For those who don’t know the tool: Levels is a free browser utility for quick grayscale map prep that can feed any DCC or engine, with code hosted on GitHub by artofpilgrim.

A small tool for the most common annoyance

Levels positions itself as a texture alpha studio in the browser. You drop in an image, dial in a black and white channel mix, adjust brightness and contrast, shape the result with a levels curve, then finish with a perspective or rectangular crop. After that, you copy to clipboard or download a PNG. This kind of workflow hits daily production reality, especially when you need a quick mask for foliage, decals, grime breakup, or anything else that starts life as a photo and ends up as a grayscale control map for shading. It also pairs neatly with a texture painting pass later, when a rough mask graduates into something worth polishing.

Channel mixing, then levels, then stop touching it

The channel mixer in Levels offers six color sliders: reds, yellows, greens, cyans, blues, and magentas. It includes presets for Default, High contrast, Dark sky, Infrared, Red filter, and Stark grunge. The goal stays simple: separate subject from background quickly, then lock in contrast.

Brightness and contrast sit as a linear legacy Photoshop pre-stage applied before Levels. The levels panel shows a histogram and gives input shadow, midtone, and highlight handles plus output black and white handles. Keyboard navigation covers Tab to focus a handle, arrow keys to nudge, and Shift plus arrow for bigger steps.

If you need to keep colour instead of converting to black and white, colour mode bypasses the conversion and applies Levels, brightness and contrast per channel. Invert sits there too, because every mask workflow eventually asks you to flip it and see if your brain calms down.

Crop tools that fix your reference photo lies

Rectangular crop supports free or locked aspect ratios: 1:1, 4:5, 5:4, 16:9, 9:16, 3:2, and 2:3. Holding Shift while dragging forces 1:1. Perspective crop lets you drag four corners of a quad to deskew a region into a rectangle. It uses bilinear sampling, includes a rule of thirds alignment grid, shows live output size, and supports 1 pixel and 10 pixel keyboard nudging. It also composes with rectangular crop, and Reset preserves the pre perspective crop.

That combination makes Levels useful beyond the obvious leaf cutout. It is a quick way to extract alhpa style grayscale sources from angled reference shots that you would otherwise fix in a heavier editor, then stash into a texture library for reuse.

Shortcuts and export that respect your time

Levels supports a real time preview. Hold Space to compare against the original image before processing, after any crop or perspective. Inputs can arrive via drag and drop, paste from clipboard, or open from disk. Exports can go straight to clipboard or to a PNG download. Exports render from the current settings even when the preview defers for responsiveness.

Shortcuts include Space for compare, I to toggle invert, Ctrl or Command plus C to copy, and Ctrl or Command plus S to download PNG. Enter and Escape apply or cancel inside crop or perspective mode. Double click resets a slider to default.

The repository also states that inputs over 4096 pixels on the long edge get downscaled with a toast notice. That limit matters if you expect full resolution scan handling, so treat it as a deliberate constraint, not a surprise feature.

Under the hood, it stays refreshingly unprecious

The GitHub repository describes a no-build step setup. It loads React 18 and ReactDOM from a CDN, and keeps the rest as plain JavaScript split into three ordered script tags.

The file layout is a index.html as shell that links CSS and the three JS files, styles.css for styles, image.js for image processing functions and presets, components.js for UI components, and app.js for the app component and DOM boot. The three JS files communicate via a window.Levels namespace with image.js populating math and data first, then components.js reading it and adding panels, then app.js rendering.

Running locally opens index.html in a modern browser, with the file protocol working for sibling script files. For touch pointer and clipboard testing, serving over HTTP using python -m http.server from the repo root is advisable

This is the part that makes it easier to keep a known good utility around. The tool does not demand a build chain just to exist, which is exactly what you want from a graysacle helper app that should still run when the rest of your stack changes.

Thomas Pilgrim Butters released Levels this week, and describes it as a simpler alternative to opening Adobe Photoshop for alpha textures, with support for alpha masks, height or roughness maps, and stylised monochrome plates from photo references. Thomas Pilgrim Butters is Lead Weapon and Prop Artist at Facepunch and an instructor at Gnomon.

https://artofpilgrim.github.io/levels/

https://github.com/artofpilgrim/levels

The post Levels cleans up alpha maps fast first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The pitch: graphs, not layers

ArcBrush builds images in a node graph. You wire inputs into operations and wire the result into exports. The app focuses on non-destructive editing, with parameters staying live so you can adjust a pipeline long after the first export. The core editor is free to download and use, and it does not require an account for non-AI work (Oh, blessed 2026, when this is a mention-worthy feature of a software….) . It runs as a native desktop app written in C++ and works on Windows and macOS. Linux coming soon.

If you live in node land already, the concept will feel familiar. The difference here is that the output target is mostly 2D deliverables: icons, sprites, UI variants, texture maps, and piles of formats that someone will ask you to regenerate five minutes before lock.

Node count, node types, and the day job stuff

The app has 75 composable node types and type-safe connections that prevent invalid wiring. It also brings five pin types, separating images, masks, palettes, and variants so the graph can validate what you connect.

A lot of the feature list reads like it came from someone who has rebuilt the same export stack too many times. There is auto save with crash recovery. There is a minimap, node search, undo and redo, node groups, per node notes, and sticky notes.

The preview tooling targets production rather than marketing . You can lock the preview to any node output, zoom deep with a pixel grid, inspect RGBA values, isolate channels, and view a live histogram overlay. For monitoring consistency, the app reads your monitor ICC profile and applies correction so the display matches exports via display color management using the monitor profile from the International Color Consortium. Test that on your own display chain, especially if you work across multiple calibrated panels, because colour surprises are lovely… .

On the output side, there are single-image exports and batch exports. Export Batch can produce named files per palette variant, or pack variants into a single sprite sheet PNG while also writing a TexturePacker compatible JSON manifest. Export nodes also support relative paths, and the app can create directories automatically when exporting.

