Procedural Roads Ahead: Blender Add-on “Roads” Lays Asphalt with Vertices
Blender add-on “Roads” builds procedural roads from vertex extrusions. Fast, planar, parametric and $10.
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VFX
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Phantom Media Group: Milk, Lola, Tippett, PhantomFX and Spectre Unite
Milk, Lola, Tippett, PhantomFX and Spectre now share a roof. Phantom Digital Effects forms Phantom Media Group to align global VFX talent.
Sculpt-Offs, Anniversaries & Anatomy: ZBrush Summit 2025 celebrates 25 years
ZBrush turns 25 and Maxon is celebrating online, 7-9 November, with live Sculpt-Offs, artist sessions and a first look at what’s next for ZBrush.
Procedural Thursday: CityEngine Users Meet Online Tomorrow
Tomorrow, 5 p.m. CET: CityEngine User Meeting: free, online, and full of procedural nerds. Bring your node graphs.
Das Element 2.2: Major Step Forward for Asset Management
The new Das Element 2.2 release strengthens 3D handling, adds dynamic permission controls and custom Python action hooks to make studio asset management even smoother.
Nobe OmniScope, Pomfort, and RePro sync up on set
RePro connects Pomfort Livegrade and Nobe OmniScope for a unified on-set-to-post workflow. Real-time streaming, shared looks, and synced scopes cut guesswork.
Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision 2, and Beyond!
HDR isn’t just a jungle of acronyms on your TV box—though it may feel that way. To bring some order, we sat down with Michael Hackl from Dolby to talk about Dolby Vision, how it compares to HDR10 and HDR10+, how it is made, and what’s new in Dolby Vision 2.
Camera Arrays for the Gaussian Age
Camera Array Tool for Blender creates surface-based camera rigs and exports 4DGS-ready image data for Gaussian Splatting workflows.
Free WaveManager Brings Procedural Motion to Maya
WaveManager for Maya adds procedural wave motion to any rig via expressions: no keyframes, full control, free download.
Video Mocap: Reallusion’s AI Gets Moving
Reallusion adds online AI motion capture to iClone: Video Mocap turns footage into editable animation for $2.50 per clip.
Blender 4.5 LTS lands
lender 4.5 LTS arrives with studio-grade support; the Blender survey shows where users stand; and Blender 5.0 beta is already here, so its time to plan your upgrade.
Off-Grid, On-Tape: EditingTools.io Launches Local Timecode Notes Server
EditingTools.io brings offline collaboration to live productions with its new Live Timecode Notes Server for macOS.
Continuum 2026: AI masks, fixes, and faces
Continuum 2026 upgrades AI masking, keying, and transitions. Face ML, Matte Refine ML, and smarter Pixel Chooser save time on tedious isolation work.
RealFX Part 1: Perfectly formed scripts
The landscape of plug-in providers for After Effects (and other host applications) has thinned out noticeably in recent times. Whereas in the 2000s and 2010s we used to receive press releases about new and interesting plug-ins several times a week, nowadays we are lucky to receive one announcement per month. But we found a few beauties!
Affinity: free all-in-one design suite
Canva folds Affinity into one free-forever app, marking a major shift for design tools and putting the old perpetual-licence model on hold.
FMX Turns 30 in 2026
FMX 2026 celebrates 30 years of digital media creation. Stuttgart, May 5–8, 2026. Theme: “The Road Ahead”. Book your rooms, time flies.
The Mill Returns
The Mill is back. TransPerfect revives the iconic VFX studio with returning talent and a global creative push.
Photoshop 27.0: Now with Harmonise, Upscale & Firefly Video
Photoshop 27.0 is official. You get Harmonise, Generative Upscale, Firefly video export, and selectable AI models. Test before rollout.
Open HDRI: 25 Free 29K HDRIs (More to come)
A new online library offers 25 free HDRIs at up to 29K resolution, all under a CC0 license. Open HDRI provides ultra-high-quality lighting environments without sign-ups, tracking or licensing headaches.
Momo: Of Time, Turtles, and Technical Wizardry
VFX Supervisor Michael Wortmann on how RiseFX built the fantasy of Momo: almost entirely on location, with 280 shots and the best turtle in the business.
