For those who don’t know the tool: iClone is Reallusion‘s real-time character animation hub, sitting between Character Creator, ActorCore, Blender, Maya and Unreal Engine, with AI Studio adding guided image and video generation.

Reallusion announced a massive double release: the debut of iClone Personal (free for all users) alongside the official public launch of AI Studio. Together, they establish a seamless, zero-barrier pipeline that bridges traditional 3D artistry with next-generation AI workflows.

Having garnered strong community interest during its Early Access phase, AI Studio is now fully available to all creators. The platform comes equipped with advanced multi-reference capabilities that preserve actor likeness with unprecedented accuracy and consistency.

Alongside this launch, Reallusion is introducing iClone Personal Edition, replacing the legacy 30-day trial with a perpetual experience that removes time restrictions entirely. Creators gain unrestricted access to iClone‘s complete 3D toolset and AI Studio, enabling them to explore, learn, and master the entire 3D-to-AI workflow at their own pace.

iClone Personal: No Time Limits, No Creating Barriers

To give artists the ultimate freedom to integrate Reallusion tools into their workflows, iClone Personal officially replaces the traditional 30-day trial. The time restriction is completely gone, allowing creators to learn and master the software indefinitely. Because iClone Personal seamlessly integrates with the Reallusion ecosystem, allowing users to animate Character Creator actors and utilize ActorCore motion packs, while supporting full imports from other industry 3D tools, it serves as the perfect permanent environment for education and long-term pipeline compatibility testing. 

A Flexible, Uninterrupted Pipeline

This update ensures creators never lose access to their work. iClone Personal provides the ideal space to build, block out, direct, and animate scenes indefinitely. While 3D project exports to external software are limited to 30 times in the Free tier, this restriction is instantly removed via a subscription plan or permanently lifted with a perpetual license. 

iClone Personal: A permanent, zero-cost tier for indefinite learning, scene blocking, and animation with full project access and entirely free rendering. While creation is unrestricted, it includes a limit of 30 exports for external 3D pipelines. 

Subscription Plans: A flexible, project-based option that completely lifts the 3D export limit. Ideal for creators who need to temporarily scale their pipeline and seamlessly export assets to game engines and external teams. If an active subscription ends, the software simply reverts to this Free version, keeping your work fully accessible.

Perpetual License: The premier upgrade path for professional studios wanting full, permanent ownership of the software and completely unrestricted 3D asset export capabilities.

Standalone Production Power with RTX Render

Creators can also take advantage of unlimited rendering via the upcoming, highly optimized RTX Render engine. Launching in Open Beta in late July as a future free update for iClone and Character Creator, this engine delivers high-fidelity visuals directly within the software. This allows creators to complete entire animation and rendering processes natively without needing to export to external tools, making the core production experience completely free.

The license rights for iClone Personal are clear:

Render Output: Renders created with RTX or the real-time renderer are licensed for personal and social use only and require an upgrade to a subscription plan or a perpetual license for commercial use.

AI Studio Exports: Commercial rights are determined by your AI Cloud plan; the Basic and Pro tiers include commercial use, while the Starter and Free tiers are limited to personal and social use.

AI Studio Official Launch: Enhanced Character Consistency & Next-Level Multi-Reference Control

With iClone Personal opening up a permanent environment for unrestricted 3D creation, creators now have the perfect foundation to fuel Reallusion’s next major release. AI Studio officially moves out of Early Access and into full public availability, introducing a powerful suite of new multi-reference features designed to deliver unmatched cinematic fidelity and an upgraded solution to character consistency. 

Re-engineered AI Actor Support: Uncompromising Identity Precision

While Early Access introduced AI Actors (iModels) to ensure character consistency, the official launch takes character preservation significantly further. We have re-engineered the workflow to capture and lock down absolute identity precision, virtually eliminating identity drift even during drastic style or angle changes. This enhanced precision is also incredibly useful when characters do not clearly appear in the start frame, ensuring the model accurately anchors and maintains the correct identity the moment they step into view.

The useful part is not that another tool has learned to say AI in a louder font. The useful part is that the workflow starts with 3D character animation, not with a hopeful paragraph and a sacrificial coffee.

Enhanced Video Integration

AI Actors can now be combined as a reference layer directly inside the Seedance 2.0 video pipeline to ensure your character’s likeness remains flawlessly stable from the first frame to the last.

Image Edit Deployment

AI Actors can be deployed directly within image-editing workflows. Effortlessly swap assets, change outfits, or coordinate multiple characters across various angles. This unlocks complex, derivative storytelling pipelines while keeping your characters perfectly locked in, every single frame.

Advanced Multi-Reference Support for Seedance 2.0

As a platform that integrates multiple premier generative models, including Kling 3.0, Veo 3, Nano banana, Flux, and others, we are constantly pushing the boundaries to let users harness the full creative power of these technologies.

While Seedance 2.0 was already established in AI Studio as the most advanced video generation model for interpreting 3D spatial data, this official launch delivers a major update that allows creators to experience it to its absolute fullest. By introducing native support for what the industry knows as Elements in Seedance, the platform unlocks unprecedented artistic control. 

Users can now seamlessly mix, match, and combine multiple reference inputs, including Image, Video, Audio, and AI Actors, alongside native 3D scene data. Instead of guessing with unpredictable text prompts, creators can orchestrate complex camera movements and character choreography in 3D, allowing the AI to flawlessly execute the final cinematic look with complete structural precision.

Reallusion AI Cloud Plans Now Fully Available

Coinciding with the public launch, Reallusion’s AI Cloud Plans are now officially open to everyone. Designed to scale with your production needs, these plans unlock the true capacity of the integrated 3D & AI workflow.

Subscribing to an AI Cloud Plan (Starter, Standard, or Pro) gives you full access to premier generation models like Seedance 2.0, Kling 3.0, and Veo 3, alongside a massive premium creative library:

5,000+ 3D Previz Assets: Fully unlocked for subscribers. Easily populate, compose, and block out your scene layout with poses, posed people, interior furnishings, buildings, animals, trees, plants, and vehicles.

200+ Production-Ready AI Actors (iModels): Skip the setup and jump straight into production with a massive roster of consistent digital humans, stylized characters, and creatures ready to perform under your direction.

(Note: Free-tier users can still get a taste of the workflow with a curated selection of 200 sample assets and 12 starter AI actors.)

Additionally, the AI Points included in these plans can now be used for other Reallusion AI cloud services beyond AI Studio. This includes powering your entire character and animation pipeline through the Headshot 3 image workflow and the cloud-based Video Mocap.

Why this is handy

For Previz, this release is the easiest on-ramp into the Reallusion ecosystem so far. Artists can block scenes, direct cameras, test performances, explore AI-guided looks, and keep the project file alive without a trial expiring in the middle of a job.

It also makes sense as a permanent utility install. Need quick background animation, a camera idea, a motion sketch, a lip-sync test or a “can this shot even work” pass? Open the free edition, move characters, point a camera, hit play. That is much better than building a production pipeline out of excuses and screenshots.

Start Your Limitless Creation Today

The future of 3D-to-AI production is live. Download iClone Personal to access unrestricted 3D creation and unlimited RTX rendering with no 30-day limits, and seamlessly step into the public launch of AI Studio for next-generation character consistency and workflow integration.

Get iClone Personal: New users can download the software permanently from the official iClone Product Page to begin building, directing, and animating 3D scenes without any time constraints. 

Unlock iClone Pipeline Export (Subscription or Perpetual): Upgrade to a flexible subscription plan or a perpetual license to permanently remove the 30-time export limit. This fully unlocks iClone’s pipeline connectivity, enabling seamless 3D project and asset exports directly to game engines and other external 3D applications. 

Access AI Studio: Now fully open to the public, existing users can update their software via the Reallusion Hub to access the fully integrated AI Studio toolkit. Free-tier users and trial explorers can begin testing the pipeline instantly, with 500 free AI Points automatically provided upon installation.

Explore AI Cloud Plans: To tap into premier generative models like Seedance 2.0, Kling 3.0, and Veo 3, along with the expanded premium asset library, creators can review options and subscribe directly on the AI Cloud Plans Page.

The post Reallusion Unlocks Limitless Creation: iClone Personal Debuts Alongside AI Studio Official Launch  first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Advertorial.

For those who don’t know the tool: Arnold is a renderer from Autodesk for final-frame lighting and lookdev. It plugs into Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini and Katana.

Splats enter the renderer

Arnold 7.5.2 adds support for rendering 3D Gaussian Splatting data. That gives captured scenes and objects another route into offline rendering, instead of staying parked in viewers, real-time tools or half-temporary conversion scripts (Which have been temporary and unchanged since the first time they worked. Yes, we’ve all been there.

The main ingest route uses the existing Points node. It can load 3DGS data from an imported PLY file, or import the data directly as a per-point array. That keeps splats close to point-based workflows, which is sensible and pleasantly unfancy.

The update also adds preliminary support for the new Gaussian Splat schema introduced in OpenUSD 26.03. The ParticleField3DGaussianSplat schema represents the original 3D Gaussian Splats technique as a ParticleField. In Arnold 7.5.2, that makes it possible to render 3DGS data stored in USD files.

Relighting, the useful bit

The new Gaussian Splat Shader adjusts the lighting of imported splats. Splats can be relit entirely with scene lights, which is teh part that matters once a capture has to sit inside an actual shot instead of looking lovely in isolation.

That puts 3DGS closer to normal lighting work. The splat is still a splat, with all the data-shape caveats that come with the technique, but the renderer now has a specific shader for controlling its appearance in an Arnold scene.

For Gaussian splatting workflows, this also moves the format closer to the boring middle of production. Boring is good. Boring means fewer emergency exporters named final_final_v12.

NPR gets more knobs

Toon and non-photorealistic rendering also get new nodes. Tone Zones splits RGB lighting into up to eight discrete brightness bands. Each band can be tinted independently or rendered as a separate AOV.

Shader to RGBA evaluates lighting for a surface shader, including OpenPBR Surface, and outputs RGBA data for use in a shading tree. Those RGBA values can feed into a Ramp shader for non-photorealistic rendering.

The result is more control over cel-style bands and shader-driven looks inside the renderer. That is good news for artists who need graphic shading without turning the node graph into a small regional train map.

USD lights behave better

Arnold 7.5.2 supports the current UsdLux standard for USD lights. Cone shaping controls and IES photometric profiles now work on all light types, including cylinder, disk, quad and mesh lights. Previously, that support was limited to spot and sphere lights.

That change is less glamorous than splats, but production lighting often lives in these tiny consistency details. A light standard that behaves differently per light type is how pipelines acquire folklore.

Denoising and mesh updates

Noice, the native denoiser, gets quality improvements. Denoised images should come out sharper with fewer pixel artifacts. That is the kind of update nobody celebrates until a supervisor zooms into a dark corner at 300 percent.

GPU rendering also gets faster scene updates, especially when artists edit meshes interactively. Loading meshes from PLY files is claimed to be about 1.2x to 1.4x faster.

System requirements list Windows 10 or newer, Linux with glibc 2.28 or newer, and macOS 12.0 or newer. GPU rendering runs on Windows and Linux only and requires a compatible NVIDIA GPU.

Plugins and cloud chores

The integration plugins have been updated for this release. Listed versions are MAXtoA 5.9.3 for 3ds Max, C4DtoA 4.9.2 for Cinema 4D, HtoA 6.5.2 for Houdini, KtoA 4.5.2 for Katana and MtoA 5.6.2 for Maya.

Flow Render now supports scenes larger than 5GB. Scene uploads are automatically validated, and files without a camera or defined render outputs generate a failure message. That sounds like admin plumbing, and taht is exactly why it matters when an artist has already gone home.

Flow Render remains free for all Arnold users for up to 40 hours of rendering per month. The cloud service first arrived with Arnold 7.5.1 as a tech preview with 2,400 render minutes per user per month.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_core_7520_html
https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/

The post Arnold 7.5.2 Adds Gaussian Splats first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Maxon One is a Maxon bundle for 3D, sculpting, rendering and VFX. It includes Cinema 4D, Redshift, ZBrush, Red Giant and Universe.

Forty years, one checkout

Maxon is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a 40 percent sale on eligible new annual subscriptions. The offer runs from June 22, 2026, to Sunday, June 28, 2026.

The discount applies to new annual subscriptions for Maxon One and individual non-bundle products, including Cinema 4D, Redshift, ZBrush, Red Giant and Universe. That is the useful production bit. The emotional bit is that a 40th anniversary sale now feels less like marketing and more like a calendar-based attack on everyone who remembers beige workstations. And Zip Disks. And rewinding tape.

The promotional rate applies to the first year only. Renewal returns to standard annual subscription pricing. Annual subscriptions are billed upfront for the full year, and auto-renewal can be cancelled before the renewal date. Access continues until the end of the current billing period.

What qualifies / Mind the birthday cake

The discount is applied automatically at checkout. No coupon code is required, which means one fewer thing to remember, which is good when you feel old as dirt.

