Stargate Studios Malta has released a new breakdown reel of their VFX work for Medici: Masters of Florence. Watch it on Vimeo.

SIGGRAPH has released a recording of a presentation about the history of JPL Computer Graphics Lab, a NASA entity active between 1977 and 1990 who were tasked with investigating how emerging 3D technologies could be applied to the space program.  The lab has an important place in CG history, publishing several research papers and producing animations for high profile missions such as Voyager and Pioneer in addition to working on external projects like the influential and much-loved Cosmos series with Carl Sagan. Watch the full lecture on YouTube (starts after approximately 7 minutes).

Rachad Meya, lighting TD at Rocket Science VFX, has released a new showreel of recent works. Watch it on Vimeo.

Amazon Lumberyard, SpeedTree, and NVIDIA have announced the Open Research Content Archive (ORCA), a free, creative commons licensed library of 3D assets aimed at the research community. Researchers often struggle to find appropriate high-quality assets for their work that are representative of those found in modern pipelines, this collaboration is designed to fill that gap. Initially the repository contains a bistro scene from Lumberyard, several vegetation models in two levels of detail from SpeedTree, and four complete city blocks from NVIDIA. More contributions are encouraged.  Assets are provided in FBX format, as well as a Falcor scene file (a newly updated open source real-time rendering research software framework).  Find out more on the ORCA website.

With over 120 technical papers presented at this year's SIGGRAPH, it takes a extremely dedicated person to see them all. Thankfully SIGGRAPH has recorded a fast forward presentation at which each contributor has just a single minute to precis their research and invite you to find out more. If you're not lucky enough to be attending SIGGRAPH then documents from several of the featured talks are also online, and can be found by searching the list of publications kindly posted and updated by Ke-Sen Huang. Watch Technical Papers Fast Forward on YouTube.

New features in the latest version of Abvent's real-time engine for architectural visualization include: the software now uses Unreal Engine for its real-time graphics, ArchiCAD and Revit live connections, 360° video export, PC and Mac versions, etc. More on Abvent's website.

Iloura has posted a breakdown of the visual effects they delivered for season 3 of HBO's The Leftovers.  Watch it on Vimeo.