The Mill has created a promotional video for Star Wars: Battlefront PlayStation 4 Bundles. Watch it on Vimeo.

Vancouver-based Waterproof Studios has recently completed a CG cinematic for the first expansion pack of Firaxis' strategy video game. Watch the video on Vimeo.

Oslo-based studio GimpVille have posted online great breakdowns for the VFX work they did for Roar Uthaug's film The Wave ("Bølgen"). Watch the video on Vimeo.

Chaos Group's Vladimir Koylazov has incorporated the suggestions given by various artists and the Blended Box Map plugin is now officially available for 3DS Max and V-Ray users, with many useful options. The news has been very well received, check out the blog post from Canadian artist Neil Blevins, who has been advocating for the development of such a plugin for more than 10 years, and a video by Austris Cingulis from Viscorbel, showing the plugin at work. V-Ray users can head over to Chaos Group's forum to download the plugin. (Registration required)

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research Asia have devised an autocomplete, interactive drawing system that helps produce animation more easily while preserving manual drawing practices. Watch a video on YouTube.

A Blender add-on is being developed to integrate Natron with Blender's sequence editor, to help bring Natron's compositing features to Blender's NLE. More on Natron's forum.

Hans Godard, Character TD at Naughty Dog, has released his commercial Maya plugin for converting animated mesh sequences into bone-based skinned animations. The plugin is priced at $199. More on the Autodesk App Store.

New short films produced by students from France-based Ecole des Métiers du Cinéma d'Animation (EMCA) are available online. Highlights include Dark Night Bright Stars and Bûche Royale, among many other good ones. Check them out on Filmnosis.