Pixel art and texture helpers, without pretending to be a full DCC

The feature goes for game art and texture workflows, but it stays in 2D territory. There are pixel art oriented nodes like Pixelate, Outline, Dither, Quantize, Palette Remap, and sprite sheet export. Dither lists Floyd Steinberg, ordered, and blue noise options.

For texture work, the app includes Seamless Blend to make images tileable, Noise and Pattern nodes for procedural bases, Tile Preview to check repetition, and a Normal Map node that generates lighting maps from grayscale. This is not a replacement for a full material authoring suite, but it covers the everyday prep-and-iteration loop where you need quick variants, quick tiling fixes, and quick exports without babysitting layers.

If you spend time in texture painting or material prep, the most interesting claim is the pipeline idea: build the graph once, then regenerate every variant and export target when the source changes. That includes a Watch File toggle on input nodes that reloads when the source file changes on disk. The page even spells out a simple case: edit in Photoshop and see the result live in ArcBrush. That makes it less of a walled garden and more of a graph-driven post station for assets.

OpenCV processes images on CPU and GPU, and OpenGL renders previews. For SVG import, it rasterizes via ThorVG. None of that guarantees performance on your particular workstation, but it does clarify that the app aims for native processing rather than another browser wrapper.

Optional AI nodes: credits, cloud, and knobs you can count

AI features are optional. The app has AI cloud based nodes that only reach out when you use them, while the rest of the graph runs locally. There are nodes for text to image, image edit with text instructions, background removal, and 4x upscale powered by AuraSR. It also has differnet models, including FLUX variants and Nano Banana 2 for text to image and editing.

Pricing for AI is a one time credit packs with no subscription and credits that never expire. The packs listed are Starter at $10 for 350 credits, Plus at $20 for 800 credits, and Pro at $40 for 1800 credits. The site also states 10 free credits on signup. Credit costs vary per model and task, and at standard resolution up to 1024 by 1024.

That setup makes it easy to budget AI usage as a production expense, but it also adds a network dependency for those nodes. Treat it like any other external service: check availability, latency, and whether cloud processing fits your client and studio rules. Or if the bubble already burst, and you need to rewire things to the little Docker Server you have in your Cupboard that replaces all the Hype…. If you only want the node graph editor, you can ignore AI completely and still use the full non AI toolset.

Where it fits if you already have node tools

Node based workflows already dominate compositing and lookdev, so the real question is whether a dedicated 2D node graph editor reduces friction compared to existing tools. ArcBrush positions itself as a build once and export everything machine: variants, palettes, batch exports, sprite sheets, and texture prep steps chained together so you can re run them on demand.

First, when you need to ship a lot of consistent variants, like tiered item icons, UI colorways, or platform specific asset sets. Second, when you need to keep a process editable after the first deliverable, because late changes rarely arrive in a neat package.

Reality check before you bet a deliverable on it

ArcBrush looks designed for artists who want node graph control for 2D assets and textures without living inside a heavyweight suite. The free core editor and the explicit credit pricing for AI lower the barrier to testing (Which we’ll do after FMX) , and the node count and export features cover a lot of common production chores.

Still, new tools and innovations should be tested before use . Put it on a few real assets, run it through your team review loop, and see whether teh graph model actually reduces mistakes compared to your current wokrflow.

ArcBrush is available as a free download from the product site, with documentation hosted on the docs portal and community links including Discord.

https://arcbrush.com/

The post ArcBrush turns image editing into a node graph first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: 3ds Max is a DCC for modeling, animation, and rendering, often paired with Arnold and OpenUSD for lookdev and pipeline handoffs across VFX, broadcast, and realtime.

The newsroom tries to explain Max to itself

Over in the Digital Production newsroom, there is a special kind of silence that happens whenever I say the words modifier stack. Half the team nods like they understand. The other half quietly searches for a button called “Make It Pretty”. So here is the deal. 3ds Max 2027 lands with new modeling tools, new deformation noise, selection upgrades, performance work, viewport cleanup, and a few foundation updates that matter to pipeline folks who like their tools modern and their crashes vintage.

Smart Bevel: post Boolean intersections, less cleanup

Boolean modeling can be fast, brutal, and wonderfully irresponsible. The new Smart Bevel feature targets post Boolean intersections and focuses on creating cleaner bevels with less fuss. Smart Bevel is designed for post Boolean intersections and is presented as a way to create cleaner and more intricate bevels with ease. It is framed as a dedicated approach to getting better looking edges after Boolean work, aimed at reducing the need for manual cleanup.

This fits neatly into the hard surface rhythm a lot of artists know too well: cut the shape, stare at the resulting edge spaghetti, then spend quality time repairing the part that was supposed to be the fast part. Smart Bevel tries to make that edge repair step less of a ritual. And yes, Bela asked if this means booleans are finally safe. The answer is still no. But fewer sharp edges turning into a bveel shaped tragedy is a welcome upgrade.

Extrude and Spline Chamfer: splines get better directions

The Extrude modifier now supports a custom direction workflow. Splines can extrude with orientation and direction rather than only local Z. For spline driven workflows, that is a practical change, because it reduces the need to pivot objects around just to make an extrusion behave.

Spline Chamfer also gets updates, including the ability to use a fixed radius for consistent circular corners. This focuses on predictability, which matters when spline corners must stay consistent across revisions, instancing, or exported geometry. If you have ever watched a single inconsistent corner ripple into five downstream fixes, you already know why this is worth caring about.

Noise Plus: more fractals, animation, tiling controls

A new Noise Plus modifier arrives with new fractal types, animation ability, and tiling controls. It is positioned as a more capable procedural noise option for pushing results further. The legacy Noise modifier also gets updates. It now uses a modern Qt interface and supports Paramblock2 for user-defined defaults. The animated Phase parameter now uses linear interpolation rather than ease in and out, for more predictable animation behaviour. For deformation work, predictable interpolation is the unglamorous hero. It keeps animation curves from feeling like they are fighting you.

