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The artists from Brazil-based Stratostorm studio have released their first in-house short, called "Monsters Got Talent", directed by Mario Pece and produced by Helena Hilario. According to the director it was hard to fit the project in the studio's schedule, between commercial work, but everyone was committed to do a fun and nice looking project, and the team was very excited with the creative process. It also allowed the studio to further develop its pipeline and tools for animation, and also to use different software to get the final look. The artists have already started working on their next short. Watch Monsters Got Talent on Vimeo.

New features in The Foundry's 3D painting software include: enhanced node graph, Bake Point node allows to free up space on your GPU, connected mesh selection, support for OpenEXR 2.2 (which brings significantly reduced OpenEXR file sizes), etc. Read the release notes (PDF) and find out more on The Foundry's website.

The latest version of LaubLab's V-Ray integration plugin for Cinema 4D operates under the latest 3.4 core technology of V-Ray incorporating performance improvements and a long list of new features. Watch some new features videos on Vimeo and find out more on V-RayforC4D's website.

The interactive cloud sculpting and rendering plugin for Maya developed by The Alexandra Institute has been released in v1.5, with support for volumetric clouds directly into modern renders such as Arnold and RenderMan through OpenDVB. Elementacular allows you to design cloud shapes through Maya mesh operations while continuously visualizing volumetric clouds directly in the viewport – interactively and in high-quality. The export to OpenVDB allows the cloud to integrate seamlessly with the rendering of the entire scene – no more postproduction and composition needed to integrate the Elementacular clouds in your final image. Licenses cost $175 (incl. VAT) per user. More on Elementacular's website.

New features in Allegorithmic's texturing tool include filters dedicated to blending and weathering of scanned materials as well as brand new Normal map and Ambient Occlusion filters. More on Allegorithmic's website.

Sottozen is back with another fun video, this time with a tribute to Pac Man. Created with Blender, which was also used to track all the shots. Watch it on YouTube.

E3D MOGRAFTER FX is a new After Effects tool that will allow to control the Element 3D plugin for After Effects with a functionality resembling that of Cinema 4D's MoGraph module. Watch a preview video on YouTube.

Brazilian artist Cícero Moraes compares how 7 photogrammetry software perform, including OpenMVG + OpenMVS, MVE, Agisoft Photoscan, Autodesk Recap 360, Autodesk 123D Catch and PPT-GUI. (Portuguese|English)

Stockholm-based Important Looking Pirates have posted VFX breakdowns for impressive VFX work they did for Jaume Collet-Serra's film The Shallows. Watch it on Vimeo.

Directing duo Burcu & Geoffrey have come up with another great video with a stylized aesthetic, a personal project produced on their spare time. Watch it on Vimeo. (more...)