One click, fewer vertex pushes

SmartConform Pro is a geometry-based conform and projection tool that wraps meshes onto complex surfaces like terrain, walls, and props directly inside the editor. The goal is to avoid manual rotation, scaling, and tweaking when placing assets on uneven geometry.

The core workflow is simple_ You select a source mesh and a target surface, then run a projection to conform the source onto the target. The tool targets common environment tasks like placing sci-fi panels, vents, and other hard-surface details onto curved geometry, plus placing rocks, debris, and similar assets naturally on terrain. Or, as we now them, ALL DA GREEBLIES!

Wrapping modes, overhangs, and smoothing

SmartConform Pro includes projection modes for surface-based wrapping and vertical projection, with volume preservation called out as a “design intent” – including supposedly smart overhang handling with an optional fallback to world surfaces.

There is a relaxation smoothing feature intended to reduce stretching and improve deformation quality. The interface provides a real-time preview for interactive setting changes before committing the result. One takeaway is that this is meant for fast conform tasks where the input mesh shape and UVs should stay predictable after the confrom step, instead of becoming a hand-tuned placement problem.

Baking, Nanite, and what it depends on

SmartConform Pro can bake the result to a static mesh, with Nanite readiness claimed after baking. Nanite support is described in the context of generating baked meshes suitable for high-detail rendering workflows, which aligns with how Nanite operates on static mesh assets.

Under the hood, the tool lists a C plus plus core powered by Geometry Scripting and an Editor Utility Widget interface. The listing also notes it requires the Unreal Engine Geometry Script and Geometry Processing plugins, referencing Geometry Processing as part of the dependency stack.

As always, new tools and workflow shortcuts should be tested on a copy of your project before they touch production assets, especially when deformation, baking, and downstream lighting or collision are involved.

Pricing and availability

SmartConform Pro is sold on Fab, with a Personal license for 55€, and a Professional License for studios / Entities beyond 100.00€ revenue a year, coming in at 96€.

What to watch for in real projects

The promise here is speed: fast placement for modular detailing and kitbashing, without leaving the editor. The real question for pipelines is how consistent the porjection results are across different mesh densities, collision setups, and target surface complexity, and how clean the baked meshes are for Nanite, LODs, and lightmaps once they leave the preview phase.

If this lands, it is the kind of editor utility that pays for itself by deleting a thousand tiny manual adjustments from every environment pass.

https://www.fab.com/listings/3df02265-3c86-4d3f-a17f-3fea15d418f1

The post Meshes in Unreal: Arvomis Oy ships SmartConform Pro first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who do not know the tool: Cascadeur is a standalone 3D character animation application from Nekki, aimed at keyframe animation, AI-assisted posing and physics-based motion work. In practice, its niche is not “AI makes animation now”, thankfully, but “the software helps with the parts people usually fix at 2 AM while reconsidering their profession.”

Unreal Live Link

Cascadeur 2026.1 is a technical update. The release focuses on three areas that tend to determine whether an animation tool is genuinely useful or just very proud of itself: handoff to Unreal Engine, clearer scene rendering in the viewport, and less manual repair after the fact.

The biggest pipeline change is the new Live Link for Unreal Engine. Cascadeur’s documentation states that the plugin works with Unreal Engine 5.5 to 5.7 and Cascadeur 2026.1 or later. Installation is currently manual: ZIP packages for each supported Unreal version are unpacked directly into the Unreal Engine plugin folder. FAB distribution is planned for later; that is a modern way of saying “for now, please enjoy file paths.”

Filament

The second major change is the full switch to Filament for scene visualisation. According to the 2026.1 release notes, Filament is now the rendering engine used in Cascadeur for visualising scenes and provides the expected controls of a modern real-time renderer. Viewport upgrades are easy to undersell, but readable lighting and better scene feedback affect timing, spacing and posing decisions far more than marketing screenshots do. The release notes also state that switching to Filament fixed quad-mesh display issues on macOS, so this is not just a prettier viewport but also a more “stable” one. (Sorry for the very bad pun. Stable. Quad. And yes, it is time for the weekend.)

Root Motion is the new AI-assisted feature in this release, and the official wording is notably restrained. Cascadeur describes it as “a new generative tool” that produces animations based on the character’s trajectory. The workflow starts with a rough draft motion and at least two keyframes, then runs the Root Motion command. That is a much healthier framing than the usual machine-learning mysticism. The animator still defines the setup. The software does not merely arrive in a robe and demand applause.

Cleanup

The cleanup side also gets useful attention. Collision Penetration Cleaning analyses an animation and removes intersections. Cascadeur notes that older scenes require rig regeneration for the tool to work correctly, whereas scenes created in 2026.1 work out of the box. Mildly inconvenient, yes. Still preferable to hand-fixing every knee, elbow and floor contact.

