good news!
Arnold 7.3.7.0: Casting Light on Glass and Gloss
Autodesk's Arnold 7.3.7.0 introduces enhanced glass shadows, improved global light sampling, and faster scene updates.
Architectural visualisation in a war zone
Let's do a 3D reconstruction of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art with Rhino and Blender in Odessa (Ukraine)!
Twinmotion 2025.1: Real-Time Rendering with Advanced Atmospheric and Lighting Features
Twinmotion 2025.1 introduces volumetric clouds, projector lights, and enhanced orthographic view rendering, setting new standards in real-time visualization.
Out on its own: Twixtor Standalone
Twixtor standalone offers an easy-to-use solution for slow-motion video generation using AI, but it is slower than competitors. Topaz Video AI excels in speed and quality, making it the recommended choice, even if it doesn't come cheap. Which one is right for you?
Mufasa heads to MPC
The Prequel of a remake of a animated movie, based on a Shakespeare play... and still worth watching! We got a Chance to talk to Audrey Ferrara, MPCs VFX Supervisor for Mufasa
Redshift 2025.3: Lighting the Way to Better Renders
Maxon's Redshift 2025.3 enhances volume scattering, USD procedural support, and introduces experimental compatibility with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs.
LightWave 2025: Something is coming
LightWave Digital unveils LightWave 2025, introducing RIPR for real-time HDR previews, enhanced Rhiggit tools, LW Construct for rapid asset creation, and a versatile Cel Shader for stylized rendering.
The Rise and Fall of Cyborg
When we think of compositing systems of the late nineties and early two thousands, Discreet and Quantel come to mind. But for a brief time, there was a real contender to those two powerhouses: 5D Cyborg!
Blender’s New Add-on: Because Waiting Forever Isn’t a Workflow
Samuel Francis introduces the Animation Render Time Estimator, a free Blender add-on that predicts total render times for animations.
Free for All: Post Manager Adds Render Compositing to Photoshop
Post Manager, a Photoshop add-on for render compositing, is now free. Manage multi-pass workflows directly in Photoshop—simple, stable, and cost-effective.
Chaos Unleashes V-Ray 7 for Cinema 4D
V-Ray 7 for Cinema 4D introduces Gaussian splat rendering, OpenPBR support, and enhanced Sun & Sky model.
Unreal Engine 5: Ambient Occlusion Returns
Master rendering ambient occlusion and depth passes in Unreal Engine 5 with Arghanion's Puzzlebox tutorials, enhancing your real-time VFX workflow.
NVIDIA’s Project DIGITS: A Tiny Powerhouse for VFX Pros?
Project DIGITS pairs NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell Superchip with compact design, offering potential for VFX rendering, denoising, and AI workflows. Testing will tell.
Nuke Gets Splatted: Gaussian Splatting Plugin Debuts
Introducing Gaussian Splatting for Nuke: real-time 3D point cloud rendering with GPU acceleration, enhancing VFX compositing workflows.
NVIDIA’s RTX 5090: Overkill or Exactly What Your Render Farm Needs?
NVIDIA unveils its RTX 5090 lineup, promising record-breaking performance for VFX, real-time rendering, and game development. Ready to upgrade?
MoonRay 1.7: DreamWorks’ Renderer Gets a Shiny Update
DreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 1.7, introducing PortalLight, enhanced NVIDIA GPU acceleration, and Cryptomatte support in hdMoonRay.
Terragen 4.8 & Sky Update: Shaping Clouds and Worlds
Planetside Software releases Terragen 4.8 and updates Terragen Sky, introducing GPU previews, cloud exports, and a cloud-painting tool for CGI and VFX professionals.
RenderMan 26.3
Pixar rolls out RenderMan 26.3 with updates focused on real-time rendering, denoising, and artist-friendly features.
Adobe Substance 3D Stager 3.1 Beta
Adobe Substance 3D Stager 3.1 introduces key updates, enhancing material editing, asset management, and real-time rendering workflows.
