We have the pleasure of offering our readers another thorough review, talented CG artists Olli and Sami Sorjonen take an in-depth look at the latest version of Autodesk’s sculpting and painting software: “… has some features that make it hard to be without.” Read the review.

Autodesk has released another sneak peek video showing features for an upcoming release of Max. More at Ken Pimentel’s blog.

(Updated) Ken Pimentel discusses other possible solutions to this problem. More at Ken Pimentel’s blog.
A thread at Autodesk’s Area reports about a possible fix found for a common Nitrous lag problem experienced by some users when performing certain basic operations (selecting, rotating, moving, scaling, etc.). The fix, however, is not working for everyone. More at Autodesk’s Area.

A quick tip on obtaining sharp shadows from HDR maps described at Bertrand Benoit’s and Peter Guthrie’s blogs.

UK artist Peter Guthrie shares a number of post production tips using Adobe Lightroom. More at Peter Guthrie’s blog.

Polish artist Filip Kaczorek has released a set of plugins for After Effects designed to help make the most out of a ZDepth pass. The package contains 3 plugins: [more...]

Ken Pimentel from Autodesk has posted information that hints at upcoming 3DS Max developments. Among the highlights, the post mentions that Autodesk has hired once again Oleg Bayborodin, the original author of Particle Flow, to research and develop new Particle Flow capabilities for Max and integrate it with XBR’s unified physics system. More at Ken Pimentel’s blog.

Autodesk’s MaxStation blog has posted a simple solution to prevent 3DS Max from displaying ‘Not Responding’ when it is running complex MaxScripts. Find out more at MaxStation.

Marko Permanto has released an extremely useful range of new Kismet actions for UDK that allow for the creation of custom HUD and UI elements without the need to learn and use Scaleform. The scripts along with a tutorial by Sjoerd De Jong can be downloaded from hourences.com.

Peter Guthrie has shared a handy tip that uses a simple MaxScript command to resolve the problem of pixelated reflections when using glossy materials in conjuction with HDRI maps and V-Ray dome lights. Find the MaxScript code and an explanation on Peter Guthrie’s blog.

Autodesk has released a sneak peek video showing some of the common ‘Small Annoying Things’, (SATs), they have fixed in an upcoming release of 3DS Max. Their attempt is to fix those small and annoying problems that you have gotten used to over the years. The video can be viewed on the 3DSMaxSneakPeek YouTube channel.

A free After Effects global tonemapping plugin for processing HDR video has been released. The Simple Tone Mapper is designed to help compress superbright pixels without darkening an image by applying a Reinhard curve. More at VFX Wizard.