The Mill has released a breakdown of their promo spot for Cognac brand Hennessy. The impressive 90 second ad dramatises the exploits of Auguste Piccard who was the first man to reach the stratosphere, and his son Jacques who 30 years later descended to the deepest point in the ocean.

Alt.vfx has posted a breakdown of the visual effects work they did for the Honda Square commercial. Watch it on Vimeo.

Allegorithmic showcase some beautiful textures in two new reels demonstrating the use of Substance in games and architecture.

Tvori is VR platform for creating animatics using VR technology. A new preview video demonstrates composing shots, annotating in 3d space and animating objects using the HTC Vive system that uses two handheld controllers to interact with the scene. Rather than keyframing, animation is created by recording the user's movement of the objects in realtime, with the promise of an intuitive and speedy workflow. More on Tvori's website.

LA and Vancouver based studio CoSA VFX have posted breakdowns and highlights of the work they carried out for season 2 of Gotham.

3DVF has a great interview with Spanish software engineer Marcos Fajardo in which he discusses the origins of the Arnold renderer and Autodesk's recent acquisition, among other subjects. Watch it on 3DVF.com.

Stockholm-based studio Bläck have posted a breakdown of the work they did on the Conan Exiles cinematic teaser.

AlphaVFX Inc has posted a video showcasing the new Finite Element Organism Solver that will be part of the new BulletFX 4 release for 3DS Max. For more information, you can visit the AlphaVFX website.