The sale is limited to 10 eligible product licences at the promotional price. Additional licences beyond that limit are charged at standard retail price. Non-eligible products in the same order stay at regular price, because the cart has boundaries even if the deadline does not.

The offer covers all new annual subscriptions for non-bundle products listed in the promotion. That includes Cinema 4D, Redshift, ZBrush, Red Giant and Universe, plus the full bundle.

The offer excludes Maxon plus Adobe bundles, mobile apps, subscription renewals, RLM licences, educational licences and the Chinese Region. Bundle subscriptions and upgrades are also excluded. In plain language: this is a first-year acquisition deal, not a renewal rescue boat.

The actual tools

Cinema 4D sits in sculpting, modeling and animation in the sale lineup. Its description focuses on motion graphics, procedural workflows and MoGraph for building and animating complex scenes. In daily production, that means it remains the obvious place to put clones, type, product renders and brave client ideas that arrive late.

Redshift covers GPU-accelerated rendering. The sale page lists integrations for more than seven 3D applications, including Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, SideFX Houdini, Vectorworks and Autodesk Revit. Its marketing claim centers on near real-time previews for lighting, materials and camera effects.

ZBrush covers digital sculpting, modeling and painting. It is listed for highly detailed 3D models and brush-based sculpting, with an iPad version mentioned for mobile workflows. That makes it the obvious pick when geometry needs pores, scales, scars or another round of artistic suffering.

Red Giant sits in compositing, VFX and post-production. Its sale description focuses on color grading, stylized film looks and visual effects for editors. Universe adds GPU-accelerated transitions, effects, animated titles and motion graphics directly inside the editing timeline.

Good sale, normal caution

This is a clean anniversary discount with a very simple joke built in: 40 years, 40 percent. The company gets to celebrate. Artists get a cheaper first year. Everyone else gets to remember how long they have been arguing with render settings. Or shouting at the Gizmos. Or cursing Null Objects. Or sacrificing on the Altar of particles.

The offer ends on June 28, 2026. After that, pricing returns to standard annual subscription rates. The knees, tragically, do not.

https://www.maxon.net/de/buy
https://www.maxon.net/en/maxon-one

The post Maxon turns 40, subs get lighter first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: DaCaPo is desktop DCP authoring software from Waldman Media AB. It is not a DCC plug-in, but it helps when you have to work with DCPs, XML, SRT, WAV, Dolby Atmos, and MXF assets.

The package janitor arrives

DaCaPo is in a free public beta for desktop DCP authoring (beta portal). The application creates, edits, exports and verifies DCP packages for cinema delivery. It is built for post-production facilities, distributors, festivals and independent filmmakers. It manages OV/VF workflows, subtitles, accessibility tracks, verification and encrypted packages. And all of that rather easy.

The workflow centers on projects, packages, DCP timelines, existing DCP folders and imported assets. For postproduction teams, that puts the app near final delivery rather than inside creative editing, grading or compositing. Boring place, important table.

The production value sits in the less photogenic part of delivery: one wrong language code, one stale hash, one missing access track, and the cinema package suddenly becomes a group therapy exercise with a progress bar.

Projects, versions, variants

Projects can hold productions, packages and DCP timelines. OVs, VFs, subtitle versions, accessibility versions, trailers and alternate deliveries can live in one structured project. The point is keeping the same show, its variants and its delivery odds and ends together when the fifth language version arrives at the least charming hour.

Export can cover Original Versions, Version Files and Multi-CPL packages. That means the tool can create delivery variants for multiple languages, accessibility tracks or other package requirements without treating each variant as an island. It also works with SMPTE standards, Interop, OV/VF workflows, Multi-CPL packages, RDD52 markers, subtitle languages, auxiliary audio and delivery variants.

The app can load existing DCPs, import subtitles, add audio tracks and export new packages. It is not a picture finishing system, an editor, a color corrector or a sound workstation. It lives where those departments hand over material and someone still has to produce a cinema-ready package that does not sulk when screened.

Subtitles and access tracks

Subtitles come with XML and SRT import, text editing, timing adjustment, issue review and preparation for accessibility versions. Track types include OCAP and CCAP. The same for subtitle languages, accessibility versions (Finally, those are getting more common!) and delivery variants, where the small text mistakes can become very large auditorium mistakes.

Audio handling includes WAV audio, HI/VI-N tracks and Dolby Atmos assets. DaCaPo can import DCP MXF assets, WAV audio and Dolby Atmos MXF files, replace picture or main audio reels, and add HI, VI-N and Atmos tracks. That is delivery work, not a mixer replacement, and that distinction matters when the calendar has grown teeth.

The export includes audio language, subtitle language, CC language, content kind, annotation text, an output path, encryption, and a verify-after-export option (ore on that below). It also includes an export profile for SMPTE RDD52 and an export type set to OV.

Verification and the scary bits

Verification can run on DCP folders or timelines before delivery. DaCaPo checks package structure, metadata, assets, subtitles, markers, hashes, encryption and export compatibility. Warnings and errors can appear directly in the timeline and inspector, with relaxed, recommended or strict validation modes.

Encrypted package work includes unlocking DCPs with compatible keys, KDMs and DKDMs, or digest files. The tool can also create KDMs and DKDMs for cinema servers, projectors or mastering systems. KDM work remains one of those delivery chores where a single typo can make a room full of people stare at a black screen with professional sadness.

The Pro Version adds DCP encryption and KDM support, advanced reel editing workflows, subtitle editing and styling tools, advanced subtitle timing, Multi-CPL project workflows, full validation and verification, RDD52 validation support, and copy, paste, delete and trim reel operations. Remember: Any new delivery tool should be tested with a real cinema server, a projector path and a sacrificial schedule before production use.

Pricing without fog machines

Current pricing starts with Lite at €20 per month or €150 per year. Lite includes a desktop software license, basic functionality, DCP playback, XML and SRT subtitle import, OV and VF export, license activation with periodic validation, and email support. The yearly Lite plan is presented as a €90 saving compared with monthly billing.

Pro is listed at €59 per month or €349 per year. The yearly Pro plan is saving €359 compared with monthly billing. Pro includes the full toolset listed above, including encryption, KDM support, reel operations, subtitle tools, Multi-CPL workflows and validation.

The interesting license

A short-term Pro option costs €25 and is valid for three days. Yes, you can get the whole package for the weekend for the delivery – especially when you don’t do DCP delivery for a living (And who does, these days), that is the license to get.

Support uses email and lists a typical response time within 24 hours, often faster. Payment refunds, subscription cancellations and billing are routed through Paddle.

Mind the beta tape

DaCaPo is currently in public beta, and the toolset and licensing may change before final release. Commercial plans are marked for Mac and Windows, but minimum operating system versions, current build number, supported picture input formats outside the listed DCP and asset paths, and final release timing are not yet stated.

https://dacapo.pro

The post DaCaPo Opens DCP Authoring Beta first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The inclusion of 12G-SDI positions this monitor at the intersection of professional broadcast-grade signal handling and compact field utility, offering real-time, uncompressed UHD video feeding directly from cameras. The display is factory-calibrated to Delta E < 2 and covers the sRGB and Rec.709 colour spaces, continuing ASUS’s focus on colour accuracy across its ProArt products.

Serial Digital Interface (SDI) is a standard for transmitting digital video signals over coaxial cable with very high reliability and low latency. Unlike consumer interfaces such as HDMI, SDI uses robust BNC connectors and supports long cable runs without signal degradation, making it preferable for multi-camera setups, live production trucks, and studio infrastructure. With the 12G-SDI variant, this interface can carry uncompressed 4K video at up to 60 Hz in a single cable run, reducing complexity and preserving image fidelity between camera and monitor or recorder.

Technical specifications

The PA16USV features a 15.6-inch 4K UHD (3840×2160) IPS panel with a pixel density of 282 ppi and typical peak brightness of 400 cd/m2. It supports HDR10, has a static contrast ratio of around 1200:1, and a response time rated at 5 ms. So far the specs according to the sheets.

Viewing angles are wide, at approximately 170° horizontally and vertically. Colour performance is a wideset coverage of 100 per cent sRGB and 100 per cent Rec.709. The panel’s anti-glare surface enhances usability in diverse lighting conditions. Refresh rate is capped at 60 Hz.

Connectivity and additional features

Connectivity on the PA16USV includes a 12G-SDI input for uncompressed 4K60 video feeds, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, USB-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode, and a USB hub for peripherals. USB-C also provides limited power delivery for compatible host devices. Physical features include both a mini-stand and a kickstand for flexible positioning, VESA-compatible mounting patterns and optional tripod mount points suited to on-set rigging. Additional practical touches include Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture modes for multi-source monitoring, and QuickFit Plus on-screen overlays to assist framing and alignment.

Our review

The panel may even be redirected out of laptop production lines, but this 16” monitor aims at the needs of video professionals in cramped ‘video village’ situations. We don’t expect many readers to consider UHD resolution on such a small screen over a good 27” one for their daily work on a computer. But it should be good enough to spot focusing issues where size and portability are of primary importance. Asus also claims professional-grade colours, so we had a closer look – and found a serious flaw, but not regarding colours.

True colours?

Like others from the ProArt line, the monitor comes with an individual calibration sheet, measured by a Konica Minolta CA-310. While that is a highly respected measuring device in the industry, it has been discontinued. So, forgive us if we cross-check with a humble Spyder Pro and a X-rite, as recently reviewed here. The spec sheet has obviously been measured for a gamma of 2,2, showing a reasonably close value of 2,18. While this is used a lot for social media, it’s not the correct gamma for video, which is 2,4 according to Rec.709 BT.1886. This alone is a source of endless discussions and even more frustration. Another source of ambiguity is the correct brightness, which is not specified in the spec sheet. It should be 100 nit according to TV standards, but some may prefer 120 nit these days.

The PA16USV is offering several fixed gamma values in its menu, including 2,2, 2,4 and even 2,6 as defined by DCI for cinema. We measured it with the preset of gamma 2,4 and adjusted the brightness to 100 nit according to our probe. With these settings we got 99% of Rec. 709 and sRGB color space, which are the same anyway, and the difference to 100% would not be seen by any pair of human eyes. The uncalibrated value for gamma was a bit too high at 2,46, which should be visible for a trained person. The white point was slightly off with the internal preset for Rec.709, while the preset of 200 was more like 108 nit. You’ll need to increase it to 216 as a starting point if you want to calibrate for 120 nit.

The results after calibration proved that even a screen with factory calibration can be slightly improved, but colours were already excellent out of the box. It may need calibration after being in use for a few months; nevertheless, this is due to normal ageing of electronic components. Our verification by DisplayCal with the i1 DisplayPro device gave us a near-perfect white point at 6.548K, pretty good blacks for a TFT at 0,07 nit and an average Delta E of 0,75 with a maximum around 1,5. Very few patches were above 1 at all, which is still well below perceptible deviation. The contrast ratio of 1.300:1 is really good for TFT technology and even a bit higher than the manual claims.

But can this handle HDR?

ProArt PA32UCDM: The OLED Display That Thinks It’s a Reference Monitor And Dresses Like an Accountant

Asus is claiming a maximum of 400 nit, but the Spyder Pro measured only 350 at that point. Even if those ubiquitous three letters are listed with the specs, they are not even claiming that minimal standard of VESA 400. So, we are still far from any serious HDR monitoring, and this doesn’t mean much more than: “Yes, this screen understands HDR and will not be completely off.” The PA16USV is even offering three HDR modes in its menu for PQ Optimized, PQ Clip, and PQ Basic. But being just a TFT monitor without any local dimming, it can’t replace this ProArt PA32UCDM with OLED and 1.000 nit peak. That one is a true low-cost HDR screen with 99% DCI-P3 coverage, true blacks and 10 bit.  On the other hand, that large monitor doesn’t even have an SDI input and it has a glossy screen.

Or even DCI?

Crawly for Videoscreens: SpyderPro

Our candidate is not glossy and has a 12G SDI input, but neither has DCI 4K. The ProArt 16 USV offers a preset for DCI-P3, with gamma at 2,6 and the slightly different white point of 6.300K, called P3 Theater here. The preset also sets brightness to 48 nit. In this case we measured a gamma of 2,61, pretty good blacks at 0,02 and 0,3 deviation of the white point. It can also be switched to 6.500K and a gamma of 2.2, which is a popular version on the web, often called Display P3 (for further explanations, see here). This preset showed slightly higher blacks at 0,04, gamma too high again at 2,26 and white 0,3 off – nothing you can’t overcome with minor calibration. Unfortunately, in both cases, the colour space is limited to 76% of P3, which resulted in pretty strong deviations for several colour patches well beyond that imperceptible Delta E under 2 for Rec. 709.

„For Those Who Dare“

Mechanics

Parts of the packaging double as a pretty good shade for location work, a clever approach to limit packaging and what’s going to the bin. Mounting is flexible with 1/4” screw holes at the top and the bottom, provisions for a VESA mount, and a flap at the back to set the monitor on a flat surface at an angle.

