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Thank you both for such incredibly detailed replies. Rather than just saying, "You're doing it wrong", giving such informed and lengthy explanations really does help noobs like me. Spurred on to do things correctly, I am going to rebuild the model properly! Thanks again.

Cylindrical smoothness under SDS is almost entirely dependent on even radial spacing of polygons. In the original model we have way too much density, lots of mesh problems, tons of triangles and none of it is even, so predictably, it can't subdivide, and will look horrible and creased regardless of what you do with it ! Remesh can sort this of course (ZRM far better than Instant Meshes in this case) but I would remove the thickness before you apply it, and sort the object axis out so you can use its symmetry features. But I would use that model as the guide to do it again, which, if you use 2 way symmetry, is only a few polys to wrangle. Final topology should be along these sorts of lines... I couldn't see your photo reference, so had to approximate, but you get the general idea... kite quads on sharp corners so you don't need to compromise rotational edge evenness to support them, and minimal poly density required to support the curves. Hope that helps. CBR

Skybox AI 0.8 The update expands the set of art styles available, with Technowizard subscriptions getting access to nine experimental styles, described as “extra powerful, but also more unpredictable”. The new styles range from graphic design-inspired looks, including vector art and linocut effects, to more realistic ‘organic architecture’. Lower-tier accounts now have access to 32 art styles, grouped by theme in the style menu. Skybox AI is currently in beta. It’s browser-based, so it should run in standard modern web browsers, although some features are only available on desktop machines or larger tablets. Users with free accounts can generate up to 15 skyboxes per month. Exports are watermarked, and are licensed under a CC-BY licence. Basic accounts cost $120/year, include the advanced features, and can generate 1,200 skyboxes per year. Pro accounts cost $240/year, can generate 3,000 skyboxes per year, and include full commercial licensing. Technowizard accounts cost $578/year and can generate an unlimited number of skyboxes. https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/ Redshift and Cinebench Optimized for Mac Lineup with M3 Family of Chips Maxon is thrilled to announce updates to Redshift and Cinebench 2024 that take advantage of the latest developments in Apple’s M3 family of chips. Artists will experience outstanding performance when generating photorealistic imagery using Maxon’s industry-leading Redshift render engine, thanks to the increased GPU power of the M3 family of chips, which includes support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 benchmarking tool, built on Redshift and Maxon’s Cinema 4D, is fully optimized and available as a free download, offering creators to evaluate the performance of Apple’s M3-series chips. Apple’s new GPU architecture features hardware-accelerated ray tracing, provides substantial speed increases when rendering with Redshift. Cinebench 2024.1 is available immediately from maxon.net for anyone to download and benchmark performance on macOS and Windows hardware. Optimizations will be available as part of regular Redshift updates for Maxon One and Redshift subscribers in the coming months. https://www.maxon.net/en/downloads/cinebench-2024-downloads Pencil+ 4.05 Line Already available for 3ds Max, Maya and Unity, PSOFT’s Pencil+ toolset is widely used in the Japanese animation industry, by studios including Toei Animation, Shirogumi and Marza Animation Planet. The 3ds Max and Maya editions are more general non-photorealistic rendering toolkits; the Unity and new Blender editions are focused specifically on outline rendering. Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender generates outlines around 3D objects mimicking the look of hand-drawn lines. Users can control line properties like width, colour, brush angle, opacity and blend mode via parameter settings in the UI, or – for more control – from Blender’s Node Editor. The results can be previewed in the viewport in real time, either overlaid on 3D geometry, or in isolation. The plugin itself is open-source, but PSOFT’s new standalone application Pencil+ Render is required to actually render the lines, so it’s effectively part of a commercial product. Although Blender has its own native NPR tools, in the shape of the Freestyle renderer and Grease Pencil toolset, the selling point of Pencil+ 4 Line is likely to be the control it provides over the lines generated. Equally significantly, PSOFT has also released Pencil+ 4 Bridge for Blender, a free add-on that can be used to transfer Pencil+ 4 line settings between Blender and the 3ds Max, Maya and Unity editions of Pencil+. The latter should make it easier for animation studios with existing Pencil+ pipelines to switch to Blender from other DCC applications, or to incorporate Blender into their pipelines. The new add-on was developed in partnership with one such studio, Studio Khara, which used it in production on Blu-ray extras for Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. This month’s 4.05 update adds support for viewport rendering, making it possible to render sequences of images from animations in near-real-time for checking. Previous updates have added the option to export lines in EPS format. Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender is compatible with Blender 3.0+ running on Windows 10+ only. It’s a free download. The source code is available under a GNU Public Licence. Pencil+ Render is available for Windows 10+. It costs ¥63,800 (around $474) for a standalone licence, ¥95,700 (around $711) for a network licence. https://psoft.co.jp/en/product/pencil/blender/ https://github.com/psofthouse/Pencil-4-Line-for-Blender/releases Substance 3D Painter 9.1 New features in Substance 3D Painter 9.1 include import of vector graphics in SVG format, plus three new ‘SVG focused’ material filters: Custom Sticker, Custom Spray and Graphic to Material. The update also improves handling of translucent materials, with support for Opacity, Translucency and Absorption Color added to the ASM (Adobe Standard Material) shader. There are also a number of workflow improvements, particularly to drag-and-drop workflows. It is now possible to drag and drop external assets directly into the Layer Stack, to drag textures from the Assets Panel into the Layer Stack, and to drag filters and generators onto a 3D mesh. Users can use [Ctr] and [Alt] modifiers to control how new effects and layers are created. The new Path tool introduced in Substance 3D Painter 9.0 gets usability improvements, with new transformation manipulators for path points, including tangent controls. It is also now possible to copy and paste path properties, and to toggle the visibility of paths individually. Other changes include a new Send to After Effects option, which exports a textured 3D mesh directly from Substance 3D Painter to Adobe’s compositing software. In addition, temporal anti-aliasing and subsurface scattering are now enabled by default, although GPU ray tracing is deactivated by default when baking texture maps on AMD GPUs. The software also now applies lossless compression to 16-bit images when saving. According to a tweet from Adobe’s Wes McDermott, this can reduce project files sizes by “up to 50%”. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-painter/release-notes/all-changes.html Move One Move AI has released Move One, its much-anticipated AI-based markerless iOS mocap app. The app lets users extract animation from video of an actor recorded on a single iPhone, in FBX or USD format, for use in DCC apps and game engines like Blender, Maya and UE5. Move One brings the same markerless motion-capture technology to single-camera footage. Users record a clip of an actor on their iPhone, beginning in the A-Pose and ensuring that the actor stays in frame throughout the shot, then upload it for processing online. The processed animation can be downloaded in FBX or USD (.usdc) format for use in DCC apps or game engines, with a new Chrome extension making it possible to send data directly to a PC. It supports clips of up to 60 seconds in length, and the original video can be exported alongside the FBX file, which includes both full-body motion and finger tracking, but not facial animation. You can get a feel for the quality of the results from the videos on the Move One page on Move AI’s website, which were created by beta testers of the app. Given that Move One has only a single camera view from which to extract data, there are, obviously, some limitations when compared to a multi-camera set-up. Whereas the multi-camera system supports multiple actors – typical capture volumes support up to three – Move One can currently capture only one person at a time. And unlike when using the web app for multi-camera set-ups, it doesn’t seem to be possible to generate a Blender or Maya HIK file regargeted to a custom character. However, the online documentation includes walkthroughs for retargeting animation data generated in Move One manually inside Blender, Cinema 4D, Maya, Unity and Unreal Engine. Move One is compatible with iOS 16.4+. The app itself is free. Processing data is priced on a credit basis, with one credit corresponding to one second of processed video. Registering for a free account on the Move AI website gives you 30 credits, after which, processing video requires a paid subcription. Free accounts are limited to 30-second videos. The Move One Starter Plan costs $30/month, which includes 