Chaos Brings V-Ray Beta to Blender
V-Ray for Blender beta is here—free and packed with pro-grade tools from Chaos, including lighting, rendering, and shader features, plus OSL support.
Blender Holograms: Gaussian Splats Meet Real-Time Magic
Splattering Holograms and skeletons sounds like a Slasher-Movie, but it might be the most efficient way to get your "Ghosts of Christmas" done before Christmas. CHeck out the Tutorial by BlueNile 3d!
Procedural Texturing using Houdini and MaterialX
Learn how Houdini's MaterialX simplifies procedural texturing for VFX artists, with a focus on efficient shading and rendering workflows.
Nevercenter Updates Silo and Milo for 2025: Refining 3D Modeling and Rendering
Nevercenter launches Silo 2025 and Milo 2025, enhancing quick and lightweight 3D modeling and real-time rendering tools.
Chaos Group Unleashes V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max
V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max is here with expanded toolsets, boosting rendering flexibility, materials management, and GPU acceleration for high-end VFX and design work.
D5 Render 2.9: Enhanced Terrain and Workflow
D5 Render 2.9 updates: Terrain tools, AI-based lighting, and pipeline optimizations for smoother real-time rendering.
Substance 3D Viewer (Beta): New Lightweight 3D Viewer for Over 70 File Formats
Adobe has released Substance 3D Viewer as a free open beta. The tool supports over 70 3D formats and integrates seamlessly with Photoshop for a flexible, non-destructive workflow.
First Beta of V-Ray 7
Chaos launches the V-Ray 7 beta for 3ds Max, offering new material creation tools, enhanced lighting, faster rendering, and new procedural clouds for skies.
QD-Oleds by Asus
ASUS launches its ProArt Display OLED PA32UCDM, a 32-inch QD-OLED monitor aimed at creators, offering precise color accuracy
USD, Solaris and Karma in Houdini 20 (and elsewhere…)
Solaris saw the light of day 4 years ago in Houdini 18. When I tried it out for the first time back then, it was still very bumpy and initially put me off. One crash followed another. If that happens today, then it's probably due to the graphics card driver, which is supposed to be up to date.
Renderman 26 is here!
Highlights of RenderMan 26: XPU receives extensive updates that improve lighting support, camera control and adaptive sampling capabilities. Plus an interactive version of the Denoiser with ML and a stylised looks toolset. And the free, non-commercial version of RenderMan 26 is already available.
Engineering data to CGI –what could possibly go wrong?
Almost every major industry that is manufacturing sophisticated physical products uses computer aided styling (CAS) or design (CAD) in at least some steps of its development. Living in the digital age, one could assume that using this engineering output to create media products shouldn’t pose too much of a challenge. Sadly, that is only true if you know your way around some common pitfalls and peculiarities of the engineering universe.
The easy Cloudrendering?
There are many, many companies offering cloudrendering services – and most tell you how you can tweak everything, you have all the control –
and therefor you also need a TD and DEEP pockets, because the first time the bill from the cloud infrastructure arrives, it’s going to be massive.
Our Universe of… Houdini?
Who would have thought that one of our favourite documentaries seen this year would come from Bristol?
Creating a K-Pop Avatar with Character Creator
Seoul character artist Yunji Jung explains a K-pop-inspired workflow using Character Creator, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance 3D Painter and Photoshop.
Elementary!
You’ve surely seen the posters: There’s a new Pixar movie, this time asking “What if the Aristotelian elements have feelings?” The story plays out in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together.
FMX tickets now!
Ticket sales for FMX 2023 started today. This means that preparations for the Stuttgart trade fair, which will once again take place in hybrid form, are entering the hot phase. Ready?
Real-time rendering and modelling tool in a double pack!
With Silo 2023 and Milo 2023, software provider Nevercenter is releasing the latest versions of its rendering and modelling tools. Cost: 160 US dollars.
Otoy unveils the Octane 2023 GPU renderer!
Developer Otoy beckons with the functions meshlet streaming, neural rendering and temporal real-time denoising. An announcement about the closed beta.