The small plastic feet, optionally mounted to the bottom, are a bit flimsy and may not last too long. The frame is of relatively solid plastic and keeps the weight down to 1,3 kg, but you may want to keep it in a sturdy flight case when travelling. 

Electronics

Sources can come through the upper USB-C port, which is compatible with DisplayPort 1.2 or DP 1.4, through HDMI or SDI. The input range is switchable between full range, 16-235, or 16-254, so sources with ‘superwhites’ will be digested too. When connected to a camera by SDI we didn’t notice any latency worth mentioning. Both USB-C ports can also deliver power to external devices, 5V/1,5A from the upper one and twice as much on the one below. On the left side, there is a USB-C port just for power input from the included power adapter. The device itself consumes less than 15 W, but it requires 15 to 20 V, so it can be powered by a laptop or charger, but not by most power banks, which typically supply only up to 12 V. A single USB-A port on the left is for service use only. Two keys can be defined by the user for quick access to regularly used settings. The multilingual menu is easy to understand for those familiar with ‘video lingo’, but switching between modes or signals needs quite some patience. There are no scopes at all, no focus peaking, nor audio, but safe areas, centre markers, and rulers.  

One serious issue

While the manual says it accepts 24, 30, or 60 Hz, we didn’t notice any tearing when supplying 25 or 50 Hz, and these frame rates were correctly identified under “Information” in the menu. Unfortunately, the monitor does not correctly identify those pesky fractional frame rates made for the colourful NTSC world. When fed with 23,98 fps it simply says it’s 24, 29,97 is seen as 30, and 59,94 as 60. While you’ll see a picture, such misleading information at the top of the menu, or in the submenu with all the information about your signal, can lead to heated discussions between the DoP and the DIT. Or even worse, since many hybrid cameras by Sony (for example, there are others too) do just the same: you choose 24 or 30 fps in their menu, and they deliver the slightly slower rate without telling you. Now, imagine you are shooting multicam for a live event, let’s say an opera or a concert, and not all your cameras are behaving like this. Ouch!

Commentary

The Asus PA16USV is a good monitor for SDR with SDI 12G, precise colours out of the box and good contrast. But it’s in dire need of a firmware update to show correct frame rates for all varieties of incoming signals. Until that happens, use it with caution. And while they are at it, maybe Asus’ developers can make recognition of the incoming signals a bit faster. Other monitors do better in that respect.

The post Asus ProArt 16 USV: A Laptop-Sized Production Monitor first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

The sheer mass of innovation so far has been roughly the same kind of brain trip as Neo’s journey down the rabbit hole. So put the popcorn on the table, question your own reality, celebrate Houdini’s 30th anniversary to the day while you are at it, and off we go into the land of new nodes. And yes, you can imagine this being read to you in Keanu Reeves voice.

“We have a clear, confident and calm direction to get you through these big changes that are happening in this industry.” – Cristin Barghiel, Head of R&D from SideFX

Oh well, let’s see…

KineFX & APEX Rigging

The “umbrella ” for character and creature workflows reaches a certain level of maturity in Houdini 22, where all subareas interlock: rigging, animation, retargeting and motion mixing. With this version, CFX (muscle simulation), hair and fur systems, is integrated into the KineFX environment to form a continuous workflow.

In production, rigging traditionally sits between static modeling input and the animation pipeline. Houdini 22 now makes this transition smoother by treating even new, extreme assets such as Gaussian Splats like normal polygon meshes. You can capture G-Splats, rig them procedurally and animate them without changing the workflow.

Using a wasp as an example, the new Rig Builder shows how the system works. Thanks to new Shape LODs, you can switch in the viewport between proxy, low-res and high-res splats to get real-time feedback while posing interactively. The finished setup is saved as a Rig Template and adapts to completely different insects such as rhinoceros beetles or absurd larvae, because KineFX procedurally detects different joint lengths and can skip joints based on names and tags.

Controller widgets also get a upgrade. The old image controls are back, scale natively with the viewport, can be docked to the edge of the screen or act as screen-space gadgets fixed to the display. This opens the door for clever control interfaces inside the viewport.

BiPeds

For daily work with bipeds, Houdini 22 provides ready-made recipes and templates. You simply throw your geometry and skeleton in, and the system builds a biped, including a completely revised viewport interface. Joints can be aligned through translations instead of rotations thanks to auto-aiming, while procedural Selection Sets sort the controllers clearly by body part and place them collapsibly in the animator’s field of view.

Here’s Cedric

The chimpanzee Cedric demonstrates how character setup, animation and Creature FX, or CFX, work together. Here, Rig Builder, Fuse Graph, blendshapes and the Wrinkle Deformer for muscle and armor setups flow together, without having to touch a messy graph in the network.

For facial setups, the combination of classic blendshapes and the Wrinkle Deformer saves a huge amount of manual sculpting, since the system calculates fine wrinkles and nonlinear deformations procedurally. The face controllers are shapeshifters and can switch on the fly in the viewport between direct on-face manipulators and classic 2D sliders.

The Mechs are coming

For mechanical rigs or robot arms, Houdini uses Set Driven Keys and Multi-IK with constraints. The central component is the new APEX Rig Pose Node, which manages posing, rest pose and animation in the Animate State. Its secret weapon is the Set Driven Key component, which acts as an automated translator: you define an animation range and connect it to a driver control, allowing the rig to fire off logical dependencies without manual graph tinkering. If something gets stuck, the APEX Graph Debugger displays the numerical values of the graphs live as hover text directly in the viewport.

Together with studio Tumblehead, SideFX uses toad Hank to show how much creative madness is packed into APEX. CUDA-accelerated custom deformers via HDK enable an extreme squash-and-stretch rig to run completely in real time. The system stubbornly follows the Character-In-Character-Out principle, allowing you to procedurally attach new eyes or extra arms to the rig in the middle of a shot without breaking the rig. Because apparently even amphibians deserve modular body horror now.

AI, here we go….

To speed up the coding of complex rigs, Houdini 22 introduces the APEX Script Comfort Package. It provides a VS-Code extension for autocomplete, a Python panel directly inside Houdini and, functionally, an MCP server, meaning Model Context Protocol, that controls a carefully curated library of syntax rules and snippets.

Since the thing is claimed to be highly “token-efficient” (We used to call that “Working”, but the LinkedInification of language. Sorry.), you can connect a local LLM, and generate rigs using natural language. An integrated validator checks the code, and since the final output consists of pure scripts, you keep ownership of the data without AI dependency.

Mo-capybara

Mocap retargeting is fully automated through a new biped recipe, which maps joint names, proportions and rest poses from Mixamoall the way to custom characters. Even incomplete skeletons, are accepted. The subsequent rig inversion translates the skeleton data back onto the rig , measures bone lengths for automatic stretch and counters the IK flipping on overbent mocap knees using the new Rest Twist option. If needed, IKs can even be intentionally broken as an artistic decision.

In a live demo, SideFX shows that the entire process, from bare geometry to the finished Motion Mixer, can be completed in under five minutes. The character is rigged via template, connected to retargeting data, art-directed at the shoulders, converted through rig inversion and then pushed directly into the Motion Mixer.

Animation

When it comes to animation, viewport performance is the big metric. Houdini 22 delivers with the “Evaluate Rig in Parallel” option. The system distributes characters across separate CPU threads, so 20 fully rigged Electra characters can play back smoothly at a full 24 frames per second. More than 3,600 controls and over 13,000 channels in native real time, without disabling anything in the background. Since these are full rigs and not simple crowd agents, you can make live adjustments and pose characters during playback. We don’t know how big the Workstation was, though.

In the revised Motion Mixer, you can drag animation clips onto the timeline, trim them and use functions such as Match Position to align joints. Clips can be blended into each other by overlapping them, looped or cleaned up with filters such as Smooth FX. The real workflow rescue device here is the new Nested Clips.

Nested what?

These nested clips combine a whole battery of timelines and tracks into a single clean block, which keeps the thing vastly more usable. A double-click takes you back into the data to edit details.

APEX Character

The new APEX Character Picker gives rigs a visual control center on a configurable canvas. You can load backgrounds directly from the viewport or use ready-made templates to link buttons to the desired controls via right-click. The tool adopts the names and colors of the controls, can be scaled, mirrored or connected to procedural Selection Sets.

For complex areas such as hands, the canvas can be split to preserve readability. A neat side effect appears in ragdoll rigging: you can control invisible collision shapes through the picker while keeping the unscaled mesh visible in the viewport. The tool ships directly with standard characters such as Electra.

Cameras are now full citizens inside APEX, which improves working with the integrated audio panel, including scrubbing. A face camera, constrained to the character’s head, eliminates the full body movement. In the viewport, you get a stable focus on the face, which is essential for precise lip-syncing and fine facial animation. For posing, you can access your animation library directly. You select the pose from the catalog and blend it onto the entire rig or, through Selection Sets, onto isolated areas such as the mouth region.

Through the new Geometry Channels, you get direct access to all animation layers of your character at once. If, for example, the director shifts the audio by a few frames after the fact, you no longer have to touch every layer individually. Instead, you use the Retime tool. A double-click places markers in the timeline. If you grab the thick handle, you can shift the entire animation. If you use the thin handle, you correct the marker position without touching the keyframes. This lets you compress or stretch animations between markers quickly, while all keys outside the markers remain untouched.

With the Full Body IK system, animations can be reshaped without coing through a thicket of keys, curves and individual controls. Bookmarks define the relevant time range in the timeline, a keystroke places a target on the hand or head, and the in and out points are pinned. From that moment on, a single controller is enough to make the entire character behave procedurally.

Did someone say ragdoll?

The ragdoll system receives four physical forces that can be activated directly in the viewport. In addition to wind, magnets and damping, which makes the character float as if underwater, turbulence adds a major boost in realism. Since these forces work through collision shapes, you can reduce turbulence on the head or legs to avoid unattractive wobbling. With the magnet, you can pull and tug on the rig procedurally to sculpt poses physically. The thing even works without prior keyframe animation.

For brutal destruction scenarios, where a character is slammed through a table, Houdini 22 introduces the new Impact Threshold. This threshold is based on impact velocity and removes the manual keying of the exact ragdoll activation moment. The object shatters automatically in the exact frame in which the critical velocity is reached. Since the system works nondestructively on copied animation layers, the throw timing can still be moved afterward. The Impact Threshold recalculates the ideal physical break moment automatically every time.

Animated Splats?

The fact that Gaussian Splats are, under the hood, nothing more than points with attributes makes them ideal food for the animation pipeline. Since they are lightweight and calculated on the GPU, you can load G-Splats as full sets, remove individual points or bring them back into the rig with controllers through the Scene Add Prop Node. You can animate and pose G-Splat stools and kick them around correctly with ragdolls.

For organic creatures, the system provides procedural secondary motion directly on controller level. A keyframe animation on the main control generates automatic swinging on antennae or legs. Multipliers prevent all limbs from twitching in sync, while modes such as Lag Overshoot, Jiggle or Spring add a touch of inertia. Using a blend slider, you can blend this physical secondary motion back into your keyframe animation at the end, or send the chunky G-Splat wasp crashing into the wall with a ragdoll impact.

CFX

In CFX, Houdini 22 expands the interaction between crowd simulations and anatomical correctness. The new feature for crowds is the porting of the ML Deformer to Agent Primitives. The machine-learning model runs on the GPU, calculates inference blending of blendshape weights in batches across multiple characters and gives mass agents.

An Agent LOD slider in the viewport lets you balance performance quickly by downgrading more distant agents while only characters close to the camera receive the full deformation stack.

Look at those muscles!

The revised Muscle Transfer recipe benefits from the new biped retargeting tools, allowing mocap animations to be pushed onto muscle setups.

For muscles, SideFX fixes the solver so that stiff tissue no longer lags behind during fast movements. Thanks to new constraint formulations and velocity blending from Vellum, you get organic jiggle without additional calculation overhead. The Otus subnets are now fully editable for POP forces, provide stress attributes for wrinkle masks and offer real sliding constraints for tissue sliding over other tissue.

For hair and fur, Houdini 22 delivers the long-awaited end-to-end workflow requested by the community. You load any high-resolution static groom into the system without any prior attributes and let an extremely thin set of guides deform the final fur only at render time.

Responsible for this is the Guide Reduce SOP, written completely in OpenCL. Its adaptive algorithm selects the most distinctive outlier hairs for Vellum simulation, with 100 to 200 guides often already enough for a clean result.

The new Guide Deform 2.0 maps these weights accurately onto all stray hairs. To prevent dense fur clusters from falling apart during extreme action, the options Preserve Shape and Preserve Clumps run under the hood. Using a quasi-static physics simulation, they smooth out high-frequency artifacts and preserve the spatial relationship between hair tips.

The new Capybara Fur recipe bundles this workflow and pushes Guide Deform 2.0, thanks to OpenCL optimization, to 50 times the speed of its predecessor in native real time in the viewport. The integrated Guide Utility Node handles the annoying work of root pinning, Vellum orientation and 0-to-1 curve normalization in a single node, cleaning up the network.