300 credits per month; or $288/year, which includes 3,600 credits per year. Unused credits do not roll over between subscription periods. https://www.move.ai/move-one https://apps.apple.com/us/app/move-one/id6448635527 AccuFace Reallusion has released AccuFace, a new GPU-accelerated AI mocap plugin for iClone. The add-on is capable of extracting facial motion data from video footage of an actor captured on a standard 720p webcam and streaming it to the animation software in real time. It is compatible with iClone’s AccuLips automated lip-sync system, and can generate accurate lip movements for a range of languages. AccuFace (strictly, it’s styled ‘accuFACE’) extracts facial motion data from footage of an actor – either a live feed or pre-recorded video – and streams it to iClone in real time. It is intended for use with standard USB webcams or laptop cameras, so it can work with relatively low-quality footage: the recommended minimum is 720p resolution and 30fps. It includes controls for denoising and smoothing the raw animation data, and for adjusting the strength of motion of different regions of the face when retargeting animation to a 3D character. Processing is GPU-acclerated, and requires a relatively recent NVIDIA GPU: anything from 2019’s GeForce RTX 2060 onwards. There are a number of third-party solutions for extracting facial motion-capture data from video, and iClone already has two facial mocap add-ons of its own: Live Face, for use with iPhones, and an integration with Faceware’s real-time facial tracking technology. As well as being optimised for consumer webcams, selling points for AccuFace include timecode sync, and good support for iClone’s native tools: the add-on is optimised for AccuLips, iClone’s automated lip sync system, which supports languages other than English. You can see a comparision table for Reallusion’s facial mocap add-ons in the online FAQs. AccuFace is compatible with iClone 8.33+. It requires a compatible NVIDIA GPU. It has a MSRP of $499, although at the time of writing, it is available at a launch discount. iClone itself is compatible with 64-bit Windows 7+. New perpetual licences cost $599. https://magazine.reallusion.com/2023/11/06/accuface-revolutionizes-facial-tracking-from-live-and-recorded-video/ https://mocap.reallusion.com/iclone-motion-live-mocap/accuface.html UVPackmaster 3.2 The main change is a new UV tracking system, making it possible to have the transformation of a duplicate set of UVs follow those of the original set during packing, as shown above. In addition, the update reworks the plugin’s UI to a multi-panel layout, and makes it possible to pack UV groups into the same UV space with independent texel densities. Other new features since the original release include Stack Groups, which automatically stacks UV islands of the same shape on top of one another during packing, then packs the stacks. In addition, the plugin is now available for Linux and macOS as well as Windows. UVPackmaster 3.2 Pro is available for Blender 2.83+, running on Windows 10+, glibc 2.17+ Linux and macOS 10.13+. A new single-user licence now costs $44, up $5 since the original 3.0 release. Multi-user Studio licences start at $159, up $40 since the 3.0 releaase. https://uvpackmaster.com/ Katana 7.0 The biggest change in Katana 7.0 are the new USD-native workflows for production pipelines based around the Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) framework. Although Katana has been able to import USD data for some years now, the new Native USD framework – based on the same low-level architecture as Nuke’s new USD-based 3D system – should provide better performance when working with very large production assets. It comes with new nodes for creating and manipulating USD Stages, and should also be more customisable, with studios able to build custom nodes and engines, and to integrate their own version of USD in place of Katana’s FnUsd library. The existing USD framework – which uses the Geolib scene graph processing engine – and the new Native USD framework will be provided in parallel “for the foreseeable future”. Updates to existing features include support for OpenVDB volumes in the Hydra viewer. In addition, Live Rendering is now multi-threaded, making renders “up to twice as fast”. The Geolib3-MT runtime has been optimised to improve memory management, and now supports three alternative scene caching modes. For pipeline integration, Katana 7.0 supports the CY2023 specification for the VFX Reference Platform, along with USD 23.05, and Rocky Linux as a successor to CentOS. Foundry is also supporting the same standards in the latest versions of its other key applications: Nuke 15.0, released last month, and the upcoming Mari 7.0. Katana 7.0 is available for Windows 10 and Rocky Linux 9. The software is now subscription-only. Since Katana 6.0, the price of Katana Interactive