French school ESMA has made available online some great graduation shorts from its students. Watch them on Filmnosis.

The release has not been made official, but the first impressions of 3DS Max 2017 have begun appearing on the Autodesk forums. Users have been posting screenshots of the new UI, plus mentioning some of the new features in this latest release. You can read the discussion over on the Autodesk forums. 

Google has made available its Nik Collection suite of plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom available for free. The Nik Collection is comprised of seven plugins that provide a range of photo editing features, from filters that improve color correction, to retouching, image sharpening that brings out hidden details, color and tonality adjustment, etc. The filters include Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. Those who purchased the Nik Collection in 2016 will receive a full refund. More on the official page.

NewTek has made available another preview video of the upcoming version of LightWave, showing performance improvements thanks to the implementation of a Unified Mesh System. Watch it on LightWave's blog.

The latest work by Spanish artist Daniel Martínez Lara, this time he created an animation based on an illustration by Mayumi. He used Blender's Grease Pencil tool and Krita. Watch the video on Vimeo.

A nice effect created by Hakim Harrouche using Houdini, as part of RnD for a project. Watch it on Vimeo.

OpenToonz, the open source version of the 2D animation software developed by Digital Video, has been released, making a quality 2D animation software available for free to animators around the world. Dwango is launching the OpenToonz project in cooperation with Digital Video and Studio Ghibli. More on Github.

A video by FX artist Rafael Santos created with a Houdini tool he developed to modify fur's look as if it had been wet, and after a while it dries up and returns to its original shape. Watch it on Vimeo.