A highlight for polishing at shot level is the fact that the Shot Sculpt tool now fully supports curves and guides. You can mix mesh fixes and guide adjustments in constant back-and-forth, mask areas or use animated attribute painting to morph haircuts and fur colors fluidly in the middle of a shot.

When expanding hair, the Hair Generate Node enables sparse guide grooms on highly detailed geometry through the Blend in Skin Space option, so guides only need to be placed where they are required for the final look.

The Configure Guide Deform LOP saves a huge amount of disk space because it does not bake hair deformation to disk. Instead, it calculates the deformation on the fly at render time using a Hydra procedural.

Through deep LOPs integration, the system automatically inherits motion-blur subsamples from the skin and guide input, preventing hair from ever tearing away from the skin. Since the in-house Husk procedural has also been upgraded to real geometry motion blur, millions of hairs render cleanly even with nine samples and without the typical artifacts of the old velocity blur. This saves enormous amounts of disk space and network I/O because the heavy high-resolution groom only needs to be stored once instead of firing hair salad frame by frame onto the servers.

Modeling and terrain

The Quad Remesher receives an Edge Flow upgrade in Houdini 22. The new rectangular method was developed for hard-surface models, since it procedurally detects hard edges and aligns the mesh exactly to them without distorting the internal topology. At the same time, the symmetry function provides a cleaner flow for organic objects.

The new SideFX Labs tool Split by Expression allows flexible splitting of geometry using different methods. Its special feature is that the interface displays the underlying VEX expression directly next to the parameters, making the node a useful learning tool.

For complex organic patterns or laying cables, the Walk on Surface Node provides a solution for growing or sliding curves and points along closed meshes. Control is handled through attributes or through noise vector fields via streamline tracing.

The Curve Tool receives a evolution with Curve Animate. In addition to pure point positions, tangents can now also be animated. Even if the topology breaks into pieces during motion, the interpolation of curve arcs and tangents remains consistent across the animation.

Heightfields in Copernicus

The migration of heightfields into Copernicus accelerates terrain generation by a factor of five (supposedly) and integrates it directly into the texture synthesis workflow. Instead of working awkwardly with volumes or layers, the Copernicus nodes provide direct access to all inputs and outputs.

These can be seamlessly combined with all the heightfield tools. As a result, complex operations such as erosion can be controlled through compositing inputs and directional maps can be generated in the node network.

The new tools include Height Field Strata, which emulates layered rock and quickly generates high levels of detail through an included recipe. The new Fractal Sample Node builds a bridge between real terrain and pure texture.

It samples a simple input pattern fractally across different resolution levels and scales, repeatedly over itself, producing complex, seamlessly tileable structures very quickly. In addition to directly available recipes for these nodes, larger scenes for more complex environments and texturing are planned for the Content Library in the future.

With Neural Layer to Height, machine learning also enters the terrain pipeline. The node automatically downloads an external ML model, MOG 2, in the background and estimates depth directly from a single photograph, while the tool remains controllable like any other Houdini node. Since purely image-based ML results are often somewhat soft, the generated heightfield can then be refined with procedural tools to add fine details and structures.

Solaris

The focus in Solaris lies on the long-awaited expansion of layout, worldbuilding and set dressing. The USD Component workflow becomes a first-class citizen directly inside SOPs. Here, you can build geometry hierarchies, create proxies and finally place and manipulate pivots without switching context to LOPs. For point-based placement, paint-based instancing has been made more robust and expanded with geometric shapes such as circles or rectangles, which serve as brush fill masks.

Procedural mass placement is handled by a new scattering procedural that runs Houdini Engine inside the Hydra pipeline. Since the data is only generated at render time, the USD scene remains lightweight even with half a million instances. The tool provides powerful masking options: camera frustum culling saves RAM, ambient occlusion places instances specifically in crevices or avoids them, and external hero meshes can mask roads out of vegetation, for example. Comprehensive transform randomization also provides some realism.

The Edit LOP now uses the RBD and ragdoll developments for improved physics-based object placement. You can move clusters interactively, build organic piles and benefit from a iterative workflow. Karma also now supports instanced mesh lights with individual control over intensity and color per instance.

For lighting and volumes, the introduction of equiangular multi-importance sampling provides less noisy point lights in volumes. For lighting design, there are also new, highly controllable Light Blockers with adjustable shapes and soft fall-offs.

In look development, the new Texture Material Library LOP allows a tight loop for COP-based texturing directly in combination with Karma. Through the update to the latest USD and MaterialX versions, SideFX gives Karma a native flake shader as well as dedicated shading nodes for curvature and ambient occlusion.

Finally, slap comping moves directly into LOPs through the new Image Filters as a post-processing stack. Since these filters are authored as USD data, they are available to all Hydra renderers and remain live in the viewport during interactive layout.

VFX

After the enormous number of new solvers in recent releases, SideFX uses version 22 to slow the pace slightly and close functional gaps.

One important gap is closed in Bullet: the rigid-body solver now receives a simple method for bending and metal fracturing, making the resource-intensive MPM solver unnecessary in many classic pipelines. In parallel, the reliable Voronoi Fracture Node has been optimized and now runs faster than in previous versions, saving time before the actual simulation, even with hundreds of thousands of fragments.

For entry-level use, SideFX also includes new ready-made recipes for magic effects, covering the full path from simulation to rendering and compositing in a single learning setup.

The main focus in the VFX area, however, is the Copernicus-based Sparse GPU Fluid Solver, which has been upgraded from a simplified background experiment into a full production solver on SOP and DOP level. To avoid slowing down brute-force GPU performance by uploading heavy polygon meshes, Houdini introduces so-called implicit surfaces. These mathematical shape descriptions are generated directly on the graphics card and immediately used there as efficient collision objects or source geometry for fluid simulation. This merges the advantages of procedural physics simulations with the flexible pre- and post-processing possibilities inside the new Copernicus environment.

Copernicus

In just two years, Copernicus has evolved from a beta version into a full toolset for texture synthesis. Houdini 22 marks an important milestone here, since the 2D and 3D painting functions are now fully integrated.

A significant architectural shift takes place in terrains, since all heightfield workflows have been migrated from SOPs into COPs. In addition to expanded physics solvers, Copernicus also serves as a central platform for orchestrating AI models, allowing ML-based processes to be represented inside the node environment.

Newly integrated are parametrized UV Shapes, which output complex layouts that would be difficult to build manually, such as horseshoe or spiral UVs, allowing arbitrary input textures to be distorted across surfaces.

For photorealistic PBR materials, the system also provides new procedural grunge maps for drips, rust or stains, as well as tools for web, knit and bark patterns.

For the games pipeline, Copernicus uses Session Sync to drive interactive Unreal materials in live exchange between the engines. During subsequent texture baking, the new Bake Pre-Process Node helps in the COP and Karma baker. It automatically identifies interpenetrations between high-res and low-res meshes via attributes and corrects the cage geometry before the actual baking process.

With Neural Cellular Automata, or NCA, another ML node enters the system. It scales and distorts learned texture patterns and, thanks to adjacency maps, lets them grow seamlessly across UV seams directly on 3D geometry to create complex organic growth effects.

With the new Paint 3D COP, a full paint package moves directly into Copernicus. The user interface provides everything expected from texturing, including a classic layer stack with blending modes, alphas and many brush shapes. The toolset is complemented by features such as tiling for seamless textures, ready-made recipes for catalogs and countless options for customizing brush strokes.

This tool is not limited to 2D space, but also allows direct painting on 3D meshes. Handpainting therefore happens exactly where it is needed, making it possible to place textures on the geometry.

Since the Paint node lives natively inside the COP network, its use goes far beyond classic drawing and can be repurposed for entirely different tasks. One example from the presentation showed how hand-painted masks on a backpack image sequence were used directly in the network to train a machine-learning model for image segmentation.

With the integration of SAM 2, a powerful neural model for image segmentation becomes available. It fits into the familiar user interface as a native node and can be integrated directly into existing texturing pipelines or compositing processes.

Oceans in Copernicus output height information directly as texture maps. Based on that, two-dimensional simulations such as custom foam can be calculated and seamlessly combined with ocean surfaces.

New tools for Refraction from Height and Caustics from Height generate physically plausible light effects directly from height data, without three-dimensional rendering. This enables techniques such as rendering a depth map from the camera perspective, calculating caustics from it efficiently and projecting them back into the scene through lights. These additions push Copernicus toward becoming a full compositing tool.

The arsenal is expanded by a new two-dimensional Ripple Solver directly inside Copernicus. It processes animated inputs as well as collision objects and is suited for deforming surfaces for stylized effects or motion graphics.

Adjacency Maps solve the problem of visible seams at the edges of individual UV tiles. When a texture-based effect reaches such an edge, the motion is transformed seamlessly across the boundary and continued. Houdini now provides several tools that natively support this, such as Cellular Automata, where organic growth patterns flow across complex geometries without interruption.

But what else ? If that isn’ enough for you, SideFX is carrying out a major technical rebuild in Houdini 22 on two fronts.

3D viewport

The viewport throws out the old OpenGL ballast and now consistently uses Vulkan, or Molten on Mac. This not only cleans up the code, but finally clears the path for the “cinematic near-realtime Vulkan-based renderer” that has been promised to us for years as a future vision “just around the corner”. Next up, Nuclear Fusion at Room temperature.

User interface

For years, users have demanded a UI update, but SideFX stayed with the proven interface. With Houdini 22, SideFX now breaks with that tradition. Cristin Barghiel makes clear that this is not merely a design update: “We drew some new icons. There it is. Oo laa.”

It is explicitly not just a re-theming, but a “serious, long-term, arduous exercise in functionality,” made possible by the transition to Qt and QML, which finally removes the technological roadblocks that have prevented SideFX from significantly advancing the UI and UX for years.

The new start screen collects all essential entry points, such as recent projects, tutorials and production templates, in one place. This simplifies the workflow when launching the application and saves time in daily work.

With the integrated Theme Editor, there is no more painful manual editing of text files, which previously required regular restarts of the application. Adjustments now happen directly inside the interface, allowing global color schemes, highlights and contrasts to be modified without interrupting the workflow.

The revised Preferences organize all settings in a much clearer structure. The integrated search function enables direct access to all options, finally ending the time-consuming hunt through nested menu paths.

Tooltips now function as a visual knowledge base directly inside the viewport. In addition to explanations, they also display example images, allowing users to understand functions more quickly without leaving the software to look at the documentation.

The color picker improves color selection through precise control and management of custom color palettes. The eyedropper can now sample colors from any element outside the software, making it easier to integrate reference values from other applications.

The ramp catalog replaces previous text presets with a visual library of available gradients. Thanks to adaptive sampling from the screen, ramps can be generated directly from existing references, making the creation of complex gradients much more efficient.

Gaussian Splats

Gaussian Splats are now first-class citizens in Houdini. The toolset has been expanded from a visualization and rendering solution into a full component of the pipeline. Splats are now editable across every node: they can not only be loaded, but also procedurally created and modified.

The performance of Gaussian Splats has been improved in Houdini 22. Under the hood, these splats are simply point clouds with attributes, which makes them ideal for procedural manipulation.

The capybara test model can be animated without difficulty. Standard nodes such as Bone Deform and Surface Deform are used for this. Physical simulations can also be applied, for example to make a palm tree sway believably in the wind by controlling the points.

One inherent problem of splats is their baked-in lighting, which can look unnatural when deformation becomes too strong. New relighting tools based on spherical harmonics allow dynamic relighting of the points.

Gaussian Splats are created directly inside Houdini from photographic input and parallel training via PDG. Only the generation of the COLMAP data for camera estimation currently still has to happen externally. Messy edges after training can be cleaned up easily using simple networks.

Splats can also be generated directly from rendered three-dimensional scenes by placing a camera array around the object. The result is high-resolution models that can be navigated in real time. This technique is not limited to geometry, but also converts volumetric data such as clouds or animated fireballs into storage-efficient splats.

Anyone who made it to the credits knows: that was not all. In addition to these major highlights, there are dozens and dozens of other new features.

Get it … now?

Exact release date? SideFX is sticking to its usual rhythm here: the keynotes and sneak peeks, which took place in mid to late June 2026, serve as previews. Traditionally, it takes about another four to six weeks from that point until the actual launch.

Thanks, and out.

The post Here comes Houdini 22 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Manuel Kotulla.

For those who don’t know the tool: Godot Engine is a standalone free 2D and 3D game engine. No host DCC app is specified, it works with pretty much every DCC Suite out there. It connects to its Asset Store, GDScript, C#, C++ and GDExtension.

Release with actual buttons

Godot 4.7 is available now. The release brings HDR output, rectangular area lights, a new Asset Store, Android and XR export work, shader previews, UI transforms and editor fixes that sound small until you have clicked the same menu 400 times in a day.

