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Daniel Martínez Lara previews the latest features being added to Blender's Grease Pencil tool. Watch the video on Vimeo.

German artist Marc Zimmermann has created a great panoramic video designed to take viewers from a noisy city through a slowly transforming forest to a wild and airy landscape. The video seeks to express our desire to turn off everyday turbulences and experience nature in its rawest form. It was created using Cinema 4D in cooperation with the Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction (Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg). Find out more on the author's website and watch the video on YouTube.

Laubwerk have announced that their collection of realistic 3D trees that provide fine grained control over level of detail is now available for Maya and 3DS Max 2017. (more...)

Kraken is an open source cross-platform rigging framework created in Fabric Engine that allows you to use and define rigs and solvers that produce identical results across different animation applications (currently Maya and Softimage). Initially developed at Hybride Technologies, a division of Ubisoft, it is now an open source project, with Hybride and Fabric continuing development with contributions from other studios, including Oculus Story Studio. Version 1.2 brings a new and easy Biped workflow. More on Fabric Engine's blog.

Madrid-based Next Limit has released the native version of its fluid dynamics simulation software for Maxon's 3D application, offering an easy workflow and the ability to use Cinema 4D modifiers and tools combined with RealFlow. The software is priced at $595. More on RealFlow's website.

New features in Esri's 3D urban environment creation software include: Alembic exporter for using massive city models with popular 3D applications, ‘Get map data’ tool for creation of 3D mock-ups of cities around the world in minutes (can import street and building footprint data from OpenStreetMap if available), numerous additions to CityEngine's shape grammar language, internal render engine upgraded to OpenGL 4.1, etc. A trial version is available. More on Esri's site.

ActionVFX is a stock footage website created for VFX artists and filmmakers. It offers over 250 effects to choose from, including high quality explosions, fire, structure fire and particles. The effects were created taking into account feedback from over 400 artists. Features include: effects are kept within the frame, individual purchasing, 2K and 4K Pro options available (both include pre-keyed 10-bit versions of the effects, the 4K Pro version also provides the original unkeyed RAW file that was shot - .R3D or .MXF). The site offers some free VFX footage, too, such as real lens dirt overlays, dust waves, etc. More on ActionVFX.

BECTU's VFX branch is inviting UK-based VFX artists to join them to send a message to the industry: reduce or end the unpaid overtime, reduce the unnecessary reliance on short-term contracts where they can be avoided, offer reasonable sickness policies and rationalize the way that workplace pensions are paid. The meeting takes place tomorrow Wednesday, June 22, from 18:30 to 21:45 (BST). More on EventBrite.

London-based Art&Graft has posted a making of video for a recent short film the studio created for promoting a brand of sunglasses. Watch it on Vimeo.

New features in 3Dflow's image-based modeling software include: batch mode, marker detection, profile tool, FBX format export, etc. Read on for more. (more...)