Autodesk has announced that it will be raising the prices of its maintenance plans for those customers who chose to stay on those plans and kept their perpetual licenses instead of adopting the rental-only licensing system the company is transitioning to. Citing increasing costs due to maintaining two business models, the company has stated that beginning May 7, 2017, renewal prices will increase by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018, and 20% in 2019. The numbers are cumulative. Also, it will only be possible to renew maintenance plans for one year at a time. Autodesk is offering discounted prices to those who choose to give up their perpetual licenses and join the rental-only plans.

The news has been met with heated reactions such as "If before this email I was hesitant to start learning another software, now all my doubts have completely dissipated", "You still haven't switched to Blender/C4D/'insert another app here' yet? Then here's some more price increases and changes in licensing". (more...)

Cartoon Brew has posted an article discussing the use of digital actors in the recent film, Logan. You can read the full article on the Cartoon Brew website.

Thinkbox Software, makers of Deadline, Krakatoa, and many other software tools, have announced they have been acquired by Amazon Web Services. In an email sent out to customers, Thinkbox representatives stated, "We're excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Amazon! We'll be joining the Amazon Web Services family, and we're looking forward to working together to deliver exciting customer offerings." More details on this acquisition can be found on the Thinkbox Software website.

Barnstorm VFX and Theory Studios have released VFX reels for season 2 of Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle". Of particular interest is the fact that both studios used Blender and rendered with Cycles. Watch BarnStormVFX's reel on their website, Theory Studios' on Vimeo and find out more about the production in this Reddit AMA.

Nvidia has announced three new tools aimed at game artists that use machine learning and CUDA to manipulate textures: Super-Resolution makes it possible to double or quadruple the resolution of textures and photos; Photo To Material is a texture generation tool that creates diffuse, normal, specular, and gloss maps from two photos of a surface; and finally, Texture Multiplier allows you to create randomised variations of a texture or photo while maintaining a natural appearance. If you are interested in testing these tools you can apply as a beta tester on the Nvidia website.

FX artist Boris Bruchhaus has posted a new version of his Open Ocean project. Created with Houdini. Watch it on Vimeo.

German artist Till Nowak (The Centrifuge Brain Project, Dissonance, Delivery) has made available a video from his latest project, an art installation that has opened recently at the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, Germany. Watch it on Vimeo.

The latest version of Ephere's hair, fur and feather creation plugin for 3DS Max brings many new features, including: transplant grooms with single-button detaching, new hair LOD workflow, improved vegetation and instancing, surface comb rotation and bending control make styling fur faster and better, mirroring and brush-specific settings significantly improve brush-based workflow, push away from surface modifier keeps the hair out of any object to improve realism, procedural guide data generation, Alembic cache import for applying and layering baked hair animations, hair from particles, edit hair after propagation, etc. (more...)