Pricing stays simple: the engine is free and open source under the MIT License. No paid engine price is specified. The migration notes list behavior changes, API breaks and changed defaults. New tools and innovations should be tested before use in production, especially when a project file has paying work attached.

HDR, now with fewer excuses

On the Rendering side, HDR output sends internal HDR rendering to the final output. It works on Windows, macOS, iOS, visionOS, and Linux through Wayland. The implementation supports the Forward+, Mobile and Compatibility renderers only in the first two . Compatibility rendering, Web output and Android HDR output are outside this 4.7 support set.

That means the engine can now show more of its internal HDR simulation on supported displays. For artists, this is the practical bit: overbright elements, glow, exposure and bright outdoor detail can reach the screen instead of being squeezed into SDR manners. Such polite. Very limiting.

The new AreaLight3D node adds rectangular light sources. It renders real-time light from a rectangle in 3D space, with softer shadows and more realistic reflections. The old workaround of pairing emissive materials with global illumination is no longer the only route for glowing windows, TVs and billboards.

DrawableTexture2D adds a simpler API layer for drawing on textures. Before 4.7, texture drawing leaned on viewport-based tricks or lower-level rendering access. This one should matter to anyone building paint systems, runtime masks, interactive decals or little debugging scribbles that slowly become production features because someone liked them.

The asset shelf gets less creaky

The Godot Asset Store replaces the older Asset Library. The update changes how asset items display, adds zoom for preview images, shows asset ratings and introduces threading so store tasks can run without blocking the editor’s main UI. The store page also states that the store is in beta, so polish is welcome, but tea and caution remain on the desk.

The store lists asset ratings, licenses and free new arrivals. That is practical for small teams and solo developers who need a template, utility or plug-in without spelunking through forum archaeology. It is still an asset store, so test anything downloaded from it like it owes you money.

Text shader editing gets inline previews. A text shader can now show a real-time preview directly in the editor while typing. That removes one small loop from shader work: write, compile, switch context, squint, repeat. Now teh squinting can happen closer to the code, as nature intended.

The Control node gains offset transform properties. UI elements can be translated, rotated or scaled without the container immediately ruining the fun. By default, the transform offset is visual only and does not affect mouse input, which avoids buttons losing hover state after a visual transform.

Editor fixes for tired hands

Game Engine updates often sell themselves with renderer fireworks. This one has plenty of small editor changes that may save more daily friction than the headline features.

Path3D points can snap to colliders. The 3D editor ruler can show vector component lengths for each axis. CSG nodes gain an Autosmooth property on the root node, using a Smoothing Angle value that defaults to 50 degrees. Vertex snapping arrives in the 3D editor with the B shortcut as the default.

For 2D work, CollisionShape2D can set one-way collision direction relative to the shape. GradientTexture2D can generate conic gradients. TextureRect can tile AtlasTexture regions as repeating textures.

GUI work gets a better Tree drag and drop indicator, optional search for long PopupMenu lists, and RichTextLabel images that can scale relative to font size. Landmark navigation gives screen reader users more context when moving through interface areas.

The Project Manager now shows icons for upgrade and downgrade cases before a project opens. The Inspector can copy and paste categories or groups of properties. The Remote Scene Inspector can fold groups and subgroups. The Remote Tree Inspector can show enum names for non-exported enum variables instead of plain integers.

For layout work, the dedicated MeshLibrary editor should make GridMap tile work less inspector-heavy. The 2D editor also gains Scene Paint Mode for scattering objects such as collectables, enemies or decorations without setting up tile maps first.

The 3D editor can follow a moving object after pressing Focus Selection twice. The 3D view controller is unified for editor and embedded game use. Trackball-style rotation lets users rotate 3D nodes by dragging a translucent sphere inside the transform gizmo. Very space mouse adjacent, minus the desk hardware.

Android gets more independent

For game development, the portable build story is the loud part. GABE, the Godot Android Build Environment, is now stable. It is a companion app for the Android and XR editor that handles Gradle export support in the background.

GABE can generate AAB and APK files directly on an Android or XR device. The project states that this allows developers to create, develop, export and publish a game to stores using only such a device. GABE is available through the Google Play Store, Meta Horizon Store and GitHub release page.

Input, animation and the migration tax

Input work includes a built-in VirtualJoystick node with Fixed, Dynamic and Following modes. A project setting can ignore joypad input when the application is unfocused. Keyboard and mouse events now use device identifiers, with dedicated constants for keyboard and mouse IDs.

Animation gets collapsible animation editor nodes and Tween signal waiting through tween_await. Export templates can now be downloaded per platform or architecture instead of forcing every template into one large download. GDExtension files now appear in Project Settings, which helps teams see which extensions a project actually loads.

The migration guide lists specific breaks. AudioEffectSpectrumAnalyzer removes tap_back_pos. OpenXRExtensionWrapper changes _on_register_metadata. Several EditorSceneFormatImporter constants move to ImportFlags. Rendering, physics, input and GDScript behavior changes are also listed, alongside changed defaults for animation, rendering reflections, RichTextLabel image parameters and dynamic font hinting. So yes, this is a big update. It has HDR sparkle, mobile ambition and XR paperwork, so, clone the project, read the migration notes, test the export templates, profile the renderers, and only then let version 4.7 near the build machine that everyone quietly fears.

https://godotengine.org/releases/4.7/

https://store.godotengine.org/

https://godotengine.org/article/hdr-output-arrives-in-godot-4-7/

https://developer.android.com/develop/xr/godot

The post Godot 4.7 turns up HDR first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: ARRI LUKA is a very new Unreal Engine plug-in for lighting, camera previs, LED wall prep and post handoff. It sits beside the company’s lighting, camera, lens and metadata tools.

Previs, now with lights

LUKA is a plug-in for Unreal Engine that brings lighting and camera setup into a real-time virtual environment. It targets film students, gaffers and DPs who want to test lighting and camera setups before the physical set starts charging rent.

The tool works as a planning sandbox for lighting, camera, exposure, lenses and staging. The interface claims to be simple to use, scalable and designed for users with little or no previous Unreal Engine experience. The catalog includes luminaires, lighting accessories, cameras, recording formats and lenses. The plug-in also accepts custom and third-party hardware input, so users can move beyond the built-in set of virtual kit when a job demands it.

The download entry lists the LUKA Plug-In and Manual for Win64, macOS and Linux downloads are not listed.

Fixtures with fewer fairy tales

Virtual Fixtures use detailed specifications from real lighting fixtures to model color, intensity and light distribution. The system aims to reproduce the look, reach and tuneability of actual fixtures. Common accessories can attach to fixtures or sit around them, including diffusion, bounce and flags.

The shadow model covers hard-edged shadows from open-faced lamps, softer shadows through accessories and shadows cast by multiple sources. That is the sort of detail that turns a previs scene from “nice mood board” into ligthing homework.

The plug-in integrates with ArtNet and sACN for lighting networks and control panels, for practical production planning, not just viewport decoration with a photogenic UI.

Supported fixture models beyond the described catalogue are not listed in public detail. The same goes for the exact depth of third-party hardware support. Custom and third-party input exists, but a complete compatibility list is missing so far.

Camera brains in the viewport

Virtual Cam emulates different camera models and camera settings inside Unreal Engine. It extends the engine’s camera actor into a production-style virtual camera and includes lens properties such as focal length, focus setting and T-stop.

Lighting previs without camera behaviour often lies with a straight face – a lamp can look useful until the lens choice, stop and exposure show up. LUKA puts those choices into the same scene, which is much closer to how DPs and gaffers actually argue, only with less walking.

Virtual cameras and lights also connect to color rendition and exposure levels inside the previs. The aim is dependable previsualization for logistics and creative planning. This does not replace taste, experience or the person who knows where the shadow should fall. It gives those people a shared digital room before the real one gets booked.

For virtual camera work, the interesting bit is the combination of lens settings, camera models, light response and real-time feedback. A camera sandbox gets more useful when it can annoy both the camera and lighting departments at the same time.

Lumen does the fast talking

Real-time rendering in LUKA uses a Lumen-based workflow. Lumen is Unreal Engine’s dynamic global illumination and reflections system. In this workflow, users see changes to light, shadow and reflections while moving lights and cameras on a virtual set.

Users can build a 3D space from scratch or choose and adapt environments available in Unreal Engine. The official product page also mentions scanning performer faces with consumer hardware to practise lighting realistic virtual avatars. That sounds very 2026, but it is simple: test faces and light together before someone has to stand still for an hour.

For the Unreal Engine plug-in crowd, LUKA is not about gameplay logic, foliage tools or shader archaeology. It is aimed at film lighting, camera testing and production communication. The pixels are there to answer blocking and exposure questions before the crew eats the schedule.

LED walls get a rehearsal room

For in-camera visual effects and LED walls, LUKA can twin a virtual camera with a physical camera via LiveLink. Camera and lens settings sync in real time for live output.

The same workflow connects to Color Management for Virtual Production for LED wall calibration. That tool allows precise calibration of LED walls in ICVFX environments, uses an LED Calibration plug-in for Unreal Engine, and supports Unreal Engine Version 5. The LED Calibration software communicates with compatible cameras via CAP and generates a calibration file for a chosen LED panel and camera combination.

Color Management for Virtual Production is available as an annual subscription license. It also has a free 30-day trial route. That pricing belongs to the color management tool, not LUKA.

Live Link Metadata remains a separate Unreal Engine plug-in. It streams camera metadata into Unreal Engine via the Universal Motor Controller UMC-4 or natively via the ALEXA 35. It transmits real-time lens metadata and camera metadata, including camera state. The current listed version is 1.04 for Windows, with support from Unreal Engine 4.27.2 to Unreal Engine 5.7.2.

For Live Link workflows, that ecosystem matters. The plug-ins do different jobs, but they point in the same direction: camera data, lens data, lighting choices and stage output should travel through the Unreal pipeline with fewer mysteries.

Post gets a clearer parcel

LUKA also targets data transfer to postproduction. For shoots with virtual elements, it can provide control of virtual lighting fixtures and streamline data handover to post.

The postproduction angle is practical. CG element integration can move faster when the virtual lighting setup is easier to reconstruct. The useful part is the record of intent. Light positions, fixture choices, camera settings, lens values and scene layout can help post teams understand what production planned. That does not solve every matchmove, lighting or comp problem, but it can turn handover into something closer to a package.

The tool also supports preproduction tasks such as digital recces, accurate previsualizations, fixture type planning, fixture quantity planning, visual set planning and rehearsal of complex sequences. For previs, that is the sweet spot: make the uncertain parts visible early enough that departments can still change them.

Trial, pricing and caveats

A trial license route is available for LUKA. Commercial pricing is not specified. The available public download entry lists the Win64 plug-in and manual, but does not list a paid license price.

arri.com/luka

The post Arri LUKA lights Unreal previs first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: MetaHuman Animator sits inside Unreal Engine for performance capture on MetaHuman characters. The new Fab plugin extends it with markerless body capture from video.

Why this news? Because at the release of Unreal Engine 5.8, we brushed past this, but since then, we realised that this is kind of a big deal. And we were yelled at by excited authors. (Hi Manuel!)

The webcam enters the mocap chat

Epic Games has released MetaHuman Animator Markerless Motion Capture Plugin, a free add-on for Unreal Engine 5.8. The plugin generates body animation from standard video footage and extends MetaHuman Animator inside the engine.

The pitch is simple enough to make mocap stage operators stare into the middle distance: shoot a performance on a phone, webcam, or studio camera, process it locally, and use the result as animation in the editor. The plugin targets full-body animation, including hands, and can drive the MetaHuman skeleton directly or support retargeting to other character types.

The useful part for production artists is not the absence of Lycra. It is the pipeline position. The generated take can be refined and adapted in Sequencer like other animation. The plugin uses the same assets and processing flows as the rest of the facial capture workflow, with automation available through Python and Blueprints.

One camera, two solves

The plugin supports single-camera capture for body, or body and face from the same video. Face and body solves run independently on the same footage. That matters for small teams because one camera can cover both streams without a separate stitching pipeline, and dual solves means more focussed code for each.

A dual-camera path also exists. In that setup, face and body footage come from separate cameras and combine in a level sequence, like a head-mounted camera for face capture and an off-actor reference camera for body capture. When a final game character does not yet exist, an identity stand-in MetaHuman can be used first. All MetaHumans share the same skeleton, so the animation maps to the final character without retargeting.

The body capture path works offline. The video-to-mocap pipeline processes footage locally on the workstation. The Fab listing also states that footage never leaves the workstation. That is the boring sentence supervisors like, because cloud upload policies are not usually where shots get prettier.

Experimental means experimental

This is an experimental feature introduced with Unreal Engine 5.8. Experimental features are not production-ready and may change or be removed in future releases. Translation for anyone building a show bible: do not wire the whole animation department around it before a proper test.

The requirements are clear. The plugin needs Unreal Engine 5.8 or later, the MetaHuman Animator plugin enabled in the editor, and the markerless plugin installed and enabled from Fab. It requires one or more performance takes captured with a single video camera or the Live Link Face iOS app configured to use a non-TrueDepth camera.