Field Helper: more precise component selections

A new Field Helper is introduced for more precise component selections for manipulating items, including driving selections.

This is paired with a performance note elsewhere in the release that Volume Select soft selection performance has been improved for polys. The stated goal is smoother, more responsive soft selection performance on high poly objects. In practical terms, selection quality and selection speed both matter. Selection is not just a click. It is the start of most modeling and deformation decisions, and it tends to multiply into every other step you do.

Viewport grid and display improvements: cleaner and less annoying

Viewport grid and background display have been refreshed to provide a cleaner, more focused environment. This is the part where the newsroom says, “Cool, so the background looks nicer!”, and searches for snacks.. Then a Max user quietly smiles, because they live in the viewport. The viewport is where time goes, and small friction reductions add up quickly.

Arnold for 3ds Max: MaxtoA updates

The included Arnold for 3ds Max plug-in is version 5.9.0. Updates since 3ds Max 2026.3 include lightweight OpenUSD instancing, a new hair scattering mode, more flexible light sampling, plus other enhancements and bug fixes. If your pipeline touches Arnold, these plugin updates matter because they affect how features show up inside the host.

Retopology and Shape Map: faster processing, better targets

Flow Retopology has been relocated to Tools and is now under Tools > Flow Retopology to make it easier to find and access as part of core modelling workflow. Retopology performance is described as improved via faster ReForm processing. It is presented as providing quicker results and improved support for meeting quad target goals, with more reliable and consistent outputs.

Shape Map performance is also described as much faster, reducing wait times when working with shape keys and morph targets. This is a more responsive shape-based workflow, especially with complex character rigs or detailed morphing operations.

Colour management: sampling and OCIO

Colour management gets updates. You can sample underlying colours from the scene space in windows that support it, including viewports and the Rendered Frame Window. The Colour Selector eyedropper includes options to sample display colour or sample scene colour. The software also uses the latest version of the OpenColorIO library (OCIO v2.5.1).

Autodesk Assistant: tech preview help inside the app

A tech preview called Autodesk Assistant is included. It is described as an AI-powered tool / LLM that helps you quickly find information about features and workflows directly within the product. This might be cool for beginners, or if you are looking for that feature you know is in there, but can’t find. Only time will tell if it works.

Bela asked if it can also explain why someone would stack twelve modifiers and still sleep at night. No promises were made.

Autodesk prices Subscriptions are at 255 USD per month or 2,010 US Dollars a year. In many countries, artists earning under 100,000/year and/or working on projects valued at under 100,000 Dollars per year can get the Indie subscription, which now cost 330 US Dollars a year. Before you roll this into a pipeline, do the boring but essential checks. Open hero scenes, validate modifier stacks, confirm export paths, and compare renders. New tools and innovations should be tested before use in production.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2027/ENU/?guid=GUID-7CC2F041-F797-4DB9-B2F9-326AAB994F37

P.S. If you are asking yourself, “Where does he get the cat pictures?” Be in a chat with Bela for any amount of time, and you’ll have them, too.

The post 3ds Max 2027 is here. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mike Kuhn.

For those who don’t know the tool: Substance 3D Designer by Adobe is the procedural backbone of the Substance ecosystem, used to author textures, materials, filters, and 3D scan data for applications such as Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, and Blender. Unlike Substance 3D Painter, Designer is node-based, non-destructive, and procedural. It feeds entire material pipelines in VFX, games, and lookdev.

Graph creation, now less of a click-fest

Version 15.1 introduces a reworked graph creation window. Instead of plain text templates, users now see visual thumbnails of material and filter templates. Each preview displays the graph type and intended use, such as base materials, scan processing, or filters. Tooltips now provide short technical descriptions, making it easier to select the correct graph type. The window also features a new categorisation system, grouping templates by purpose. Users can still switch to legacy list or package views if they prefer.

Sample materials: less blank-page syndrome

To ease onboarding, Adobe has added ready-made example graphs for common material families: fabric, wood, metal, plastic, and ceramic. These graphs use clean node layouts and minimal complexity, illustrating practical network structures without clutter. The samples are embedded in the installation and open directly in the main window.

Noise nodes behave themselves

One long-standing annoyance in Designer was inconsistent noise behaviour. Version 15.1 brings better predictability to noise nodes like Cells, Cloud, Dirt, and Directional. Several noises no longer force tiling when used on non-repeating surfaces. Bit depth is no longer locked at 16-bit for most procedural patterns, giving artists finer control of data precision. Adobe has also unlocked additional parameters for certain noise types, allowing subtler tuning of randomisation and distribution. These changes should make procedural pattern generation more stable and flexible when working on high-frequency materials or custom filters.

Node search and grouping: smaller wins for large graphs

To make navigating large graphs faster, Designer 15.1 adds a Group attribute for nodes. When defined, this attribute helps organise search results by logical groups within a graph. It’s a small improvement that can make a large difference when managing hundreds of nodes.

Platform and pricing

Substance 3D Designer 15.1 is available now for Windows 11, macOS 12.0 or newer, and RHEL-compatible Linux. It ships via Adobe’s Substance 3D subscription plans or as a standalone perpetual licence for approximately $199.99 on Steam. The update installs directly through the Creative Cloud Desktop app for current subscribers.

What’s missing (and what’s not broken)

This release does not include any changes to the viewport renderer, path tracer, or USD import/export features introduced in 15.0. Those remain in place and function identically. There are no new node types or export formats. In other words, 15.1 is an incremental workflow update, not a rendering overhaul. As always, test the new version on non-critical projects before rolling it out in production, especially if your pipeline relies on custom graphs or legacy noise nodes.

