New features in Google's 3D painting software for VR include: (more...)

The Rock Essentials is a collection that offers hundreds of scanned rocks for Blender. It includes small rock models as well as large rock elements, scanned ground materials, rock materials and scanned rock brushes that use real height information from sections of cliffs that let you to sculpt realistic rocks. The rock models come with handy controls for adjusting the saturation, value, reflection and more, without needing to dig through node setups. Three sample rock models are available for download. A Lite version is priced at $217 (brings 180 rocks + 16 cliffs) and the Ultimate version costs $397 (brings 267 rocks, 23 cliffs, 13 grounds, 33 brushes and 47 materials). More on Blender Guru.

Spaceship Generator is a Blender add-on by Michael Davies for procedurally generating 3D spaceships from a random seed. It is being further developed by Patan Amrulla Khan. More on GitHub.

New features in the open source Blender add-on for creating rigged 3D human and anime models include: skin editor, meta parameters, ability to load and save custom poses, professional light studio setup, etc. More on Manuel Bastioni's website.

New features in the open source framework for creating browser-based 3D visualizations, games and interactive presentations include: hardware-accelerated geometry instancing, multi-touch support, upgraded depth of field effect (now with bokeh) and multiple improvements to the audio subsystem including implementation of the Doppler effect. More on Blend4Web’s website.

Word out of Toronto, Canada is that Arc Productions has filed for bankruptcy. Arc reportedly had a staff of 500+, and has worked on LEGO and Marvel animated specials, Thomas & Friends, and many others. Word of this story has just broken, so full details are not available, but all workers have been locked out, and told not to report to work as of Tuesday, Agust 2, 2016. More details can be found on the Cartoon Brew website.

The Art of VFX has posted an interview with Scanline's Bryan Grill, where he discusses the work they did on Independence Day Resurgence. You can read the full interview at Art of VFX.

London-based Analog studio has posted online its latest reel featuring great CG work. Watch it on Vimeo.