subscriptions has risen to $4,199/year, up $200/year. Katana Render subscriptions cost $323/year, up $15/year. https://campaigns.foundry.com/products/katana/whats-new https://learn.foundry.com/katana/Content/release_notes/7.0/Katana_7.0v1_ReleaseNotes.html ZBrush 2024 Key changes in ZBrush 2024 include a time-saving new Repeat to Similar Feature. It enables users to make a change to one mesh, then automatically apply the same change to all other meshes with similar topology. As well as transferring sculpted details, it works with changes to Polypaint or Polygroups, and can even replace each mesh with a different mesh. The Anchors brush added in ZBrush 2023.2 also gets an update, making it possible to use it to repose part of a sculpt without the need to manually create a mask to isolate the part. In addition, the older Transpose feature has been improved, with the option to snap the Transpose line to the center of a mask, so stays positioned correctly when the mask is updated. It is also now possible to use every ZBrush stroke type with Insert Mesh brushes, making it possible to control the position of the inserted meshes more precisely. Suggested uses include using the DragDot stroke to position individual meshes added by InsertMultiMesh brushes. There is also a new stroke type, DragStamp, intended as a more controllable alternative to the existing DragRect stroke. In addition, the Knife brush has been updated to make it possible to split a mesh into pieces. Other changes include new Grow All and Shrink All options for masks, and new Crease Unmasked and Uncreasaed Unmasked options for creasing the unmasked areas of a model. Finally, 25 noise types from Cinema 4D, Maxon’s 3D modeling and animation software, have been added to the ZBrush Surface Noise library. The change should open up new options for adding random surface variation to models when sculpting details on their surfaces, or painting them inside ZBrush. Another key change in ZBrush 2024 is that it is only available via subscription. Although Maxon ended the old policy of perpetual free updates to ZBrush when it acquired Pixologic in 2021, perpetual licences themselves remained available until ZBrush 2023. According to its new online FAQs, ZBrush 2024 is not available as a perpetual licence, although perpetual licences of ZBrush 2023 will remain available until the end of the 2024 release cycle. That also means that holders of perpetual licences will need to switch to a subscription to get the new features introduced in ZBrush 2023.1 and ZBrush 2023.2. ZBrush 2024 is compatible with Windows 10+ and macOS 11.5+. It is only available through subscription. ZBrush subscriptions cost $39/month or $359/year. https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/11319972117148-ZBrush-2024-Release-Notes https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/7461742431260-ZBrush-2023-Upgrade-Paths-for-Perpetual-License-Users Rhino 8 soon KeyShot 2023.3 The update overhauls color workflow, making individual colors instances within KeyShot. When an instance is updated, all of the material of that color in a project update automatically. Color instances can be grouped into ‘multi-colors’, analogous to multi-materials. Other related changes include a new Color Mode, which hides most of the UI to focus on color libraries and multi-colors; and support for the perception-based Natural Color System (NCS). Outside color workflow, KeyShot 2023.3 adds a new Performance Mode option for GPU rendering, in some cases accelerating GPU renders “over 2x”. There is also a new Light Solo Mode, which preserves lighting when soloing part of a model, and a new ACES image transform for adding film-like looks to renders. KeyShot 2023.3 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.7+. Integration plugins are available for a range of DCC and CAD tools, including 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D and Maya. The software is now available rental-only. KeyShot Pro subscriptions cost $1,188/year. KeyShot Web and network rendering are available via separate subscriptions. The old web page for the lower-cost KeyShot Personal Edition now redirects to the main online store. https://www.keyshot.com/blog/2023-color-workflow-gpu-performance-mode-improvements-2/ https://manuals.keyshot.com/keyshot2023/Content/manual/whats-new/release-notes-2/Release Notes 2023.3.htm Radeon Pro W7700 The Radeon Pro W7700 is the latest workstation card to use AMD’s RDNA 3 GPU architecture. It includes dedicated hardware cores for general GPU computing, for ray tracing, and for accelerating AI operations, and unlike current professional NVIDIA and Intel cards, supports DisplayPort 2.1, the latest version of the digital display standard. For DCC work, it’s important to note that several key render engines, including Arnold GPU, OctaneRender and V-Ray GPU, use Nvidia APIs, and are not accelerated