The official gmax support web site, www.gmaxsupport.com contains some video tutorials on using gmax with the Tempest pack to create Quake III Arena levels.

Liquids, liquids: Realflow and Realwave galleries have been updated with some new animations.

Anders Stensgaard has posted on his website some images and animations done with finalRender. Check 'em out!

Creative Mac has a review of RE:Vision ReelSmart Motion Blur and FieldsKit: "ReelSmart FieldsKit and Motion Blur work tremendously well either on their own or as a team. They both live up to and surpass expectations".
InsideCG.com reviews Maya 4.

Global Information Group's GIG3DGO, a complete solids-based 3D graphics software for Linux-based systems is available for purchase following revisions that increase its speed, reliability and usability. GIG3DGO has an introductory price of $495.

SplutterFish have updated their Brazil r/s rendering plugin to version 0.2.26.

Post Magazine has an article that provides a good list of companies that offer quality music and sound FX for use with your animations.

Click on more for details on TrU-V 2.0, and Segmation.   [ more... ]

Click on more for more info on InterBlinn, TrueGrit, Auran Technologies, Chair v1.0, EdgeMap, and Virtools Exporter.   [ more... ]

Precision Lightworks have updated their Nverse Photo plugin to version 1.1
“Here are some of the enhancements you can look forward to in 1.1:

• Multi-level undo
• Object scaling
• Keyboard accelerators
• Multiple object selection
• Copy/paste in 2D and 3D (very powerful)
• Expanded user preferences”

New and updated scripts and icons by Herman Saksono, including:
- Hairstylist's tools: several tools to groom Shag Hair's model hair
- SplinePencil
- Selection Tools
- Nature Brushes update for Freehandtools 3.1
- Combustion-style trackview icons

Discreet have released an upgrade for Character Studio (for Max R3.x only!). The patch can be found here.   [ more... ]

The first update to the 0.2.x version is now available.  This update fixes several bugs that were tracked down over the last couple of weeks. Check out the list of changes since last version.

The Art Institutes at San Francisco announced it is offering a new bachelor's degree program in Game Art & Design. The program is designed for students who want to prepare for entry-level positions in the game development field. Students will learn character animation techniques, complex modeling, computer mapping, game level design, how to script within the game along with art history and classes in the humanities.
Read the whole PR.

Cebas have announced that finalRender will start shipping 28th September 2001. Cebas' raytracer can do all manner of effects, such as global illumination, reflective and refractive caustics, soft (penumbral) shadows, illustration-style rendering, true depth of field, translucency and true blurry reflections.   [ more... ]

VFXPro has a very nice article on the latest ride film project produced (with 3ds max) at Blur Studio.

Discreet has released gMax, their free 3D content creation platform designed to let game enthusiasts create custom art for their favorite titles. It includes many powerful tools including polygon and patch editing, texturing, lighting, and simple keyframe animation. Discreet has also included gMax tempest into this release, which allows users to create their very own custom Quake III levels. Download gMax from Discreet's ftp server.

Blur studio released a new BlurPack, BSPack_023, which includes several new scripts and updates to the older BlurScripts. Pick it up here.   [ more... ]

Wacom Technology has introduced the Cintiq 15X, a new pressure-sensitive interactive pen display with over 512 levels of sensitivity. The price is $1899.
The Intuos2 line of tablets has also been released, with 1,024 levels of pressure-sensitivity.

squirrely productions releases The Scene Explorer 1.0, a plugin that consolidates various max functionality into one window and simplifies and speeds-up the day-to-day workflow.
A 14 days trial is available.  Price is $95.

Effective immediately, when you purchase the currently shipping combustion 1 software, you qualify to receive the upgrade to combustion 2 at no additional charge.
Version 2 is expected  to begin shipping end-of-year 2001.

electricFX Inc. announced the release of eFX Pyro for After Effects, retailing for $195. The plug-in enables artists to create authentic 3D fire and smoke effects within the After Effects compositing application. A demo version is available. Press release.

Gregg Hess has updated the 3ds max hardware FAQ at 3DLuVr

“In an effort to support our readers in these difficult economic times and to thank them for the patronage that has made DMN communities #1, we are announcing that starting immediately all ads placed at DMN Classifieds are absolutely FREE!”

Due to the current affairs in the U.S., and the state of the world as a result, Max Underground will not be updated until further notice.

I believe I speak for everybody behind Max Underground when I say that our thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends - and we wish them all the best in these difficult times.   [ more... ]

“DoberMan is a free collection of scripts which allows you to save your MAX scenes as a RIB files”

From this Friday until next Monday, IBC 2001 will be held in Amsterdam, Discreet will be there, more infos here. As in every tradeshow, Discreet will probably release/announce something new, stay tuned...

