HappyPolygon

https://www.creativebloq.com/news/maxon-updates

Usually problems like these get resolved by changing the subdivision type of the constituent splines (like uniform or adaptive)

I made this list for the following reasons: So users with old software can have access to modern tools with alternative 3rd party plugins. So underexposed developers can have their chance here. So new developers or even MAXON itself can revive dead plugins.

I'll do as soon as posible

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/playboy-image-from-1972-gets-ban-from-ieee-computer-journals/

How I see the AI space right now.mp4 a6Zm8dA_460svav1.mp4 A editors life.webm

Each year, thousands of content professionals
from all corners of the broadcast, media and entertainment ecosystem go to NAB Show. It’s designed for those striving to drive listeners and engage viewers in larger numbers for greater reach. And it’s imagined for those seeking to create uncommon audio and visual experiences. No matter where you fall on the content continuum—from creation to distribution, management to monetization—this is where you’ll find a renewed path to clarity and confidence that takes your work in bold new directions. https://www.maxon.net/en/event/nab-show-2024 Mudbox 2025 While the previous three updates included new Windows, Linux and macOS installers, this time, there are no specific improvements or bugfixes mentioned at all. When we contacted Autodesk, the company provided this list of changes. Two are updates to Autodesk backend technologies, one is a bugfix, and one is the removal of an outdated library. What’s new in Mudbox 2025 Autodesk Identity Manager is now available on Linux, in addition to Windows and Mac support added in Mudbox 2024 Autodesk component updates (Installer, Licensing, CER, UPI, AGS (not much for customer) Fixed serial number activation issue Removed Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2010 SP1, 2012 UPD4 (no longer supported) references from Mudbox We asked Autodesk if Mudbox users can expect any new features in future, but the company told us that no information was available about future updates. Mudbox 2025 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL/Rocky Linux 8.7/9.3, and macOS 12.0+. The software is rental-only, with subscriptions costing $15/month or $100/year. https://help.autodesk.com/view/MBXPRO/ENU/?guid=Mudbox_ReleaseNotes_release_notes2025_html Vantage 2.3 First released in 2020, Vantage is a hardware-accelerated ray tracing renderer intended for exploring large V-Ray production scenes in near-real time. The initial release was targeted at visualization, but in 2023 Chaos added support for rendering deforming meshes, like animated characters, and began pitching Vantage at VFX work. Vantage 2.3 isn’t as major an update, but adds support for two important features of V-Ray: the V-Ray Blend Material (VRayBlendMtl) and the Multi Matte render element. You can find a list of V-Ray features not yet supported in Vantage here. Workflow improvements include a toggle for the viewport light gizmos, and a new setting to reduce performance impact on other applications while Vantage is rendering. Vantage can also now encode video using the AV1 codec as well as H.264 on NVIDIA Ada Generation GPUs. Chaos Vantage is compatible with Windows 10+ and DXR-compatible AMD, Intel or Nvidia GPUs. The software is rental-only, with subscriptions costing $108.90/month or $658.80/year. It is included free with V-Ray Premium and Enterprise subscriptions. https://docs.chaos.com/display/LAV/Chaos+Vantage%2C+v2.3.0 Substance 3D Modeler 1.8.5 Substance 3D Modeler is a SDF-based tool that lets users sculpt both organic and hard-surface models in virtual reality, or in desktop mode using a mouse and keyboard. Workflow combines elements of digital sculpting and Boolean modelling, with users able to build up forms with virtual clay, then join them or cut into them with Boolean operations. You can find more details in this story on Substance 3D Modeler 1.0. Substance 3D Modeler 1.8.5 introduces experimental new AI features, of which the most eye-catching is Search by Shape, shown in the video at the top of the story. With it, users can roughly block out objects, then search the Substance 3D Assets library for readymade parts with a similar shape, using keywords to refine the search if necessary. The blockout version can then be replaced in the scene by the readymade asset. In addition, the software’s Increase resolution algorithm, used to upres models, has been updated to “better maintain sharp edges and details”. Substance 3D Modeler 1.8.5 is compatible with Windows 10+, and these VR headsets. It is available in public beta via the Creative Cloud desktop app for anyone with an Adobe ID. Find commercial pricing in our story Substance 3D Modeler 1.8. the current stable release. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-modeler/release-notes/public-beta.html Cell Fluids 1.6 for Blender The Cell Fluids 1.5 release removes at least two of those limitations. The first is that as well as waves and ripples on the fluid surface, the solver can now generate splashes, making it possible to mimic waterfalls or water pouring over objects more accurately. The second is that the ground surface beneath the liquid can now be animated. In the video at the top of the story, you can see the new Dynamic Ground system in use: according to the online documentation, it can create glitches if objects are moved too fast, but it gives good-looking results when used to generate waves, or to block parts of the fluid. The update makes it possible to bake the simulation to a static mesh with flow maps, and export the baked animation to game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, as shown above. Cell Fluids 1.6 is compatible with Blender 3.6+. It costs $20. https://blendermarket.com/products/cell-fluids Unity discontinues Ziva The announcement marks the end of the line for the tools that Unity acquired in its buyout of their original developer, Ziva Dynamics, in 2022. The original, and probably the best-known, is Maya soft-tissue simulation plugin Ziva VFX, used in high-profile VFX projects including Dune, many recent Marvel movies, and Game of Thrones. It was later joined by two new AI-based tools, online facial rigging service Ziva Face Trainer, and real-time character deformation system Ziva RT. All three were discontinued with little notice: the email informing users that the products are no longer being sold or supported, went out yesterday, as Unity announced the news on its blog. Subscribers can choose to convert