Gravity Sketch, a new mixed reality design tool supported by Innovation and the James Dyson foundation is now available for early access users on Steam. This beta version is compatible with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive as well as the Leap VR system to track detailed finder movements.  Reality Sketch has 3 license options: Basic, a perpetual license costing $23.99 for personal use; Pro, a monthly rental license costing $29.99 for freelancers who earn less than $10,000 per year; and Studio, a rental plan costing $99.99 for studios that earn over $100,000 per year. More on Gravity Sketch's website.

Autodesk has made available online a series of lectures by guest speakers and in-house experts presented at SIGGRAPH 2017. Watch them on Autodesk Area.

Amazon has released Lumberyard 1.1 with over 546 new features improvements and fixes, including: (more...)

Animal Logic has released USDMaya, a new plugin built on Pixar's Universal Scene Description format designed to facilitate the interchange of 3D assets between different DCC tools. The plugin allows native Maya entities such as complex Maya Rigs to be loaded as references, and assets not easily represented in USD, to be embedded in USD scenes and imported into Maya in their native form.  USDMaya compliments Pixar's USD Maya plugin, and can be run alongside it. USDMaya is released under an open source license and is available now on GitHub along with more information about features and benefits.

Nurulize has announced two new virtual reality tools to be released by the end of the year.  Nu Design is a suite of virtual reality production tools that enables up to 8 artists to collaborate and design in a simple virtual space that's able to display very high quality volumetric data.  In this environment artists are able to storyboard life-size scenes, measure virtual sets, interact with the virtual environment, collaborate with other members of the production team, frame shots using virtual cameras, make notes on digital whiteboards, and navigate from the perspective of a character of any height. (more...)

New features in Luxion's interactive rendering and animation software include: UI customization, updated material library and new material types, improved texture mapping, KeyShot Configurator adds ability to present material and model variations, VR headset support, more scene lighting capabilities, etc. Read the press release and find out more on Keyshot's website.

Red Giant Software announced the release of v14 of its collection of After Effects plugins for motion graphics and VFX. Updates brought by this latest version include Particular 3, Form 3 and an improved version of Tao. (more...)

The Krita Foundation, developers of open source painting application by the same name, has admitted facing financial difficulties following a misunderstanding about their tax affairs. To support the continued development of Krita, the foundation is now seeking donations from users to the value of approximately 20,000 €.  Since the initial post yesterday over 10,000 € has already been raised, in addition to securing sponsorship of £20,000 from a VPN provider. You can read the initial disclosure including financial statements and an update on the Krita website.