We're pleased to announce that CGPress now features a free jobs listing service. Anyone can list relevant vacancies on the dedicated jobs page free for 30 days and reach tens of thousands of professionals in the 3D industry. You'll find the new jobs board from the menu at the top of the main page, and a list of the most recent jobs on the right-hand sidebar. 

We're just getting started, but you can visit the new jobs page now, or advertise a vacancy simply by filling out this form (posts are moderated). 

Eloi Andaluz Fullà has published a video showing how 3DS Max's Nitrous viewport can be tweaked to achieve some of the raster effects seen in Blender 2.8's new EEVEE viewport. The video is careful not to suggest there is parity, but instead demonstrates parameters that are available to improve Max's viewport and discusses the differences between Nitrous and EEVEE. Watch it on YouTube. (more...)

The International Animated Film Society has announced that Ton Roosendaal and the Blender Open Source Software will receive the Ub Iwerks award. The award is intended to recognise technical advancements that make a significant impact on the art or industry of animation and this is the first time the award has been granted to a free open source software project. Read more on Blender's website and see the nominees for all categories on the 46th Annie Awards page. 

Grant Wilk from Remington Graphics has released D-NOISE, an implementation of NVIDIA's the Optix denoiser for Blender. It isn't limited to Cycles, the denoise operation can run on any image loaded into the UV/Image Editor including texture bakes and even photos. At present it is compatible with Blender 2.79 or 2.79.6 on Windows but support for 2.8 and other platforms is expected soon. Find out more on Remington's website. 

Chocofur has released a collection of tutorials to help new users get up and running with Blender 2.8. See the playlist on YouTube. 

Simon Thommes has released B'rn, a free animatable volumetric fire shader for Blender that allows the user to create fully volumetric fire with several options without having to do any kind of simulation. Find out more and download from Gumroad.

Evermotion has released a short written tutorial on how to convert scenes set up for Cycles to EEVEE. Read it on Evermotion.org. 

More EEVEE eyecandy, this time from Atypique Studio who used Blender's latest viewport technology to create a trailer to promote the world of NOARA that appears in its independent games and books.  Watch it on YouTube.

The Blender Foundation has announced the official release of the Blender 2.8 beta. This version has been some 3 years in the making and the list of new features and improvements is too large to list in its entirety here, but a few highlights include the completely revamped user interface with harmonised tools, gizmos and shortcuts for a more consistent experience across the application. A part of the UI overhaul also saw the introduction of workspaces that enable the user to optimise the interface for common tasks like sculpting, texture painting or motion tracking.  (more...)

Simon Thommes has released a useful new procedural texturing tool for Blender 2.8 that is able to randomly scatter textures on a surface, similar to some of the features found in Substance Designer. The plugin is free but you can choose to donate should you find it useful. Find out more in the tutorials on YouTube or get the tool from Gumroad.