CG news

Blender 2.93 LTS has an updated workspace and table editor for geometric nodes. More than 20 new nodes have been added, including nodes for creating 2D and 3D primitives. Mesh parameters such as vertex colour data, some of the UV properties and material assignment can now be accessed. The update also added a default workspace for geometry nodes, including a new spreadsheet editor to display attribute

Dimension 5's D5 Render 1.9 features a new physical sky system, Geo & Sky, allowing scenes to be automatically lit according to a given latitude and time of day in the real world. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KnHofPuKPgk&feature=emb_logo[/embed] The update also includes new double-sided foliage material and the ability to customise the colours of the three-dimensional plants. More than 412 plants have now been added to the accompanying resource libraries.

Chaos, the company formerly known as Chaos Group, has released V-Ray glTF, a free collection of Python scripts for rendering models in glTF format using its V-Ray rendering module. glTF is a lightweight file format for 3D resources in real-time applications and is now supported in DCC software, including Blender and Nvidia's Omniverse. While there are a number of online glTF viewers available - the new

The software, formerly known as Project Lavina, now known as Chaos Vantage, uses the RT cores in current generation Nvidia RTX graphics cards to create an interactive image of an environment with full ray tracing in real time. Vantage 1.3 gained support for VRay2SidedMtl, a two-way V-Ray material and animated camera parameters from an imported .vrscene file. Also, Vantage now includes the Nvidia GPU-based OptiX noise

ZBRushCoreMini 2021 is a free, stripped-down version of ZBrush, providing "artists of all ages" with an introduction to the popular digital sulpting software. The update adds support for the ZBrush Vector Displacement Mesh (VDM) system, allowing complex 3D elements, including entire body parts, to be added to a model in a few clicks. Other changes include a new real-time occlusion system, designed to bring out finer

Pulldownit 5.0 has got new visual workflows for controlling where the mesh fractures and also new parameters for keeping the fragments formed by cracks on the surface within the boundaries, so that multiple delaminations from the surface can be controlled. The performance of the plug-in has been improved: the crack solver is now "at least twice as fast" and fracture operations create lighter meshes for modelling.

400 HDRI environment and sky maps by Grzegorz Wronkowski are presented in 2048x1024 resolution. These images are presented in EXR format, most of them are exterior, there are both rural and urban environments in a wide range of lighting conditions. In addition to the free 2k versions, commercial versions of the images are available in high resolution, with a width resolution typically up to 20,000 pixels,

Zoo Tools Pro 2.5 is designed to simplify everyday modelling, texturing, lighting and animation tasks. The animation toolset has been updated in the release, adding new tools for baking, timing changes and animation randomisation. Developed by former Weta Digital and Framestore animator Andrew Silke, formerly called C3dC, Zoo Tools Pro 2 is a modular Python-based Maya tool structure. The framework includes over 40 tools, from workflow

RailClone 4.3 is the new version of iToo Software's parametric modeling plugin in 3ds Max. The update improves the performance of complex models - RailClone objects now estimate "up to 500%" faster and a "Deformation" tab has also been added, to the "Transform" operator, to override deformation settings for multiple segments. V-Ray users have received support for the new VRayMultiSubTex and VRayUVWRandomiser cards in V-Ray 5,