The post Substance Designer cleans up its nodes first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Substance Painter 11.1, released on 18 November 2025, marks a technical milestone: the long-expected switch from OpenGL to Vulkan on Windows and Linux. The change brings the viewport renderer, texture computations, and baking to Vulkan, aligning all platforms with the Metal backend introduced earlier on macOS.

According to Adobe, Vulkan should improve viewport performance and shorten baking times. GPU raytracing now uses Vulkan-based compute, replacing both OptiX and DXR. This unifies GPU-based baking across AMD, NVIDIA, and Linux systems. However, users should verify GPU compatibility, as the new API may change hardware support requirements.

New Ribbon path tool

The central addition in Substance Painter 11.1 is the Ribbon tool, a new member of the path tool family. It repeats or stretches a texture seamlessly along any 3D surface, with precise control over start and end segments and options for sharp or curved corners. The Ribbon can lay down clean gradients, trim details, or even deform text along a path, useful for stitching, labeling, or placing ornaments around complex geometry. Adobe describes it as a “cleaner tool for more precise drawing with paths.”

Ribbon paths are compatible with symmetry, dynamic strokes, and come with blending modes for overlapping alpha, height, and normal channels. Artists can adjust size and opacity per vertex, decoupled from stylus pressure, giving finer control over variation along a stroke. Two new presets, Custom Ribbon Grayscale and Custom Ribbon Material, are provided to demonstrate advanced uses, such as multi-channel path strokes with dynamic ends and corners.

75 new presets and categories

Painter 11.1 adds 75 new Ribbon presets, grouped into new categories accessible from shortcut buttons in the Properties window. These include:

• Apparel: stitches, zippers, and fabric tears
• Basic: lines, gradients, and dynamic custom ribbons
• Grunge: surface cracks
• Hard Surface: panels, grips, welds, and mechanical seams
• Organic: bandages and wrappings
• Paint: brush-based gradients
• Text: text-along-path templates

Typing “ribbon”, “paint”, or “path” in the Assets window filters the relevant content. Switching presets no longer deselects the active path, streamlining iteration.

Symmetry for fill layers and effects

Symmetry now applies to fill layers and fill effects using 3D projection. Both mirror and radial symmetry are supported, activated via the contextual toolbar or the Properties window. Fill layers gain a new flip input resource option to mirror text or logos while keeping them legible on both sides. The symmetry UI has been reworked with dedicated sliders for each axis and a smaller radial display.

Physical displacement size

Displacement in Painter can now be defined using real-world units. Users can choose between Normalised, Scene-based, or Physical size (cm) units. This makes it easier to align displaced geometry across DCCs or game engines that expect physically accurate height values.

Vulkan raytracing and performance updates

Beyond rendering, the Vulkan backend modernises Substance Painter 11.1’s baking system. Raytracing via Vulkan replaces previous DXR/OptiX-based implementations, bringing GPU baking to AMD GPUs and Linux systems for the first time. Adobe notes faster render times, particularly at high resolutions. Performance has also improved when working with very large or elongated triangles, resolving earlier issues with low-poly meshes used for tiling texture creation. Shader compilation is faster, and the default brush shape has been updated for better roundness and hardness behaviour.

Smaller but useful updates

Substance resources in tools and fills now include a Resolution Override group. This allows changing the generation resolution (Auto, Texture Set, or Custom) with an optional scaling factor—useful for optimising quality or performance. The Substance Engine has been updated to version 9.2.5, and export presets now correctly handle grayscale mesh maps.

Fixes and known issues

Crashes during project loading and path snapping have been addressed, along with several interface glitches in the Path panel and tool properties. However, Adobe lists known issues with the new Ribbon system, including UV tile performance drops, tangent loops at corners, and instability with very long text paths. HDR colour conversion under ACES on Linux still clamps values, and the right-click menu remains undersized on HD displays.

Practical note

As always, production artists should test the Vulkan backend and new path workflows in controlled environments before using them in active projects. Hardware behaviour, especially for GPU-based raytracing, may vary depending on drivers and GPU vendor support.

Summary

Painter 11.1 is less a feature flourish than a structural overhaul. Vulkan unifies the graphics layer across all platforms, the Ribbon tool introduces precision path workflows, and displacement gains measurable units.
Together, these mark a shift toward more predictable, platform-agnostic performance in Adobe’s texturing flagship.

The post Ribbon Rules: Substance Painter 11.1 goes Vulkan first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mike Kuhn.

Adobe has introduced significant updates to After Effects, tailored for motion designers and VFX professionals, particularly those working in 3D. This 2024 release aims to improve the integration of 3D models into live-action footage and 2D compositions, providing more control over realism and creative flexibility.

One of the standout features is the new ability to import embedded 3D animations directly into After Effects. This allows users to integrate skeletal rigs and keyframe animations from external 3D models (GLB or GLTF formats). With embedded 3D animations, motion designers can now use pre-animated assets and manipulate them without needing to recreate the animations from scratch. This update simplifies the use of animated 3D models, enabling smoother integration within the After Effects environment, while also supporting advanced deformations such as bone-based movements.

Adobe also addresses the challenge of achieving ultra-realistic shadows with virtual objects. The introduction of shadow catchers makes it possible for 3D objects to cast shadows that accurately interact with real-world footage. Additionally, new color shadow capabilities allow shadows to be rendered in more nuanced tones, reflecting the natural variation of light sources and eliminating the typical flat, grey shadow effect common in many virtual designs.

Another significant improvement is the expansion of depth mapping tools. Users can now extract depth maps from complex 3D scenes, which contain pixel-based distance information. These depth maps allow artists to apply post-processing effects such as depth-of-field or atmospheric fog, further blending 3D elements with real-world environments. This tool offers new compositing possibilities by allowing 3D objects to interact more dynamically with live-action footage, creating seamless visual effects.

