New CG software you may have missed: 7 September 2026

Free 3D grooming tool Sisir: just one of nine applications covered in our round-up of recent updates to CG software that didn’t get full stories on CG Channel.

While CG Channel tries to write about 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 game art tools that didn’t get full stories in the past two weeks.

Below, you can find summaries of what’s new in Unity, real-time FX tools IlluGen and LiquiGen, Maya character rigging add-on Smooth Weights 2, and AI rendering app AI Studio.

There are also updates to several free tools, including photogrammetry app RealityScan Mobile, Blender 3D Gaussian Splatting add-on 3DGS Render, and hair grooming tool Sisir.

The round-up also includes a completely new tool: VFR2CFR, RE:Vision Effects’ post-production utility tool for converting variable frame rate footage to constant frame rates.

3DGS Render 5.1

Overview
3D scanning tools developer Kiri Innovations’ open-source add-on for visualizing and editing 3D Gaussian Splats in Blender gets support for real-time relighting of imported Splats.

The animation system added in 3DGS 5.0, which makes it possible to transfer animation from a proxy mesh to a Splat, is now GPU-accelerated, and generates more accurate deformations.

Both features were developed by external contributors: Kiri Innovations continues to maintain the add-on’s GitHub repo, but is turning feature development over to the user community.

New features

• Realtime relighting of splats
• Relighting supports all Blender lights, with ‘limited support’ for the world shader
• GPU-accelerated baking for proxy rigs
• Support for Blender 5.2

Price and system requirements
3DGS Render 5.1 is compatible with Blender 5.1+. It’s a free download.

Read a full list of new features in 3DGS Render 5.1 in the online release notes

AI Studio 1.1

Overview
Reallusion’s new 3D-guided AI rendering toolset gets its first major update since its initial release earlier this year.

Originally available embedded within iClone and Character Creator, Reallusion’s animation and character generation tools, AI Studio is also now available as a standalone application.

New features

• Now available as a standalone application
• Supports 4K output with Seedance 2.0 in Video Create and 3D to Video
• Supports 4K image generation in Image Create and Image Edit
• Capture Frame: use any video frame as the starting frame for Video Create
• New Basic mode in AI Actor Creator, supporting image upload to generate AI Character Sheets
• New AI models supported: Seedance 2.0 mini and Seedance 2.5
• Support for cloud sync of user data across different devices

Price and system requirements
The standalone edition of AI Studio is available for Windows only. The base application is free.

Generation of images and videos is charged on a credit basis. New users get 500 AI points free; further points requires a paid subscription, which start at $9.99/month.

Read an overview of the new features in AI Studio 1.1 on Reallusion’s blog

Read a full list of new features in AI Studio 1.1 in the online release notes

IlluGen 1.2

Overview
JangaFX’s new tool for creating the 2D and 3D assets required for in-game FX – including base 3D meshes, textures, noises and masks – gets its biggest update since its release last yewar.

Selected new features

• New Image to Material node extracts albedo, height and roughness maps from photos
• New Accumulate node combines a range of timeline frames into a single image
• New histogram overlay for the 2D viewport
• Three new tonemapping operators in the renderer (GT7, AgX, Khronos PBR Neutral)
• New interpolation modes for the Color Interpolate and Color Gradient nodes
• New Geo Subdivide node for Catmull-Clark subdivision of geometry
• New Geo Complex Shapes and Geo Honeycome Shapes nodes for complex 3D forms

Price
Indie subscriptions, for artists earning under $1 million/year, cost $20/month, with users getting a perpetual licence after 18 months. Indie perpetual licences cost $300.

For studios with revenue up to $100 million/year, perpetual node-locked licences cost $1,600, up $200 since the release of IlluGen 1.0. Perpetual floating licenses cost $2,667, up $337.

System requirements
No changes since our story on the IlluGen 1.0.

Read a full list of new features in IlluGen 1.2 on JangaFX’s Discord server

LiquiGen 1.1

Overview
JangaFX’s other major new tool, real-time liquid simulation software LiquiGen, also gets its first major update since becoming production-ready last year.

New features

• Dedicated new Meshing node moves mesh-generation controls out of the Simulation node
• Adaptive particle radius and minimum-neighbors filter help fill holes and cull stray floating droplets during mesh generation
• ‘Insanely good’ mesh decimation
• Support for subgraphs in the node graph
• Support for wireless connections and connection reroute in the node graph

Price
Indie subscriptions, for artists earning under $1 million/year, cost $20/month, with users getting a perpetual licence after 18 months. Indie perpetual licences cost $300.