Platform support is the next practical filter. The markerless motion capture plugin is supported only on Windows. MetaHuman Animator on Windows requires a DirectX 12 compatible graphics card and the default RHI set to DirectX 12. The recommended hardware page is at least 16 physical high-performance CPU cores, 32 GB RAM, and a GPU such as an NVIDIA RTX 3070, AMD RX 6800 XT, or Apple M2 Ultra with 8 GB VRAM for MetaHuman Animator and MetaHuman Creator features.

The workflow in plain editor language

The workflow starts with footage import. Video comes through Capture Manager in Live Link Hub, creating a capture data asset in the project. Then the artist configures solve settings in the MetaHuman Performance editor, runs the solve, and exports the result as an animation sequence. Finally, the exported animation gets assigned to a MetaHuman in a level sequence.

It is a fairly normal offline animation workflow, minus suits, optical markers, and a dedicated capture volume. The plugin removes the requirement for a mocap rig, helmet camera, or markers for this motion capture path. It also removes the need for a separate pipeline to stitch face and body results together when using the single-camera route.

For motion capture teams, this makes the plugin more interesting as a rough blocking, indie capture, previs, or fast iteration tool than as an automatic replacement for a controlled stage. So far we have not had accuracy metrics, solve times, cleanup effort, camera movement limits, occlusion behavior, or multi-actor support.

Pricing, licensing, and the fun-free bit

The Fab listing marks the plugin as Free, including commercial use.

Where Meshcapade fits

The plugin arrives after Meshcapade was acquired by Epic. The Max Planck Society madeMeshcapade as a Max Planck spin-off from Tübingen that develops advanced technologies for creating and animating digital humans. The team joined Epic’s Research team to contribute to technologies for Unreal Engine and MetaHuman.

What artists should actually test

The first test should be ugly. Use an ordinary webcam, a phone clip, a clean studio clip, and a clip with occluded hands. Try the same action from a static camera and from a less stable camera. Compare foot locking, finger motion, torso rotation, and contact with props. Then push the result through the exact Sequencer and retargeting path used on a real shot.

The second test should be boring. Confirm processing time, storage use, RAM use, GPU behavior, and whether the solve survives batch work without babysitting. Local processing is good. Local processing that monopolizes a workstation all afternoon is still a scheduling problem with nicer branding.

For small teams, students, indies, previs artists, and realtime prototyping, this is a practical addition to the Unreal Engine plugin shelf. For serious shot work, it is an experimental plugin that needs ruthless testing before anyone sells it to production as a solved problem.

https://www.fab.com/listings/4095b8e0-3eff-44f1-acb4-cb40b99228b9

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/metahuman/metahuman-animation-from-mono-video-capture-in-unreal-engine

The post MetaHuman gets markerless mocap first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Beeble Canvas is a browser based node graph for AI VFX work across SwitchX, Image Generator, Video Matte, and Cloud tools. It connects to workflows around Nuke, Blender, and Unreal Engine.

The useful slider

Canvas now adds a built-in comparison view to its Topaz Upscaler node. Users can drag a split slider across the image and compare the original with the upscaled result directly inside the node.

That removes the extra Compare node from this specific check. Less graph furniture, fewer cables, same uncomfortable question: did the upscale add detail, or did it invent confidence?

Beeble Canvas

For production artists, this is amazing: Upscaling lives and dies in small areas like eyelashes, hair strands, cloth weave, signage, texture noise, matte edges, pores, grass, compression mush, and the horrible little crawlies that only appear once the shot moves. A split slider makes those checks faster because the decision happens where the upscale happens.

Upscaling rarely fails politely. It can sharpen noise, clean away useful grain, hallucinate texture/moiré, or make AI material look more AI than befroe. It can also save a shot, rescue a low resolution element, or make a quick delivery possible without sending the plate through a separate app. The new split view does not guarantee a better upscale. It gives artists a faster way to judge one. That is a better promise.

A cleaner Canvas habit

The update also adds more than 30 new generation models across video and image workflows. The visible Image Generator menu includes Nano Banana 2, Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2, GPT Image 2 High, Grok Imagine Quality, Grok Imagine, Seedream V5 Lite, Seedream V4.5, FLUX.2 Pro, FLUX.2 Max, FLUX.2 Flex, FLUX.2 Klein, and Recraft V4.1.

(deep breath….) The video side adds Grok Imagine, Grok Imagine 1.5, Wan 2.7, Wan 2.6, LTX 2.3 Pro, LTX 2.3 Fast, and Luma Ray 3.2. The listed modes include text to video, image to video, reference to video, video to video, Extend, Retake, and Reframe, depending on the model. That model buffet will get the screenshots. The Topaz slider will probably save more time. And waste less credits.

Notes, snap, describe

Sticky Note now supports rich text and Markdown. Artists can write headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, lists, blockquotes, inline code, and links. Pasted Markdown auto formats, and notes can be copied out as clean Markdown.

That is proper graph hygiene. Notes often carry the part of the workflow nobody wants to reconstruct : prompt versions, reference choices, plate notes, supervisor picks, links to refernces “Somebody saw on a webpage”, failed settings, and why version 14 looked worse but passed review.

The Compositor now has Magnetic Snap. Clips can snap to clip edges, the playhead, or frame 0. The magnet button toggles snapping, and the S key does the same. This is not glamorous, but neither is a frist frame slip in a client review.

Where this fits in the archive

This update plugs into the same Cloud direction covered in earlier Digital Production stories. Beeble Canvas introduced the node based AI compositor with SwitchX and SwitchLight under the hood. SwitchX API covered upload, generation jobs, polling, webhooks, 720p and 1080p output, alpha modes, prepaid USD credits, and pipeline integration.

SwitchX API for video transformations in YOUR pipeline

Background Remover covered the standalone masking workflow with preview, refinement, RGBA export, and alpha only export. The Nuke plugin story covered PBR pass loading and relighting inside Nuke with Directional, Point, and HDRI lights. SwitchLight 2.0 covered PBR relighting, HDRI extraction, deflicker, neural detail enhancement, and local processing.

Beeble Nuke plugin: relight with passes

The pattern is simple. Cloud gathers model access, browser nodes, masking, generation, comparison, and timeline helpers. Local tools handle heavier pass based relighting and DCC handoff.

https://docs.beeble.ai/beeble/canvas

https://www.topazlabs.com/

The post Beeble Canvas gets a Topaz split first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

QC Kitchen is live as a self-serve quality-control service for editors, DITs, producers and post houses. Users upload a file, choose a test package and receive the result by email. PixelPantry positions the service around broadcast compliance checks rather than creative anything.

The workflow centres on finished files and test clips. The service accepts up to two uploads at once, processes them systematically and sends each report when its scan finishes.

The service claims that most scans complete faster than realtime. File length and complexity affect the duration. The completed report uses frame-accurate references and contains errors, warnings, pass or fail results, plus flags that need investigation.

Four menus, one kitchen joke

The automated service has three tiers. Set Menu runs one selected check. À la carte runs a broader automated QC pass. Tasting Menu targets finished AS-11 masters in an MXF container. Chef’s Table adds human review. Set Menu lets the user select PSE SDR testing under ITU BT.1702, RGB and luma testing under Rec.709, dead-pixel detection, blanking detection, Black Detection or a loudness test. The service advertises the automated report as available as soon as processing finishes.

The PSE check targets flashing and patterning in SDR material. ITU BT.1702 provides guidance for reducing the risk of photosensitive epileptic seizures caused by television imagery. QC Kitchen lists that recommendation for Set Menu, À la carte and Tasting Menu testing.

RGB and luma checks target legal-range violations in Rec.709 material. Set Menu groups RGB and luma as one selectable test. À la carte lists RGB gamut, luma at 100 nits and EBU R128 loudness tolerance of plus or minus 0.5.

Dead-pixel detection and blanking checks sit in Set Menu. The service also names black-frame detection. These checks can be used on test clips as well as delivery files, including camera-prep material intended to reveal stuck or faint pixels.

Loudness gets its own course

The loudness scan uses EBU R128. The broader Audio checks include loudness and peaks, while Tasting Menu also examines audio track layout.

Stereo and 5.1 material are supported. Set Menu can analyse six embedded channels or a separate interleaved audio upload. Tasting Menu uses the audio configuration declared in the AS-11 metadata.

Configuration examples use EBU R128 R48 code 2a for stereo and EBU R128 R123 code 16c for 5.1. The service checks the declared arrangement rather than asking the user to flatten every mix into stereo before upload.

À la carte is the broad scan

À la carte combines PSE, RGB gamut, luma at 100 nits and EBU R128 loudness in one automated pass. It is intended for a file that needs broader checking before the final AS-11 master is made. The À la carte tier does not list dead-pixel detection, blanking detection or audio-track-layout validation. Those functions appear elsewhere in the service. Users should select the tier from the stated test list rather than assume that every named check appears in every menu.

A full scan returns pass and fail information, warnings and QC flags. A flag still requires investigation. The report identifies where the check found the condition, so the user can return to the relevant frame or section in the master.

Tasting Menu checks the master

Tasting Menu accepts finished Full HD AS-11 MXF material for UK DPP delivery. It checks metadata, PSE, RGB gamut, luma at 100 nits and EBU R128 loudness. Tasting Menu also examines audio-track layout and segment structure, then presents AS-11 metadata fields in one AQC PSE report.

AS-11 UK DPP HD defines an MXF delivery format for finished HD programmes sent to UK DPP broadcasters. The family constrains media formats for specific delivery purposes and includes video, audio and metadata rules.

The service’s own AS-11 workflow also checks file and container structure, codec, resolution, frame rate, audio mapping, timecode start points and basic metadata compliance. Its report identifies faults with frame-accurate references.

AS-11 checking does not create or repair the master. The upload workflow reads the file and reports conditions. Users cannot modify, share or download the uploaded file from the system after submission.

Pricing follows duration

Set Menu starts at £5 per file. À la carte starts at £10 per file. Tasting Menu starts at £13 per file. Chef’s Table starts at £50 per file and requires a quote for the human review.

Duration-based examples add another layer. At 30 minutes, Set Menu costs £35, À la carte costs £40 and Tasting Menu costs £50. PixelPantry charges £5 at sign-up, then deducts that amount from the first bill.

Billing runs at the end of each day in which a QC finishes. The emailed report includes the cost, the test performed and its pass or fial result. The account’s stored card is charged for the completed scans.

The current model is pay as you go. A subscription is not currently available, though a future subscription model with a bulk discount is planned. Free trials and discounts are distributed through newsletter promotions rather than through a permanent open trial.

SDR means SDR

QC Kitchen currently accepts SDR material for the automated picture tests. Current automated picture tests require Rec.709 files. Non-SDR files are deleted immediately while the charge still applies.

HDR testing is not available at present. The service says HDR tests are planned and places them on its 2026 development list. A user who uploads an HDR file to the SDR workflow can therefore pay for a file that the system deletes.

https://www.pixelpantry.io/

The post QC Kitchen Brings Broadcast QC Online first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

We have reported continuously about getting your colours right when working with a not-so-perfect screen, the last time here. But what to do if you just want to connect hardware like a camera or player and you can’t trust your screen’s or projector’s colour fidelity? And what about connecting them if one has only SDI and the other side HDMI? Well, there is a solution that won’t cost a fortune.

Generating a LUT

Crawly for Videoscreens: SpyderPro

The Spyder Pro can now optionally generate and export a LUT for screen corrections, not only ICC profiles. Sure, you’ll need a computer to run this process, as described here in full detail. The software still seems a bit flaky; sometimes it hangs when saving the LUT or makes a useless file with zero bytes or a few megabytes. After a few tries we got a LUT in the right size, which should be around 1 MB or less. Once you have saved that LUT in an appropriate size, you can load it into a simple interface or converter from your computer. After that, you don’t need your machine any more, only a small box.

The right device

Let’s say your source is delivering video by SDI, but you have made a LUT to correct colours and contrast on a screen or projector with only HDMI for input. The most flexible device at a decent price is the “Micro Converter BiDirectional SDI/HDMI 12G” by Blackmagic. What a mouthful! We’ll just call it the converter here, since it’s pretty small to fit such a name. It weighs only 150 grams, needs 4 W from any USB-C source and can be found for a street price from 150,- € upwards.

Its main advantage for this use case, apart from compatibility with all SDI sources up to 12G: it can take .cube LUTs in 33 point format. So, choose that size when exporting from the Spyder Pro software for a good balance between precision and compatibility. We have used Converter Setup version 12.2.1 without issues, but some users report they needed version 7.6.2 for other converters from that same line. Once the LUT is uploaded, you can choose if you want to apply it to only one output or both, which are always active on this model with any source. 

Our results

We have tried this solution with a camera that had only SDI and also with SDI output from DaVinci Resolve via the UltraStudio Monitor 3G. Receiving devices were an older, relatively cheap LG monitor with UHD and a projector by LG with HD, both HDMI only. They were remarkably close with their specific LUT to the factory calibrated MacBook Pro M1 set to its preset for Rec.709 BT.1886. If anything, the Mac’s screen was a bit cooler and the others warmer. Not bad for a laptop from 2021 with factory calibration only.