To support more streamlined workflows, After Effects has also added new animation presets, including 33 all-new effects and presets for number counting in infographics. These presets reduce the time spent on keyframing animations, letting users focus on creative decisions rather than tedious manual tasks.

In the Properties panel, Adobe has introduced camera and light support. Motion designers can now control and adjust camera angles and lighting settings more easily within a single contextual panel. This refinement helps improve efficiency when setting up complex scenes involving multiple light sources and camera perspectives.

Performance has also been enhanced with hardware-accelerated UI/UX, especially for Windows users, where the performance is reportedly four times faster than before. This boost in speed is accompanied by a redesigned, modernized user interface (UI) that is more consistent across Adobe’s apps. This redesign aims to cut down on the learning curve when switching between tools, such as Adobe Substance 3D and Cinema 4D.

Adobe Substance 3D is now more tightly integrated into the After Effects pipeline. The new “Send to After Effects” function in Substance 3D Painter allows users to texture 3D models and immediately import them into After Effects compositions. Substance 3D Sampler is now capable of generating seamless materials and creating image-based lighting (IBL) environments from photographs. This is especially useful for blending 3D models with real-world footage by matching lighting conditions and textures. Access to the Substance 3D Asset Library gives motion designers over 20,000 ready-to-use 3D models, materials, and lights, enabling rapid prototyping and design iterations.

Adobe is also improving the workflow with external 3D applications like Maxon’s Cinema 4D. Assets created in Substance 3D will now retain their visual fidelity when transferred between After Effects and other 3D software, helping to maintain consistency across projects.

These updates will be available in the upcoming beta release, allowing users to test the new features and provide feedback. It’s advisable to evaluate these features carefully before incorporating them into your production pipeline, particularly for complex, high-stakes projects.

In terms of pricing and licensing, After Effects is available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription. The Substance 3D suite requires a separate license, although Adobe offers bundles for users interested in multiple products. Adobe typically updates its pricing model annually, so checking their current plans and promotional offers is recommended.

For detailed documentation on After Effects and the latest 3D features, visit the official After Effects Documentation page. You can also explore the new beta version and other related tools on the Adobe Substance 3D product page.

The post New After Effects Stuff! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Retopology

Updates to Maya’s Retopology toolset include Retopologise with Symmetry, which creates an even edge structure on both sides of a mesh. Other changes include the ability to selectively preserve features in areas of meshes, including options to preserve edges according to their angle or component tags. There is also the ability to scan the mesh for potential issues such as non-manifold geometry before running Retopologise and retain the original mesh in the scene graph. For manual retopologisation, Make Live now also supports multiple objects.

3D modelling

With Maya 2024, modellers also receive the Unsmooth command to reset Catmull-Clark-subdivided meshes to a lower resolution. Other changes include support for the MikkTSpace standard for tangent space when baking normal maps, improved performance in the UV editor and new tool shelves for UV editing, curve and surface tools.

Materials

Look Development Artists receive LookdevX, a new toolset for creating USD shading graphs in Maya. Unlike materials created with the existing Hypershade Editor, materials created with LookdevX can be used in an entire USD-based pipeline without the need for conversion.

Character animation

Character riggers and animators also receive some specific changes, including the ability to display skin weights created with the Paint Skin Weights tool as numerical values in the viewport. In addition, multiple skin clusters can now be used on a single geometry. There are also 36 new math nodes for creating more complex rigs.

Simulation

Are you looking for a new way to simulate realistic icing, ketchup or melted chocolate? Then you’ll love the Bifrost 2.7 update for Maya! With the new source_mpm_gel node, you can now also simulate gel materials such as soft ice cream. NanoVTT is now used as the default renderer for volumes in the preview, which significantly improves the preview in the viewport.

Plugins: Updates for USD for Maya, MtoA and Substance in Maya

Maya’s other plugins have also received an update: USD for Maya 0.22 now supports relative paths for USD files in Maya scenes and improves the display of layers. MtoA 5.3, which integrates Maya with the Arnold renderer, updates the physical sky to separate light contributions from the sun and sky. The Substance plugin for editing materials in Substance format within Maya has also been updated. With Substance 2.3.2 there is now native support for Apple Silicon.

Price and system requirements

Maya 2024 is available for Windows 10 , RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.6 and macOS 11 and can only be rented. Subscriptions cost $235 USD per month, an increase of $10 USD over the previous release, or $1,875 USD per year, an increase of $90 USD over the previous release. In many countries, artists earning less than $100,000 per year and working on projects worth less than $100,000 per year can purchase Maya Indie subscriptions at a price of $305 per year.

Click here for the documentary with all the new features

The post Autodesk releases Maya 2024 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Autodesk has announced the release of 3ds Max 2024, which offers several new features. A technology preview now enables the use of OCIO colour management in Max. A new Boolean modifier with OpenVDB meshing method enables alternative calculation methods that are independent of the initial geometry. The array modifier has also been updated to provide a new phyllotaxis distribution technique and a progressive transformation mode. A new controller allows the addition of multiple transform controllers as layers of overlaid animation data. In addition, the slate material editor has been reworked and the material editor now includes a new compound node. The list of modifiers has been improved and now includes a search function. The default mirror axis of the symmetry modifier has been changed to X to better suit artists’ workflows. There are also improvements to STL import speed, automatic smoothing and retriangulation for Edit Poly and Editable Poly. 3ds Max 2024 comes with Substance 2.4.10 and Arnold 5.6.0.1.

Here are the full release notes.

The post 3ds Max 2024 is here! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mike Kuhn.

Adobe has released After Effects 23.2 – and after seeing it in beta since last year, support for the OpenColorIO (OCIO) colour management standard and the ACEScg colour space is now fully integrated for everyone, which is also the only new feature for this release. After Effects 23.2 has preset configurations for ACES 1.2 and 1.3 and supports the ACEScg colour space.

More in the beta!

