Digital Production - The VFX Magazine

Resolve 20.3.2 tidies up the edges Resolve and Fusion Studio 20.3.2 refine trims, speed up AI scaling and fix a long list of real world bugs.

Resolve 20.3.2 fixes the boring bits. Which is exactly what you want.

Arnold adds lines, points and faster volumes Arnold update adds NPR shaders and accelerates OpenVDB volumes up to five times in official tests.

Arnold gets lines, points and faster volumes. NPR artists finally get first class shaders.

Mnemonica sets out to fix digital cinema memory Mnemonica Archive addresses digital film by treating preservation as an active, monitored process rather than passive storage.

Hard drives forget. Mnemonica Archive plans accordingly.

Live FX 9.9: New Unreal Engine workflows, in a 3-part tutorial Assimilate has published a short three-part tutorial series for combining Live FX 9.9 with Unreal Engine in virtual production. The videos cover GPU Texture Share on a single system, an nDisplay workflow that outputs multiple render streams, and a Switchboard setup that enables live Unreal edits

Live FX 9.9 and Unreal Engine, now with fewer steps where your soul leaves your body. A new 3-part tutorial series covers single-machine Texture Share, a one-box nDisplay workflow, and Switchboard live-editing.

Kangaroo Builder learns to move faces between meshes Kangaroo Builder for Maya adds Landmark Warp, a topology transfer tool aimed at moving blendshapes between meshes without matching topology.

Finally, a rigging tool that admits topology changes and does something useful about it.

I fear that maintaing a feature very few people use opens a giant Can of Worms of dependencies ... Do you use it ? What was it like? (I'm not a VR-guy, soooo would like to know how it performed :) )

PureRef 2.1 adds grids lines notes and control PureRef 2.1 ships with grids snapping drawing tools image management updates and a long list of workflow fixes.

PureRef adds grids drawing and a surprising amount of polish. Reference boards just got busier.

Katana 9 deepens USD and previews Hydra 2 Katana introduces UsdSuperLayer, new USD lighting and material nodes, and alpha Hydra 2 viewer support.

Katana leans harder into USD with UsdSuperLayer and a Hydra 2 viewer. Lighting TDs, take note.

Quad Wrap arrives for Blender, offering a manual, quad-focused approach to retopology without automation promises.

Nevercenter speeds up Milo 2026 and drops VR quietly Milo 2026.0 moves to Unreal Engine 5.7, adds raytracing on Mac, pathtracing on Windows, faster lighting, workflow tweaks and removes VR.

Milo gets faster, shinier and more serious. Unreal Engine 5.7, raytracing on Mac, pathtracing on Windows and VR shown the door.

Blender 5.1 Beta Improves Performance, Workflow, and Compositing Are you already well-versed in Blender 5.0? Then 5.1 will feel less like an upgrade you need to prepare for and more like a version you simply grow into. The beta builds sit firmly on the existing 5.x foundation and focus on smoothing edges rather than adding conceptual weight. Animation and rigging: small gains that add up Animation and rigging see performance focused improvements under the hood.

Blender 5.1 is now in beta, bringing measured improvements across animation, compositing, UI, and pipeline tools. Familiar, focused, and very Blender.

Download IKEA furniture as 3D models, minus the trolley A community script allows direct downloads of IKEA’s web 3D models, skipping the store visit and the measuring tape optimism.

Download IKEA’s existing 3D furniture models and avoid discovering too late that 5 cm matters.

New 3D Pose Reference Tool for Character Artists HAELE 3D announces Pose Studio, a fully editable 3D pose reference tool for character artists with anatomical view toggles. Still in development.

HALE 3D teases Pose Studio, a fully editable full-body 3D reference posing app for art, with anatomical view options.

One click exports and zero patience for menus from Blender to Unreal, Unity and more. A free Blender add-on offers fast exports to Unity, Unreal and Godot using collections and selection logic.

Someone finally got tired of export menus and did something about it.

RapidPipeline Plugin Brings One-Click CAD Prep to Unreal RapidPipeline launches a native Unreal Engine plugin that lets artists import, clean and optimise CAD/3D assets locally inside the Unreal Editor.

New RapidPipeline plugin for Unreal lets you prep heavy CAD models inside the Editor with one click. No external transfers needed.

Crocotile 3D Gets Projection UVs Tool and Workflow Additions Crocotile 3D version 2.6.5 introduces a projection UVs tool, grid snapping, export options and animation control enhancements.

Crocotile 3D 2.6.5 lands with projection UVs and workflow refinements for tile-based 3D creation.

Frame Ref tidies your reference mess Frame Ref 1.0 launches with an infinite canvas for images, video, PDFs and GIFs, aimed at daily reference work for creatives.

Another app promises to fix reference chaos. This one might actually stay out of the way.

BlendShape Monitor puts Maya rigs under a heat lamp A new Maya plugin visualises blendshape influence in real time, targeting riggers dealing with dense and poorly documented rigs.

Finally a way to see which blendshape is actually wrecking your rig.

MetaTailor adds engine bridges and less FBX fatigue MetaTailor 2.5 introduces official engine bridges and workflow updates for realtime character clothing pipelines.

MetaTailor adds official engine bridges, cutting out repeated FBX exports in realtime character clothing pipelines.

Animate re-animated Adobe confirms Animate remains available with support and fixes, but no new features.

Animate lives. Barely. Adobe says it stays, just without new tricks.

Blender turns meshes into sponges. Rubber duck not included A free Blender Geometry Nodes setup converts meshes into sponge like forms using volumetrics and procedural subtraction.

Free Blender Geometry Nodes tool turns any mesh into a sponge and yes your cube can finally take a relaxing bath.

glTF learns to splat without losing the plot Khronos proposes a glTF extension for Gaussian splats, aiming to standardise how splat data is stored and exchanged.

glTF gets splats. Khronos tries to stop the format chaos before it starts.

Unreal Reality: Building A New Specimen Director Dimitri Vallein breaks down the real-time production of his Unreal Engine short film New Specimen, from motion capture to cloth sims.

Director Dimitri Vallein explains how he built a New Specimen in Unreal Engine, one frame at a time.

Adobe pulls the plug on Animate at last Adobe has confirmed the end of life of Adobe Animate, setting clear dates for sales, access, and support wind-down.

Flash is gone, again. Adobe Animate now has an official end date. Not enough ways to push AI, presumably.

Resolume adds 10 bit colour and speed fixes Resolume update adds 10 bit output, faster loading, Wire usability changes, and capture updates for live graphics.

Social Media Resolume adds 10 bit colour output and speed fixes aimed at serious realtime graphics.

RGB sliders now judge your colour skills A free Android game turns RGB value matching into a timed test of colour perception. No scopes. No mercy.

A free mobile game proves RGB sliders can be more stressfull than deadlines.

GGro grows strange things in Houdini, for free Free Houdini add-on GGro generates procedural organic growth forms via custom solvers and influence nodes.

Free Houdini add-on GGro grows organic forms procedurally and costs nothing but your GPU time.

Hi Linda! As a HP-victim: 3d printers are easier than 2D ones these days.

Using 3d Printers is easy these days, even I can do it! And sooo much fun creating things that were a stupid idea a few hours earlier.

Also: Last Minute Presents.

Infinity Hotel: Endless Rooms, Endless Renders HFF Munich’s VFX students built Infinity Hotel, a hybrid short film merging live action with CGI, LiDAR scans, and Dolby Atmos sound.

Endless stairs, digital snails, and surreal corridors: the HFF Munich students built a world between memory and madness.