Flix 8.0: Foundry’s story hub gets serious about Storyboard Pro
Foundry’s Flix 8.0 tightens its Storyboard Pro link, retools shots UI, refines ingest monitoring, still “priced on request”, which probably means “too expensive”.
SLAPSHOT promises AI Camera Tracking “in minutes”
SLAPSHOT has released its AI Camera Tracking tool: what used to take a day or more can now take under ten minutes according to the developer.
ICE.ART 2025.II recordings now live for free
All talks and panel recordings from ICE.ART 2025.II are now live online: set aside a free weekend and dive into environment, historical racing,, city simulation, film nostalgia (including dinosaurs) and Unreal workflows.
Ugly Gets an Upgrade: Digital Anarchy’s Free Halloween Plugins
Digital Anarchy resurrects its Ugly Box and Flicker Freak plugins just in time for Halloween. Free, frightful, and gloriously hideous.
Free Blender add-on “Outset Boundary” lets you expand faces with one click
Free Blender add-on “Outset Boundary” offers an outset tool for expanding faces rather than insetting them, nice for quick margins.
Deadline 10 enters maintenance mode for studios
AWS Thinkbox will put Deadline 10 into maintenance mode on 7 Nov 2025: no new features, just fixes. Studios should plan migration to Deadline Cloud.
ZEISS CinCraft Virtual Lens Enters BETA: Real Glass, Virtual Magic
ZEISS opens BETA registration for CinCraft Virtual Lens Technology, a GPU-powered Nuke plugin that replicates real lens behaviour in compositing, simulating optical artefacts like bokeh, distortion, and chromatic aberration.
Unreal 5.7 Preview: PCG Grows Up, Foliage Gets Fancy
Unreal Engine 5.7 Preview is out. PCG hits production-ready, foliage goes Nanite, and MetaHumans get smarter, all free via Epic’s launcher.
HFF Munich Hiring: Two Half-Time Heroes Wanted
HFF Munich’s VFX department wants two new tech minds—one for the pipeline, one for IT. Expect creative chaos, cool people, and excellent surroundings!
Trees in Autumn: SpeedTree Controller 3.0 Falls for Houdini 21
SpeedTree Controller 3.0 lets Houdini artists break, regrow and shade trees with Karma: new features, same procedural roots
One Toolbag to Rule Your Clicks
William Faucher’s EasyToolbag trims the fat from Unreal Engine 5 workflows with one-click helpers, shortcuts, and smarter viewport tweaks.
Netflix Merges Scanline and Eyeline
Netflix unifies Scanline VFX and Eyeline Studios as “Eyeline”, merging high-end VFX with virtual production and AI research under one label.
Anastomia: Comparative Anatomy for Creature Artists
Human, horse, wolf, dog: Anastomia visualises their anatomy side by side, with sync, isolation, and pose features. Free in early access.
Blender’s Compositor Gets a Photoshop-Style Setup (Free)
Free node setup Easy Photorealism turns Blender’s compositor into a one-stop post-processing station with glare, noise, vignetting, and colour tweaks included.
TD Meetup 21: VR, Quill & the Renaissance of Real-Time Storytelling
At TD Meetup #21, Dan Franke showed how Quill VR lets you literally paint, animate, and pivot scenes in real time—no rig, just hand and headset.
GPU-FLIP solver Storm HydroFX launches in free open beta
Storm HydroFX, a standalone GPU FLIP fluid solver from Storm VFX, is now freely available in open beta with full import/export and no feature lockouts.
Material Maker 1.4: Godot 4 port, flexible UI, 32-bit baking
Material Maker 1.4 debuts: full Godot 4 migration, rebuilt shader engine, new node types and UI redesign. A serious update, not cosmetic.
Free 3D Cathedral Kit Lands on Fab
Epic’s Fab marketplace offers RagTarock’s Abandoned Cathedral pack: 210 modular Unreal Engine 5 assets, Nanite and Lumen ready, free until 21 October 2025.
Need an AI Video Enhancer in Your Workflow? Aiarty Video Enhancer!
Blocky VHS? Grainy DSLR shots? Aiarty Video Enhancer upscales, denoises, and restores video locally—no cloud upload required. (Sponsored Post)
After Effects Gets Hands-On: Victoria Nece Shows Off Quick Offset & Co.
