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AMD has released Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Blender and Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Maya, the latest versions of the Blender and Maya editions of its free, physically accurate GPU renderer. Better support for rendering volumes, plus DeepEXR export for Maya users Both versions get support for rendering environment fog and heterogeneous volumes like clouds and smoke in Full quality mode, although not yet on macOS. The Blender edition supports Blender’s Volume Scatter node and Principled Volume shader. In addition, the Maya edition can now export Deep EXR files for use in VFX compositing workflows. Availability and system requirements All the editions of Radeon ProRender are free downloads. The source code of the plugins is available under the Apache Licence 2.0. Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Blender is compatible with Blender 2.80+ on Windows, Linux and macOS. Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Maya is compatible with Maya 2018+ on Windows and macOS. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender full list of new features in Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Blender Version 3.3 New Features: Support for Fog and Heterogenous Volume rendering has been added to the RPR Full mode. Simulated volumes are now rendered on CPU and GPU. This includes support for the Blender Volume Scatter node and Principled Volume shader. Fixes: An output socket has been added in the Render Layer compositor node for Outline renders. An issue that could cause Material Previews not to work has been fixed. An error when Shadow Catcher objects were enabled with viewport rendering has been corrected. The following issues with Image Sequence texture not working have been fixed: Viewport and Final renders using texture sequences now look correct; Cyclic and Auto Refresh options in the image texture now work correctly; Support for numeric image filenames has been added. Hide/unhide could sometimes not work correctly with viewport rendering — fixed. Viewport upscaling now always uses 16-bit depth, which has fixed an issue with upscaling working on macOS. Emission Strength values > 1.0 now work correctly in the Principled Shader. Motion blur now works correctly with the “Center on Frame” and “Frame End” options. Setting the minimum samples option from 1 to 16 is now allowed (default is still 64). Hair rendering fixes: Hair UVs now work correctly; Textures are now supported for the color input of the Principled Hair BSDF and Hair BSDF; The color and melanin settings of the Principled Hair BSDF now look more accurate. Particle objects with hair on them were not rendering the hair — fixed. An issue with the “World” light being empty has been fixed. An AOV output “Camera Space Normal” has been added. Exporting .rpr files now takes into account material overrides. A warning is now added when an object with an excessive number of faces is exported. When a shader node was “muted,” that was not working in some cases — fixed. Differences in point lights between Cycles and ProRender have been mitigated. The Albedo AOV now passes the “Base color” on the Toon shader. A halo no longer appears around shadow and reflection catcher objects. AOVs passed through transparent or refractive materials — fixed. Noise convergence with emissive materials using textures has been improved. Performance with outline rendering has been improved. Performance regression on WX7100 GPUs has been fixed. The Object ID Lookup node now works in the Full mode. Objects with Toon shaders attached now cast shadows correctly if the flag is disabled. An issue detected on the latest NVidia drivers has been fixed. Known Issues: Volumes are not implemented on macOS. Vega GPUs with AMD 21.10 drivers can cause an issue when using the ML Denoiser. full list of new features in Radeon ProRender 3.3 for Maya Version 3.3 New Features: Support for Fog and Heterogenous Volume rendering has been added to the RPR Full mode. Simulated volumes are now rendered on CPU and GPU. An option of exporting DeepEXR files for compositing has been added. DeepEXR files contain multiple depth samples, allowing compositing better with depth. Support for the Voronoi Texture node has been added. Fixes: The texture cache location is now saved between sessions. Scenes that have many instances could crash IPR — fixed. A crash could happen with a correct HDRI image on an environment light — fixed. Support for Object ID and Random Color lookups in shader nodes has been added. After a critical render error, users could not render again without restarting Maya — fixed. Optimizations to the export of objects with deformation motion blur have been made. An error with references to materials in another scene has been fixed. The Albedo AOV now passes the “Base color” on the Toon shader. A halo no longer appears around shadow and reflection catcher objects. AOVs passed through transparent or refractive materials — fixed. Better noise convergence with emissive materials using textures has been achieved. Performance with outline rendering has been improved. Performance degradation on WX7100 GPUs has been eliminated. The Object ID Lookup node now works in the Full mode. Objects with Toon shaders attached now cast shadows correctly if the flag is disabled. An issue detected on the latest NVidia drivers has been fixed. Known Issues: Volumes are not implemented on macOS. Vega GPUs with AMD 21.10 drivers can cause an issue when using the ML Denoiser.

So apparently the StarTrek - Discovery Season 4 has started and I am very excited about it. I used to hate StarTrek and love StarWars but my feelings changed after Disney bought LucasFilms (except The Mandalorian). My feeling towards StarTrek changed after the last 3 movies. StarTrek - Discovery begun in Season 1 somewhat at the same concept as the previous series but had superior CG. As the story progressed the scenario became more and more appealing. I like series that start a bit slow and predictive but show future potential. StarTrek - Discovery is now out of control with a re-imagined futuristic StarFleet closer to other contemporary SciFi futuristic concepts. I like the Intro sequence Spin-offs tailored for each Season and sometimes for special episodes. The intro mimics wireframe renders and FUI. For a TV show, the complexity of many scenes is just incredible. At the end of Season 2 there is a huge battle spanning in two episodes. The amount of particles, explosion's and spacecrafts made the quality look parallel to the last battle of The Rise of Skywalker. Below you will find some VFX breakdowns from all seasons And here's a time-lapse setting the control bridge stage

This "too late" really gives a negative feel doesnt it? I think I understand the whole thing about maintanance and the idea behind it. But saying "hey, too late!" to a customer, I dont know man... I think I also keep asking myself, how companies like Pixologic manage to be such good guys, for SO LONG. I've gotten now, new and shiny Zbrush 2022, paying zero for it, after paying for the full license back in 2016. Since then, I paid nothing... nada, and the software has improved so much over the past years.