RenderNode have just posted all the videos made by them during IBC 2003. You can find, among others, over 40 minutes of Discreet 3ds max 6 new features video, over 25 minutes of Luxology Modo videos and over 15 minutes of Discreet Combustion 3 videos.

Enrique Gato has created an animated short based on the adventures of Superlópez, a traditional Spanish comic book character invented by Juan López Fernández (JAN) in 1973. Enrique Gato worked for four months in his spare time using Max 5.1 in order to complete this personal tribute to JAN's character. He also did the sound design for the short and animated the hero's cape using bones and keyframes. Check out this great short at Enrique Gato's website.

DigitalProducer reviews Particleillusion 3.0: "...the only limit to what can be generated with Particleillusion 3.0 is your imagination."

Jeremy Engleman has been using a laptop at figure painting classes and has created a series of beautiful figure paintings using Max for quick 3D modeling. Check 'em out!

CGChannel has an interview with Mark Skelton, an extremely talented modeler at Blizzard who wants to veer his career towards the film industry (Pixar?). The interview is a bit short but sheds some light on Blizzard's own history and makes for some very interesting reading. If you enjoy Blizzard's cinematics (who doesn't?) check out also the impressive demo reel at Mark Skelton's personal website.

Rhino House is offering The Animal Motion Show, a set of DVDs for animators with Muybridge-style reference material on animal motion.

Max3d.pl has released a new video tutorial discussing how to make hair using deform paint.

Cuneyt Ozdas has released his beta of a new Color Correct plug-in. New features are more color space processing options and floating point support, which means that you can now process HDR images with CC! Download it for Max 4, 5 and 6 at Cuneyt Ozdas' forum.

CGNetworks takes a look at the history of 3D rendering (Part II): "To Photorealism and Beyond".

Oregon3D is offering training classes on the new features of 3ds max 6. Classes are taught by Discreet certified instructor Gary Davis. The two-day courses will present an overview of new additions and enhancements to the 3ds max toolkit. Dates and locations for these courses are as follows: Vancouver, British Columbia on Nov. 11-12, and, Austin, Texas on Nov. 15-16. Oregon3D is also offering an online course scheduled for December.

Bauhaus Software announced Mirage 1.0, a 2D paint, animation and special effects tool. Designed for projects of any resolution, ranging from HDTV and film to web video, Mirage offers features such as real-time 32-bit video paint, stop-motion, natural-media drawing tools, volumetric lights, particles, keying, color correction, and pixel tracking within the same environment. Visit Bauhaussoftware.com for more.

CGW has a great article that discusses student films such as Christopher Cordingley's "After You" and Thelvin Cabezas' "Poor Bogo".

Di-O-Matic announced the release of Morph-O-Matic v1.5. New features include: enhanced material blending and improved morph target extraction. A trial version as well as a free upgrade for existing customers are available at  www.di-o-matic.com/download.

New features in nPower Software's plugin include: dynamic Boolean operations, quick help and new material application options. Version 2.5 supports Max R6. Read the whole PR for more.

Animators rejoice! Character Animation Toolkit public beta finally available for download! Also of note, more animations posted at the gallery section.

Discreet has added a number of feature videos to their website for 3ds max 6. The video tutorials cover new capabilities such as the Shell modifier, Reactor's Fracture, Particle Flow, etc. Check 'em out!

Diffractor is a new Max plugin distributed by Digimation that enables users to create different kinds of light effects on transparent and glossy type surfaces. Diffractor is implemented as a procedural map that is normally applied to the self-illumination or environment map channels of a standard or raytrace material. As such, it does not rely upon any mapping coordinates (UV or XYZ), which makes setup and usage very quick and easy. Visit Diffractor's pages at Digimation.com and check out the gallery of sample animations to see the kind of effects that can be created with this Max plugin.

Lighting 201 Part 3: Outdoor Lighting
Life After Pose to Pose - taking your animation to the next level
Tricks for Cartoon Snappy Motion
Basic Car Rendering setup with Brazil r/s
Deform Paint Tutorials
Juan Siquier - Creating "DBT Café"
Low-poly face modeling using Surface Tools

Newplugins has released the latest version of its Vehicle Simulator plugin for Max. A demo version is available for download.

Peter Åsberg has written a tutorial on using complex procedural materials to create a detailed canyon wall.