Womp: Simple 3D for everyone?
"No downloads or grey apps with 1,000 buttons. Just your browser and your creativity". The website www.womp.com presents itself colourfully and confidently and promises to make 3D modelling easy for everyone. Womp, an online 3D application, is currently still in the alpha phase and is still free to try out. The Womp team promises that Womp Alpha will remain 100% free. A "Pro version" with a wider range of functions is planned for later - the current version has only been released for about a month. A price does not yet seem to have been set.
Who should use the Aurora renderer from Autodesk?
It is aimed at artists who work with Universal Scene Description (USD). What other functions does the real-time path tracing renderer offer?
New pricing for OctaneRenderer!
Software developer Otoy is scrapping its previous licensing model and replacing it with: Studio Plus subscriptions, including numerous assets and software solutions.
Strange New Worlds in Norway
When we talked about the Virtual Production of Strange New Worlds, we only talked about one side – the interiors and strange
planets. But Star Trek is called STAR Trek –
so who made the Spaceships?
Release: V-Ray 6 for Maya
Chaos Group is back with the latest version of the renderer - and with new functions such as geometric tiling, procedurally generated clouds and new shader profiles. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Character Rendering in Unreal Engine 5
Lead character artist J Hill demonstrates the complete UE5 workflow, from importing a model and building materials to final renders.
Houdini 19.5: I/O – UI – RBD -FLIP – PYRO – UX ..
There are no completely new features in the Houdini 19.5 update this time. Rather, there are fundamental revisions to the most important functionalities of Houdini: RBD Rigid Body Dynamics and Fluids Simulations. I/O, i.e. input & output, is another topic that extends across all tools. And as expected, there are some user interface standardisations and improvements - especially in the interactive tools. Let's dive right in!
Attend the free webinar on U-Render!
On 07.07. you will learn everything about Previz and Final Frame Rendering in real time - together with Glenn Frey, the U-Render evangelist! And it's free of charge.
Recreating Skyfall in Unreal Engine 5
Jay H. Patel recreated the Skyfall estate and Aston Martin DB5 with 3ds Max, Unreal Engine 5, Lumen, Niagara and Megascans.
Light Tracer Renderer: Latest version released!
Rendering - faster than the speed of light? Version 2.3 of the rendering software entices with an "online library for materials", "export function for 360-degree videos" and other features.
Pilgway releases 3DCoat 2022.16!
The multifunctional wonder bag among the DCC tools? Digital sculpting, UVs, PBR texturing, painting, rendering and low-poly modelling - what can version 2022.16 not (yet) do?
Pixel Art Shaders in Unreal Engine 4 and 5
Artist and developer Yoan-Dako Petkov presents a series of pixel-art environments and shaders created in Unreal Engine 4 and 5.
Ice and Frost VFX in Unreal Engine 5
Artist Yue.J created airborne ice and frost effects in Unreal Engine 5 with Niagara Fluids water and explosion templates.
Now comes the Corona Renderer for Blender
In future, you can also render such cosy beds with Blender 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2. Artist Adilkhan Yakubov will take care of the porting (and make the bed for you).
Whispy Boom VFX Project Files
VFX artist Simon Trümpler released free Unreal Engine project files for a stylised explosion built with hand-painted Krita textures.
ACES Colour Management in Maya
Two Autodesk tutorials explain Maya's default ACES workflow and colour picking within the application's colour-management system.
Archived UJAM Plugin Discount
DP readers received a time-limited 15 percent UJAM discount tied to the Enrage, Finisher and UVI plugin review in issue 01:2022.
Maya 2022.3 Expands Morph Workflows
Maya 2022.3 adds morph retargeting, mirrored deformation, tangential constraints, GPU jiggle playback and sculpting updates.
VFX Suite 2.1 Adds Metal Support
Maxon VFX Suite 2.1 adds Metal shadows and reflections, Apple processor optimisation, faster Bang blur and glow, and bug fixes.