by AMD cards. However, Blender’s Cycles renderer and Maxon’s Redshift both now support GPU-accelerated rendering on AMD GPUs using AMD’s HIP API, and real-time render engines that support DXR (DirectX Raytracing), like Unreal Engine, support GPU ray tracing on both manufacturers’ cards. The Radeon Pro W7700 is available now. It has a recommended price of $999. https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/amd-radeon-pro-w7700 Maya 2024.2 & Maya Creative 2024.2 Retopologize, Maya’s automated retopology system, gets another update, with the Symmetry options now respecting the new feature preservation options added in Maya 2024. The underlying algorithm, ReForm, has been updated, with processing now “up to 30% faster”. LookdevX, Maya’s new toolset for creating USD shading graphs, gets a more substantial update. New features in LookdevX 1.2 include the option to solo nodes; and a new dynamic port workflow, for working with one unified shader rather than multiple separate shaders. In addition, it is now possible to use relative USD paths as well as absolute paths, and the LookdevX graph is now controlled by global color management preferences. There are also a number of workflow improvements, including the option to copy and paste nodes and materials, and to drag and drop files from an external file browser. For character rigging, the Proximity Wrap deformer gets a new Snap mode for when the existing Surface mode creates unwanted deformations. The GPU Cache plugin, used to speed up playback of complex rigs, now lets users start the cache at a specific frame; and there are 12 new rigging math nodes. The Time Slider gets further workflow improvements, with the option to color code keys, as shown above, and the viewport now updating when you [Alt]- or [Shift]-drag keys. In the Graph Editor, the new system for ‘sculpting’ animation curves introduced in Maya 2024 can now modify curves on the Time axis as well as the Value axis. The Bake Deformer Tool, used to bake down character rigs for export to game engines, now has full Undo support. In addition, the bake process is now “faster and uses substantially less memory”, although the release notes don’t put a figure on the performance improvements. When baking simulations, it is now possible to disable processes that draw processing power away from the simulation in the Bake Simulation options. Outside the core software, the Arnold, Bifrost, Substance and USD plugins have been updated. USD for Maya 0.25 is the biggest update of the four, making it possible to save USD files relative to the Maya scene file, and to isolate-select in the viewport. It also features workflow updates when using the Layer Editor, Attribute Editor and Channel Box. Arnold for Maya (MtoA) 5.3.4.1 adds support for the new features in Arnold 7.2.4, while Bifrost for Maya 2.7.1.1 is just a bugfix update to version 2.7.1, which shipped with Maya 2024.1. Autodesk has also updated Maya Creative, the new cut-down edition of Maya for freelancers and small studios. It only lacks simulation tools, so the new features are almost identical to Maya 2024.2 itself, with the exception of the update to the Bifrost plugin. Maya 2024.2 is compatible with Windows 10+, RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.8/9.2, and macOS 11+. The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $235/month, or $1,875/year. In many countries, artists earning under $100,000/year and working on projects valued at under $100,000/year, qualify for Maya Indie subscriptions, now priced at $305/year. Maya Creative is available on a pay-as-you-go basis. Prices start at $3/day, with a minimum spend of $300/year. https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-89BCD2FB-A30A-4189-BB92-012B99B44416 https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYACRE/ENU/?guid=GUID-89BCD2FB-A30A-4189-BB92-012B99B44416 3ds Max 2024.2 While Autodesk usually puts out updates to 3ds Max every three months, it has been six months since the release of 3ds Max 2024.1, and presumably as a result of the extra development time, the changelog for 3ds Max 2024.2 is rather longer than usual. Although the update doesn’t introduce any major new features, there are workflow and performance improvements to a number of the existing tools, some of them quite significant. Those tools include the Boolean modifier introduced in 3ds Max 2024: Autodesk says that processing Boolean operations on meshes is now “35% faster”. In addition, the modifier now supports source meshes with co-planar faces. Boolean sources now retain their original pivot points, making them easier to reposition; and Boolean operations on OpenVDB volumes now preserve their animation parameters. Several other key modifiers get performance improvements: Push is “up to 1.5x faster”, Relax and XForm are “up to 1.7x faster”, and Volume Select is “up to 10x faster”. Volume