Check out the teaser for Irish filmmaker Ruari Robinson's (Fifty Percent Gray, Silent City) latest film, Blinky.

The Hollywood Reporter has the news.

Woody3D is a Tree Engine that generates 3D trees for real-time rendering. Dynamic libraries (x86, x64) for Windows and OSX operating systems are included. Trees are animated using the CPU or with the GPU using the included vertex shaders (GLSL / HLSL). Sample video and more info at Woody3D.com.

Partio is an open source C++ library for reading, writing and manipulating a variety of standard particle formats (GEO,BGEO,PTC,PDB,PDA). It also has a python API and a collection of simple command-line tools. The goal of Partio is to provide a unified interface akin to unified image libraries that makes it easier to load, save, and manipulate particle files. More at Walt Disney Animation.

Adelaide-based GruntWorks Studio has announced the launch of Australia's First Open Movie Project, and issued a call for artists to join in the production. The short film resulting from the collaborative effort will be released under the Creative Commons License. Production starts in Adelaide in 2011. The project will be using Maya as its primary software (which will likely make some Blender users question the "open" word in the project's label). More at GruntWorks.com.au.

The latest version of Andersson Technologies' camera tracking software has been released. Features include: a new set of reconstruction tools, a texture-extraction system that creates low-noise textures and panoramic backdrops from image sequences, SimulTrack window that monitors multiple trackers and/or multiple frames simultaneously, Overall Distance constraint for smoother and more controllable solves (especially for object and low-perspective solves), etc. New tutorials are expected over the next weeks. Check out the list of new features and upgrade policy for more.

CGAxis has released a collection containing 30 detailed models of furniture (sofas, chairs, tables) with textures and materials in many formats, supporting V-Ray, Mental Ray and the scanline renderer. More at CGAxis.com.

Autodesk has posted interviews with renowned Max users Brandon Davis, Adam Watkins and Chris Bond, on the subject of 3D Studio's 20th anniversary.