AutoPosing and physics tools also get more practical. Improved AutoPosing for quadrupeds is part of the release. Point Constraints now work in AutoPosing, and they are also taken into account in AutoPhysics and Ragdoll. Additional quadruped spine switching angles have been added in Settings. In plain production terms, that means better support for non-biped rigs and more reliable behaviour for constrained objects during assisted motion passes. Or, translated into the dialect of late-night animation cleanup, fewer props quietly leave the hand and pursue an independent career.

Cascadeur on physics, AI and control

The release also lands neatly next to Digital Production’s earlier interview with Cascadeur CTO Alexander Grishanin. In that February conversation, he described Cascadeur as a standalone 3D character animation DCC focused on physics-assisted keyframe animation, AutoPosing and AI Inbetweening, with FBX and USD support for engine-oriented pipelines.

He also explained that broader integration into standard production workflows had become a core development goal. Read against that background, 2026.1 looks less like a feature heap and more like a continuation of the same agenda: better engine connectivity, better scene readability and more automation where it actually reduces labour. A rare case in which the new release more or less matches the old interview instead of contradicting it for sport.

Cascadeur 2026.1 release notes:
https://cascadeur.com/help/category/312

Cascadeur Live Link documentation:
https://cascadeur.com/help/category/268

Digital Production interview:
https://digitalproduction.com/2026/02/18/cascadeur-on-physics-ai-and-control/

The post Cascadeur 2026.1 adds Unreal Live Link, Filament rendering and AI root motion. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The problem NanoGS tackles

3D Gaussian splatting can look like magic right up until it starts behaving like a tax audit. Big captures mean millions of splats. Millions of splats mean constant sorting work, a lot of memory pressure, and a very real risk that the renderer spends time drawing things the camera never sees. NanoGS targets that exact pain: rendering large-scale Gaussian splatting files in real time, while handling video memory pressure, sorting huge splat counts efficiently, and drawing only what the screen needs.

The approach focuses on a set of optimisation techniques: Nanite-style LOD clusters, screen-space error LOD selection, splat compaction, a global accumulator, and GPU radix sort. The headline promise is straightforward: large-scale Gaussian splatting scenes should render efficiently, with an emphasis on keeping memory usage low. That is a marketing claim.

Supported engine versions and what you actually install

NanoGS lists support for Unreal Engine versions UE5.6 and UE5.7. The workflow stays inside the familiar plugin lane. You download the plugin from the releases page, place it into your project’s Plugins folder, then import a PLY file using the plugin import button. That import creates a Gaussian Splat Asset, which you can drag directly into a level for rendering.

There is also an asset action to enable or disable Nanite if needed. It is an unusual sentence to write about splats, but that is the point: the tool is trying to make splats behave like a native citizen in the realtime world.

The controls that decide whether it feels stable

The plugin exposes settings grouped by intent. They map cleanly to the trade-offs most realtime teams already juggle: quality, performance, and final look. On the quality side, SH Order adjusts spherical harmonics quality. On the performance side, Sort Every Nth Frame changes how often splats get sorted. Enable Frustum Culling turns frustum culling on or off. LOD Error Threshold sets how sensitive LOD cluster switching should be. On the rendering side, Opacity Scale adjusts splat opacity, and Splat Scale adjusts splat size.

These are not vanity sliders. Sorting frequency can be the difference between a stable camera move and a shimmering mess. Culling can be the difference between a scene that fits and a scene that explodes memory. LOD sensitivity can be the difference between crisp detail and visible popping. And opacity and scale are the levers that decide whether the splats read as a coherent surface or as a cloud of regret.

About one third into your first test session, you will probably notice the same thing most teams do: the scene can look fine at rest, then fall apart during motion if sorting gets too infrequent. That is when you stop guessing and start dialing.

Debug commands that make problems obvious

NanoGS includes console commands designed for inspection and stress testing. gs.ShowClusterBounds 1 enables a Nanite cluster preview, and setting it to 0 disables that preview. gs.DebugForceLODLevel can force rendering at a specific LOD cluster level for debugging, with values like 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on.

Then there is the one that will get used the most in anger: gs.MaxRenderBudget. It limits the maximum number of visible splats after culling to save memory. The default is no limit, using 0. You can set a maximum cap such as 3,000,000. When the cap is active, the culling starts from splats far from the camera.

If you are trying to ship anything on fixed hardware budgets, this kind of explicit cap is refreshing. It makes the failure mode predictable. It also makes it easier to have honest conversations with art and production, because the tool draws a hard line instead of pretending everything will fit if you just believe harder.