Real Time Fur is coming very soon, here is a paper and an example application, that runs on Win2000, check this out. This is very cool.
Real-Time Fur over Arbitrary Surfaces, once unzipped check out the readme.txt for more infos about the realtime controls.

"The Animator's Survival Kit : A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators" is the title from an upcoming book from Richard Williams. More infos at Amazon.com   [ more... ]

Fatlips is a new lipsync tool coming very soon for 3ds Max... More infos at www.fatlips3d.com

Morph-O-Matic wins the 'Seal of Excellence' from Animation Magazine in the August Issue. More Infos at www.diomatic.com

Boomer Labs has released an update to their Enhanced Sound plugin.  This new build provides a couple of fixes and the following new feature :  1/4x, 1/2x and 2x audio playback supported during Scrubbing and Motion Capture .
This build can be obtained from their freeware page

George Barjoud has released details of the new version of Vehicle Simulator, which should be available soon. More infos available at www.newplugins.com

SplutterFish, LLC. just now made Brazil r/s 0.2.21 available at their website.

You can read all about the things new to this version in the release notes, and check up on what goes on where in the manual.

Also be sure to read Neil Blevins' “excellent” tutorial on this release.

Keep Your eye on the News and Announcements page as more information is made available.

Check out the home pages of a couple of interesting projects that were presented at this year's SIGGRAPH: AlphaWolf, created by the MIT's Media Lab Synthetic Characters Group (take a look also at some of their other projects) and Protrude, Flow, designed by Minako Takeno and Sachiko Kodama of Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications.

More images created with the upcoming release of the Brazil renderer have been posted on the Web. Check out the sites of Johan Thorngren and Robert Boothman.

Just a short note: I'm moving to sunny California so I'll be off the airwaves for a while. Hope to meet many of you there. Greetings to all our readers and the wonderful people I had the chance of meeting online (from France, Japan, Israel, Spain, USA, Australia, Brazil, Holland and the U.K. among others). Special thanks to Scott Kirvan. See you soon, as soon as I can get my hands on a Net connection. :-)

Enjoyed Shrek? Find out what new CG animated films are lined up for production at PDI/Dreamworks.

CGarchitect has an interesting interview with Henrik Wann Jensen. Be sure to check the images on the right side of the page, as well as the question about his 'disappointment'.

Visual Infinity is offering Grain Surgery, a plugin for After Effects (and AE plugin-compatible applications) that enables users to remove, add or match grain from an existing image sequence and apply it to another one. Unlike other techniques, Grain Surgery's algorithm does not rely on blurring or averaging. Price is $499.

Creative 3D has a comparative review of Swift 3D and Illustrate! 5.

3D Nature unveils Visual Nature Studio, a GIS visualization package based on World Construction Set's landscape visualization technology. Visual Nature Studio will continue the tradition of realistic visualization while providing new tools to control visualization directly from GIS data, simplifying and automating the process.   [ more... ]

3D-worXX has an article on creating QuicktimeVR panoramas and objects from within 3ds max. (German)

Squirrely Productions has updated SceneExplorer, a Max plugin that helps users speed up day-to-day workflow by consolidating various Max features into one window. SceneExplorer v1.0 is now feature complete, this is the final beta version before the commercial release. SceneExplorer beta may be downloaded from Squirrely Productions' website.   [ more... ]

Snoswell Design invites you to join an open Beta program for their ACT muscle and skinning software. Email mark@cgCharacter.com with subject ACT-Beta to get on the beta program. Include your full contact details in your mail. This will be a short, active beta. To stay on you will have to make at least one post a week (no trivial teapots either).
Read the details at ACT's website.

The first animations done with Snoswell Design's skin deformation by muscles plugin have been posted at Digimation's Beta Site.

The Art of Seeing (perceiving and portraying details: edges, contrast and chiaroscuro)
Techniques on using the Solidify plugin and meshsmooth for beveling
Advanced Water using Fresnel and depth fog
Simulation of a Rocket flight using Max dynamics
Max 4 History-Independent IK
Subdivision Surface Modeling 101 (Beginner)

According to the UK's Independent Digital, Motorola's innovation allows silicon to be combined with higher performance compound semiconductors, which are expensive but faster and able to receive and emit light. Optical circuits transmit information at the speed of light, so the new chips could run at more than 70Ghz, compared with the 2Ghz speed of current chips. Real-time GI rendering on your desktop PC? Read the whole news report.

Greg Hess has posted brief report at 3DLuVr.com on some of the major hardware vendors' offerings at this year's Siggraph.

Take a look at these animations illustrating some of Henrik Wann Jensen's research work.

Blizzard has posted another *awesome* trailer online. This one belongs to their new World of Warcraft multi-player, online role-playing game. A movie of the actual gameplay is also available.

Some interesting Max shaders have been posted lately. Check out Next Limit's, Willi Hammes' and Yoshee & Roy's shader pages.