Greg Zaal, the creator of HDRO Haven and Texture Haven,  has announced that thanks to a $10000 grant from Epic Games he and Cameron Casey will soon launch a new project called 3D Model Haven. Similar to the other sites, this will offer high-quality free 3D assets. According to Zaal, "The Epic grant will cover the work required to get the site up and running with some decent initial content, but after that, we'll be relying on Patreon support just like HDRI and Texture Haven to keep it going." The 3D Model Haven site is already live. but at present features just a coming soon message. We'll report more information as it becomes available. 

Exoside has announced the release of Quad Remesher for Blender. The plugin is an auto-retopology tool created by Maxime Rouca, the developer of ZRemesher, capable of working on hard-surface as well as organic objects. To learn more, visit the Quadremesher website. 

EA has announced an open-source library called Dem Bones. The library implements the state-of-the-art skinning decomposition solution that was first introduced in a SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 technical paper called “Smooth Skinning Decomposition with Rigid Bones” by Binh Le and Zhigang Deng. (more...)

Adobe has announced that its software services will no longer be available in Venezuela in compliance with US sanctions implemented by President Donald Trump in August. Existing users have until 28 October to download any cloud-based content, after which time accounts will be deactivated. According to Adobe's help pages, there is no date at present for reinstating the services but they "will continue to monitor developments closely and will make every effort to restore services to Venezuela as soon as it is legally permissible to do so". Due to its subscription model, this means users will not be able to continue to use the software, nor can they buy a standalone version. Behance is not affected by this sanction. Read more on Adobe's help site.

Berlin-based XOIO has released a two-part tutorial explaining how to cut roads into a terrain. In the first video they create a continuous terrain that features realistic roads cut through steep terrains that maintains edge loops to make the roads easier to texture. In the second video they go over texturing the terrain, animating objects, placing fencing more. Watch the tutorial on YouTube: Part 1 | Part 2.

NVIDIA has announced it has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron level sponsor. The 120,000 € per year donation is said to keep two full-time developers working on Blenders core and ensure NVIDIAs GPU technology is supported. The only other company funding at Patron level is Epic Games who recently awarded the Blender Foundation a $1.2 million mega grant. To see the list of sponsors, visit Blender.org

Catch up with last week's CG news in a vlog by Juan Gea from Bone Studio. Watch now on YouTube (English | Spanish).

Esri has released the latest version of its parametric tool CityEngine. (more...)