Geometry Nodes Workflow in Blender 3.0
Satendra Saraswat's 15-minute tutorial builds a stylised scene while explaining Geometry Nodes workflow and node setup in Blender 3.0.
Angie Hybrid Rendering in Clarisse 5.5
Isotropix's Angie combines CPU and GPU rendering in Clarisse 5.5 Early Access with OSL, MaterialX and NVIDIA OptiX.
Lycra Moves You: CG Cloth and Dance
Glassworks London combined CG cloth and dance in the award-winning Lycra Moves You commercial using Softimage, Flame and Nuke.
U-Render Volumetrics Tutorial
Part seven of U-Render First Steps covers real-time volumetrics, fog, haze and volume scattering in Cinema 4D R19 or later.
Turbopera: An Operatic CG Fish
The two-minute CG short Turbopera turns a fish into an operatic singer; the film was nominated for an Animago award in 2019.
U-Render Multipass Tutorial
Part six of U-Render First Steps covers Object ID, Material ID and Depth passes for Cinema 4D R19 or later.
None of That | Animago Afternoon
The award-winning animated short None of That turns museum censorship into a brisk, technically polished comedy.
Blender 3.0 Begins a New Series
Blender 3.0 launches the 3.x series with faster Cycles rendering, Geometry Nodes work and Asset Browser improvements.
17 Souls
Since October 2020, the Munich University of Television and Film has been offering a new specialisation in VFX as part of the Image Design course. In their first year, the students have already been able to realise an animated film in teams of three; from a reinterpretation of the werewolf myth (from page 102) to mysterious radio messages from a lost plane.
U-Render Tutorial: Final Rendering
Part five of U-Render's first-steps series covers final resolution, the dashboard and output from Cinema 4D.
Sprite Fright: Blender Open Movie
Blender Studio's free ten-minute horror comedy Sprite Fright sends five visitors into a forest with murderous mushroom sprites.
Katana 5.0 Links Lighting and Comp
Katana 5.0 adds Nuke Bridge, expanded Foresight live rendering, USD lighting exchange and reusable material networks.
Procedural Jet Thrust for Blender
Raisy Clutch's Blender add-on generates adjustable real-time jet-thrust effects for distant game and film shots.
Modelling a Vintage Ticket Dispenser
Pulkit Jain explains a Maya, Substance and Marmoset workflow for a vintage ticket dispenser built to practise subdivision modelling.
Octane 2022.1 Previews Faster Caustics
Octane 2022.1 previews a photon-tracing kernel for cleaner, faster caustics plus an expanded subscriber software bundle.
U-Render Tutorial: Camera Controls
Part four of U-Render's first-steps series covers depth of field, motion blur and spherical camera rendering in Cinema 4D.
3ds Max 2022.3 Refines Modelling
3ds Max 2022.3 updates Smart Extrude, viewport filtering, pipeline configuration, OSL wood and file-save performance.
Cinema 4D Lite R25 for After Effects
Cinema 4D Lite R25 arrives with After Effects, providing basic modelling, texturing, lighting and animation for motion graphics.
Digital Production 01:2022 Arrives
DP 01:2022 covers plug-ins, student VFX, camera comparisons and production work on Dune, Raised by Wolves and Encanto.
Maxon Agrees to Acquire Pixologic
Maxon agrees to acquire Pixologic and bring ZBrush under the same roof as Cinema 4D, subject to closing.
Cinema 4D Halloween Project
Creative director Sabour Amirazodi breaks down a personal Halloween project and the Cinema 4D techniques behind it.
U-Render Tutorial: Post Effects
Part three of U-Render's first-steps series covers ambient occlusion, bloom, tone mapping and chromatic aberration.
BOA Dist Distributes Objects in 3ds Max
The free BOA Dist script places small numbers of object instances along surfaces, splines and references in 3ds Max.
Procedural Hair with Blender Geometry Nodes
Character artist Irakli Kupunia demonstrates procedural hair and secondary clumping with Blender's Geometry Nodes field system.