their existing licenses to five-year terms in order to keep using the products beyond their current expiration dates, albeit without active support. They then have until 2 October 2024 to download the new license keys, after which point they will lose access to the Ziva customer portal, including online documentation. A “significant proportion” of the original Ziva team will move to international VFX firm – and long-term Ziva tools user – DNEG, which has acquired an exclusive perpetual license of the Ziva IP. According to DNEG’s blog post, the technology will “further enhance” its creature pipeline”, and will also be used by its new DNEG IXP immersive experiences division. There is no mention of any plans to make the technology available as commercial products. Unity also retains ownership of all the technology it acquired from Ziva Dynamics, and will “continue to evaluate the best way” to use it to “enhance [its] core offerings”. In January, Unity revealed that it planned to lay off 25% of its workforce as part of an ongoing “reset” to refocus the company on its core games products – the Unity Editor, Unity Cloud, and its monetization services – and would “likely discontinue” other non-core products in future. Unity had previously ended its professional services agreement with VFX facility Wētā FX, laying off 265 staff involved in developing Weta’s in-house tools, which Unity acquired in 2021. Some of that technology had previously been due to become commercially available through Unity Wētā Tools: an offering now further reduced by the discontinuation of the Ziva products. Aside from features of the Unity game engine itself, the only major technology listed on the Unity Wētā Tools webpage that remains commercially available is SpeedTree, the plant-generation toolset that Unity bought in 2021, and which is widely used in games as well as VFX. https://blog.unity.com/news/update-about-ziva STABLE PROJECTORZ A free tool for generating textures via Automatic1111 StableDiffusion. Preserves UVs. Blend layers by brush. Aid with Backgrounds. 3d Inpaint Runs on your computer, for free (no hidden costs for you). You will need an NVIDIA GPU that supports StableDiffusion. AMD GPU is also supported but check #amd-gpu on our Discord. So, at least a GTX 1080 or later, + appropriate CPU with at least 12 GB RAM. If using minimal zip, check Discord for instructions Create, combine, and fine-tune high-quality textures for your 3D models, with ease. Preserves the original UVs. Makes multiple art variants (batches of art), via the Depth of the scene. Art is then automatically projected onto the 3D objects. Texture entire object at once, via Multi-View-Projection. Great for visual consistency. You can mix different art-projections and remove seams between them. Adjust blending by painting/brushing directly on the 3D model. Adjust Hue, Saturation, Value, Contrast of any 2D-art-projection. Generate and use 2D Background to inspire the StableDiffusion when texturing your actual 3D-object. Bake Ambient Occlusion shading, applies on top of all projections. Uses several Control Net units, the first one is Depth (ON by default). Uses img2img (Inpaint) Masking, to project only into selected areas. Ability to additionally enhance it with an inpaint-ControlNet unit. You can use additional control net, such as Style-transfer control net, etc. Open your 3D models (OBJ), your own textures (PNG, JPG). Both txt2img and img2img capabilities. StableProjectorz is created by one guy, Igor Aherne. Scroll down for the info about the latest-version additions. https://stableprojectorz.com/ Blender 4.1 VALENCE Sapphire 2024.5 The update improves performance of 11 resource-hungry nodes, including blur and defocus effects, adding Metal support on macOS, and improving memory usage on Windows and Linux. There are also five new lens flares. Sapphire 2024.5 is available for a range of compositing and editing software, including After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Flame and Nuke, on Windows, Linux and macOS. It costs $1,695 for the Avid and Adobe/OFX editions, or $2,795 for a multi-host licence. Sapphire is also available via monthly and annual subscriptions. What’s New in Sapphire 2024.5 New Features MacOS: New metal support for the following effects: BlurDirectional BokehLights Convolve DefocusPrism DissolveGlare Flashbulbs Glare NightSky RackDefocus Whiplash ZDefocus \ Windows and Linux: Improved memory usage for the following effects: BlurDirectional BokehLights Convolve DefocusPrism DissolveGlare Flashbulbs Glare NightSky RackDefocus Whiplash ZDefocus \ Windows and Linux now use CUDA 12 which provides better support for Ada and Hopper generation NVIDIA cards. Configuration Editor tool to control Sapphire settings. Mari Extension Pack 6 R2 Jens Kafitz has released Mari Extension Pack 6 R2, the first free update for Extension Pack 6 users. Key features include the new Node Editor, for editing the exposed Attributes of Materials, Group Nodes and custom Procedurals. It provides a more powerful alternative to Mari’s native Knob editor, adding the power to create groups and tabs, and to edit the default values of Attributes. In addition, a new Ramp Editor “finally introduces true Gradient editing to Mari”. The editor, which takes inspiration from the way that ramp editing is implemented in tools like Houdini and Substance 3D Designer, adds the option to sample color sequences from images; scaling and intelligent key reduction for ramp keys; and a full preset system. There are also updates to workflow with Selection Groups, and a number of new nodes. Mari Extension Pack 6 is compatible with the commercial edition of Mari 6.x and 7.x. Older versions of Mari are supported via Mari Extension Pack 5, included in new purchases. Indie licenses, for individuals with revenue under €90,000/year, cost €69 (around $73); Freelance licenses, for companies with revenue up to €1 million/year, cost €110 ($118). Site licences cost from €1,600 to €19,900. https://docs.mariextensionpack.org/6R2v1/6Series.html https://jenskafitz.gumroad.com/l/MariExtensionPack6 Substance 3D Modeler 1.9 and 1.9.5 beta Substance 3D Modeler 1.9 itself is primarily a bugfix release, although there are some workflow improvements to the keyboard shortcuts. The latest public beta, Substance 3D Modeler 1.9.5, is also largely quality-of-life improvements, with Subtools now remembered when switching tools in the Toolbar. Loading of alpha textures and the behavior of the field of view slider have also been improved. The current beta also includes experimental new AI features rolled out earlier this month, which haven’t yet made it into the stable release. Substance 3D Modeler 1.9 is compatible with Windows 10+, and these VR headsets. It is available via Substance 3D Collection subscriptions, which cost $49.99/month or $549.88/year. Perpetual licences are available via Steam, and cost $149.99. The public beta is available via the Creative Cloud desktop app for anyone with an Adobe ID. