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Although this is no news to those who work in the VFX industry, it's perhaps the first time it's being covered in an extensive article by a large news paper such as The New York Times. The article covers the move of VFX away from the US to new homes with a majority of VFX now being produced in Vancouver and London as well as discussing the financial difficulties the industry struggles with. Read the full article on The New York Time's website.

Foundry has posted a webinar on its website hosted by Rory Woodford that demonstrates all the new features Foundry has added to Mari version 3 through version 3.3. There's also a look at what's planned for future versions of Mari's UI. Watch it on Foundry's website.

Hollywood Reported has posted an article covering the extensive behind-the-scenes look at Luc Besson's upcoming SciFi movie that kicked off the VFX conference at FMX that's currently underway in Stuttgart, Germany. The movie, a passion project for Luc Besson, is based on a French comic book series and feature 2,355 visual effects shots with the major contributors being ILM, Weta and Rodeo FX. Find out more about what was shown and talked about in the article on Hollywood Reporter's website.

Oliver Hotz has released an open source tool that lets you copy and paste geometry between different 3D applications. The current 3D applications supported are Maya, Houdini, Modo, Lightwave and Blender. (more...)

This year at the annual convention FMX, Isotropix will show off their next major update for their rendering and compositing software Clarisse. You can read a bit of information about the update, version 3.5, at Isotropix's website.

Quickly following the release of 3DS Max 2018 comes the next major version of the renderer Arnold that has replaced Mental Ray in 3DS Max. Arnold 5 is in many cases quite a bit faster than its predecessor, it's also been designed to be easier to use, ships with several new shaders, OSL support and more. Arnold 5 is available now as a standalone renderer, as well as a plugin for Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Katana, and soon Houdini and Softimage. Although the company was acquired by Autodesk last year, Solid Angle still offers its renderer both through permanent ($1220) and rental ($7.5/day) licensing. Free trials are available for download. To read more about the new version, head on over to Solid Angle's website.

(Updated) Jon A. Bell has posted more information on the features brought by Max 2018. Read his comment.
Today Autodesk released the next major version of 3DS Max to customers on rental or maintenance. Some of the new features include OpenVDB support, Arnold proxy objects that work with all platforms Arnold is available on, new VR camera, user interface improvements, MCG improvements, motion paths and more. Read the what's new section of the 3DS Max 2018 help file for more.

Kinetic Lab has posted a series of commercial scripted plugins called UI Toolkit that is aimed at helping artists quickly create modern and sci-fi user interfaces as well as motion graphics. Among the tools are 18 new geometry plugins, the abllity to quickly create lines and circles with lines, dots and numbers, a holographic effects that works by projecting lines onto a mesh and many more. For more information, visit Kinetic Lab.

The Mill has posted a behind the scenes look at the spot they did in collaboration with VCCP for mobile provider O2. Watch it on The Mill's Youtube channel.

Art of VFX has posted an interview with Rising Sun Pictures' VFX Supervisor Dennis Jones on his and Rising Sun Picture's work on the movie Logan. Read it at Art of VFX's website.