An interesting short film created in paper using Muybridge-style photo cycles by UK artists Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas as part of their studies at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth. Check out the making of and the film.

Netherlands-based Act-3D announced the release of Lumion, their real-time architectural visualization software. Features include: imports content from major 3D software including Max, built-in video editor, library of 3D models and materials, ability to edit scenes in real-time using GPU rendering, outputs mp4 files, stereoscopic videos and print resolution images. More information and sample videos at Lumion3D.com.

A short film by Polish artist Mateusz Staniszew that portrays a different POV (unusual for CG) with some great use of sensorial images.

Marvelous Designer is a cloth design software by Seoul-based CLO Virtual Fashion that allows users to design multi-layered 3D clothes with details like ruffles, belts and pockets. With its various sewing techniques, it can also make pleats, shirring, gathering as well as ironed lines, elastic bands, zippers, etc. It has a notable cloth simulation solver and offers compatibility with major 3D software through Collada, Obj and DXF-AAMA formats. More at MarvelousDesigner.com.

The VDACTr8 systems use up to eight Nvidia GTX 580 cards packing up to 4096 CUDA cores and 12 TFLOPs of compute power in a single workstation or 4U rack mounted system. These systems are low cost, high performance alternatives for certain types of HPC and GPU rendering applications. More at RenderStream.

Storm assists RED Digital Camera workflows. It allows users to view takes in high resolution without interruption or delay, cutting together edits or exploring a look interactively. Storm offers metadata tagging and timeline re-conform, speeding up exchange with editorial and post production. More at The Foundry.

The Studio Light Rig is a collection of lights, background cycs, and pre-set scenes for Max that allows you to easily light your scene with realistic soft boxes, octagon soft lights, fluorescents, and more. It's available in both Mental Ray AND V-Ray versions. The Studio Light Rig is a no nonsense tool that doesn't get in the way of your normal workflow. Its only job is to turn your scenes into a professional tabletop studio and make beautiful studio lighting easy. (more...)

As reported back in April, EditShare announced that the Lightworks video editing software was to be made available as open source. A public beta of the software has been released and is now available for download. (more...)