Wired has posted an interview with ILM's John Knoll, where he discusses visual effects and the upcoming film, Star Wars: Rogue One. You can read the full interview on the Wired website.

Homam Bahnassi has posted an interesting article showcasing R&D work completed at INFramez games designed to improve the quality of texture baking using machine learning. According to Homam, a typical workflow involves using texel density to evaluate quality, but this misses the importance of human perception. Their approach promises significantly better results without having to increase texture sizes. Currently the tool works only in Softimage, but if there is sufficient interest it may be ported to Unreal and Unity. Find out more on the INFramez blog.

Google has announced that ZYNC, their cloud rendering service, now supports Cinema 4D and Houdini. Cinema 4D users can now use ZYNC with standard and physical renderers, Houdini users can use the service with Mantra and Arnold. This announcement extends the platform which already supported V-Ray, Arnold and Renderman on Maya in addition to Nuke. Find out more on ZYNC's website.

8monkey Labs has announced the release of Marmoset Toolbag 3, its physically-based realtime model viewer and presentation software. New features include: the ability to import and keyframe animated meshes, lights, cameras and post effects; global illumination, image based lighting and occlusion; advanced texture baking tools; and much more. Read about all the new features on Marmoset's website

ManvsMachine has posted their latest ad for Nike ~ Air Max 2017, featuring some great visuals. You can view the full project page via the ManvsMachine website. Watch it on Vimeo.

SideFX speaks with Realtime UK on their use of Houdini to create effects for the Dropzone trailer. You can read the full interview on

Chaos Group has announced a €2 million investment in Cl3ver, the browser-based 3D engine for creating interactive presentations. In addition to existing plans to release new mobile, web and VR applications next spring, this partnership aims to connect V-Ray to the platform,  although specific details are not yet available.  Their first connection will be to the newly released V-Ray for Revit, a demo of which is viewable on Cl3ver's website. You can find out more about the platform and apply to join a closed beta on the related beta page.

Some great new work from the talented folks over at Unit Image, for the French cable channel, Canal+. Watch it on Vimeo.