Best practice: do not feed it one giant splat brick

NanoGS calls out a best practice that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever fought streaming, culling, or draw lists. A single big chunk of gaussian splatting file does not help performance optimization. Splats outside the camera view cannot be culled effectively. And if everything stays in one chunk, all splats stay engaged in sorting all the time.

The recommended format is to slice a large splat file into smaller pieces. Examples given include individual props for cinematic scenes or tiles for geo-spatial data. The repository includes a simple tile slicer written in Python to support that workflow.

Proof of concept, not a miracle

NanoGS is described as a proof of concept, with a clear warning not to expect perfect results. Issues can be reported on the project page. That framing matters for production teams because it sets the correct expectation: you are evaluating a technique and an implementation, not adopting a finished commercial renderer. The good news is that the tool is built to be tested, with the kind of switches and debug views that make evaluation less mystical.

New tools and innovations should always be tested before use in production, especially when they touch core rendering paths and memory budgets.

Release, license, and what it costs

NanoGS is released under the MIT license.

The repository lists v1.0.1 as the latest release, dated March 20, 2026.

The plugin is free.

https://github.com/TimChen1383/NanoGaussianSplatting

The post NanoGaussianSplats for UE5 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the site: FippedNormals is/was a CG store for assets and training you use alongside Blender, ZBrush, Unreal Engine, and the Substance 3D tools, when your pipeline needs fewer guesses and more ready-to-ship bits. Also Plugins, Tutorials, 3d-Printfiles and much more.

The dates you need on your calendar

The FlippedNormals Marketplace will stop accepting new orders on March 31, 2026. After that, purchases are done. Access to previously purchased files stays available until April 30, 2026. After that date, marketplace files will no longer be accessible. Creator payouts have a final date too. The last creator payout happens on April 15, 2026.

April 30, 2026 is also tied to creator operations, because the Creator Dashboard shuts down on the same day customers lose access to file hosting. If you bought something in the past, invoices matter. An invoice was emailed after every purchase, and it should be in the email inbox used at checkout. You can keep what you have locally forever, but you need to get it locally first. Treat April 30, 2026 as a hard donwload deadline, not a friendly suggestion.

What is actually shutting down

This is a shutdown of the marketplace, not a blanket disappearance of everything connected to it. The official plan is a smaller, more focused reboot that pivots away from running a broad storefront with thousands of creators. The new website is planned to focus on FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox.

Why it is happening

The reason given is simple and painfully familiar to anyone who has ever stared at an infrastructure bill and then stared at their revenue chart. Expenses increased significantly over the last years while earnings decreased. Salary reductions were also mentioned as part of efforts to keep things going.

A key detail here is that revenue from FlippedNormals Exclusives was used to keep the marketplace afloat during that period. That combination of higher operating costs, lower earnings, and internal cost cutting still led to the conclusion that the marketplace model was no longer sustainable. If you are reading this as a warning label for other niche CG storefronts, resist the urge to generalize. The only confirmed facts here are the reasons described for this specific shutdown, not the whole sector.

What customers should do right now

Log in, open your library, and pull down everything you have paid for to local storage before April 30, 2026. If your workflow spans multiple machines, back up like you mean it. Put a copy on a second drive. Put another copy wherever your studio keeps long-term project archives. If you rely on invoice PDFs for accounting, store those alongside the content so future you does not have to play detective.

If you depend on the platform for recurring downloads during a production, plan to stop depending on it before the cutoff. The last thing you want is a late-night render emergency that turns into an “amrketplace is gone” surprise.

There is also a specific path for owners of exclusives content. If you purchased FlippedNormals Exclusives on the current marketplace, there is a process to move them to the new site once it launches.

That process requires contacting support after the new site is live, using the support email address. A 100 percent promo code is described as the mechanism to migrate courses to a new account. One more detail that will trip up anyone on autopilot: you will have to make a new user account for the new site as part of that migration flow.

What creators should expect

If you sell on marketplaces, you already know the question creators ask first: what about payouts. The official timeline includes a final creator payout date of April 15, 2026. That is presented as the last payout event. There is also an operational cutoff on April 30, 2026, when the Creator Dashboard shuts down.

If you are a creator and you have analytics, product files, thumbnails, descriptions, license text, or customer support notes you rely on, assume you need to export whatever you can before that dashboard goes dark.

The new site focus, as described, narrows the catalog to FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox. That is a very different value proposition from a wide creator marketplace, even if the UI ends up sleeker. If your pipeline planning relies on “I can always re-download that later,” change the habit. This event is a reminder that availability is a feature you only notice once it is gone.

https://help.flippednormals.com/article/130-flippednormals-marketplace-closing-down-faq

The post FlippedNormals Marketplace closes March 31 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The free Blood Hit 3D Asset lands as an Alembic animation, pre-simmed and intended to drop straight into a project. That matters because it keeps the asset squarely in the world of import, shade, light, render, comp, rather than asking you to set up a fluid sim, cache it, and hope your deadline shows mercy.

