KeyShot 8.2 has been released adding the ability to pause offline renders, Interior mode speed and performance improvements, vertical orientation for Presentation Mode, the ability to use the shift-key with drag-and-drop to add sub-materials, the addition of network Rendering for Linux, support for Alembic Vertex Color/Deformable Curves, Autodesk Revit 2019 Import and updated integrations for Solidworks, PTC Creo, Fusion 360 and Cinema 4D.  Find out more on the Keyshot blog.

Vlado has posted a short video preview of V-Ray Next Update 2 to his YouTube channel. The video shows improvements for scenes with many lights sources, up to thousands. According to the description, Update 2 will feature up to 2x faster light cache for scenes with many lights, an improved algorithm for discovering important light sources to reduce flickering when using adaptive lights, and faster BF+BF rendering when adaptive lights are not available. Watch the clip on YouTube. 

France-based Hocus Pocus Studios has released their latest reel of 3D animation and VFX work. Watch it on Vimeo.

Epic Games has announced a preview release of Unreal Engine 4.22 bringing support for real-time ray tracing, Editor Utility Widgets, Blueprint indexing optimizations, virtual production updates, Oculus Quest support the Unreal Audio Engine and more. See the announcement on Epic's blog and a full list of changes on the forum.

Wysilab has announced the release of Instant Terra v1.4 adding the ability to create and share components. These are essentially small snippets of the graph that can be packaged into a single node with its own inputs and outputs. Find out more about this release on Wysilab's website.

Digital Domain has released a VFX breakdown for its work on an Assassin's Creed Odyssey ad spot. Watch it on YouTube.

Allegorithmic has announced the addition of 20 new technical fabrics to Substance Source. The materials have been scanned from samples and include modifiable parameters to create many different variations. Even if you don't need the materials, it's worth watching the announcement video which was created in collaboration with artist Ronan Mahon. Read more about the collection on Allegorithmic's blog. 

Sony Pictures Imageworks has released a video walkthrough of OpenCue, the open source render manager released in collaboration with Google that is "specifically built for the needs of the visual effects and animation industry". The video features an explanation of key features and functionality. Watch it on YouTube.