Zero VFX has released a reel showcasing the visual effects work they did for the film, Fences. Watch it on Vimeo.

The official trailer for Alien: Covenant has been released, featuring work from MPC, Atomic Fiction, and many more. Watch it on YouTube.

Pixar has made available a library with 130 tileable textures that were created for classic Pixar films. The textures have been updated and now include 16-bit bump and normal maps. They are released under a Creative Commons attribution license. More on Pixar's website.

Autodesk has posted an interview with Important Looking Pirates regarding their work on the series, Westworld. You can read the full interview on The Area website.

RE:Vision Effects announced that its set of tools for projection conversion and lens distortion correction is now available for the Foundry's Nuke and Blackmagic Design's Fusion Studio. RE:Lens straightens curved video captured with wide-angle and fisheye lenses, and includes spherical stabilization to address problems with shaky camera motion. The software is compatible with Nuke 7.0 and up and Fusion Studio 8.0 and up (as well as AE and Premiere), and is priced at $189.95 for a node-locked license and $284.93 for a floating one. (more...)

Render Legion has posted more information on the new features available in the daily builds of Corona 1.6, which include: reduced noise thanks to improved Random Sampler, better sampling of high contrast HDRIs, enhanced distributed rendering, new VFB layout, triplanar mapping, improved rendering of round edges, support for Lens Distortion effects in the 3DS Max Physical Camera, reduced memory requirements, etc. More on Render Legion's website.

Adam Savage pays a visit to the team at Weta Digital to take a look at some of the tech being used in the upcoming film, Ghost In The Shell. Watch it on YouTube.

Japan-based PSoft have announced a new version of their NPR shader plugin for 3DS Max. New features include: Nitrous shader, material transparency, light intensity control, multi-threaded rendering, a spreadsheet for handling materials, rendering of edge selections, open edges, merged groups, self-intersections, etc. Release date has not been announced yet, but PSoft has stated that those who have purchased Pencil+ 3 on or after February 1st, 2017 will be eligible for a free upgrade. More on PSoft's website.