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-modeler/release-notes/public-beta.html Glaze 2.0 Released last year by researchers at the University of Chicago, Glaze makes it harder for generative AI models to learn artists’ personal styles from images scraped from online galleries. The software applies a ‘style cloak’ to images processed with it, intended to disrupt the training of AI models without the changes being significant to human viewers. It’s intended to make it harder to reproduce artists’ personal styles via text-to-image generation, but the FAQs say it provides “some protection” against image-to-image style transfers. Glaze 2.0 reduces the time taken to process an image, particularly on Macs. The software is now “over 5x” faster on current Macs with M1, M2 and M3 processors, and “around 50%” faster on “most platforms”. The output is also “significantly” more robust against the popular AI models Stable Diffusion 1, 2 and SDXL, particularly for ‘smooth surface art’ like anime. Finally, the modifications made to images by the software are less visually perceptible. Since we last wrote about the software, The Glaze Project has also released Nightshade, a separate tool intended to ‘poison‘ AI models trained on images processed with it. Glaze 2.0 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 13.0+. At the time of writing, the macOS edition for Intel Macs has not been updated, and remains on version 1.1.1. The software is free, and is available under a custom EULA. https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html#about https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/downloads.html Colourlab Ai 3 Colorlab Ai 3 is now officially out of beta, according to Color Intelligence’s latest email newsletter. At the time of writing, the product webpage on the website has not been updated, and still lists live sync with After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro as ‘coming January 2024’. However, all three are mentioned in a separate webpage offering discount pricing for NAB 2024. It isn’t clear whether the Pro edition, which adds support for RAW camea files, SDI connections and Tangent control surfaces, has also been updated, or only the Creator edition. Users on the product’s Discord server are reporting that the current build does not load RAW files on Windows. We’ve contacted Color Intelligence and will update if we hear back. The Creator edition of Colourlab Ai 3 is compatible with Windows 10 and macOS 13.0+. New perpetual licenses cost $299. Rental costs $15/month or $150/year. Perpetual licenses of the Pro edition cost $599. Subscriptions cost $39/month or $299/year. Perpetual licenses of the Studio edition, which comes with Look Designer and Grainlab, cost $999. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $499/year. https://colourlab.ai/features/ SketchUp 2024.0 The major change in SketchUp 2024.0 is the new graphics engine, which provides “notable improvements in file navigation and responsiveness”. The main benefit is simply that it’s faster – Trimble says 2.4x faster on “the most common [hardware] configurations” – although the speed boost is greater on higher-end systems. It requires slightly more powerful hardware than the ‘classic’ engine, which is still available as a fallback, although the system requirements are still low by the standards of 3D software. One extra graphical capability of the new graphics engine is that it supports ambient occlusion, lending extra detail to SketchUp’s traditionally stylized viewport display. As well as the desktop application, ambient occlusion is supported in SketchUp for iPad 6.5, the latest version of Trimble’s tablet edition of SketchUp. There are also a number of smaller workflow improvements to SketchUp’s modeling toolset, including the Move tool, and the undo, guides and inferencing systems. In addition, the desktop edition of SketchUp now supports both glTF and USDZ files – although not USD itself – providing new possibilities for exchanging assets with other DCC applications. The other new features in SketchUp 2024.0 are more likely to be relevant to architectural users. They include faster loading of IFC files, and native integration with Trimble Connect, Trinmble’s cloud-based collaboration platform. LayOut, SketchUp’s toolset for generating 2D documentation from 3D models, is now versionless, removing the need to save files in the format of a specific release – although it’s still only possible to open them in versions up to two years prior to the current one. The other changes to LayOut are mainly performance and quality-of-life improvements, although it does also support the new ambient occlusion face style from the desktop edition. Users with Studio subscriptions also get a new Ground Mesh tool, which converts an imported point cloud into a quad-based terrain mesh that can be edited inside SketchUp SketchUp 2024.0 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.0+ (macOS 12.3.1+ for the new graphics engine). The software is available rental-only, with entry-level SketchUp Go subscriptions, which include the browser edition of the software and SketchUp for iPad, costing $119/year. SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Studio, which also include the desktop edition and LayOut, now cost $349/year and $749/year, both up $50/year since the release of SketchUp 2023.0. There is also a free, feature-limited web-based edition of SketchUp, SketchUp Free. https://help.sketchup.com/en/release-notes/sketchup-desktop-20240 Flame 2025 New features in Flame 2025 include Match Grain, a new node for matching the grain of footage to that of a source clip, with the option to adjust RGB values, dispersion and scale. It should provide a more streamlined workflow than the existing Degrain and Regrain nodes. Lens distortion workflow has also been overhauled, with a new Lens Distortion node replacing the old Lens Distort node. Like its predecessor, it can be used to correct or simulate lens distortions in footage, but provides a wider range of options, computing lens distortion from a Lens Grid clip, manually inserted splines, or importing distortion data from 3D tracking software 3DEqualizer. Users can then apply multiple distortion