Correction and a look?

Of course, you can’t see which LUT is currently loaded and which outputs are activated, since the small box has no screen or lights other than LEDs for power and active connections. Good old adhesive tape and, yikes, handwriting should help. You are free to load any 33 point LUT in .cube format, so it could also be a specific look you want to demonstrate.

The device will accept only one LUT, but if your screen is seriously off without the correction, why not combine the LUTs? DaVinci Resolve can do that even in the free version, but if you don’t have any such software, there is Colorizer.net which can do it online. You’ll need the membership, but it’s a humble single payment of 10,- € for a set of tools serving many more tasks around colour. 

Alternatives

There are other LUT boxes by Blackmagic and other manufacturers, some cheaper and less flexible, some more expensive. But if you want to play out of a computer via HDMI, there’s enough software to do it. Professional NLEs can integrate a LUT for output, or a highly recommended commercial player called Screen by Videovillage, which handles RAW formats, and even the free IINA player will do for non-RAW (both Mac only). Since IINA is based on ffmpeg, you can also use a LUT by command lines. 

The post The Right Colours Without a Computer first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

Fusion already includes DepthBlur, but its handling of Z-depth defocus leaves room for alternatives. Millolab, also known as Emilio, has released ml_ZDefocus, a Fusion macro intended to produce more controllable depth-dependent blur while dealing with the edge artefacts that so often turn a respectable Z-pass into a halo generator.

The macro accepts either depth data stored in the main image’s auxiliary channels or an externally connected depth map. When a Z-buffer is present in the AUX channels, ml_ZDefocus reads it directly from the primary input. Separate maps can be connected through the additional input.

Input images must contain an alpha channel. The Z-buffer must use a normalised range with the far plane represented by a value of 1. Depth maps that do not already meet this requirement can be normalised inside the macro. Controls for working with layered images are located in Fusion’s Common tab.

Focus inspection and Z-buffer processing

ml_ZDefocus can display the incoming depth map after its internal Z-remapping and falloff processing. During forum testing, users requested a clearer indication of the active focus region. Millolab subsequently restored the Sharp Zone display, which visualises the area currently intended to remain sharp.

Highlight controls were added in another update. These provide additional control over bright areas affected by the defocus operation, a useful addition when depth blur starts converting every specular highlight into a small weather system.

The macro also includes edge preprocessing and a Reduce Artifacts function. Version 1 revised the artefact-reduction stage and introduced several interface adjustments. A forum tester specifically noted the usefulness of the edge preprocessing, although that remains an individual assessment rather than a controlled comparison.

Variblur at the centre

The actual blur operation is based on Fusion’s Variblur tool. This means ml_ZDefocus does not support custom blur kernels. Millolab confirmed that this limitation follows directly from the underlying Variblur implementation rather than merely from an omitted interface control.

Z-buffer preparation relies partly on CustomTools. Alternative approaches were tested during development but reportedly performed more slowly. Version 0.2 introduced a small performance improvement, although the macro was still described by one tester as slower than a simpler defocus macro. Millolab stated that further acceleration would require a different method of processing the Z-buffer.

Release status

The development thread is up to Version 1, followed by an Official Release build. An initial official package contained a bug and was replaced, so anyone who downloaded the first release should obtain the reupload. A version 0.1 user manual is also available from the thread. Millolab has mentioned a possible Reactor submission, but no release is confirmed.

The current ml_ZDefocus .setting file and manual can be downloaded from the We Suck Less development thread. As with any community tool, it should be tested on representative shots before being introduced into an active production.

The post Fridays for Fusion: ZDefocus Adds a More Practical Z-Depth Blur first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Manuel Kotulla.

Unreal Engine 5.8 is less about keynote fireworks and more about features that may survive contact with an actual production schedule. For VFX and virtual production teams, the main additions include a production-ready Movie Render Graph, Live Link Hub, MegaLights, Chaos Cloth and Dataflow, plus new MetaHuman crowd, terrain and animation systems.

Movie Render Graph reaches production

Movie Render Graph is now Production-Ready. Its redesigned Queue Window exposes graph-based render settings directly in the interface, while new nDisplay support and per-shot light isolation provide more control over virtual production and final-pixel rendering.

Per-shot light isolation allows individual shots to use different light intensities, colours and other properties without rebuilding the entire lighting setup. The render pipeline has, in other words, discovered that shots are occasionally different from one another.

The new Accumulation Depth of Field system produces film-style focus effects similar to the Path Tracer at a lower time and performance cost. It is designed to reduce common depth-of-field artefacts while working more comfortably with deferred rendering and real-time look-development workflows.

Live Link Hub and MegaLights

Live Link Hub is now Production-Ready and can monitor multiple video sources, synchronise Live Link data and control compatible recording devices over IP from a central interface.

Mocap Manager adds a dedicated facial-animation preview and procedural cameras that can automatically follow captured performances.

MegaLights has also reached Production-Ready status. The system supports large numbers of dynamic, shadow-casting area lights and gains lower noise, improved performance and support for subsurface scattering, translucency, lighting channels and cloud shadows.

Lumen Lite introduces a lower-cost global illumination mode for projects that still require indirect lighting but would prefer to retain some GPU time for everything else happening in the frame.

MetaHumans assemble a crowd

MetaHuman Collections introduces an experimental workflow for creating larger digital crowds. Characters can transition between detailed individual Actors and lower-cost Instanced Skinned Meshes according to camera distance, with Mass handling crowd orchestration and Nanite available where supported.

Epic says the system can scale to hundreds of characters on mobile devices and thousands on higher-end hardware. Existing MetaHuman components, including faces, bodies, hair and clothing, can be combined procedurally to create variation rather than filling every stadium with the same twelve extras in different shirts.

MetaHuman Animator also adds experimental markerless full-body capture from a single external camera. Face and body motion can be recorded together using the Windows-only MetaHuman Animator Markerless Motion Capture plugin, without markers, helmet cameras or a conventional mocap stage.

Mesh Terrain leaves the heightfield

Mesh Terrain is Epic’s experimental alternative to conventional 2.5D heightfield terrain. Because the system uses full 3D meshes, it can represent cliffs, overhangs, tunnels, floating islands and areas with different geometric resolution.

Terrain can be created inside Unreal Editor or imported from external applications, then refined through nondestructive modifiers, sculpting and painting. The system integrates with PCG, Nanite, World Partition and One File Per Actor, allowing procedural environments to remain editable without disconnecting them from their upstream controls.

Heightfields have served nobly, but landscapes are now apparently allowed to contain ceilings.

Character animation and secondary motion

Direct Mesh Controls allow animators to manipulate characters directly on sections of the skeletal mesh through Control Rig, rather than relying entirely on conventional control shapes.

Control Rig Physics has moved to Beta, while the experimental Control Rig Dynamics solver provides a lighter particle-based option for secondary motion such as clothing, hair and tails.

Chaos Cloth and Dataflow

Chaos Cloth and Dataflow are now Production-Ready. Cloth authoring has moved to the Dataflow-based Cloth Panel Editor, while Dataflow gains improved graph evaluation and nondestructive workflows for Chaos Destruction.

Chaos Cloth also supports round-tripping garment assets with Marvellous Designer, reducing the familiar export, reimport and version-checking ritual in which the correct file eventually turns out to be called final_final_07.

Fog and atmospheric effects

Unreal Engine 5.8 introduces experimental Fog Screen Space Scattering for denser smoke, fog and dust. The system simulates multiple light scattering to make atmospheric effects appear softer and more integrated with the surrounding scene.

Unreal Engine 5.8 is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Mesh Terrain, MetaHuman Collections, Direct Mesh Controls and several other additions remain Experimental and should be tested away from active productions, where experimental features traditionally develop their most interesting personalities.

Unreal Engine 5.8 release overview

The post Unreal Engine 5.8 Tidies Up first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the group: SMPTE develops technical documents used across cinema, broadcast, postproduction and media-over-IP systems, and has done so for over 100 years. Its Standards Library covers interchange, transport, metadata, mastering and display workflows rather than one specific DCC application, and builds the foundation and working standards of basically all our current media technology. It’S that big of a deal!

The paywall leaves the building

SMPTE Standards are now freely accessible to the global media technology community. The change covers the complete publsihed catalogue and all future releases. The open library includes Standards, Recommended Practices, Engineering Guidelines and Registered Disclosure Documents. Engineers, developers, manufacturers, integrators, educators and production teams can access the specifications without buying individual documents or holding a membership. This is the first time the Society has opened its entire standards catalogue during its 110-year history.

For working facilities, the benefit is simple. Teams implementing a file format, transport protocol, metadata scheme or interchange specification can work from the actual technical document. They no longer need to rely on summaries, copied excerpts or somebody’s suspiciously ancient PDF from a shared drive.

More than formal paperwork

A “Standard” defines specifications, dimensions or criteria required for effective interchange or interconnection. It can also define functions needed for systems to exchange material correctly.

A “Recommended Practice” covers specifications or methods that facilitate implementation without being required for basic interchange. These documents may define test materials, measurement methods or constraints applied to existing specifications.

An “Engineering Guideline” provides informative technical guidance. It can contain designs, procedures and agreed engineering practice, but it does not contain normative requirements.

A Registered Disclosure Document lets an organisation publish information about a technology, interface, control system or design approach through the Society. An RDD is not a standard and cannot act as a normative reference in an engineering document.

That matters. A disclosed interface and an agreed industry standard are different things, even when a product brochure would prefer everyone to stop asking awkward questions, and just buy the damned thing.

Familiar specifications, easier access

The catalogue contains document suites used throughout professional media production and delivery. Examples? The Interoperable Master Format suite covers component-based masters and related interchange workflows. The SMPTE ST 2110 suite covers professional video, audio and ancillary data transported over managed IP networks.

The recently published documents page lists new documents, revisions and amendments with publication dates. This will not make interoperability automatic. Vendors still need to implement the same requirements correctly, test edge cases and resist creative interpretations of words such as shall. Free access does remove just one avoidable obstacle.

Search first, download second

The library application lets users search the latest document versions. Results can be filtered by document suite, assigned technical committee and document type. They can also be sorted by document number, publication date, suite or title.

Users can select earlier publication dates to inspect previous versions. Superseded editions remain accessible through the document page, while the main search view concentrates on the current verison.

This matters during facility upgrades and forensic troubleshooting. A system installed several years ago may implement an older revision correctly while disagreeing with software built around a newer one. Version history turns that disagreement into a technical comparison instead of a meeting with twelve people and one increasingly abused whiteboard.

Industry money keeps the doors open

The open library receives support from Diamond-level corporate members Amazon Web Services, Apple, Blackmagic Design, Paramount, Disney, Dolby, Fox, Google, Ross Video, Sony and Telstra.

The catalogue itself carries no document purchase price under the new access model. Membership, training, events and other Society activities remain separate from free standards access.

SMPTE Standards and Other Documents

Recently Published Documents

Library App Search

Library App Document Metadata

Library App Bundles

The post SMPTE Opens Its Standards Library first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: EDIUS 11 is a standalone Windows NLE from Grass Valley, paired with the Mync media-management application. It does not require a host DCC.

Fix the export, not your evening

EDIUS 11 Quick Fix Export works in Broadcast edition from build 11.50.20742 onward. Pro and Workgroup do not include it. The workflow modifies selected sections of an existing full-length export. Editors reopen the timeline sequence used for the original file, make the required changes and mark each revised range with duration markers. Marker comments can identify the individual fixes.

The original project must be saved before the operation begins. Both the project and the completed export must remain accessible to the editor. When the exported file has moved, the user must manually select the target file, exporter and output destination.

Quick Fix Export cannot process a full-length file created with Display Timecode or Enable Conversion Processing active. Productions planning to use the function therefore need to choose the correct export settings before generating the first master.

The Quick Fix Export dialog lets editors select the marker colour used for revised video ranges. Audio can follow the video changes or be re-encoded from selected tracks. Choosing None prevents audio re-encoding when the correction does not require it.

Segment encoding determines whether the operation saves time. An exporter without segment-encoding support triggers a complete full-length encode. The feature therefore does not guarantee a partial render with every exporter or delivery format.

Preview controls move between marked revisions, play the current section or loop only the edited range. This gives the operator a chance to inspect each correction before launching the export.

The workflow has more conditions than the phrase quick fix might suggest. It depends on the saved project, the original export settings, accessible media and a segment-capable exporter. Set up correctly, it can replace several marked sections without rebuilding the unaffected programme.

That makes it useful for corrected captions, revised graphics, legal text, end credits and other late changes in long-form or broadcast deliverables. It also makes planning part of the feature. An incompatible first export leaves the editor with the traditional solution, which is watching the progress bar reconsider its life choices.

