SplutterFish, developers of the Brazil Rendering System for 3ds Max, announce pre-release availability of Brazil r/s V2, the successor to their high-end 3D rendering package. This pre-release version is a feature complete, production tested, late stage beta, and is available for purchase now. More info can be found at Splutterfish website.

Seven years and counting! We've been covering the evolution of the 3D arena in general, and 3D Studio MAX in particular for some time now. And time flies when we're enjoying what we do. Happy Birthday to MU!

Spiral Graphics Inc. has released the third installment of its popular line of free seamless texture packs. The new pack comes with over 150 materials, bringing the total number of available royalty-free textures to about 450.   [ more... ]

There are several dozen copies of "Model, Rig, Animate with 3ds max 6" available for donation to high schools, colleges, or any other non-profit organization. The majority of the book is still valid in the current version, the modeling section in particular.   [ more... ]

Potapych is a great animated short by Australian artist Darren Price, which features the story of a bear who loved vodka. Created with 3DS Max. Check it out! (Note: more info on the short can be found at Animwatch.com)

Todd Perry reviews Sitni Sati's FumeFX for DigitalProducer.com: "... In short – Fantastic program."

New features in Vue 6 include: improved landscape creation tools, a realistic spectral atmosphere model, clouds that can be manually placed and modified, and much more. Read the whole PR at E-OnSoftware.com.

MorphX2 is an Additive/Corrective Morph Modifier for 3DS Max. MorphX2 allows artists to create morph targets that can go on top of any other modifier in Max, allowing 'fixer' shapes to be created far more easily than with the traditional 'Morpher' modifier. MorphX2 is free, to download visit the "Freeware" section at Lumonix.net.

Galen Fott reviews Corel Painter X for PC Magazine: "... subtle improvements in the brush control can mean dramatically improved results."

Kelly Murdock reviews NatFX 4 for Gamedev.net: "... works great and includes some great features that can enhance the realism of the trees and plants you add to your scene."

CG news website InsideCG.com is up again.

Eos Systems announced the release of Photomodeler 6, an update to their modeling software that helps users extract 3D models from photographs. Check out the list of new features at Photomodeler.com.

Todd Perry has written a brief review of Mudbox for DigitalProducer.com: "... working with MudBox is a joy and makes me want to be a better modeler."

Ruairí Robinson ("Fifty Percent Grey") has posted the full version of his impressive live action film online. Before and afters and visual effects breakdowns also available. Amazing work. Check it out! (Note: some images may be unsuitable for impressionable people)

Iloura have just posted a 'making of' montage of their work on Charlotte's Web. The beginning shows the work in context, then the film shows sample shots in layers. It includes Wilbur, Ike (the horse) and some of their matte work.

Skymatter announced the availability of a 15 day, fully-functional trial version of Mudbox Professional v1.0.4.

Autodesk's upcoming extension for Max 9 is expected to be available for download by subscription members on March 29, 2007. It offers more than 30 productivity enhancements in the areas of animation and Biped, rendering, UI and usability, increased interoperability with AutoCAD 2008, new DirectX10 support and Windows Vista 32/64-bit compatibility. Read the whole PR at DigitalContentProducer.com.

"Hi there, I’ve put up some new tutorials for 3dsmax on various particles and effects subjects, one of them is more theory based just demonstrating how to create a fx interface to control your particles that you build for specific effects pipelines. Here I mocked up an effects pipeline for ashing vampires (similar to the effects work I did on blade trinity a couple of years back) but using pflow, and I’ve scripted an interface to be able to quickly apply an effects pipeline like that to a new scene in literally seconds." http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/tut_dts.avi - Tutorial on particles and compositing them
http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/tut_ObjAB.avi - Tutorial on scripting particles to transform from one shape to another
http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/Tut_FX-Gui.avi - Tutorial on demonstrating the effectiveness of creating scriptable UI’s for your effects to execute effects pipelines quickly and effectively within a working production.

After nearly 6 years, ScriptSpot is celebrating the launch of an entirely new user driven community for script developers. Go and visit the new site, participate in the community, contribute content and best of all - keep going back for the weekly "RE-launch" raffles!   [ more... ]

New decade, new site design. MaxScript wizard Borislav Petrov has updated his website with fresh content, including Max 9 MaxScript and .NET samples, and a new web design.

Someone who's wanted to make a film for years, but (like many others) found himself being held back by various responsibilities, has finally decided to dive in and make his own short. The name is Steve Ogden (of AnimWatch fame) and he is more than happy with the results of his first immersion. Check out the animation at Lunaentertainment.com.

New impressive images created with Terragen 2 Technology Preview version.

MAXtreme 9 D3D is a new performance driver for 3DS Max 9 capable of delivering performance improvements of up to 100% when coupled with NVIDIA Quadro FX. The 64-bit version is out. Release Date: February 2, 2007.

Harry McCracken takes a first look at Corel Painter X for Digit Magazine.

New Features include: RealBristle Painting System, new composition tools such as the Divine Proportion tool that provides guidelines to follow the Divine Proportion (also known as the Golden Ratio), a Match Palette effect to help artists match the color and intensity between two images, enhanced speed and more. Corel Painter X is available for pre-order and is expected to ship in late February 2007. Visit Corel.com for more.

Digital Trove announced the release of a Windows version of their set of plugins for After Effects. Visit DigitalTrove.com for more.

CG Academy has released "HLSL Shader Fundamentals" by Ben Cloward (of Shader FX fame), the first in a series of DVDs on the creation of HLSL shaders for real time use in video games.

Boomer Labs has announced the release of MAX2AE Version 2.0. The plugin has been expanded to further improve the workflow between Max and After Effects. On top of exporting a large amount of information from Max, you can now also import After Effects compositions into Max. MAX2AE also supports Max 9 (both 32-bit and 64-bit). You can read the whole press release here (PDF).

A series of commercials for TV and the web produced for the Irish National Lottery by Brown Bag Films are the target of claims of plagiarism. It has to do with similarities in look and style of animation of the three main bear characters. Long-time Max artists Matt Everitt and Matt Clark produced a series of short animations for Ricky Gervais a couple of years ago, and the similarities are striking. We'll keep our eye on this story and let you know of any updates.

Drives are expected to be available in Q2, 2007. Bit-tech.net has the news.

Holographic techniques are being used to store 300 times as much data as current DVDs. New Scientist Tech has the news.