models to undistort the footage, and output an STMap and Inverse STMap to apply the same undistortion to other clips via the new STMap node. Handling of preferences and presets has been overhauled, with Autodesk dispensing entirely with the concept of Flame User Profiles to which version-specific user settings are tied. Preferences are now organized in a version-agnostic four-level hierarchy (user, project, version, system), and there is also a new option to create centralized presets on a studio network. There are also a number of smaller workflow improvements to the timeline, to Batch, to the Keyboard Shortcuts Editor, and to the user interface. Other changes include support for Apple Log color space, introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro, and updates to the SDKs and media formats supported. Flame 2025 is available for Rocky Linux 8.5/8.7/9.3 and macOS 12.0.1+ on a rental-only basis. Subscriptions cost $610/month or $4,870/year. Flare 2025 and Flame Assist 2025 are also available for Rocky Linux 8.5/8.7/9.3 and macOS 12.0.1+. Single-user subscriptions cost $2,595/year. Lustre 2025 is available on Rocky Linux 8.5/8.7/9.3. Single-user subscriptions cost $4,870/year. https://help.autodesk.com/view/FLAME/2025/ENU/?guid=whatsnew-2025 RenderMan 26.0 As with previous versions of Non-Commercial RenderMan, the release can be used for personal projects, research, and tools development, including development of commercial plugins. Output isn’t watermarked, although Pixar stipulates that users should add its ‘rendered with RenderMan’ logo to the credits of any project released publicly. Non-Commercial RenderMan includes most of the key features of the commercial edition, including RenderMan XPU, Pixar’s hybrid CPU/GPU rendering system. The main exception is Stylized Looks, RenderMan’s non-photorealistic rendering toolset, since it was developed in partnership with Lollipop Shaders. Non-Commercial RenderMan 26.0 is available for Windows 10+, CentOS/RHEL 7.2-7.9 Linux and macOS 10.15+. Plugins are available for Blender 3.0+, Houdini 19.0+, Katana 5.0+ and Maya 2022+. To download it, you will need to register for a free account on Pixar’s forum, which entitles you to two node-locked licences. The licence times out after 120 days, after which you have to renew. https://renderman.pixar.com/intro Skybox AI Model 3 The new AI Model 3 makes it possible to generate much larger and more detailed images, raising the resolution for equirectangular images from 6K (6,144 x 3,072px) to 8K. At the minute, it comes with fewer preset styles than AI Model 2 – still available alongside it – and you can’t remix or edit images generated with it, or generate 3D meshes from them. We also think that the service is now officially out of beta, since you don’t get a popup with the beta changelog when you log into the site, but we’ve contacted Blockade Labs to check. Skybox AI is browser-based, so it should run in standard modern web browsers, although some features are only available on desktop machines or larger tablets. The Unity integration plugin is compatible with Unity 2021.3.11+. Users with free accounts can generate up to 15 skyboxes per month, but actually downloading them requires a paid subscription. Basic subscriptions cost $12/month or $120/year, and make it possible to generate and download up to 100 skyboxes per month under a CC BY license. Pro subscriptions cost $24/month or $240/year, and make it possible to generate and download up to 250 skyboxes per month, with full commercial licensing. Technowizard subscriptions cost $60/month or $576/year, have no limits on the number of assets generated, and include experimental features like 3D mesh generation. Try browser-based generative AI tool Skybox AI NVIDIA RTX A400 and RTX A1000 pro GPUs NVIDIA has unveiled the RTX A400 and RTX A1000, two new entry-level professional GPUs based on its previous-generation Ampere architecture. The 4GB and 8GB single-slot cards are targeted at “a range of professional needs, from basic graphic design and photo editing to … 3D modeling”, and at generative AI. Outside of high-performance computing, the RTX A400 and RTX A1000 are the first new professional GPUs based on NVIDIA’s Ampere GPU architecture for over two years. Although Ampere has since been superseded by the Ada Lovelace architecture – by default, NVIDIA’s product webpage for its workstation GPUs hides the Ampere cards – it does feature older versions of all three of NVIDIA’s key GPU core types: CUDA cores for general GPU computing, Tensor cores for AI operations, and RT cores for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. As you might expect, the new cards are less powerful than the existing Ampere GPUs – and significantly less so than the current Ada Generation cards – in most key specifications. For context, both have a lower FP32 compute performance than NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080, an eight-year-old consumer GPU still popular in the second-hand market. At 4GB for the RTX A400 and 8GB for the RTX A1000, the on-board memory capacity is also on the low side for GPU rendering, at least for complex scenes. The main selling points are the form factor – both are single-slot cards – and low power consumption: at 50W, both GPU’s TDP is 20W lower than the existing RTX A2000. However, with NVIDIA not having announced recommended launch prices for the cards – both will be available through partner firms – it’s hard to assess their value for money. NVIDIA has included performance figures in its data sheet for the RTX A1000, but only relative to the 8GB T1000, the equivalent GPU from the previous Turing generation of workstation cards. Viewport perfomance in Maya – as measured by the SPECviewperf synthetic benchmark – is 1.7x higher for the RTX A1000 than its predecessor, while rendering performance in Arnold is 3.2x higher. The largest relative performance increase is for generative AI, a use case that NVIDIA promotes in its blog post on the new cards, with the RTX A1000 providing 3.6x performance of the T1000. The RTX A1000 is available, starting now, via distribution partners like PNY. The RTX A400 will become available in May. NVIDIA hasn’t announced recommended launch prices. