New CG software you may have missed: 20 September 2026
This week’s round-up of updates to key VFX and games tools includes animation library-building software Animcraft, which gets new AI rigging and animation systems.
While we try to write about the major new versions of CG software released each week, sometimes there are smaller updates or useful plugins that we don’t manage to cover.
Rather then letting those releases slip past unnoticed, we’ve put together a round-up of updates to VFX, animation and games tools that didn’t get full stories last week.
Below, you can find summaries of what’s new in animation library-building tool Animcraft, game engine Unigine, and GPU renderers OctaneRender and Radeon ProRender.
Animcraft 6.0
Overview
Basefount’s unusual software for building software-agnostic libraries of animations gets new AI rigging and animation capabilities, priced separately to the core application.
New features
- New AI character rigging and skinning module
- Developed in-house: ‘billions of params, local inference — not a generic LLM wrap’
- Works across DCC applications, including 3ds Max and Maya
- New clip-based text-to-animation module
- Based on the NVIDIA Kimodo model
- Supports timeline splicing, ground path and start-frame pose constraints
Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on Animcraft 5.0.
Read a full list of new features in Animcraft 6.0 in the online release notes
OctaneRender 2026.5
Overview
The latest update to the stable version of Otoy’s GPU production renderer adds support for the RTX Spark, NVIDIA’s upcoming ‘superchip’ for laptops and mobile workstations.
New features
- Native support for the NVIDIA RTX Spark
- Support for OpenColorIO 2.5 (OCIO 2.5) configurations
Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on the OctaneRender 2026.4.
Read a full list of new features in OctaneRender 2026.5 in the online release notes
Radeon ProRender for Blender 3.7
Overview
The Blender edition of AMD’s free physically based GPU renderer gets an update to support Blender 5.2, the latest version of its host software.
AMD now seems to be maintaining Radeon ProRender for Blender, but not actively developing it: the software hasn’t had a significant feature update since version 3.6 in 2023.
New features
- Supports Blender 5.2
- Based on the current Radeon ProRender SDK 3.1.7
Price and system requirements
Radeon ProRender for Blender is compatible with Blender 5.2. Compiled binaries are available free for Windows only. The source code is available under an Apache 2.0 license.
Read a full list of new features in Radeon ProRender for Blender 3.7 in the online changelog
Unigine 2.22
Overview
The latest update to Unigine’s real-time 3D engine addresses one of its weaknesses for entertainment work, as opposed to industrial simulation: the animation toolset.
The release introduces Sequencer, a new timeline-based tool for creating cinematics directly in the Editor, and expands the capabilities of the Animation Graph.
New features
- Sequencer: new timeline-based tool for creating cinematics in the Unigine Editor
- New Animation Graph capabilities: IK, Look At, joint constraints, procedural pose control
- Experimental rework of the navigation and pathfinding system
- Cesium integration for planet-scale geospatial data streaming
- Improved Gaussian Splatting support
Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on the Unigine 2.21.
Read an overview of the new features in Unigine 2.22 in Unigine’s blog post
Read a full list of new features in Unigine 2.22 in the online release notes
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