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...)

Mosketch from Moka Studio is a new standalone 3D animation software for animating characters and creatures. As the name suggests part of its core is the ability to sketch poses but you also have the ability to control each bone separately. (more...)

Although this is no news to those who work in the VFX industry, it's perhaps the first time it's being covered in an extensive article by a large news paper such as The New York Times. The article covers the move of VFX away from the US to new homes with a majority of VFX now being produced in Vancouver and London as well as discussing the financial difficulties the industry struggles with. Read the full article on The New York Time's website.

Researchers from UCLA, UPenn and Dreamworks have developed a model for the simulation of gravity-driven landslides and debris flows with porous sand and water interactions. Watch a video on Vimeo and read the paper on UCLA's website (PDF).

A comedy of errors with a crime genre theme by MegaComputeur, a French group of artists formed by MOPA students Léo Brunel, Quentin Camus, Camille Jalabert, Oscar Malet and Corentin Yvergniaux. The short was produced during the artists' internship at Paris-based WIZZ Design. Watch it on Vimeo.

Foundry has posted a webinar on its website hosted by Rory Woodford that demonstrates all the new features Foundry has added to Mari version 3 through version 3.3. There's also a look at what's planned for future versions of Mari's UI. Watch it on Foundry's website.