As earlier reported, Dutch artist Martijn van Herk is working on integrating the Bullet Physics library into 3DS Max. New videos have been posted: 10,000 boxes-SoftBody Bunnies-Particle Flow-Triggers.

Chaos Group has just published an interview they did with Greek studio Ixor VFX, and how they use V-Ray in their pipeline. Full article can be read at Chaos Group. (Disclaimer: expect content aimed at highlighting V-Ray’s capabilities)

New York-based Charlex studio has posted online its latest reel. Watch it on Vimeo.

UK artist Wayne Robson is making his entire range of Mudbox training DVDs available for free. More at Wayne Robson’s site.

Exotic Matter announced their upcoming Naiad Buddy for Max, a collection of plugins, Naiad user ops, and command-line tools designed to allow particles and meshes to be imported/exported between Exotic Matter’s fluid dynamics software and Max. Naiad Buddy for Max is currently in alpha, more information at Github.

New features in Autodesk’s modeling tool for combining parts from different 3D models include: [more...]

CGCookie posted a tutorial showing the features of the collision map node in ThinkingParticles. 3DS Max artist Alessandro Cangelosi shows you how to use this feature to generate secondary particle effects on your dynamic simulations. The tutorial can be seen at CGCookie.

Hiero, the latest software from The Foundry, has entered open beta and they are inviting anyone who would like to try it out, to go to their website and download it. Hiero is a VFX project management, conform and review application. It’s due for release in February 2012 and will cost £3150 / $5,000 / €3800 (all prices quoted are nodelocked and include one year of maintenance). You can read more about Hiero, and download the beta from The Foundry’s website. (Note: currently beta is only available for Mac64 & Linux64; expect a Windows64 release soon)

Sitni Sati has published an interview with Santa Monica based Luma Pictures and the work they did using FumeFX on the feature film Thor. The full interview can be read over at the Afterworks site. (Disclaimer: expect questions aimed at highlighting FumeFX’s capabilities)

It’s a pleasure to present our readers with our latest MU feature. Talented Norwegian artist Rune Spaans shares a detailed account of how he used 3DS Max to create the photoreal characters for The Troll Hunter hit movie, as well as the Star Wars-inspired prequel, The Troll Hunter Strikes Back. Enjoy! Read the article.

New features in Lumatix’s interactive preview renderer include: [more...]

A fun essay on slow motion, motivation, love, and one of its possible outcomes. The ambitious animated short was produced at French school ESMA by Hugo Jackson, Pascal Chandelier, Valentin Michel, Bastien Mortelecque and Elliot Maren. Watch it on Vimeo. (Note: not created with Max)