RealtimeUK created this impressive cinematic trailer for Bigmoon Entertainment’s Dakar 18 almost entirely in UE4 using assets from the video game. Only the sand and dust VFX, made with Houdini, were added outside the engine. You can see the trailer on YouTube and read more about the project on RealtimeUK's website.

A new collaboration app called Zig has been announced and is now available to beta test. Zig is designed to enable users from different disciplines to connect and create projects together by combining  aspects of networking and social media with project management in a single app. Some of the features include:  (more...)

Digital Frontier FX has released a breakdown video showcasing their work for Fear the Walking Dead. Watch it on Vimeo.

Update A windows version of Tape is now available from Aeriform.com.

Michael Christophersson has released a new streamlined personal project management tool called Tape. The interface focuses on the essentials required for managing small projects, presented in a clean minimal UI. It allows the user to track projects in Collections, and then add tasks and deliverables as Items within Collections. The state of each Item is set depending on its status, all in a couple of clicks. Version 1.01 is currently available for free and version 1.02 is available for Patreon donors, both for MacOS (a Windows version is in development). Starting in February 2018 Tape becomes a commercial application costing $5. Find out more on Aeriform.com.

Paris-based Zeppelin Pictures has released their 2018  reel featuring some striking work for the perfume and beauty industry. Watch it on Vimeo.

Unity has released a teaser video for a new first-person interactive story called Book of the Dead created by the Unity Demo Team also responsible for Adam and The Blacksmith. The project is designed to demonstrate the rendering capabilities of Unity 2018 and according to the creators is "representative of the actual gameplay experience". Watch it on YouTube.

Epic has announced the first preview of Unreal Engine 4.19. This is an early build and the software is still in active development, but several improvements are already available including updates to animation and physics, performance improvements to the Live Link plugin and Sequencer and significant changes to VR resolution settings. You can see more details about this update on the Unreal Engine forum.

Andrew Saladino has recorded a short documentary profiling Richard Williams, well known to many of our readers as one of the great old-school animators and ubiquitous in schools and universities thanks to his book The Animators Survival Kit. Richard Williams- Animating Movement is part of an ongoing series about film created for the Royal Ocean Film Society YouTube channel.