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ampere-rtx-a400-a1000-ai/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/rtx-a400/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/rtx-a1000/ BuildingGen for iClone Building generation is, on the face of it, an unexpected toolset to add to a character animation app, although recent iClone updates have included features that can be used for architectural as well as entertainment work, such as the crowd animation toolset added in iClone 8.4. Reallusion’s pitch for creating 3D buildings inside iClone, rather than doing so in an external DCC application, is primarily ease of use. According to the website, “unlike traditional modular building generators that require extensive node-graph editing, BuildingGen [creates] 3D buildings using customizable Blueprints.” To generate a building, users simply specify its overall size and shape – primarily the number of storeys, and number of windows per storey – and the plugin does the rest. There are 10 readymade building types, each with four variant looks and ‘day and night modes’, which determines whether windows appear to be lit from the inside. Each base building generated can be further customized by adding features like balconies or cloisters, swapping window styles, or editing the base materials. BuildingGen also comes with options for optimizing the buildings it generates for real-time performance, consolidating repeated models and textures. Once optimized, buildings can be exported to other DCC applications in any 3D file format that iClone supports, including OBJ and FBX. The plugin comes with 210 component assets that can be recombined to create new custom building styles, and users can supplement them by importing their own base assets – the website shows a modular asset kit from the Unreal Engine marketplace. Reallusion has also released its own French Style asset pack, which provides 10 more building styles and over 600 components. BuildingGen is compatible with iClone 8.0+. Perpetual licenses hava a MSRP of $199. The French Style Pack costs an additional $149. iClone itself is available for Windows 7+. Perpetual licenses cost $599. https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/building-gen/ Sapphire 2024.5 The update improves performance of 11 resource-hungry nodes, including blur and defocus effects, adding Metal support on macOS, and improving memory usage on Windows and Linux. There are also five new lens flares. Sapphire 2024.5 is available for a range of compositing and editing software, including After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Flame and Nuke, on Windows, Linux and macOS. It costs $1,695 for the Avid and Adobe/OFX editions, or $2,795 for a multi-host licence. Sapphire is also available via monthly and annual subscriptions. https://borisfx.com/release-notes/ https://blog.borisfx.com/new-sapphire-2024 Photoshop 25.9 The new public beta continues the rollout of features powered by Firefly, Adobe’s generative AI platform, inside Photoshop. The first two Firefly tools – Generative Fill, for replacing part of an image with AI content, and Generative Expand, for extending its borders – were released last year in Photoshop 25.0. In Photoshop 25.9, they are joined by the ability to create entire images from scratch, in the shape of new text-to-image system Generate Image. It enables users to generate images – either photorealistic content, or more stylized images suitable for use as illustrations or concept art – by entering simple text descriptions. The results can be refined with Photoshop’s new Generate Similar and Reference Image control options – about which, more later. Photoshop 25.9 also adds a second new generative AI tool, Generate Background. It’s based on Generative Fill, but rather than replacing a user-selected portion of an image with AI-generated content, it automatically detects and replaces the background of the image. Users can guide the output by entering a brief text description, with Photoshop automatically matching the lighting and perspective of the foreground objects in the content it generates. Generative Fill itself gets three new control options in Photoshop 25.9. Generate Similar, shown above, automatically generates variations of a source image, making it possible to iterate more quickly on design ideas. Reference Image makes it possible to upload a reference image to guide the new content that Photoshop generates, in addition to entering a text prompt. Enhance Detail is a more conventional image-enhancement option, albeit an AI-based one, improving the “sharpness and clarity” of the content generated. Photoshop 25.9 also includes one new non-AI-based tool: the Adjustment Brush. It lets users apply non-destructive adjustments to images, including Brightness/Contrast, Exposure, Vibrance and Hue/Saturation, by painting them on directly, as shown above. Photoshop 25.9 is currently available in beta. Beta builds are available free to subscribers via Adobe’s Creative Cloud desktop app. The new AI features will be available in a stable release of the software “later this year”. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/photoshop-beta-desktop-app.html#ps-beta-features Photoshop 25.7 Photoshop 24.7 updates the software’s Font browser, with a new More Fonts tab making it possible to browse fonts from the Adobe Fonts online library. The fonts can be previewed on the canvas without having to install them to a local machine. In addition, the Move tool gets a new hover layer bounds feature, which displays the boundary of an object when the user mouses over it on the canvas. While the boundary is displayed, the corresponding layer is highlighted in the Layers panel. It is also now possible to export multiple Actions from Photoshop simultaneously, and to import actions by dragging .atn files “almost anywhere” in the interface, not just the Actions panel. Photoshop 25.7 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.0+. In the online documentation, it is also referred to as the April 2024 release. 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 cost $34.49/month or $263.88/year. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new/2024-3.html World Creator 2024.1 A GPU-based terrain generator combining procedural and manual editing workflows, World Creator has been used by artists at games and VFX studios including Blizzard Entertainment, Crytek, Blur Studio and Cinesite. The software began life as a plugin for the Unity game engine, before evolving into a standalone application in 2017, and becoming independent of Unity with 2022’s World Creator 3. Artists create terrain using a layer-based workflow, sculpting or stamping the basic 3D forms, and generating linear land forms like mountain ranges, rivers and roads along vector paths. The terrain can be modified using a large set of filters, including those mimicking the effects of erosion and sediment deposition, previewing the results using World Creator’s built-in ray tracing renderer. Users can export terrain to DCC applications and game engines in 3D formats like OBJ, FBX and glTF, or as 2D texture maps, including height maps and flow maps, with support for 32-bit EXRs The main new feature in World Creator 2024.1 is the new Rivers system. As the name suggests, it carves river valleys through terrain, with users able to generate the rivers automatically, from hand-placed source points, or from scratch for greater control. The width, depth and sinuosity of the river is determined by the slope of the terrain at each point along its length, and by flow parameters controlling the throughput of water. Users can also modify the results with parameters to control river and valley shape, and overall settings to control branching, lake formation and sea level. Other key changes include the return of Polygon Layers, for creating custom raised or flattened areas in terrain. The feature was previously available in World Creator 2, where it was known as Shape Layers. There are also three new filters, Hexagons, Squeeze and Rocky Layers. Under the hood, performance has been improved, and for users of non-NVIDIA GPUs, there have been fixes for “all AMD issues”. The Bridge Tools – the integration plugins for DCC applications – have also been updated, with a new plugin for Blender 4.1. BiteTheBytes puts its changelogs in its customer portal, so you can only view them if you’re an existing user, but you can find more details of the new features in the online documentation. World Creator 2024.1 is available for Windows 7+ only. Integration plugins are available for Blender 2.93+, Cinema 4D R25+, Houdini 19.0+, Unity 2022+ and Unreal Engine 4.26+. Perpetual Professional licenses cost $289; Company licenses, for firms with over five employees, cost $2,489. Companies can also rent the software for $1,289/year. https://www.world-creator.com/en/news.phtml NeXus 2024.2 Particles can be encouraged to follow the surface of any scene object using the new nxFollowGeo modifier. This works with all other NeXus modifiers, including the GPU fluid solvers, making the setup of complex simulations quick and easy. You can layer up unlimited scene objects in one nxFollowGeo modifier, each with individual custom settings for things like pull force, surface offset and friction. As well as following the surface of objects, you can also get particles to follow the polygon edges and scene splines, great for wireframe animations and HUD elements. nxColor enables the sophisticated coloring of particles using an intuitive layering and blending system. Mix the use of colors, gradients, textures, shaders and fields for unlimited control of particle color effects. Artistically cover and animate particles on scene objects and splines using nxCover. Particles can be set to land on edges, points, polygons and surfaces. Multiple objects can be used in one modifier and particles can move from one object to the next, with settings for sequences, random or defined movement. Create animated wireframe effects with ease. The Particle Ray mode can be used to create instant dust or snow accumulation effects. TerraformFX 2024.2 The Advanced Terrain Shader makes the design of intricate landscape textures fast and intuitive, working procedurally in all render engines that support Cinema 4D shaders. Customized data maps can be generated, blended, filtered and adjusted. These are then used to apply color or rendering effects to terrains. There is a library containing a vast range of color palettes from terrains worldwide, each sampled from satellite imagery for maximum realism and accuracy. Many terrain features, like rivers, floods and distributed rocks, can be masked and colored automatically with a single click. Terrain data, like altitude, slope and curvature, can be blended to mix terrain colors and effects. You can also use bitmaps, Cinema 4D shaders and fields. All textures and layers can be exported at any resolution as 8, 16 or 32bit TIFF files, for use in external software. The Grove 2.1 The Grove takes a parametric approach to generating trees, with controls that mimic the factors determining the forms of real plants, resulting in more realistic-looking models. Once the overall form has been set, The Grove fills in details using ‘Twigs’: instanced geometry representing not only actual twigs, but leaves, flowers and fruit, sold separately to the core app. The resulting textured geometry can be exported from the user’s host software in standard file formats, including FBX and OBJ, for use in other DCC applications. Users can also generate wind and growth animations, exportable in Alembic format. Since The Grove 2.0, the software – originally a Blender plugin – has become a standalone application, with integrations for Blender and Houdini. The update focuses on making growth simulations more accurate, focusing on secondary growth: the thickening of the trunk and branches as a tree ages. Previous versions of the software followed Leonardo da Vinci’s Rule of Trees: that the total cross-sectional area of a tree’s branches at any height is equal to that of its trunk. The Grove 2.1 ditches the 500-year-old rule of thumb – intended to help artists draw trees realistically – in favor of a new model that more accurately reflects how trees actually grow. According to van Keulen, the old approximation worked well for large branches, but less well for thin, new branches, which play a major role in determining the visual form of a tree. The update also reworks The Grove’s handling of how trees age – trees can now eventually die, rather than continuing to grow indefinitely – and how they shed dead branches. In addition, The Grove now uses the scientific names of trees at the start of preset names, which should mean that similar species are grouped together when sorting alphabetically. van Keulen also makes the bold claim that release “addresses every known issue” with the software, and that The Grove is as “rock solid” as it was before the milestone 2.0 update. The Grove 2.1 is compatible with Blender 3.6+ and Houdini 19.5 on Windows, Linux and macOS. The software comes in three editions. All of them include the Blender plugin, but only the Studio edition includes the Houdini plugin. The Starter edition has a MSRP of €89 (around $95). The Indie edition has a MSRP of €149 (around $160). The Studio edition has a MSRP of €720 ($772). Individual Twigs cost €9.69 ($10). https://www.thegrove3d.com/releases/21/ Twinmotion is free for indie artists and studios The move is part of a wider series of price changes to Epic Games’ products, including Unreal