Transcription stays local

Version 11.50 integrates AI-assisted speech-to-text processing directly into the editor. It supports multiple languages and can turn detected speech into subtitles, text or markers. Processing runs locally. Audio and transcription data do not travel to an external service. That gives productions a simpler route for handling interviews, unreleased material, confidential footage and recordings covered by internal data policies.

Local processing also removes dependence on a working internet connection during transcription. The machine still needs a compatible graphics processor with Vulkan 1.3 support. The generated results can feed an automated subtitles workflow or create timeline markers for navigation. Editors can also produce plain text from spoken material.

That does not turn transcription into editorial judgement. Names, technical vocabulary, accents and poor location sound still deserve human attention. The useful part is getting a first pass without uploading the production audio to somebody else’s server.

Auto-save gets a sharper option

Automatic saving can now overwrite the current project file. The existing backup behaviour remains available. Overwriting the active file reduces the gap between the open project state and the saved project on disk. Backup copies can still preserve earlier states, depending on the selected configuration.

The choice deserves deliberate setup. Overwriting the current file keeps the primary project current, while separate backups protect earlier versions. A production should decide which behaviour fits its recovery policy before editors discover the difference during an actual recovery. Project saving rarely receives an exciting launch video. It usually becomes interesting several seconds after something crashes.

More audio gets through the door

Release 11.50.20977 expands audio import support. The editor can now import 32-bit floating-point audio defined by ISO and IEC 23003-5. The update also accepts high sample rate audio from MP4 files defined by ISO and IEC 14496-12.

Build numbers matter

The initial 11.50 release arrived as version 11.50.20742 on April 23, 2026. It introduced local transcription, effect sorting, the expanded auto-save configuration and Quick Fix Export. Version 11.50.20977 followed on May 19, 2026. It added effect search, linked-clip renaming and the new audio import capabilities. It also fixed several bugs.

That distinction matters when checking a workstation. A system running the first 11.50 build does not automatically contain every function announced under the wider 11.50 label. Editors looking for effect search or expanded audio support need the later 11.50.20977 build.

A cheaper route from another NLE

The new Jump 2 Upgrade is a crossgrade for editors moving from another video-editing application to EDIUS 11. Eligibility depends on the price of the existing software. The alternative application must have cost more than 100 euros, or carry an annual subscription above 100 euros, for the Pro crossgrade. And there are damn few of those…

The Workgroup crossgrade requires an alternative application with a purchase price or annual subscription above 200 euros. Owners of MAGIX Video deluxe also qualify.

The product is available through authorised resellers. The Pro Jump 2 Upgrade cis f 299 euros excluding 19 percent German VAT. The Workgroup Jump 2 Upgrade costs 549 euros. These are recommended prices. Regional taxes, reseller pricing and local availability may differ.

The crossgrade addresses editors who already own another paid NLE and want a permanent licence rather than another annual bill. The standard product site describes the editor as a perpetual purchase with free updates during the life of the current major version.

Three editions, different jobs

There are three different versions: Pro, Workgroup and Broadcast editions. Pro receives the general 11.50 workflow additions, including local transcription and the palette improvements. Workgroup receives those changes and has its own crossgrade tier.

Broadcast alone receives Quick Fix Export. That separation matters for buyers attracted mainly by partial export replacement. Purchasing Pro through the new crossgrade does not provide Quick Fix Export.

EDIUS English homepage

EDIUS German news and release information

EDIUS and Mync 11.50.20742 release notes

The post EDIUS 11.50 Patches Exports Faster first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Brushes, now in orbit

RadialZ places brush thumbnails in a circle around the cursor. Open the menu, move the pen towards a brush and select it with a directional gesture. The idea is pleasantly small: stop travelling across the interface whenever a different brush is needed. During a long sculpting session, those tiny journeys can become a commute. But: RadialZ reorganises access to existing tools. It does not introduce a new brush format or alter stroke behaviour.

And you can create several menus for different tasks. Blocking brushes can live in one wheel, detailing tools in another, and Insert Multi Mesh brushes in their own well-stocked drawer.

Bring your own brushes

The picker supports the standard ZBrush library, custom brushes, vector displacement mesh brushes and Insert Multi Mesh brushes – useful for productions where factory tools rarely remain alone for long. Personal brushes, studio presets and project-specific assets can sit beside the defaults instead of being exiled to another menu.

Made for pen juggling

The utility supports Wacom tablets. Artists can trigger it from a keyboard, left-hand controller or Elgato Stream Deck. The drawing hand stays near the model while the other opens the wheel. Once the directions become familiar, brush selection can rely more on muscle memory and less on remembering whether ClayBuildup was assigned to Shift, Ctrl, Alt or interpretive dance. But too many wheels would recreate the original problem in circular form. Sensible menu design requires adult supervision. So, ask your Colorist or Rigger to help you with that.

Windows only, for now

RadialZ currently requires Microsoft Windows and ZBrush 2026. Earlier releases, macOS and ZBrush for iPad are not supported. That narrow compatibility may rule it out for studios running frozen software builds. But RadialZ is very new, ad compatibility and OS support might widen.

The price?

RadialZ costs $39 USD as a one-time purchase. The licence can be reactivated after moving to another computer. One-Time, no subscription. The developer describes the utility as lightweight and claims it does not affect performance. We’ll see about that, but as a small, helpful tool it is at least worth a try.

RadialZ official website

The post RadialZ Gives ZBrush a Brush Wheel first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Blender is an open-source DCC for modelling, animation, simulation, rendering and compositing.

A Map, Finally

The Blender Roadmap is now the central overview for major projects currently under development and recently completed features. The Blender Foundation is tracking upcoming changes, for studios planning a pipeline, and contributors looking for development work.

That sounds modest. For a large open-source application, it solves a familiar problem. Development information tends to spread across project pages, issue trackers, pull requests, release notes and blog posts. Finding the relevant item can require a working knowledge of the project’s infrastructure before the actual reading even begins. The new overview brings selected work into one place. Each project appears as a card that leads directly to its underlying technical material.

Those destinations can include a project page, issue, pull request or development blog post. The overview therefore acts as an index rather than a replacement for engineering documentation.

Built for Different Questions

Artists, production teams and developers rarely approach a roadmap with the same question. An artist may want to know whether a planned change affects modelling, rendering, animation or another daily workflow. A studio may need enough visibility to decide when to test a coming feature or postpone an upgrade. A contributor may want the issue, project page or pull request where work actually happens.

The Roadmap provides that shared entry point. Visitors can scan the selected porjects at overview level, then open the associated development material without hunting across several services.

It also does not publish schedules, milestones or estimated completion dates in the material. Teams still need to examine each linked project for its current status and technical scope. That restraint is useful. Production planning needs clear status information, but an unfinished feature remains unfinished even when presented in a handsome card.

Curated, Not Exhaustive

The page covers selected major work. It does not attempt to catalogue every activity inside the project. We know that Blender is only getting bigger with each release. Routine development continues outside the featured cards. That includes triage, maintenance, bug fixing, documentation and day-to-day work within individual modules.

Completed Work Belongs Here Too

The Roadmap includes recently completed features alongside ongoing projects. That gives the page value beyond forecasting. Users can also see which selected initiatives have crossed into the completed category without searching through a sequence of older announcements.

The new page should make major work easier to find. But it does not turn software development into a fixed timetable.

https://code.blender.org/roadmap/

The post Blender Roadmap Puts Plans in One Place first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: O3DE is the Open 3D Foundation open source game engine, built around the Atom renderer. It imports FBX assets.

A Release With Two Speeds

O3DE 26.05.0 arrived, and it contains hundreds of patches across the editor, renderer, asset pipeline, build tools and simulation systems. Binaries are available for Windows and Linux, alongside the source code. The release combines maintenance work with an experimental native particle Gem. So far, the particle system carries an explicit warning against production use.

Native Particles, With Caveats

The Open Particle System adds a native particle system for VFX. Its simulation runtime connects directly to Atom, and a dedicated editor handles authoring and previews.

Artists create an effect, save it as a particle asset, add a Particle component to an entity and assign the asset. AutoPlay can start the effect automatically. Playback can also be controlled through scripting.

The system supports sprite, ribbon and mesh particle types. Modules can alter color, force, speed and velocity. Mesh rendering remains unsupported and may cause problems on some platforms. The Gem stays experimental, and production use is discouraged. That warning matters more than teh presence of a mesh option in the editor.

LODs Join the Import Queue

The FBX importer gains an Auto-Generate Missing LODs option. Artists must enable it manually. When a source model lacks some levels of detail, the importer can generate the missing geometry during ingest. The option targets scene prototyping rather than final asset preparation. Import fixes also cover blend shapes, transforms on keyed meshes and the root coordinate system used for animation. A new interface between the Scene API and Assimp prepares the import layer for other libraries.

More Tone Mapping Choices

The Display Mapper gains AgX in Standard, Golden, Punchy and Warm variants. It also adds Khronos PBR Neutral. Both join ACES as tone-mapping choices.

The renderer gains an Unlit material type. Materials now enable emissive mode automatically when an emissive color exists. Scripts can read and set exposure on the Image Based Light component.

Diffuse Probe Grid lighting now includes bounce light from direct lights and emissive sources instead of sky lighting alone. Anisotropic filtering reduces moire patterns. Alternate frame rendering and basic cluster-level acceleration structures arrive for Vulkan. A Deferred Materials feature processor exists behind a setting and starts disabled.

Less Setup, Fewer Excuses

A new graphical tool creates custom C++ components from the File menu. It writes header and source files and registers them with the build system. Entity startup state returns to the Inspector. An entity can begin active or wait for code. The chosen state propagates through descendants, with a bitmask controlling child activation in finer detail.

Price and Availability

O3DE is free and open source. The engine has no license fee or commercial obligation. The default code license is the Apache License 2.0, with the MIT License available as an alternative. Third-party software and assets can carry separate terms.

Pricing is therefore zero for the engine itself. Separate licenses may still apply to external software or assets used in a project. The release is available as binaries for Windows and Linux and as source code. The particle Gem remains experimental despite shipping inside the same package as the production-focused fixes.

O3DE 26.05 release notes

The post O3DE 26.05 Gets Native Particles first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Blender Procedural has assembled more than 50 ready-made setups into a single procedural collection. The pack covers Geometry Nodes effects, simulations, generators and environmental building tools.

The catalogue wanders cheerfully from practical scene construction into visual mischief. It includes city, castle and island builders, plus voxel sand, fluids and foam. Magic trails, swarms, wind effects and bubble wrap occupy the more playful shelves. Painting strokes, mosaics and carousels handle the art department, while fractures, cracks and edge wear wait nearby with tiny procedural hammers. Science-fiction panels, slime and condensation complete the cabinet.

Every setup uses Geometry Nodes. That keeps the collection inside Blenders procedural system rather than introducing a separate simulation package or proprietary graph.

The library takes the scenic route

The bundle itself is an asset library. Users register it manually in the DCC’s Asset Libraries and append node groups by hand. That approach keeps the assets exposed through the host’s standard library workflow, which will suit artists who already organise procedural tools there and do not mind a little administrative gardening.

With more than 50 setups, however, manual browsing can become a small archaeological expedition. It simply has the flavour of filing taxes inside a node editor.

Then the sidebar arrives with biscuits

The separate 50 Procedural Generators Addon V2 packages the same collection behind a sidebar panel. Its main job is not to invent another batch of effects. It removes several manual steps from installing, finding and appending the existing ones.

After installation from a ZIP file, the add-on can register the asset library through an Add Asset Library button. A List Geometry Nodes command loads the available setups into a dropdown. Append to Active Object places the chosen node group on the selected object. Parameters then appear under Geometry Node Settings in the sidebar, which avoids opening the Geometry Node Editor for routine adjustments.

So the library supplies the content. The add-on supplies the doorman, catalogue and helpful trolley. Both lead to the same procedural pantry, but one expects users to fetch their own jars.

This wrapper may matter more than another generator. Asset libraries become less charming when artists cannot remember whether the useful setup lives under Simulations, Environments or Things That Looked Sensible Last Thursday. A searchable dropdown and one-click append operation can reduce navigation, especially during look development or rapid 3D creation.

The sidebar also exposes live controls without demanding an excursion into the full graph. That can help less technical users operate prepared effects, while node specialists retain the underlying setup for deeper changes.

Price of admission

The marketplace currently displays a regular price of USD 29 and a sale price of USD 20.30 for both the asset library and the add-on. Sale pricing can change, so the storefront remains the final number before purchase.

The library lists compatibility with versions 4.0 through 4.5 and a royalty-free licence. The add-on lists versions 4.0 through 5.0 and a GPL licence, with Cycles and Eevee as render engines.

Buying only the library preserves the standard Asset Browser workflow. Buying the add-on adds automated registration, dropdown browsing, direct appending and sidebar controls.

https://superhivemarket.com/products/ultimate-generators-bundle-v2?ref=586

https://superhivemarket.com/products/50-procedural-generators-addon-v2?ref=586

The post Fifty Ultimate Generators Enter the Node Garden first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.