However, the separate beta build of After Effects has now added support for text layers to the new Properties panel, which was previously only available for shape layers. The plan is that the panel will reduce the time it takes to open layer hierarchies by providing quick access to the most important properties of layers selected in the timeline.

You can see a full list here: Adobe Release Notes AE

Substance Designer 12.4

Adobe has released Substance 3D Designer 12.4, the latest version of its material authoring software. According to Adobe, the “quality update” improves the workflow in the node graph, simple formulas can be typed directly in the parameter fields, and a quick access toolbar now adorns the 3D view.

The improvements in the Nodegraph include, for example, the automatic removal of non-connected nodes (at the touch of a button, not just in the middle of work), as well as the selection of all nodes behind a selected one. And: You can now use the context menu in the node to switch whether it is colour or GRau.

Formulas can now be entered in the basic arithmetic operations ( ,-, x and /) instead of parameters – already in the properties window. And the icing on the cake? The Python interface has been updated and now offers full access to the model graph!

You can find all the new features in Substance here: Adobe Release Notes

Substance receives an Oscar!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that Substance 3D Designer has been honoured with this year’s Scientific and Technical Award, which is given to products that have “demonstrably made a significant contribution to the production of motion pictures”.

The concept and realisation of Sébastien Deguy and Christophe Soum were highlighted, as were Sylvain Paris and Nicolas Wirrmann for the design and development – the Academy also recognises the power of procedural workflows.
And this is officially recognised: “Adobe Substance 3D Designer offers artists a flexible and efficient procedural workflow for designing complex textures. Its sophisticated and controllable pattern generators, intuitive design and renderer-independent architecture have led to its widespread use in the visual effects and animation industries”.
Well then, congratulations!

The post After Effects! Substance! Oscars! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In nuce: Adobe releases version 3.3 of its Substance 3D Sampler. Users can look forward to new tools, new content and – of course – new functions designed to simplify working with materials and ambient lighting.

The new features of Substance 3D Sampler version 3.3 – an outline: Below are some of the new features that immediately caught our proverbial user’s eye. Why don’t you jump along!

Content-Aware Fill: In Adobe Photoshop, Content-Aware Fill is used to remove parts of an image while leaving the surrounding area – around the removed part of the image – unaffected. In Substance 3D Sampler, this feature is now used to keep PRB materials and ambient lights clean.

Spherical Projection: Makes it easier to navigate – and make changes to – 360-degree environments. Adobe has published a video worth watching about how “Spherical Projection” can be used to accommodate 3D ambient lights within such a 360-degree environment, which we have linked below.

First Steps With Sampler: Light Environment

Brush Toolbar: Thanks to the new user interface, you can move the toolbar to any position within the 2D view – regardless of whether it is aligned vertically or horizontally. Use the “e” key to switch between the brush and eraser tool. According to the description, the new tiling options should make painting even more convenient.

Clone Stamp: Now paint multiple Stamp Strokes from different sources – all in a single layer. You can also access your stamp history via the layer stack. You can now display the result of your stamping directly in the Brush Preview before you start drawing.

Click further: For all other newly added functions, click through the corresponding release note.

The post Substance 3D Sampler 3.3 released! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Game artist and tool developer Nathaniel Albright (also known under his pseudonym “3D CG Guru”) releases his add-on called “Trimsheet Maker Pro”. The add-on is for Substance 3D Designer, combining different materials and images into a single map.

What are trim sheets? First of all, the basics: Trim sheets combine collections of repeating texture components into a single map. Trim sheets are used within the gaming industry, especially by environment artists, to reduce the time spent on creating assets.

Why Trimsheet Manager? According to Albright, his add-on streamlines the process for you. With his add-on, together with Substance 3D Designer, he wants to burst any bottlenecks in your pipeline.

What can Trimsheet Manager do? You control the size and direction of the tiles you want to generate. You also decide which PBR texture channels are taken into account – and which are not. The add-on supports both square and rectangular textures.

Prerequisite: You need Substance Designer 11.3 or higher.

Cost: The basic version, with which you can combine up to eight materials, is free of charge. In addition, a standard version is available for 10 US dollars, a Pro version for 20 US dollars and the Studio version for 200 US dollars. Depending on your needs, you can choose one of the Trimsheed Maker versions.

Click further: On Gumroad you can get all further information about and the “Trimsheet Maker Pro v.1.0.0” itself, regardless of the version. Nathaniel Albright (aka “3D CG Guru”) is looking forward to your visit on Gumroad or Twitter. The video below will show you how the add-on works. We hope you enjoy trying it out!

Trimsheet Maker Pro Video 1 : Simple Mode

The post Trimsheet Maker Pro | Add-on first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

Even though many users have not yet fully healed from the anger caused by the takeover by Adobe, there were many exciting talks on the texturing and material pipelines of major game titles at GDC 2019: These included Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Marvel’s Spider-Man and The Devision 2.

Keynote: Substance Alchemist & Launcher

The GDC 2019 keynote also saw further releases and announcements of Substance Tools by Sébastien Deguy: Substance Alchemist has been available as an open beta via the subscription model since the end of March and is described by the developers as “augmented material creation” software. The new tool is used to create, explore and manage materials and utilises various techniques: procedural, recording-based, artificial intelligence and manual methods are intended to enable faster creation, management and export of materials. Alchemist is currently divided into the “Explore”, “Inspire” and “Create” areas. You can view the new features of the most recently released version (0.6.0) here.

The new Substance Launcher (Beta) is designed to bring a bit of organisation to the management of your Substance Tools. From now on you can manage installations, storage locations, activations and versions for Designer, Painter and Alchemist. It is also possible to use the Substance Source Library including 3D preview and download via the launcher. If you would like to test the launcher, you can download the beta here.