The asset targets broad compatibility by leaning on Alembic, a format widely used for baked geometry animation interchange. The file is positioned as something you can use in almost any render engine or 3D app, as long as your toolchain can ingest Alembic and you can assign materials the way you like.

This is very much a VFX elemnet style freebie in spirit, but it ships as 3D animation rather than a 2D flipbook or a stock plate. You get geometry motion you can place in space, aim at camera, frame with lens choices, and match to lighting cues. The messy bit becomes a scene object, not a comp sticker.

Two quality tiers, one timeline, and a choice of speed

The download includes two quality versions: a lower-quality option for faster renders and a high-quality option for hero shots. The animation runs at 24 fps, keeping it aligned with common editorial timelines and shot contexts.

There are also two speed options: a base speed described as slow motion and a fast speed option. Practically, that gives you two starting points for timing without forcing you to retime a single cache into wildly different beats right away. If the shot needs a long, readable splatter moment, the base speed exists. If you need a sharper hit that sells impact and gets out of the way, the fast option exists.

Because this is a pre-simmed Alembic cache, your artistic control flows through placement, scale, camera distance, shading, motion blur choices, and render settings. Your control does not flow through sim parameters, since the simulation work is already baked.

Where it plugs in across engines and DCCs

The broader compatibility pitch comes with specific examples of tools and engines that can be used with the paid pack the freebie points toward. The supported examples include Blender, Houdini, Unreal Engine, Arnold, V-Ray, OctaneRender, Redshift, and Cycles.

That list spans both DCC hosts and renderers, which is a useful reminder of how Alembic assets tend to travel in real productions. Sometimes you import into a DCC and render there. Sometimes you import into a DCC and export again into another context. Sometimes you bring it straight into a real-time environment like Unreal Engine for previs, cinematics, or interactive content, then either render there or use it to inform final lighting and comp decisions elsewhere.

If your pipeline already handles Alembic caches for crowds, cloth, or destruction, this should feel familiar: it is another baked motion asset you treat like a shot-specific prop. If you are new to geometry caches, the main idea remains simple. Import the cache, scrub it, and make sure it lines up with your timeline and scale before you start shading and lighting.

How you actually get it

Access to the free Blood Hit 3D Asset requires joining a newsletter, after which an email provides download instructions. If you are already on the newsletter list, previous emails are described as containing the same download instructions. The freebie is also positioned as part of a larger library described as 500+ other free 3D freebies. That bundle access is tied to the same newsletter workflow, rather than a one-off anonymous download link.

If your studio policy treats marketing email lists as a procurement step with paperwork attached, that is the moment to loop in whoever manages vendor communications. If you are an individual artist, it is simply a question of whether you want the asset enough to do the email round trip.

The paid pack it points to, and what it costs

The free asset sits alongside a commercial product called VFX Elements Volume 03: Blood Hits. That is containing 25 blood hit animations, delivered as Alembic files intended to load into render engines and 3D apps that support them. The listed price for the pack is $69.00, and it is as an instant download. The same engine and application examples show up here as well, including Blender, Houdini, Unreal Engine, Arnold, V-Ray, OctaneRender, Redshift, and Cycles. The pack is also shown with low-resolution playblasts used to preview the animations. That detail matters because it frames expectations: previews exist to show motion, but you should still evaluate how the cache behaves in your own render context, shading approach, and lighting setup.

Any new asset needs testing before you drop it into production shots. Import it into a sandbox scene first, confirm the scale, check frame-rate alignment, and verify how your chosen renderer handles motion blur on geometry caches. Do the same for both quality versions, because render cost and cache behavior can differ in ways that only show up once you hit real lighting.

Shading is the other big practical checkpoint. A blood hit cache does not automatically become convincing just because the animation looks good. You still need materials, spec response, and lighting that sell wetness and thickness. Your comp workflow also matters, especially if you plan to integrate the hit with interactive lighting or lens effects. This freebie gives you motion, but the final look still lives in your scene setup.

The Pixel Lab appears to be using this free Blood Hit 3D Asset as both a standalone giveaway and a doorway into the larger VFX Elements Volume 03: Blood Hits collection. If the one free hit covers your immediate need, great. If your work calls for a variety of impacts and angles, the 25 animation pack exists with a clear price tag and the same Alembic foundation.

https://www.thepixellab.net/free-vfx-element-blood-hit-3d-asset

The post Pixel Lab drops free Blood Hit Alembic first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.