Archive

"Artist Marco Spitoni used 3ds max extensively to create an award-winning short film in which he creates a visually stunning world covered by rain forests and giant lakes, where thousands of species live together in a wonderful and wild environment.
Check out the astonishing CG visuals and thrilling action sequences."

Iloura have put up a 'making of' for their Monaro TV Commercial.
They used 3ds max extensively, as on other projects.
Check out the screenshots of a maxscript they wrote for their work. Yowz.

Fran

Creative-3D reviews Painter 7.

Fran

Yes, we kick-off with some interesting rumors. We've heard a while ago that particles would be one of the new improvements after release 4. Discreet seems to have been working on the issue for quite a while (a possible point release version was expected with the new features) and now new details have surfaced. According to messages posted at Discreet's forum, Oleg Bayborodin, the developer of the Particle Studio plugin has been involved in programming the new particle functions for the next release of Max. Enhanced event-driven particle system or procedural rule-based particles? Will they come combined with an enhanced dynamics system? Place your bets... :-)

- Chaos Group's VRay 1.0 has been released. Features include fast raytracing, reusable irradiance maps, true HDRI support, motion blur with analytic sampling, caustics, area lights, etc. Check out Vrayrender.com for more.
- Exluna's Entropy 3.1 is available. New features of this Renderman-compliant renderer include HDRI, Depth of Field, significant performance improvements, and direct support for 3ds max. A demo version can be found at Exluna's website. Let's leave the lawsuit comments aside, but if you're interested in reading about it, check out Highend3d.com's Rendering Theory List.
- Cebas have updated their Finalrender software to version 1.1 with some bug fixes and many improvements. New features include optimizations for using GI in animations, optimized area light types, enhanced color shadow map, additional sub surface scattering features, etc. Check out Finalrender.com for the complete feature list.
- Integra's InSight has been updated to version 2.31. The patch includes support for references to lights, IESNA Photometric Type A and B and it also fixes problems with LIGHT LISTER. Check out Integra.jp for more information.
- Splutterfish's Brazil has been going through many point releases, growing in features and speed. A development roadmap and project status page was posted by Splutterfish more than a month ago, and Brazil is now advancing in its feature-complete status. A final release date has yet to be announced.

Evasion|3D have ported their X-Dof plugin to 3ds max. X-Dof specializes in high-level control of depth of field effects in 3ds max. Features include smooth, fast and accurate depth of field effect, custom lens diaphragms (producing bokeh effects), custom intensity features, support for motion blur and depth of field simulation at the same time, etc.. Check out the gallery for some impressive samples created with X-Dof.

Bionatics introduces natFX for Max, a unique plugin that enables you to rapidly generate procedural and botanically coherent 3D plants and trees with ease. Driven by AMAP, a technology developed by France's largest agronomic research center, the CIRAD, natFX plants come richly textured and can be correctly aged and set in any of the four seasons. The plugin is geared towards the gaming and architectural industry. Read on for more information. (more...)

Great news, the first collection of Lume Tools plugins is available for 3ds max 4! This set of plugins includes ocean, water, wet, submerge, and landscape shaders. The Landscape shader gives users detailed control over how their land masses are rendered from a material standpoint. Lume Tools also contains a Stain shader, which lets you use the intersection between a stain object and another object to define a new material on the non-stain object. This enables you to create wet and dry areas on a single object with ease. The plugin set is being offered for a sale price of $195.
Visit the original Lume Tools pages as well as Lightwave's implementation to see what may be in store for the next collection(s).