RenderNode takes a look at Ballistic's Exposé 1&2 and d'artiste: Digital Painting books.

Di-O-Matic announced the upcoming release of Facial Studio for Windows. Facial Studio gives users more than 500 controls over the 3d head creation process and provides FBX file format output, allowing export of 3d heads along with their deformations setup to every major 3D application. More information available at DI-O-Matic.com.

According to a recent post by 3ds max product manager Dan Prochazka, Max 7 is scheduled for a mid-October release.

You can now find detailed information on Particle Flow Tools as well as download some free Particle Flow operators (Stop, Stop Gradually and Camera IMBlur). A demo/evaluation version of Particle Flow Tools: Box #1 is also available. Visit Orbaz.com.

The fine folks at the Italian 3D portal Treddi.com have updated their gallery with lots of new pictures.

Pyrocluster 3.0 offers new features including real-time viewport preview of volumetric effects, and significant speed improvements over previous versions. Read the whole PR at Cebas.com.

CGNetworks has posted more information on the new online animation school, including dates for pre-registration and classes.

Jaime Maestro, Jonatan Catalán and Alex Mateo from Valencia (Spain) have founded Keytoon Animation Studios. Check out their work at Keytoon.com to see some 3D animation with a Spanish flavor.

Jean-Eric Hénault interviews Sébastien Deguy on Allegorithmics' research on editable procedural textures.

Burbank-based Digital Dimension creates over 100 invisible effects for New Line film Cellular, starring Kim Basinger and William H. Macy.   [ more... ]

Discreet.com has an interesting article on The Orphanage's use of Max in creating the visual effects for the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Side Effects Software announced the release of Houdini 7 and the formal launch of Houdini Escape.   [ more... ]

Visit Luxology.com for more.

Los Angeles ACM SIGGRAPH will be presenting Tuesday, September 21, a screening of the 2004 Electronic Theater with Paul Debevec as a special guest. Visit la.siggraph.org for more.

RenderNode interviews Liam Kemp on his short film titled This Wonderful Life, created with Max.

BioGraphic Technologies announced version 2.5 of the AI.implant crowd simulation family of products. This release of AI.implant contains a number of significant enhancements, including a blind-data enabled navigation mesh path–finding architecture, a vastly expanded tool set and substantial gains in authoring and run-time performance. In addition, BioGraphic is segmenting the AI.implant for Games product into three separately purchasable modules: Navmesh generation and editing, Dynamic pathfinding and Decision logic. Read the whole PR at Biographictech.com.

Some call it a "forum", others a "community". Whatever the label, CG Academy has opened up a great space for discussion where seasoned experts in different areas of 3ds max will be answering users' questions. This is one to bookmark.

The 3D GAP (Global Animation Project) contest will be awarding generous prizes to all selected participants. Check it out.

Shoran Software have released the latest update to their RenderPal 2004 Server rendering management system. Version 1.30 includes many enhancements such as the ability to let the RenderPal 2004 Server automatically add clients using UDP heartbeats sent by the RenderPal 2004 Client. Read the details at Renderpal.com.

Making of "L'homme dans la foret"
Making of "Sunrise in Venice"
Making of "Jack" (French)
FurFX tutorial (PDF)
Chain Link Fences and Slicing Planes   [ more... ]

E-on software has posted the feature list of the upcoming version of its 3D landscape creation and animation program. Features include HDRI support, new GI engine, new material editor, etc. The name has changed from "Vue d'Esprit X" to "Vue X Esprit".   [ more... ]

The fine folks at RebelThink have posted online the demo reel they used to showcase their Natural:shaders collection at SIGGRAPH 2004.

Vishnu Ramdass reviews CAT for CGChannel.com: "... incredibly intuitive to use (...) a sophisticated program for pro animators."

As previously reported, the public beta version of Aura is now available for download! Also, a few more sample movies have been posted at Aura's website.

Stéphane Marty's VirtuaLight global illumination renderer has been updated with new features such as HDRI support (input and output), ambient occlusion, new set of primitives, several new irradiance distribution functions, new sets of pixel filters, etc. Version 1.4.0 is now available for download.

The Germany-based company Sachform has just released a new collection of HDRI images called Urbanbase.   [ more... ]

Andersson Technologies announced the release of the latest version of its camera tracking software. SynthEyes 2004.5 contains many improvements suggested by users such as a File/Merge option to merge previously-tracked shots, PNG file format support, the ability to shift entire tracked shots in time, a File/Import Tracker Locations operation, etc. Visit Andersson Technologies' website for more.

Graphics throughput of PCI Express doubles bandwidth of AGP 8X. Read the article at DigitalProducer.com.

Some great animations added to CAT's gallery pages. Be sure not to miss Iloura's "Carbine" animation. Impressive work.

Chaos Group announced the beginning of the public beta testing phase of Aura, their fluid-based fire and smoke simulation plugin. A public beta version of Aura will be available on September 8, from the Chaos Group website. More details, as well as some updates to the gallery will be available soon. Stay tuned.

A few more features from the upcoming version of the Brazil renderer have been disclosed by its developers. According to messages posted at Splutterfish's forums, version 2.0 will feature at least two rendertime displacement techniques, new tools for indirect illumination and advanced lighting (including enhanced GI performance in very complex interior scenes) and some type of GPU-based rendering acceleration. No release date has been specified yet. Read the thread at Forums.Splutterfish.com for more.