Red Giant Software announced the release of Radium Glow, a plugin for compositing and editing applications designed to add glows and glitter to projects easily. Radium Glow provides pinpoint control over the glow with editable shapes that can generate precise outlines or create glimmering points. Find out more at RedGiantSoftware.com.

English artist and master deconstructor Pete Draper has posted online his latest demo reel. Check it out! He is also finishing his new book and has made available some teaser images on his website.

The procedural terrain creation software combines dynamic previews, vector-based graphical editing, and a graph-based UI to allow for the rapid creation of varied and realistic terrains. Features include natural terrain effects (such as erosion, coastal erosion, and snow), mesh export, and normal map export in 16bit formats. World Machine 2 is scheduled for a July 4 release. More information and a gallery of images at World-Machine.com.

Autodesk has released a Service Pack for Max 2009 that fixes a number of issues.

New features in the latest version of Next Limit's renderer include: new Physical Sky system, a rewritten Sub-Surface Scattering component and improvements to the Material Editor, plugins and Maxwell Studio. Visit MaxwellRender.com for more.

The latest version of Mozilla's open source Web browser is out! Firefox 3 is two to three times faster than its predecessor and offers more than 15000 improvements, including the "smart location bar", malware protection, and extensive under the hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser. For more information read the press release, FAQ and complete list of features.

Stanford professor Ron Fedkiw has updated his website with simulations of fluids, highly detailed cloth and a floppy fish, among others.

New great images added. Check 'em out!

Digieffects announced today that it has shipped Simulate: Illuma, a plugin package for compositing and editing applications dedicated to the creation of light and glow effects. Read the whole PR at Digieffects.com.

PixPlant is a texturing tool that creates seamless textures from photos. Version 1.2 features include a straightening tool for handling photos with perspective distortion, and a pattern grid to adjust more difficult patterns. Read on for more.   [ more... ]

Michele Bousquet is teaching a CGWorkshops class on 3DS Max Techniques based on her latest book, "How to Cheat in 3ds Max 2009". Class begins June 30 and goes for 8 weeks.

The latest version of Brad Noble's Skeleton Rig has just been released. Along with its long list of features it adds soft IK extensions, extra FK flexibility and other enhancements and fixes. It's available from BradNoble.net.   [ more... ]

Immersive Media are selling cameras capable of capturing panoramic video. Check out some impressive demo videos.

Splutterfish are holding a T-shirt design contest with some great prizes, which include a 3DS Max 2009 license, a seat of Rhino 4.0 and a seat of Brazil r/s v2 for Max or Rhino. Find out more at SplutterFish.com.

MyToons.com announced the launch of "HD Animation": animators can now upload and share their creations in higher definition at MyToons.com. If you are concerned about copyright issues regarding your work, check out the "Intellectual Property Rights" section on the Terms of Use page before uploading; they are clearly aware that this is an important subject and have covered it extensively.

Bionatics announced the release of version 5 of its 3D plant modeler for Max. New features include: display of real-time proxies in viewport, vegetation loading alert (an alert is issued when the poly count overpasses a certain threshold), a new NatFX material library integrated with the Material Editor (allows users to quickly customize bark, leaf, flowers and fruit materials of any plant) and editing/modification of multiple plants in a 3DS Max scene at once. Read the whole PR for more (PDF file).

3DVF has posted a great tutorial on the making of R'Zalka, Adrien Debos's entry for this year's Dominance War contest. Adrien used Max & ZBrush for creating the models. (English|French)

After years of working in production, New York-based artist Joe Gunn is releasing a series of commercial video tutorials. To keep costs down and get quick access to training materials, titles are available as digital downloads. Each title is an AVI format 1024x768 video. Also of note, some useful free tutorials are available from his website.

Mark Gerhard reviews 3DS Max Design 2009 for CGSociety: "... Re-rendering only selected objects is so fast comparatively – dream come true."