Marc Zimmermann has posted online the graduation short he made during his studies at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, which features plenty of 3D landscape work, matte painting and simulations. The short was created using Cinema 4D, TurbulenceFD, X-Particles and After Effects. Watch the video on Vimeo and find out more on EpicScapes' website.

Benjamin Bardou has generously made available 25 free statues scanned from the Louvre Museum. The models were originally created for a short film titled Gloria Victis and each was created from over 150 source images using Agisoft Photoscan. Watch the film on Vimeo and download the models from Gumtree.

ILM has posted a video showing breakdowns of the Oscar-nominated visual effects work behind the destruction of Jedha, and the battle on the beaches of Scarif, from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Watch it on YouTube.

Redshift have officially released their GPU-accelerated renderer for Houdini. This release includes support for Houdini's hair & fur, instancing particles, volumes, and more. For full details on this release, you can visit the Redshift website.

Pixar has opened a free course at Khan Academy that focuses on storytelling. The Art of Storytelling course offers 10 lessons that touch on how to create worlds and characters, and offers advice on storytelling from Pixar artists. For more details, you can visit the Khan Academy website.  

The Embassy has posted a great behind-the-scenes look at the work they did for Nissan Return of the Snowman. Watch it on Vimeo.

"On January 19, 2017, all that made MOPA one of the best educations in the world (...) has been broken, like a vulgar toy, by men with ties."
After parents from MOPA students wrote an open letter to the CCI (The Arles Chamber of Commerce and Industry), due to the sudden layoff of Julien Deparis and the crisis the institution was plunged into, teachers from MOPA have signed a letter expressing their concern for the students and the school, strong support for Deparis and for the school's independence from the CIPEN / CCI. (more...)

New features in the latest version of Epic Games' game engine and development tools include: compile times for programmers reduced by up to 50%, ability to reload content while Unreal Editor is running, reroute nodes in Materials, new Blendspace Editor, Texture Streaming system overhauled, animation blending now possible in Sequencer, developing for Nintendo Switch available as experimental, GPS data now accessible on IOS and Android, HDR display output available in an experimental state, and the ability to use Playstation VR Aim Controllers is also added. Read the full release notes on Unreal Engine's website.