Select also now supports animation of Material IDs and smoothing group values. The Data Channel modifier gets a number of workflow improvements, including the option to use MAXScript scriptiong to process channel data. Performance of the Retopology Tools has also been improved, with an update to the base algorithm, Autodesk ReForm, making processing “up to 30%” faster. When UV unwrapping meshes, the Unfold3D Peel, Pack and Relax tools in the Unwrap UVW Modifier now respect the current UV selection. For animators, the Assign Controller rollout now resizes to fit the dimensions of the Command Panel, with other improvements including an expanded context menu. Biped and CAT get bugfixes and some smaller workflow improvements. The new OCIO color management system introduced in 3ds Max 2024 is officially no longer classed as a technology preview, and gets a number of workflow improvements of its own. In addition, 3ds Max now no longer saves scenes with empty Animation Layers, Note Tracks or Note Keys, reducing file sizes. Outside the core software, the USD and Arnold plugins have been updated. USD for 3ds Max 0.5 is a significant update, adding support for MaterialX, and for exporting facial animations created using 3ds Max’s Morpher modifier as blendshapes. Find details in this story. MAXtoA 5.6.5.1 adds support for the new features in Arnold 7.2.4. 3ds Max 2024.2 is available for Windows 10+. It is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $235/month or $1,875/year. In many countries, artists earning under $100,000/year and working on projects valued at under $100,000/year qualify for Indie subscriptions, which now cost $305/year. https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-3176A998-FEA3-4BCF-9367-EE3BE66CEBB2 Kiri Engine 3.0 First released in 2022, Kiri Engine is a 3D scanning app for Android and iOS devices. It began as a photogrammetry tool, reconstructing 3D models from source photos of real-world objects, and uses AI techniques for object masking and noise removal. Recent updates have added support for Neural Surface Reconstruction, and Lidar scanning on iOS devices. To that, Kiri Engine adds support for new 3D reconstruction technique 3D Gaussian Splatting. Like photogrammetry, it begins by generating a point cloud of a 3D object or scene from a set of source photos, but rather than converting the point cloud to a textured mesh, it converts it to gaussians, using machine learning to determined the correct color for each one. The result is a high-quality and potentially fast-rendering 3D representation of the object or scene being scanned. Although other 3D scanning apps like Polycam support the creation and viewing of 3D Gaussian Splats in their iOS editions – Polycam also has a free online splat creator and viewer – Kiri Innovations claims that Kiri Engine is the first Android app to do so. Once a 3DGS scan has been created, users can generate HTML code to embed it in a website. Although 3DGS representations can be stored in PLY format, it currently isn’t possible to download a 3DGS scan directly from Kiri Engine. In fact, if you could, your options for using the file would be limited: while there is a commercial add-on for importing and rendering 3DGS data in Unreal Engine, and an experimental free add-on for Unity, most other DCC applications don’t yet support 3D Gaussian Splatting. However, proponents of 3DGS say that it should be easier to implement in existing renderers than related techniques like NeRFs, so it may not be long before that changes. Kiri Engine 3.0 is available for Android 7.0 and iOS 14.0. The new 3DGS functionality is only available to users with paid Pro accounts. The app itself is free to download. Free Basic accounts include photogrammetry, Lidar scanning and Object Capture, and can export three 3D scans from the cloud per week. Pro accounts cost $14.99/month or $59.99/year, make it possible to export an unlimited number of scans from the cloud, and unlock the advanced features. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiriengine.app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kiri-engine-3d-scanner/id1577127142 Terragen 4.7 This year’s update, Terragen 4.7, optimizes the process of exporting clouds and terrain. For clouds, the VDB Exporter now leaves grid points empty whenever the cloud density value is zero, reducing file sizes. Users can also export parts of a cloud at different resolutions by isolating them using a new Bounding Box object. For terrain, the Micro Exporter now merges duplicated vertices, normals, faces and UVs, resulting in cleaner exported geometry, and can now be used with multi-threaded renders. Workflow in the node graph has been improved, with inactive connections – those where the associated parameter checkbox is unchecked – now drawn with a faded line to improve readability of the graph. It is also now possible to export