Engine and RealityCapture, announced by the company last month. With the release of Twinmotion 2023.2.4, Epic Games has ditched the old free non-commercial Community Edition of the software, and made commercial licenses available free to anyone earning under $1 million/year. As with the Community Edition, free accounts do not include access to cloud-based collaboration platform Twinmotion Cloud, but exports are no longer capped at 2K resolution. For students and educators, the old non-commercial Education Edition has also been dropped in favour of the more general free commercial license. For larger studios, the old $749 perpetual license has been replaced by a $445/seat/year subscription. Twinmotion and RealityCapture are also available as part of the new $1,850/seat/year Unreal Engine subscriptions – again, only payable by studios with revenue over $1 million/year. Aside from the new pricing, no changes are listed in the Twinmotion 2023.2.4 release notes. However, since the release of Twinmotion 2023.2 last October, Epic has added a number of new features to the software, including a Chromatic Aberration slider in the Ambience panel, and the option to paste Ambience settings between images. There is also a new parallax setting for decals, improving the impression of surface depth, and support for procedural materials in Substance 3D format has been improved. https://www.twinmotion.com/en-US/news/we-are-updating-twinmotion-pricing-in-late-april https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/twinmotion/twinmotion-2023.2.4-release-notes New Image 3 AI model in Firefly Adobe describes Image 3 as providing “massive advancements” in the quality and detail of images generated, and in the fidelity with which they adhere to users’ text prompts. In particular, the company says the new AI model is better at generating realistic images of people, including crowds, and at generating plausible text in illustrations and icons. There are also more options for customizing AI output, including Structure Reference, available in the Text to Image module of the web app, which makes it possible to generate images that follow the composition of a reference image as well as its visual style, as shown above. The Imgae 3 model also features a new style engine, making it possible to personalize the images generated by a base text prompt in more subtle ways. The Image 3 AI model is available in the web version of Firefly, which supports supports the Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari browsers on Windows 10+, macOS 12.0+ and ChromeOS. Pricing is credit-based, with ‘fast’ generative credits available as part of subscriptions to Adobe’s Creative Cloud tools, and via separate subscriptions. https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2024/Adobe-Introduces-Firefly-Image-3-Foundation-Model-to-Take-Creative-Exploration-and-Ideation-to-New-Heights/default.aspx Unreal Engine 5.4 Unreal Engine 5.4 is now available to all game developers, and it has delivered some major changes to the popular game engine. For starters, the new engine update features a variety of performance-boosting changes, and new features that should boost the image quality of future games. For starters, Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite feature has gained a new Tessellation feature that enables more fine details. Additionally, it also features a new software variable rate shading (VRS) solution that delivers “substantial performance gains. These changes are great for game developers, as boosted image quality and faster performance have both been promised. Temporal Super Resolution is a major feature for Unreal Engine 5. Think of it as Epic Games’ version of DLSS, FSR, or XeSS. With Unreal Engine 5.4, Temporal Super Resolution has received both stability and performance enhancements. Again, this delivers heightened image quality and boosted system performance. With UE 5.4, Temporal Super Resolution has also received a new “history resurrection heuristics” feature that reduces ghosting. This increased image clarity, and should make Unreal Engine’s TSR solution highly competitive with other super resolution technologies. With TSR being hardware agnostic, this super resolution tech is great news for gamers on both PC and consoles. Nanite Nanite (UE5’s virtualized micropolygon geometry system) continues to receive enhancements, starting with an Experimental new Tessellation feature that enables fine details such as cracks and bumps to be added at render time, without altering the original mesh. Moreover, the addition of software variable rate shading (VRS) via Nanite compute materials brings substantial performance gains. There’s also support for spline mesh workflows – great for creating roads on landscapes, for example. In addition, a new option to disable UV interpolation enables vertex animated textures to be used for World Position Offset animation; effectively, this means that the AnimToTexture plugin now works with Nanite geometry. Temporal Super Resolution In this release, Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) has received stability and performance enhancements to ensure a predictable output regardless of the target platform; this includes reduced ghosting thanks to new history resurrection heuristics and the ability to flag materials that use pixel animation. In addition, we’ve added new visualization modes that make it easier to fine-tune and debug TSR’s behavior, together with a number of new options in the Scalability settings to control it with respect to target performance. Rendering performance With many developers targeting 60 Hz experiences, we’ve invested significant effort into improving rendering performance in UE 5.4; this includes refactoring the systems to enable a greater degree of parallelization, as well as adding GPU instance culling to hardware ray tracing, which also now benefits from additional primitive types and an optimized Path Tracer. Further optimizations have been made to shader compilation, resulting in a notable improvement in project cook times. The general rendering performance of Unreal Engine 5 has also been improved. The engine’s hardware accelerated ray tracing implementation has been optimised, and many aspects of the engine has been parallelized. More optimisations have been made to improve shader compilation times. Gamers have already had an early look at Unreal Engine 5.4 with Marvel 1943. Simply put, this game looks incredible. UE 5.4’s improvements have clearly enabled a major leap in graphical fidelity, especially when compared to Unreal Engine 5.0. D5 Render 2.7

