Tomáš Búran has made 10 photoscanned bakery assets available for free. The assets include 5 levels of detail and include PBR textures in 4k resolution. Get them from Gumroad.

Foundry has announced a collaboration with ACCESS:VFX, the NPO focused on improving inclusion and diversity in the VFX, animation and games industries.

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Rusty Hazelden has released a series of free tutorials called The Art of V-Ray Vol. 1. The 4 videos that comprise Volume 1 provide a practical guide to mastering the V-Ray renderer in Maya, of course, many of the principles can be applied to V-Ray in other DCC apps. Watch the course on YouTube.

Autodesk has announced that they have teamed up with Animal Logic, Luma Pictures, and Pixar Animation Studios to integrate all the Maya Universal Scene Description (USD) projects into a common USD integration in Maya. Read more on the Maya blog. 

Quixel has released a new short video showing a brief overview of Quixel Mixer 2019.2. Watch it on YouTube.

The Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenXR 1.0 specification together with publicly available implementations. OpenXR is a unifying, royalty-free, open standard that provides high-performance, cross-platform access to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)— collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. The new specification can be found on the Khronos website and via GitHub. 

Unreal has announced two new initiatives for educators teaching Unreal Engine. First up is the Unreal Authorized Training Partner Program that means that epic will support courses with access to a training curriculum, get permission to use UATC or UAT logos for marketing, and be invited to the annual UATC summit. (more...)

FXHome has announced the release of Hitfilm Pro 13, its editing, compositing and visual effects application. (more...)