images in .hdr format. Changes unique to one or more of the old editions of Terragen – about which, more in a minute – include the option to export render elements from the Professional edition as multi-layer or multi-part EXR files. The Creative edition can now export images and heightfields as EXR files, and all three of the old editions, including the non-commercial Free edition, now have the new RPC system introduced in Terragen 4.6. However, one of those editions no longer exists, at least for the purposes of new licences, since Planetside Software has just changed its pricing structure for Terragen. Previously, the software was available in three editions: a Free non-commercial trial, a feature-limited $349 Creative edition, and the full $649 Professional edition. Now all of the new licences sold will be the Professional edition, but Planetside has introduced a tiered price structure based on how much an individual or company earns. There are five tiers, ranging from earnings of $50,000/year to over $1 billion/year. Perpetual licences now cost between $199 and $980, depending on which tier you fall in, while subscriptions cost between $10/month and $56/month, or $96/year and $492/year. Existing users can choose whether to continue at their current price or change to new pricing. https://planetside.co.uk/news/terragen-4-7-release/ https://planetside.co.uk/change-logs/terragen-4-7-15-change-log/ GameMaker Free Edition GameMaker announced a free version. https://gamemaker.io/en/download Marvelous Designer 12.2 Octane 2024 Major changes already available in preview in the initial alpha of OctaneRender 2024.1 include the software’s new geometry pipeline. It unifies the memory layouts used for geometry between CUDA and Metal, making it possible to mix Macs with Windows and Linux machines in render networks. The new pipeline also extends OctaneRender’s use of the RT cores in NVIDIA GPUs to all mesh primitives, including hair, spheres and displacement triangles, improving render performance. Other changes include a new denoising system based on the Open Image Denoise (OIDN) framework, and new options for post-processing render passes in the AOV Compositor. New versions of OctaneRender go through multiple builds before the feature set is locked, so more new features are scheduled for OctaneRender 2024.1 before the stable release. They include native support for open look dev and material standard MaterialX, including its OpenPBR subproject. OctaneRender 2024.1 will also feature OctaneGPT, a ChatGPT-style Large Language Model service that will provide in-application help, and that will be able to generate new nodes, shaders, scripts – and even complete scenes – interactively from users’ text or voice prompts. Other features scheduled for future builds of OctaneRender 2024.1 include light field baking. Otoy describes it as “high-performance reflectance field caching for rendering Octane scenes at 120fps with final-frame quality”, but doesn’t go into any more detail in its forum post. You can see brief demos above and in this video of Otoy CEO Jules Urbach at the Blender Conference, where he discusses support for Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The other features described as being in “active development” for OctaneRender 2024.1 will be more familiar to regular readers, since Otoy has announced them before for previous releases. They include real-time temporal denoising via the Brigade spectral rendering kernel, previously scheduled to become available in OctaneRender 2022.1. According to Otoy, “real time filtering for path traced rays [is already in the] 2023 core”, and will now be exposed in the integration plugins, starting with Unreal Engine, Blender and Cinema 4D. Meshlet streaming, a scene streaming system that Otoy compares to Nanite, the virtualised geometry system introduced in Unreal Engine 5.0, is a bit further off. Meshlet texture streaming is due in OctaneRender 2024.1, but geometry streaming is now scheduled for later in the 2024.x release cycle. Neural rendering, previously announced as part of the Octane 2023 product roadmap, is also now due later in the 2024.x release cycle. According to Otoy’s latest blog post, it will support a range of AI-based techniques, including “NeRF, splats [presumably 3D Gaussian Splatting] and generative AI scene nodes”. The multi-render system, previously scheduled for OctaneRender 2021, is also now due in 2024.x, in the shape of “headless rendering with multi-render and multi-engine live linking”. Other features scheduled for the 2024.x release cycle include a “volumetric live compositor for virtual production and mixed reality and light field displays”, and a new network render manager. Otoy tends to be very optimistic in its public roadmaps, as you can judge by comparing what it announced in its Octane 2023 roadmap and what actually shipped in OctaneRender 