ZibraVDB: the new standard in OpenVDB for virtual production

[Sponsored] With its new Houdini plugin and free edition, Zibra AI's volumetric compression technology is shaking up real-time VFX.

Monday, April 14th, 2025

This neat free plugin lets you import OpenVDBs into UE5

Eidos-Montréal's UnrealVDB lets users view VDB files inside Unreal Engine and render them with its path tracer.

Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

Download five free loopable OpenVDB smoke animations

Get Between Two Pines' simulated jets of smoke or steam for use in your 3D scenes. Commercial use.

Sunday, January 31st, 2021

NextLimit adds OpenVDB support to RealFlow

Free update adds support for the DreamWorks-developed volumetric file format, over 70 new graph nodes.

Friday, October 18th, 2013

DreamWorks open sources the OpenVDB file format

Updated: Volumetric format used on Puss in Boots due for integration into "next major release" of Houdini.

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

SideFX just released Houdini 21: check out its five key features

Read our pick of the changes in Houdini 21, from Copernicus and KineFX to new AI workflows - then see a list of all 300+ new features.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2025

ZibraVDB for Houdini and UE5 is now free to indie artists

Indie users can now use the real-time effects tech to compress and play back an unlimited number of OpenVDB sequences for free.

Tuesday, August 19th, 2025

Sneak peek: Houdini 21

Read our list of 300+ new features due in the next version of Houdini - from Neural Point Surface for liquids to the Otis organic tissue solver.

Tuesday, August 5th, 2025

Animation studio Laika joins the Academy Software Foundation

Oscar-nominated studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings joins industry body promoting open-source tech.

Saturday, August 2nd, 2025

Autodesk releases Arnold 7.4.3

Check out the new features in the renderer, including an Inference imager for applying machine learning models to stylize output.

Saturday, July 26th, 2025

Cebas releases thinkingParticles 7.4 for 3ds Max

Check out the latest features in the particle and physics plugin, including the new Explosion Tool and 160+ new scripting functions.

Friday, May 16th, 2025

Get the free version of ZibraVDB for Unreal Engine and Houdini

Updated: free version of the real-time volumetric effects tool for games and virtual production is now available for Houdini as well as Unreal Engine.

Friday, April 18th, 2025

Autodesk releases Arnold 7.4.1

Check out the latest features in the production renderer, including toon shading on GPU, and new HTML viewer for render statistics.

Friday, March 28th, 2025