Gary Yost, head of The Yost Group, the team that developed and engineered 3D Studio in the late 1980s as well as 3DS Max some years later, has released a new documentary film that uses 3DS Max in a number of shots. All 3D sequences were created by CG artist Jamie Clay, who in the past produced many of the CG art that was used by Autodesk to demo the first versions of 3D Studio. Interestingly enough, this is the first time ever that 3D Studio/Max has been used by Gary Yost in one of his personal projects. Gary's film deals with the restoration efforts that are under way to reconstruct Mt. Tamalpais, a sentinel peak of the San Francisco Bay Area. Besides the CG art, the film features great timelapse visuals and photography. You can watch the film and find out more on Vimeo.

Autodesk's modeling tool for combining parts from different 3D models has received a significant update. New features include an integrated 3D Print Preview, Slicing Analysis tool, Attract To Target tool, improved rendering performance for large models, multi-threaded computation for many tools, etc. Meshmixer is being developed by Ryan Schmidt at Autodesk Research. Watch a new features video, read the complete list of changes and download the software from the Autodesk 123D website.

A tutorial by Motion Boutique, developers of the Newton 2D physics AE plugin. More on Motion Boutique's site.

The Foundry has made available two bundles that offer significant savings when purchasing software such as Modo, Nuke and Mari. Read a related discussion thread and find out more on The Foundry.

FXGuide have posted a recording of an interview they did with Marcos Fajardo, the developer of the Arnold Renderer. More on FXGuide.

Area 5, a San Francisco based production company that serves the games industry, recently created Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us. The feature length commissioned documentary follows Naughty Dogs artists and developers behind the scenes as they work on the well respected title. Watch the film free on Amazon Instant (currently available only in USA).

Next Limit Technologies has released two videos demonstrating RealFlow 2014's new viscosity capabilities. Watch them on Vimeo: viscosity on small scale scenes, viscosity on large scale scenes.

Allan McKay has released a reel of visual effects R&D for Transformers 3, the video also features some destruction work by Joel LeLievre. Watch it on Vimeo.

3dTotal have just posted an interview with Mike Johnson who works as a scene assembler at Blur. You can read the full interview on the 3dTotal website.

Romania based FrameBreed Animation Studio has just published a making of video for the work they recently completed on Spongebob Squarepants 4D, The Great Jelly Rescue amusement ride. The project was completed using 3DS Max and you can watch the video on the FrameBreed Vimeo Channel.