2023.1. When considering features scheduled for 2024.x, it’s also worth noting that so far this decade, Otoy has rarely put out two stable releases of OctaneRender in a calendar year. OctaneRender 2024.1 is currently in alpha. Otoy hasn’t announced a final release date yet, but other recent updates have taken 6-12 months to get from the initial preview to a stable release. https://home.otoy.com/octane2024/ Continuum 2024 Continuum becomes Boris FX’s second product this year to get new AI-based features, in the shape of new machine-learning-based video deonoising and up-resing tools. DeNoise ML, available for multiple host apps, removes low-light and compression artefacts. UpRes ML, currently only available for After Effects, upscales footage while preserving fine detail, with the option to zoom in to specific parts of the source clip. Particle Illusion, Continuum’s particle effects system, also gets new AI capabilities, with the option to generate sprites to use with particle emitters from text prompts. The functionality uses Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI‘s AI model. Other new features in Particle Illusion include the option for particle lines to be true 3D objects, and new options for controlling inheritance of velocity. Workflow improvements include a new Scale Project feature to upscale particle systems uniformly, and a UI Scale Factor to resize interface elements more easily. Other new features in Continuum 2024 itself include BCC+ Audio Visualizer, a self-descriptive new effect for generating patterns of lines, dots or circles matching an audio source. The BCC+ Super LED effect added in Continuum 2023.5 gets a Fade Map to control the effect. Continuum 2024 is compatible with a range of compositing and editing software, including After Effects, DaVinci Resolve and Nuke, running on Windows 10+ or macOS 10.15+. It is priced according to host application, with new licences costing from $695 to $1,995. Subscriptions cost from $195/year to $695/year. https://blog.borisfx.com/new-ai-powered-vfx-and-audio-plugins Photoshop 25.2 Photoshop 25.2 iself is a small update, improving workflow in the Layers panel with customizable options in its flyout panel, and new right-click options. Photoshop on the iPad 5.3 adds Generative Fill, the generative AI-based background-editing feature introduced in the desktop edition of the software earlier this year. It lets users replace part of an image by typing in a text description of the content they would like to create in its place, with the new imagery generated non-destructively in a new layer. Photoshop 25.2 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.0+. In the online documentation, it is also referred to as the November 2023 release or Photoshop 2024.1. The software is rental-only, with Photography subscription plans, which include access to Photoshop and Lightroom, starting at $119.88/year. Single-app Photoshop subscriptions now cost $34.49/month or $263.88/year, Adobe having raised the prices of many Creative Cloud subscriptions earlier this month. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new/2024-1.html#improved-layers-menus

If you use the object under the Cloner then you can use the offset the animation of each instance.

No remesh - remesh Default settings I've notices some corner crops: remedied it with these Notice the Hard Edge Selection C4D won't work miracles though... If they don't upgrade the SDS to support Fields or Polygon Selections or even just make the Remesh use Fields or Polygon Selections, there's no other way but remodel the damn thing. The explanation is really straightforward: Your topology is not uniform. Remesh and SDS are doomed to interpolate the same between dense and sparce topology, essentially treating the whole object the same when in reality it needs different treatment based on regional density. The fasters and easiest way I can advice to rebuilt it is: to keep only the Top and Bottom Polygon Selections and delete the rest of the geometry From those selections Convert to Splines only their outer edge rings Use those splines under a Loft to see their connecting geometry. You should make adjustments for the intermediate points to be dense enough to compensate for the edge details and uniform enough for a constant roundness. In order for the Loft to work best the two (Top and Bottom splines) need to have the same number of intermediate points, otherwise you'll have to bridge the two splines manually. *** Then just through the Loft under the Thicken to make the extrusion... *** At this point you could use the Ring command to add an outline to the splines, then Loft them individually adjusting their topology and then manually bridge the to Lofts. I think this is more realistic as C4D does not support Bridging between different objects or Bridging between splines. Let's hear what @Cerberahas to say about this.