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Chris Murray, 3DS Max Technical Specialist for Autodesk, is hosting another 3DS Max Happy Hour event tonight at 6pm EST, which will be streaming live online. The link to the stream will be posted on Chris's Twitter later today. He will be accompanied by 3DS Max guru Alex Horst and a few others. You can use #maxchat for asking them questions. (more...)

Clovis Gay has released a new video demonstrating his upcoming plugin called Sliced Plane Object, which creates various 2D patterns such as brick walls, tiles, and futuristic GUI gyros. To find out more watch the demo video .

VFX and 3DS Max master Allan McKay has created over 100 PFlow presets that ship with Max. The PFlow setups range from elemental effects for air, earth, fire, water and various logo effects. These setups are great for any artist to use as a starting point. A video showing the presets can be found on YouTube, more information and download links on Gary Davis's Area blog.

Autodesk has made available a web based service that allows people to create customized 3D characters, rigged and ready to animate. Users can fine-tune every feature of the character's body. The service works with popular animation packages such as Max and Maya, as well as with game engines like Unity. More on the Autodesk Character Generator's site.

John Martini has released his latest plugin for 3DS Max called Labyrinth. This plugin allows users to create splines on any given object. The knots which make up Labyrinth are automatically attached to the objects they're generated on. To find out more you can watch the Feature Overview and the Explaining Controls Video. The plugin is available at www.JokerMartini.com.

Check out this informal discussion between three 3DS Max experts, Chris Murray, Gary Davis, and Louis Marcoux. They hung out and discussed topics submitted from Twitter participants. You can watch it here on YouTube.

John Martini and Andru Phoenix announced a new animation tool that allows artists to generate paths which can be used to control the trajectory of objects. PathRig 1.0 is included in the latest update of Animators Tool Kit, the suite of tools for animation. Watch a demo video by Andru Phoenix on Vimeo.

ScanlineVFX has posted a video showcasing their latest visual effects work on The Wolf of Wall Street film. Watch it on Vimeo.

TokyoPlastic has posted a handful of stylized spots they did for MTS. The spots were created using 3DS Max, Zbrush and After Effects. You can watch them on Vimeo. You can watch more of their commercials located on their Vimeo Channel.

John Martini and Andru Phoenix announced a new animation tool that allows artists to reveal an object by unfolding the faces of that object. Available are controls to adjust the flipping speed, rotation, and offset. FlippinFlaps 1.0 is included in the latest update of the Animators Tool Kit, the suite of tools for animation. Watch a demo video on Vimeo.