OTOY has announced the official release of OctaneRender 4 with Brigade integration, out of core memory support and more.  (more...)

Render Legion has announced the release of Corona Render 3 for 3DS Max. This version adds the NVIDIA GPU-based AI Denoiser that will allow users to run a denoiser during Interactive Rendering. (more...)

Allegorithmic has updated Substance Painter with a new core that's able to handle much heavier scenes thanks to added support for Sparse Virtual Textures, a stepping stone towards full UV tile support. The new release also adds viewport upgrades, mipmapping, anisotropic shaders, new UI helpers, an enhanced symmetry tool, proper 2D view export and more. Read more about the new features on Allegorithmic's blog. 

Ivan Tantsiura. a senior concept artist at Crytek, has released RIDON Hoverbike 2018, an impressive personal project some 2 years in the making. Created in Max and rendered with V-Ray. Watch it on YouTube.

On the 20th anniversary of Half Life, the team behind the Tribute Game Black Mesa has released their first trailer for the final chapters, titled Xen. Watch it on YouTube.

Planeside Software has released an update to Terragen, it's natural environment modelling, rendering and animation tool. Version 4.3 includes support for OpenVDB clouds, reduced render times for Easy Clouds, a deferred Shading render mode, new adaptive anti-aliasing options, a new Sample Rate render element, the ability to path trace surfaces, plus many more fixes and improvements. Find out more in the online release notes. 

A new trailer has been released to announce Promethean AI, a new tool that promises AI that "works together with Artists, assists them in the process of building virtual worlds, helps creative problem solving by suggesting ideas and takes on a lot of mundane and non-creative work." (more...)

Amazon has announced the availability of Lumberyard Beta 1.16 which incorporates over 250 improvements, fixes, and features including a significant architectural update to the memory management system to enable developers reduce memory fragmentation and footprint by up to 40%. There are also improvements to the animation and cinematics systems, including the ability to drive animations directly from Track View, the reduction of Gridmate's network traffic bandwidth requirements by 300%, texture streaming support for mobile devices, support for Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8.6 and much more. Read the full list of improvement on Amazon's Gamedev blog.