Blur Studio releases 65 MAXScripts at the official BlurScripts page. Please visit the page for full descriptions of all the scripts.

According to news posted by Steve Blackmon at Blurbeta's Ghost pages, the Ghost renderer will be a commercial product although there are no plans for pricing or licensing at this point. This is an independent project, and a company to support it will likely be formed separate from Blur and its ownership. The focus during this time will be to have a stable, competitive product that is integrated into 3D Studio Max, in a production ready, and nearly marketable state. (more...)

There's been quite a uproar on the Discreet webboard (http://support.discreet.com/) about Discreet management's decision not to recompile Character Studio 2.2 for max4 despite widespread customer demand. Character Studio 3 has only been out 3 months and many affected users are not ready, willing, or able to upgrade. This puts into question their ability to use either Character Studio 2.2 or "3ds max4" in production, depending on which gets priority. Affected users are asking for my time to consider their options. Also, there's been an even bigger uproar over Discreet's policy for overseas hardware lock policy where users have to surrender their hardware locks before registering max4. (more...)

Digital Film Tools released Composite Suite 1.5, a set of plug-ins for Avid editing systems and Adobe After Effects.
Composite Suite is a collection of tools designed to combine multiple images. Some of the plugins included are: color-correction, blur, grain, matte manipulation, edge blending and special tools for combining imagery like fire, smoke and explosions.

well finally, we have all heard about that, here is a link, they are all there for free, be patient their FTP is limited to 24 users at the same time
enjoy at ftp://ftp.reyes-infografica.com/pub/freeplug/
It's funny that they finally update those for Max3, once Max4 is released

Digimation offers some handy tips

TrueSpace5 new features include:
- Full complement of NURBS-based modeling tools (support for IGES, SAT and STL formats)
- NURBS Geometry Paint which provides users with a paint brush to modify NURBS surface geometry in real time
- Physically realistic, faster rendering (radiosity)
- Real-time subdivision surfaces

Turbo Squid announced an agreement with Pepper's Ghost Productions to offer the Muybridge Variations Motion Capture Library to Turbo Squid's digital artist community (price is $35 per motion file).