Nicolas Genette adds a new article on the fR_image GI engine. The article is available in both English and in French, and covers how the GI engine works and how users can achieve fast and clean results.

Character Animation Technologies have updated their website with more information on their upcoming character animation plugin for Max. Check it out!

3ds max 6 has begun shipping! Read the press release at Discreet.com and visit CGNetworks to see a great preview of the new features. More information available at RenderNode and CGChannel.

Cebas has released a service pack for FinalRender Stage-1 with bug fixes and new features such as: re-designed distributed rendering system that can handle large scenes more efficiently, new Matte/Shadow material type, Level of Detail controls for the GI engine and general speed and performance enhancements. All registered users will receive an email instructing them how to obtain the service pack, other users may contact dcpsupport@turbosquid.com for information.

Yes, slowly but surely, we're getting there: "Our implementation demonstrates that current graphics hardware is capable of fully simulating global illumination with progressive, interactive feedback to the user." Read the paper.

GHOST 3D, LLC, developers of ResErect, Surf-iT, and Scribe-iT, have announced updates to their full line of plugins to make them compatible with the upcoming release of Max. Registered users will be able to update their copies through their Authorized Reseller or directly through GHOST 3D.

New features include an editing operator, Javascript-based expressions, Flash output and RE:Vision Effects' Flex warping and morphing plugin. Check out Discreet's press release and Combustion 3 pages for more information.

Posted Tue Oct 14, 2003 10:41 PST by Pablo Hadis | Source:

3DM-mc has posted a tutorial discussing the creation of a F1 sport car. There are English and French versions available.

New Zealand-based Character Animation Technologies will soon release a trial version of Character Animation Toolkit (CAT), their very promising new character animation system for Max. Website visitors who register will be notified when the trial version is released. To see what's coming up take a look at their video tutorials.

This beautiful tribute to human laziness is back online. If you haven't been able to download it before you can now find it at Jérôme Combe's website.

Sample movies available for download. Check 'em out!

Interactive Data Visualization, developers of SpeedTreeMAX, have released a realistic demonstration, based on emerging real-time tree and grass technologies, to showcase the possibilities for future gaming worlds. “The Valley” features realistic trees and grass blowing in the wind and includes advanced level of detail and presentation algorithms. Several features of the demo, including bark bump mapping and multiple shadowing effects, are based on as yet unreleased capabilities of the software. These capabilities should be available in a new version of SpeedTreeRT in fourth quarter 2003.

Chris Thomas and Marsel Khadiyev (of Scene Manager fame) are currently working on a schematic version of the material editor. Once it's finished this new interface will be incredibly useful for editing complex materials. The developers are now taking suggestions, so if you're interested in helping polish and make the perfect node-based material editor, head over to CGTalk and contribute with your own comments. This plugin is a free project and will be available for download at a later development stage. Thanks Marsel and Chris!!

RenderNode reviews Endorphin 1.1: "...a must for every serious animation studio."

HDRImaps.com is offering a new collection of HDR images with 55 maps of urban/industrial skydomes. "We are exploring unique real-world environments during photo shoots to achieve unique Visual Effects within HDRI imagery."

Kees Rijnen has posted some very useful advanced rigging tutorials at his website.

Morph ToolKit v1.5 has been enhanced with new features that make it easier for users to create and animate morph targets. Enhancements include: new float licensing scheme, new detach mechanism added in Attach-O-Matic, threshold to find mirror points is now Unit-based in Copy-O-Matic, more MAXScript commands for Link-O-Matic and Attach-O-Matic. Read the whole PR at Di-O-Matic.com.

Madrid-based Next Limit have updated their website with lots of information and samples on the upcoming version of RealFlow. Check it out!

François Mourlevat has updated his scripts for Max 5.1, many of them have help files in English. He has also put up a plugin search database for French speakers. Ça vaut le détour! :-)

Read the article at Gamespot.com.

HDRIE is an image editor alternative to Paul Debevec's HDR Shop. HDRIE developers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are trying to recreate much of the functionality of HDR Shop in an open source, cross-platform environment.

CGNetworks takes a look at the history of 3D rendering (Part I).

Creating "Aviator's Wife"
Modeling, Texturing and Animating Lara Croft
How to get rid of splotchiness in GI (VRay)
Applying different mapping coordinates to a single map
Photoshop Matte Painting (French)