More GDC 2019 Talks: Games with Substance

The Devision 2 – Material & Tool Pipeline

Marvel’s Spider-Man – Manhattan Lookdev

Further information: To the Adobe Substance website

The post GDC 2019 | Texturing für Assassin’s Creed first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Ton Roosendaal, who has had a background in Industrial Design before founding the animation studio NeoGeo, was involved in the software Development of Traces, an in-house tool which eventually became Blender as we know it. In 2002, with the help of a large and enthusiastic user community, the non-profit Blender Foundation was founded – and to this day Ton is its head and the development of Blender goes on. Ton served as Producer for the open-source movies from “Big Buck Bunny” onwards – and currently, the major release 2.8 of Blender is in its final stages.
You can follow his feed on Twitter (@tonroosendaal) with discussions on Blen­der, updates on the newest development stages and the best open-source projects from around the community.

DP: With Blender Cloud active for a little time: What will happen next in the Blender environment?
Ton Roosendaal: The Blender Cloud is going strong – about 4.000 subscribers who support the Blender Institute, so we can hire developers and artists, and produce the independent open-source movies. The development of the cloud is going for more features – shared assets, asset management in general, a solid versioning system, and access to render services. All of that usable in Blender, and of course open-source software. The cloud is meant to grow – we opened new offices in Amsterdam – 850 square meters, which is quite nice. So now we have the space for developers and for training, because we see a need in the industry for education and training. Many studios are interested to find out more about Blender and how they can integrate it into their pipeline. We can’t kick out all the Maya and Max licenses, but for different tasks like rendering or texturing Blender is very useful, and we want to make those kinds of trainings available from Amsterdam.

DP: The Blender Cloud already has a big area of shared assets from around the world – thousands by now, and still growing rapidly. Are the assets from the open-source movies also in there?
Ton Roosendaal: The possibility to make your own assets available in a user-friendly way is in progress – we share the files in the usual manner, obviously, but an integration into the Blender Cloud is not quite ready. We have a local version where the assets – like for example all characters from “Big Buck Bunny” – will be available in a meaningful way, with animation, rigs, textures, and models connected in a usable fashion. But quite soon entire repositories of the films will be available there as well, we just have to prepare the servers for the amount of data. We don‘t want them to go down (laughs).

DP: So what is on the top of your priority list right now?
Ton Roosendaal: Currently we are working with a higher priority on a versioning system, where people can commit and check out assets, and set up projects to work together. I am so surprised every time I see it: Many small and medium-sized studios – from 5 to 50 artists – do not have a decent versioning system, they simply use file001, file002, file003final, file003finalnowforreal … and from a software development background, I am very used to fast versioning – you fork and copy your projects, you make new versions, you commit them to logs, you rewind back – this is normal in software development. But in CGI?

You shouldn‘t have to worry about the correct naming of yesterday’s version – that is something a software can do. Obviously, bigger studios use software like Shotgun or fTrack, but that is a lot of work to get going and maintain, and there are about 100 studios in the whole world who have the capacities and the need for a system as big as this. But there are hundreds of thousands of people working in smaller teams for whom a setup like that would be a big help, and with the Blender cloud and its shared projects, we can help the artists. So that is our main target for 2018 – rolling out versioning and projects.

DP: And how will that tie into the recent development versions of Blender with Workspaces?
Ton Roosendaal: We will need a bit of history with that … Blender became open-source when in version 2.15, and until now – Blender 2.79 – we have had about 60 releases since 2002. Sometimes we skipped numbers, sometimes we had an „a“ and a „b“ release. And with 2.5 we had a complete overhaul of the interface – for many people that was the point to take Blender more seriously. Before that, it was a bit of an antique system from the 90s. With 2.5 we started to modernize everything – a modern UI, more stable code and so on. And because of that overhaul, we have a lot of leftover tasks, that can be grouped as workflow enhancements.

This spawned the Workspaces feature. For most people workflow is a personal thing – or sometimes a corporate thing. There is the Texturing Department that only does textures. And there are Level Designers who make levels. So with Workspaces, people can turn Blender into a tool for Texturing Artists and a different tool for Level Designers. Both of these toolsets – which are obviously just examples – are a subset of tasks available in Blender. For example: As a Level Designer, you don‘t need python tools or simulation control. And the Animator in the seat next to the Level Designer doesn‘t need texturing and lighting functionalities. Both can configure their individual workspaces with only their tools. Every Blender Component can be customized for the specific work – including shortcuts and available tools. So, this will be a very efficient way of working through a production.

DP: What would that mean besides structuring the departments in the studio?
Ton Roosendaal: Beside the day-to-day artist work, there are two things I am very excited about: One is something we currently call „Blender 101“, which is the simplest version of Blender you can think of – something that you can give to kids. It could be – for example – a row of monkeys, a row of materials, and a viewport. You drag a monkey into the viewport, then you drag a material on top of the monkey, and you can rotate and move it. And that‘s it, you cannot do anything more. This would be suitable for small children to teach them how to navigate in a 3D space. One by one, you can enable more features like manipulating the axis or moving things around, color work on the materials or whatever – depending on the preferred curriculum. Everything Blender offers will be configurable, and you can turn it on and off, and with that – in the most radical way – you can turn off everything, and bring it back one by one.

