One to try: appleseed
It may be yet another open source physically based renderer - but it's being written specifically with production in mind.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
Maya
Gnomon releases two-hour Pixar lighting masterclass
New DVD sees Pixar Lighting TD Jeremy Vickery reveal the principles behind Efficient Cinematic Lighting.
Monday, May 7th, 2012
Autodesk reshuffles Softimage dev team
Development of Softimage moves to Singapore. Original Montreal-based team reassigned to work on Maya VFX.
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Yeti fur plugin will not be sold in the United States
Patent wrangle with Shave and a Haircut developer Joe Alter stops Maya add-on being sold in the US.
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
Glare Technologies ships Indigo Renderer 3.2
Latest update to physically based render engine adds Sun & Sky system, direct link to Cinema 4D.
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
Peregrine Labs releases Yeti 1.1 for Maya
Promising new fur-and-feathers generation plugin adds support for the Arnold and V-Ray renderers.
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
Allegorithmic releases free parquet-creation tool
Use MakeIt A Parquet to create realistic floors in 3ds Max or Maya based on any type of wood grain.
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
Review: Dell Precision M6600 mobile workstation
Jason Lewis used to be a sceptic about mobile workstations - until he tried this sleek, unflashy workhorse.
Friday, April 20th, 2012
Sitni Sati releases FumeFX 3.0 for 3ds Max
Update to gaseous fluid simulator adds per-voxel controls, new space warps. Maya version due this year.
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
Nvidia stops shipping mental mill
Retail distribution discontinued for MetaSL shader authoring tool bundled with Autodesk software.
Saturday, April 7th, 2012
Gnomon ships 150-minute Alex Alvarez tutorial for free
Explore the creation process for the large-scale illustration pictured above in The Making of 'Gathering'.
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Golaem ships Golaem Crowd 1.4
Artist-friendly Maya crowd simulator gains support for mental ray rendering, new instancing tools.
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
The Foundry releases Mari 1.4v3
Update to the paint app adds texture replication options, navigation presets to mimic Maya and Houdini.
Thursday, March 15th, 2012