At IBC 2025, I talked with Adobe’s Victoria Nece about Quick Offset, Smooth Zoom, and 3D compositing in After Effects. It’s tactile, fast and oddly fun.
Sharper, Faster, Smokier: FumeFX 7.1 for 3ds Max
FumeFX 7.1 delivers faster warps, Alembic point clouds, and smarter VDB handling in 3ds Max. Less waiting, more burning.
Project Manager 3.41 Adds Translucency, Archives & Online Licences
Project Manager 3.41 lands with archive import, PBR translucency, online licences, colour labels, and multi-category filtering for 3ds Max users.
GPU, meet Graph Editor: free Unreal motion crash course
Unreal Engine motion design for free: 17 videos, 10 scenes, GPU fans, and all. Jesse Pitela’s course covers UE5.7’s new motion toolset.
VIEW 2025: Program, Prices & Turin Tips
VIEW 2025’s packed programme mixes Pixar, ILM and AI sessions in Turin, with ticket prices from €186.55 and yes, eat a tramezzino.
VFX Job Application | FMX 2025 [LIMITED TIME]
Applying for jobs in visual effects, animation and gaming can be challenging, so let’s reveal the secrets that…
RenderMan 27: XPU graduates, RIS retires
Pixar ships RenderMan 27: XPU is ready for final frames, RIS is being phased out, MaterialX joins the toolset, and Stylized Looks evolve.
ProRes RAW vs. BRAW
BMPCC 4K just learned a new trick: ProRes RAW via firmware. We stacked it against BRAW Q0. One’s cleaner, one’s bigger. Which would you shoot?
Nanite marches in: Twinmotion 2025.2 update
Nanite now works in Twinmotion. 2025.2 also brings a new post stack, animation upgrades, VCAM tweaks, and cloud storage.
ProRes RAW News – Fresh from the Freezer
Resolve 20.2.1 + Sequoia = real ProRes RAW. Sonoma users: no dice. iPhone 17 footage shows the difference...
ICE.Art 2025: Virtual Worlds Meet After Hours
ICE.Art 2025 goes online in October. Two evenings of talks on 3D environments. Michael Shelton returns after his FMX Westworld talk.
Pixar beamed up: RenderMan Art Challenge 2025 goes alien
Pixar’s RenderMan Art Challenge 2025 goes extraterrestrial. Theme: Aliens. Deadline: 10 November. Tools: RenderMan only. Prizes: galactic.
Animatics, AI Lighting, and a Free Tier: Previs Pro 3 Expands Storyboarding on iPad
Previs Pro 3: now with animatics, AI lighting, and a free edition for iPad filmmakers.
50 Digital Scars: Halloween Comes to Blender
250 wounds, scars and skin damage brushes for Blender. Perfect for sculpting your next zombie, vampire, or stitched-mouth monster.
Maxon drops Red Giant 2026.0
Red Giant 2026.0: fixes, Capsules, Resolve controls. Universe 2026.0: UI polish. A maintenance release wearing a party hat.
Ready-Made Hype: Epic Ships Free Sports Broadcast Motion Design Sample
Epic drops a free Unreal Engine sports motion design sample: 40+ rigged, broadcast-ready assets for sports graphics.
Eight Hands, One Brush: Mari 7.5 Beta Paints on All Fronts
Multi-Paint lands in Mari 7.5 beta. Eight channels, one stroke. Texture transfer, image grouping, and faster backups follow. Test before trusting.
RizomUV 2025: Faster Packing, But Only If You’re on Windows with CUDA
RizomUV 2025 packs faster with NVIDIA GPUs, adds a scene outliner and UDIM upgrades. Linux and macOS users: GPU speed gains not included.
Nevercenter Adds USD & UDIM in Silo 2025.2
Silo 2025.2 adds USD support, UDIM UVs, unit conversion, synced viewports, and more helpful features for serious 3D work.
Python for Artists Cohort starts soon
Repetitive tasks kill time. Python kills repetitive tasks. DP author Alexander Richter teaches scripting for Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and more.
Maxon Autumn Release: New Colour Science, Liquids, Clouds and a Logo
Cinema 4D 2026 brings OCIO colour management, GPU simulations, UDIMs, Redshift 2026 plus Maxon’s brand-new ecosystem and logo.
Resolve Animation: Everything moves!
