Welcome to the 21st century...

Itoo Software has released new versions of two of its useful free plugins for 3D Studio Max / Viz:
- Forest Pack Lite 1.3
- Clone 2.0
Both can be downloaded from Itoo Software's site.   [ more... ]

The trailer for the short movie "Teenage Zombie Attack" is now available at Flymultimedia's website.   [ more... ]

Computer Creative reviews Character Studio 3.

Jissai Graphics is giving away their Luminaire radiosity renderer for free. Limited time offer.

Version 0.0.1b of ghost which was supposed to be released any day now will be delayed until at least Jan 4th, Steve found a big bug, and does not have time to fix it before his much needed christmas vacation. v 0.0.1b will have new more stable depth of field, exposure control and new Bokeh lens effects.

Lots of new images created with the Ghost rendering system are available at Blur's new Blurbeta photo gallery. The gallery is still under construction.

Liquids, liquids: new images and animations at Next Limit's site.

Pixar's software revenues rose 37% (for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2000 compared to the same period last year) mainly due to a "general increase in RenderMan software licensing".

Happy Holidays to you all! Max Underground will *not* take a break unless the news do. :-) Enjoy!

Edgesmooth, by Ivan Kolev,  is a "procedural plug-in that allows fine touch-up smoothing of hard edges". This build will expire on January 31st, 2001.

New beta v2.6.0.-18 of Exluna's BMRT Renderman-compliant renderer available. See the changes file for more info.

Computer Arts reviews Maxon's BodyPaint 3D. The article states that Maxon will add better support for Max by releasing a free plugin in the future that will let both programs communicate seamlessly.

Sitni Sati has updated AfterBurn, Enlight and ScatterVL Pro with the following features:
- 'One Click Registration System' (OCRS)
- easy searching for product updates and news
- improved GUI   [ more... ]

Two new plugins are currently under development at Digimation: Flatten and Cluster-O-Matic. No information available on the first one yet, but according to Max 3D, the later is a plugin developed by Di-O-Matic that lets you control sets of vertices or soft selections through other objects (dummies, for ex.), and would be very useful for facial animation.

Autonomous Effects has released SceneGenie 1.4, a new version of its plugin suite for match-moving and combining live action and animation within Max. Highlights of the new release include:
- New Master Tracker panel tracks many sensors simultaneously, with automatic monitoring features.
- Four new tracker flavors with outstanding stick-to-it-ness, even as the feature spins, tilts, and changes size.
- New real-time playback and scrubbing capabilities with MAX objects, trackers, and 3-D points overlaid on the zoomable and pannable image.
- Exporter for motion-control cameras, such as Milo.
Demo version available, no charge to upgrade SceneGenie from MAX R3 to R4, or for existing SceneGenie customers to upgrade to R1.4.   [ more... ]

There's a Max 4 preview article at Computer Arts magazine with lots of screenshots showing Magma's new features.

VFXPro has an article on Max 4 describing a press event held by Discreet on Dec. 5th in San Francisco. Also of note, there's another, older article (linked to the first one) called "Product Architects: Discreet's Kinetix Line". It's from last year but still makes for some interesting reading: it's an interview with Jimmy Giliberti, Discreet's development director (since the article is from 1999, this might've changed), and gives a good explanation of the development cycle of each Max iteration.

A ship across the sea (Realwave 2 tutorial)
Animating a Boom Box with "audio postion/scale"
Some nice tutorials for beginners, including: Intro to Materials, Mapping Coordinates, Function Curves and Track View, etc.

Softimage will begin shipping XSI 1.5 on the first week of January and is offering a demo CD for a test drive.

The update is available to registered users (see download section). Changes include enhanced support for Max 4, faster calculation times, etc.

If you are a Max 4 beta tester you may join the beta testing team of this toon and illustration rendering plugin.

maxVR.qt offers the ability to create QuickTimeVR panorama files or Object QuickTimeVR MOV files. maxVR.qt provides "full support under 3ds max or VIZ for Apple's QuickTime file format" and replaces Cebas' previous QTvrMAX plugin.

Ideaworks3D has released version 1.1 of their Vecta3D Max vector renderer for Max. The new version now handles shaded output, and has improved render speed.

"Teenage zombie attack" is a 35mm short movie created by spanish studio Fly Multimedia. Completely developed with 3D Studio MAX 3.1 (and a little help of Photoshop), it will be released very soon in Madrid. You can see some frames of the film and other information on their web page.

New videos showing more on Max 4's features posted at Discreet's website.

Char. Studio 3.0.1 update available to CS3 owners at Discreet's website.

Integra's InSight renderer updated to version 2.21 with some bug fixes. Documentation also improved.

Among other features Adobe Premiere 6.0 includes the ability to publish video to the web by supporting formats such as RealNetworks RealMedia, Microsoft WindowsMedia, and Apple QuickTime. Direct support for IEEE 1394 (FireWire/i.Link) ports also added providing built-in communication with all types of DV devices.
Read the whole press release.

Boomer Labs has just released a new freeware plugin called SmoothMat. It allows you to assign materials to an object based on the Smoothing Group of the Mesh. Here is a sample image that uses this technique with 3 sets of textures on the same object.
Download this plugin from Boomer Labs' website.

New pics at Raph.com's 3D gallery.

Eyeon software has divided Digital Fusion (its main product for non-linear compositing and special effects post-production) into several modules and is now offering a way to license Digital Fusion by selling a base version of the package with the modules picked by the customer and thus charging considerably less than the price for the whole package. Sounds familiar? :-)
Eyeon has also made available a downloadable demo of the full featured version of Digital Fusion.   [ more... ]

REALVIZ announced the availability of Version 2.0 of MatchMover, their camera tracking software application.   [ more... ]

Universe 3D animation system, the latest release of Electric Image adds lots of new features to the package and is expected to begin shipping in January. It sports some nice features such as texture map layers with Photoshop-like compositing modes (multiply, screen, overlay, etc.).

Placing a tablecloth (Realflow tutorial)
Moths Around a Lamp (Char. Studio 3 tutorial)
Using bones and IK

Stitch and Light Galleries plugins and Polytrans 3D object translator reviewed at issue 4/2000 of Digital Production magazine. Auf Deutsch, available in magazine form only (not online).

Neil Blevins has posted some tutorial files here.  Also - If you are interested in seeing more Ghöst images, check out what the alpha testers have been posting up in the BlurBeta Webboard.

Unfortunately, two more studios have recently gone the way of the Dodo.  Netter Digital and Xaos Inc.

***Rumor: Max 4 to be released at the end of January/ first week of February.
Some very interesting details on Max 4 provided by Christopher Subagio after attending a Magma presentation available at Max3D.