*Last Update*

Ι think Vue's scatterer works like that.

McGavran has immunity concerning information leaks 😆

I saw the inner working of the capsule and was impressed from the simplicity of the math... I didn't expect to see simple operations like these. Every time I look on dynamic systems the theory is full of integrals... Did you convert any integrals to a form of discreet analysis ?

AHA ! I knew I could crack your NDA with erroneous unfounded assumptions ! (kidding) There you have it people, it's a new shiny system 😆

Please provide a scene so we can experiment on fixing it. I have no idea how to replicate your situation.

The new Partition Modifier is better than the Divider plugin because it provides Skew. I will be using it as an alternative to Voronoi Scatter to shatter things like glass.

That drawing thing Blender has does not exist as an interactive tool in C4D. So you have to pre-draw the spline and then use the appropriate populating tool on it. I think the Scatter Pen tool works is what you're looking for. It's free-hand though, no procedural path editing

Pixar Animator Shows How 3D Character Mouths Look From Different Angles https://80.lv/articles/pixar-animator-shows-how-3d-character-mouths-look-from-different-angles/

example from other apps ?

aW4BpZn_460svav1.mp4

But I thought .3ds is a native to 3ds max... What is tha native of Max Studio? I'm completely confused now

Yes that's what i'm telling you. Make your HUD of preference and in order to maintain it or to "transfer it" to an other scene just load the old scene using the Merge Object. Keep your template empty project of the HUD but after you merge an other scene to it don't forget to overwrite the older scene with the template. This is how I perceive your problem...

Generally I find character animation hard to do in C4D, but then again I never had the proper eductation on it as I'm selftaught...

First of all your mesh and skin objects are lost in another universe... how did you do that ? After that I had to think like a game dev... so what do they do ? They put their animation meshes inside an invisible box and have the box just move, no bones no deformations. I did the same thing with just a Connect Is this OK ? character_path HP.c4d

*Updated* (damn this month was busy)

What if you load the scene using the Merge Objects... from File in the Object Manager ?