As was predictable after Autodesk's acquisition of Solid Angle, the renderer developed by the Madrid-based company is being transitioned to rental-only licensing. Arnold is now available for renting for $600/year, or $65/monthly. Artists can still purchase and own perpetual licenses of the software for $995 through April 30, 2018. After that date, owners of perpetual licenses will retain their license rights and will be able to continue to use their software, according to Autodesk. Also of note, the company states that they will continue to develop plugins for using Arnold with third party 3D applications. More on Solid Angle's and Autodesk's websites.

80 Level has interviewed Dan Pandhi, the developer behind GeoGlpyh, a suite of landscaping tools designed to improve, update and modernise World Machine. If you're not familiar with the plugin, the interview provides a good overview as well as discussing a little of the history of its development. Read it on 80 Level.

Ryan Bruck, Principal Technical Artist at Epic Games, has released a free plugin for Unreal that allows users to paint velocity and model with volumes in real time VR. To illustrate the technology Ryan has recorded a demonstration in which the plugin is used to craft volumetric clouds, but it is expected the plugin will be useful for creating many types of flowing particle effects. Watch it on YouTube and download the plugin on Epic's forum (login required).

DECALmachine is a Blender add-on developed by MACHIN3 designed to simplify and automate working with mesh-based decals, which in turn facilitates quick design thinking, iteration and exploration. The software allows you to model a part and instantly create and use a decal based on that geometry without leaving Blender. Baking, bake processing, thumbnail generation and decal scene creation are 100% automated. Exporting models to Unity and Unreal is under development, with Sketchfab expected after that. The add-on is available for purchase for $12. More on Gumroad and the author's website.

A recent email from Allegorithmic detailing changes to its licensing model has caused heated reactions from some artists. The company has answered related questions on its forum, explaining the changes more clearly and reassuring customers that the rent-to-own model stays in place, and the company is NOT going rental-only. It should be noted Allegorithmic came up with the rent-to-own business model to help artists, both Sébastien Deguy (CEO) and Alexis Khouri (Vice President) are to be thanked for this. More on Allegorithmic's forum.

Similar to Modo's Fusion and the recently released Flux HDA for Houdini, Hard Mesh is a plugin for Maya that allows you to make advanced booleans with control of the smoothness of the edges formed after the boolean operation. Hard Mesh started as a collection of scripts a few years ago but is now a proper plugin for Maya. (more...)

YCDIVFX and JDBGraphics have made available the first major release of Nyx Sidekick, a tool designed to help users working in both 3DS Max and Houdini. Using the tool you can sync geometry (including animated geometry), time, volumes (VDB) when using V-Ray, Arnold or Redshift, physics simulations and more. (more...)