Resolve Animation? Well, everything is based on keyframes. Fusion adds power (and pain), 3D feels clunky. Still: motion graphics inside an editor? Works.
InstaMAT Gets Smarter: September 2025 Update Sharpens Shading, Painting, and Performance
New shading, erosion, and painting tools: InstaMAT’s September 2025 update is less marketing, more material.
ARRI Packs Virtual Production Into a Box
ARRI’s turnkey stage bundles LED wall, ALEXA 35, audio, and server into a scalable studio package with automation and colour management.
Mistika 11 Adds “The Gallery” for Colourists Who Hoard Looks
Mistika 11 adds The Gallery: unlimited presets, FX stacks, metadata control, and Apple Silicon optimisation. For colourists who like tidy chaos.
DaVinci Resolve 20.2: Ripple Discipline, ProRes RAW, and AI Fog on Demand
Resolve 20.2 ships with ProRes RAW decoding on all OS, AI-driven haze, cleaner ripple edits, immersive EXR support, and metadata flexibility.
Pixel 10 Pro unlocks true 12-bit RAW with DCG
Pixel 10 Pro quietly enables true 12-bit RAW video via DCG. Good for BCAM, photogrammetry, or set refs. But don’t expect it to replace your cinema cam.
Premiere Pro gains 90+ Film Impact effects – plug-in now built-in
Premiere Pro 25.5 folds Film Impact into the app. 90+ GPU-accelerated effects now ship natively, real-time playback, no plug-in, no red render bars.
TD-Meetup: Join us live, we talk about how VR Speeds Up Animation & Previz!
VR meets previs: Dan Franke shows how Quill VR fuels storytelling and rapid 3D iteration at the TD Meetup this thursday!
Chaos Vantage 3.0 beta lands with USD, MaterialX and Gaussian Splats
Vantage 3.0 beta is here: USD, MaterialX and Gaussian Splats mean Chaos’ real-time GPU renderer finally speaks modern pipeline standards.
KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla merge
KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla merge: R&D speeds up, asset libraries grow, tools expand. Users should see no price or support changes.
RV 2025: Onion Skin, Live Review, ARM Macs
RV 2025 arrives with Live Review (Beta), ARM64 macOS support, and onion skin annotations.
Matching Your Moves: Inside Vision Age VFX
Vision Age VFX specialises in high-end matchmove and rotoanim. Workflows, QC, case studies, and technical tips from Tunisia’s camera tracking experts.
Blackmagic Rents out Resolve: Subscriptions in the Cloud
Resolve goes rental: Blackmagic now lets individuals rent DaVinci Resolve Studio via Cloud. Not a shift, but an optional offer.
iPhone for Tracking: Beeble Camera enables Free “Virtual Production”
Free iOS app turns an iPhone into a tracked camera for AI-powered VFX passes. Beeble Camera links directly to Beeble Web, Editor, and Blender.
We have to talk about Switchlight 2.0
Beeble’s SwitchLight 2.0 turns raw plates into PBR maps that can be relit like CG. Now trained on 13× more data and extended to full-scene maps, not just the subject. We spoke with co-founder Hoon Kim about what’s new, how it’s priced, and where 3.0 is headed.
Premiere Pro on iPhone: Adobe goes pocket-sized
Adobe shrinks Premiere into your pocket: free iPhone app with pro editing, Firefly AI, and one-tap TikTok exports.
Free Material Assets Browser for 3ds Max enters public beta
Free Material Assets Browser for 3ds Max 2025: supports MaterialX, MatCap generation, multiple renderers. Public beta available on GitHub.
EVE Turns Houdini’s VEX Pane Into a Rainbow-Bracked Autocomplete Powerhouse
EVE revamps Houdini’s VEX panel: autocomplete, error‑tips and rainbow brackets, because coding shouldn’t hurt (in theory).
Dolby Vision 2 Rewrites HDR
TL;DR: Dolby Vision 2 upgrades HDR with AI-driven tone-mapping, ambient adjustments, and creative motion control, first to be seen in Hisense TVs, coming in 2026-2027.
Pivot with Precision: Pixie Pivot Adds Maya‑Style Controls to Blender
TL;DR: Pixie Pivot lets Blender users yank control of pivots and gizmos like Maya: snap, align, rotate and origin‑shift with precision.