The second thing I think will be very interesting is an application template system where you can enable and disable all areas of the UI and their functions. For example, you could do a training for animation and just enable the corresponding tools to make it easy for the attendees of the training to focus on the necessary tools and not be distracted or confused with all the other stuff going on. As a working artist, you can, for example, have your sculpting tools ready, but not the particles stuff. And as any software developer knows: There are never enough buttons! We build more and more features, and there aren‘t enough buttons to show them all. But most artists don’t need that many and sometimes would prefer to actually have fewer buttons, only the ones that are relevant to them. But with this feature, everybody can choose the set of buttons they actually need for their work. In the next step I hope people will share them – it is just a little file and maybe someone thinks: „Oh, I can get the workspace from this awesome sculpting artist who optimized their UI for sculpting!“

DP: While we are talking about a new UI: Will there finally be icons in Blender?
Ton Roosendaal: Well, people coming from Modo, Maya or Cinema are very used to that – having a shelf with the tool icons. And with the rise of touch screens, it is easier to navigate with one finger. There is a working philosophy with toolbars: You select the tool you want – let‘s say “Move”. So a click there. Then you select the asset / object you want to move. Then you take another tool – let‘s say “Scaling” – and select the asset / object. So the dominant thought is tools, the secondary is selection. But Blender is different – you don‘t think “I have to use this tool, and then apply it to that”, but you select first and then choose the operator. This is called a non-modal or non-blocking workflow, which is super fast if you are used to it. You always have all the tools at your disposal, because selecting is the dominant part, and by doing that it is much faster. When you select, you have all the tools and apply them one by one. You can mix them in whatever way you need. You do not have to step out of your selection to switch tools and select again.

The former version of “Operate”. Selecting is more common, because it is easier to visualize and comprehend – but also slower and in my opinion less comfortable and efficient. That being said, the interface will get icons and visual elements – users are developing and discussing versions and features and layouts as we speak. Funnily enough: When we first researched the direction, we made normal icons. Those looked nice, but where not scaling properly on high-DPI screens. And we thought they should be 3D objects which can be scaled and rendered according to the interface.

Then someone had a bright idea: We do have a rendering engine and a 3D workspace, because we are working in Blender! So the icons for the new interface will very likely be perfect on any screen size and pixel density – one of the pleasures to work with 3D software.

DP: Since you mentioned rendering: What is going to happen with the Cycles render engine?
Ton Roosendaal: Cycles is by now a production rendering engine which has been used quite a lot for feature films as well as all different types of projects. Since Blender is – unlike for example Maya – an all-in-one tool, you can have a final rendered view at any point in your workflow without leaving the program. So one of the advantages is that you can bring everything together without roundtripping – all layouts and compositing and cameras and light and scenes and whatever you want. It isn‘t separate from the other departments and rendering is always available in final quality. For the next releases, the team is working on developing exciting features – Cycles is already extremely advanced, and currently the team is working on advanced hair models and volumetrics, and the main thing, of course: speed. We do have a photo-realistic environment now, which is another part of version 2.8. The viewport is almost film quality in real-time – why wait for shots from the renderfarm for hours or days when you can have it in real-time.

DP: All of this in OpenCL?
Ton Roosendaal: Yes – we have cooperation with many manufacturers and companies. For example with OpenCL – AMD helped us out and gave us two developers – one internal who worked on all things OpenCL and one we hired through the Blender Foundation to implement the framework. So last year we could have a version which is not only compatible with the other manufacturer but also platform-independent and performing very nicely on all systems. Well, on all systems that are in touch with the creative community, at least.

DP: While we are at the FMX – when looking around – what are software-packages you find interesting
besides Blender?
Ton Roosendaal: Oh, that is an evil question (laughs). Well, to be honest, the texturing workflow by Algorithmic is such a workflow-lifesaver. One can work ten times faster when texturing and preparing the models, so there is a reason why people love those tools – it is a fantastic procedural software.

DP: The final question: What will be featured in Blender 4.0?

Ton Roosendaal: That is difficult to answer – 3.0 will probably be coming out in 2030. But on our roadmap for the next few years, we are working with studios on animation tools – we call it „Animation 2020“. This is a result of animators being disappointed with the death of Softimage. We are setting up projects to get as good as possible character animation tools. But that is short-term – in the next couple of years. In parallel, we are building an open-source pipeline for a feature film we are developing – a couple of studios and partners will participate and we want to share and develop a complete pipeline for all the necessary parts. Currently, we are raising funds. That is what takes up most of my time these days – I want to make things, especially movies. It is the most fun thing to do. “Agent 327” – the comic – will be the basis for that. We have obtained the rights for the comics and it will be an amazing movie playing in the 70ies in Amsterdam, with international spies and adventures. And for the far future? I think, as artists we will work always in completely photo-realistic renderings – be it VR, AR or a normal screen. If you think about it, there is no reason to see a wireframe, except for technical analysis. So, I hope that in 10 years, we can all work with photo-realistic images in some sort of space and across the whole world.

The post What‘s next in Blender? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Looking for hardsurface alpha masks? Game artist Dan Rožański offers you 21 free alphas on Gumroad. The sample pack contains various shapes, including pipes, vents, valves, screw heads, decorations and more.

Alpha Mask Details & Licence

The files come in PSD and TIFF format with a resolution of 2048 x 2048 px. You may use the files in commercial projects – however, as usual, reselling the alphas in your own packs is prohibited. To get the sample pack for free, you have to enter “0” in the price field at Gumroad.

To the download

For more free assets: To the download section

The post 21 free alpha masks first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Substance Designer 6.0 update has now been followed by an update for Substance Painter from Allegorithmic. Here we give you a brief overview of what you can expect in the 3D PBR Painting software. You can read the complete release notes here. If you have more time, you can also watch the one-hour video on the new features that we have linked in the article.

2.5 update features

• Brush opacity was a long-awaited feature that now allows you to make finer additions to your materials.
• Colour management has been enhanced with colour profiles and LUTs.
• Text for Substance Material can now also be added in Substance Painter. The text tool came with the last Substance Designer update.
• Custom interface for shaders is one of the workflow improvements that allows custom shader interface tools.

Other new features

All new nodes from Substance Engine 6 as well as texture baking up to 8k resolution are now supported. Parallax occlusion mapping has been added as an additional texture map. In addition, the scripting interface has been expanded for better integration into VFX pipelines.

Cost

The 2.5 version is free for anyone who has a Substance Painter 2 licence or a Substance Live subscription. You can find more information here.

The post Allegorithmic: Substance Painter 2.5 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.