For studios with revenue up to $100 million/year, perpetual node-locked licences cost $1,600, up $200 since the release of LiquiGen 1.0. Perpetual floating licenses cost $2,667, up $337.

System requirements
No changes since our story on the LiquiGen 1.0.

Read a full list of new features in LiquiGen 1.1 on JangaFX’s Discord server

Read more about the new mesh decimation features on LinkedIn

RealityScan Mobile 1.9

Overview
Epic Games’ free mobile photogrammetry app for Android and iOS gets a number of workflow and performance updates.

New features

• Delete source photos at any time, not just during the Capture phase
• Option to add more photos to a project, even when offline
• Access info like texture resolution and vertex/triangle counts from the Model view
• Object mode now creates a watertight mesh by default
• Standard mode now creates a faster-processing non-watertight mesh by default

Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on RealityScan Mobile 1.8.

Read a full list of new features in RealityScan Mobile 1.9 in the online release notes

Sisir 1.1.x updates

Overview
Promising free standalone guide-based hair grooming tool Sisir has had several updates since its public release last month, all of them adding significant new features.

New features

• New Braid Clump modifier simplifies the creation of braided hairstyles
• New Mannequin parametric head
• Blendshape support for the main mesh
• New Surface Comb tool
• New Multi-guide edit feature

Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on the original public release.

Read a full list of new features in Sisir on the product Discord server

📣 Smooth Weights 2 for #Maya – Faster than ever ⚡

Another huge performance leap. Up to ~35× faster volume smoothing, and even ~40x with 4x oversampling on a 69k test mesh. Faster painting, more robust, more fun. For you!https://t.co/ahPKdZEvuZ#3d #rigtip #gamedev pic.twitter.com/yqWBasqC7X

— brave rabbit (also braverabbit.bsky.social) (@brave_rabbit) August 19, 2026

Smooth Weights 2

Overview
Rigging and animation tools developer Brave Rabbit’s Maya add-on for smoothing skin weights directly in pose, using a painting-style workflow, has been “rebuilt in its core for speed”.

New features

• ‘Up to 35× faster’ volume smoothing
• Faster painting
• More robust output

Price and system requirements
Smooth Weights 2 is compatible with Maya 2022+ on Windows, Linux and macOS. It costs $17.39.

Read more about Smooth Weights 2 for Maya on Gumroad

Unity 6.6

Overview
The game engine and real-time renderer gets another interim update on the way to next year’s major Unity 7 release.

Many of the changes are primarily relevant to programmers and game designers, but there are several that affect the workflows of games artists.

New features

• Unity Compute Light Baker: new backend for baking lightmaps and light probes
• More accurate and scalable than the existing Progressive Light Baker
• Progressive CPU Light Baker deprecated
• View GPU Resident Drawer activity in Profiler
• URP support in Project Auditor
• Create a new shader graph asset directly from the VFX Graph
• Better support for the URP’s Built-in Particle System in the Shader Graph
• Animation Rigging, Timeline and Cinemachine are now core packages
• WebGPU is no longer an experimental release

There are also updates to the 2D animation toolset and UI tools, and some major changes to developer workflows and platform support: you can find details via the links below.

Price and system requirements
No changes since our story on the Unity 6.5.

Read a full list of new features in Unity 6.6 in the online release notes

Read more about the new features in Unity 6.6 on the Unity forum

Current support for variable frame rate footage in different editions of Twixtor.

VFR2CFR

Overview
RE:Vision Effects’ latest product is designed for one very specific task: it converts variable frame rate footage recorded on iOS or Android phones to constant frame rates.

Conversion smooths playback, and makes post work easier, particularly retiming video, as audio sync can be done precisely, rather than relying on nearest frame interpretation.

VFR2CFR is available free to anyone who bought Twixtor, RE:Vision Effects’ retiming software, in the past year, but is also available as a paid add-on for After Effects and Premiere Pro.

New features

• Converts video footage from variable to constant frame rate
• Works with current and previous versions of Twixtor
• ‘Should work’ with other video retiming software

Price and system requirements
VFR2CFR is free with licenses of Twixtor 8 and Twixtor 8 Pro bought after August 2025. It is also available as separate add-on for After Effects and Premiere Pro, and costs $49.98.

Read more about VFR2CFR on the RE:Vision Effects website

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