BlackRay is a new real-time renderer and game engine for 3DS Max in development by Hamid Memar. (more...)

Unity Technologies has announced that its prices will rise in 2020. Currently, a Plus license costs $35 per month and a Pro license costs $125 per month. From January 1, 2020, a Plus license costs $40 per month and a Pro license costs $150. This is the first price increase since 2016 and free users can relax as there are no changes to the Personal edition. Find out more on the Unity Blog. 

Google has announced that it is to discontinue its Daydream View VR headset and that VR support will not be a part of its latest flagship phone the Pixel 4, nor will it be integrated into any other future devices. Find out more on Venture Beat.

Adidas is the latest company to join the Blender Development fund according to a recent tweet by the Blender Foundation. Adidas joins as a silver sponsor alongside companies like Google, Ubuntu, Intel, Steam and more. You might wonder what a sports apparel wants with Blender, but apparently, they used it in the past for visualisations. 

Befores and Afters has published an article on how industrial robots can be controlled directly from within Maya using a plugin called Mimic. This can be useful for controlling complex camera rigs that need to precisely repeat movements for VFX that use miniatures and physical models. Read the article in full on Befores and Afters. 

Kinetic Thoughts has released Pulldownit 4.7 for Maya. (more...)

Autodesk has released a recording from SIGGRAPH 2019 in which they discuss the how the company is working with leading animation studios to "ensure a consistent yet modifiable way to use USD within Maya, while remaining fully open-source and used as a baseline going forward". Find out more on Autodesk's website.