VFX journalist Ian Failes has announced a new visual effects website called Befores & Afters that will publish interviews and articles related to the industry. 

Patreon has announced a new pricing structure to be introduced this spring. 3 tiers are proposed: a limited lite version for 5% of a customers income, a Pro version which is analogous to the current offering for 8% (with a few more features included), or a premium service for 12% that adds team accounts, a partner manager and "Merch for Membership". If you're a Patreon Creator before the plans kick in, you'll be moved to the Pro plan retaining the old rate of 5% of earnings. Find out more on the Patreon website. 

NVIDIA has announced Omniverse, a new open collaboration platform that allows for multiple live connection between applications like Maya, Photoshop and  Unreal Engine. It will allow artists to see live updates made by other artists working in different applications, for example "an artist using Maya with a portal to Omniverse can collaborate with another artist using UE4 and both will see live updates of each others’ changes in their application."  (more...)

Roper Technologies has announced 410 million pound agreement  to buy Foundry, the publishers of Nuke, Modo, Mari and Katana. This acquisition is the most recent of several takeovers that took place in 2011 and 2015. Read the announcement on Foundry's website. 

Autodesk has announced the Arnold 5.3 beta which brings long awaited GPU rendering to the renderer. Other features include improvements to quality and performance for adaptive sampling, improved version of Randomwalk SSS mode, enhanced usability for Standard Surface, improvements to the Operator framework, better sampling of Skydome lights, and finally updates to support for MaterialX, allowing users to save a shading network as a MaterialX look, Find out more on Autodesk's website. 

A new development build of World Machine is now available that adds the ability to create automatic lakes and rivers, drive new texturing tools based on soil wetness, and allow the software to "recraft your terrain by breaking through ridges and creating new drainage basins according to hydrodynamic principles." Find out more on the World Machine blog. 

Wysilab has announced that is has switched it's licensing model from subscription to perpetual licensing. Instant Terra, the node based terrain modelling software, is now available starting at $149 for users earning less than $500k limited to 8kx8k maps, a version with unlimited resolution for $199, and a new Pro edition for users earning over $500K which adds algorithms for working on huge environments, faster imports, API access and premium support. Find out more on the Wysilab website. 

The Khronos Group, an open consortium of hardware and software companies, has released the OpenXR 0.90 provisional specification. OpenXR is a royalty-free, open standard that aims to deliver high-performance access to augmented reality and virtual reality platforms and devices. The new specification can be found on the Khronos website and is released in provisional form to allow affected parties to provide feedback.