Next-Gen Cloud Rendering for Blender? Meet Praxilla!
Praxilla offers Blender cloud rendering with Cycles and Eevee, starting at 2.50 € per GPU hour. Secure, fast, and aiming for collaborative rendering.
Blender 5.0 Ships Built-In ACES 2.0 View Transform
Blender 5.0 gains a built‑in ACES 2.0 view transform, new HDR and wide‑gamut export, and better OpenColorIO compatibility, making HDR pipelines more native.
Goodbye Adobe Premiere
I whispered, "Goodbye, Adobe!" as I pressed the unsubscribe button. To me it sounded very much like “Hasta la vista” but less dramatic. We had a good run, but it was time to move on.
RE:Vision Effects ups the ante with REZup V2 (and yes, it’s 4× sharper)
REZup V2 arrives with two new GPU-friendly ML models: general-purpose DNN 3 and face-focused DNN 2 and adds temporal denoising for cleaner 4× upscaling.
Netorium and dveas move in together
netorium AG and dve advanced systems merge to combine broadcast IT, VFX, and postproduction workflows for European clients.
ProArt PA32UCDM: The OLED Display That Thinks It’s a Reference Monitor And Dresses Like an Accountant
First impression: The ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM is the Clark Kent of displays. On your desk, it could pass for a premium, but otherwise unassuming office monitor—sleek, thin, and lightweight, with none of that over-designed “gamer” bling. But underneath?
Making it Soft – Diffusion in Post II
We looked at Halation and Diffusion before - but how about the new Tools from FilmConvert and Resolve 20?
Faster, wider, cleaner: KIRI Engine 4.0 drops mobile scan limits
KIRI Engine 4.0 slashes scan time, boosts photo limits, adds AR guidance and AI PBR and plus free users enjoy unlimited exports. Production-ready, at last.
Houdini 21 Finally Lands: The Buzz Is Over, Time to Actually Use It
SideFX has released Houdini 21, adding rigging, CFX, VFX, lookdev, terrain, and Copernicus updates. The hype is over; time to test in production.
Howler 2026 lands: AI inpainting, Confetti particles and four-track audio for under $33
Howler 2026 reinvents the quirky painting app with AI image tools, particle effects and multitrack audio—and it’s still just $32.99.
USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging
USDSkel is an OpenUSD component that supports scalable, manipulable, and interchangeable skinned characters. Wanna know more?
Clay 4.Doh Update Sculpts Blender Workflow
Rahul Parihar’s Clay 4.Doh update expands his Blender clay toolkit with new tools, modifiers, shader improvements, and perpetual free updates.
Problem Solver for VFX | TD Meetup 19
Problem-solving is a key life and professional skill, especially for those working with technology. Technical artists and directors in visual effects, animation and games are constantly solving technical problems, such as software crashes and slowdowns. They create alternative workflows and write Python scripts to speed up the process.
Cross Sections Without Tears: Free Plugin for 3ds Max
Free plugin for 3ds Max generates multiple 2D cross sections on any axis, with spacing, offset and weld options
EIZO CG3100X: The New Gold Standard for Colour-Critical Work?
EIZO’s new ColorEdge CG3100X offers DCI-4K, HDR presets, 99% DCI-P3 coverage and True Black filter. Available November 2025 for less money than you'd expect!
WorldEngen promises AI-built 3D scenes in hours, not weeks
WorldEngen claims to cut 3D scene creation from weeks to hours with AI integration into Blender, Unreal, and Unity. Early Access now open.
FumeFX 7.0 on Water: New Version Adds NodeWorks Ocean
FumeFX 7.0 for 3ds Max introduces NodeWorks Ocean, a GPU‑accelerated simulation system for waves, foam, spray, bubbles and multiphysics.
Axiom 4.0 Sneak Peek for Houdini
First preview of Axiom 4.0 shows improved collisions, redesigned sourcing, and faster GPU-driven simulations for Houdini.
Meshroom 2025.1: Templates, Plugins and Photometric Stereo
Update 2025.1: Meshroom adds templates, photometric stereo and a plugin hub. More open, modular and production-friendly.
Tomato Warfare: Milk VFX on Heads of State
Milk VFX Supervisor David Sadler-Coppard on how the team built thousands of CG tomatoes, exploding doors, and digital crowds for Heads of State.