The Blender Foundation and online developer community released Blender 2.77 with more than 100 of bug fixes and improvements; honestly, this is a quite nice number of changes. Between the most noticeable changes belongs a new Subsurface Scattering algorithm - (Christensen-Burley). The new added Subsurface Scattering algorithm (Christensen-Burley), preserves details much better than the Cubic/Gaussian falloffs and It is the new default falloff for the SSS shader. The new version include GPU support for Smoke/Fire, Point Density (3D textures) and optimize memory usage and performance of Subsurface Scattering on the GPU which at the end results in up to 3x faster SSS renders! As a result of the new changes in GPU rendering, the developers decided to remove the experimental CUDA kernel and make Subsurface Scattering and Correlated Multi-jittered sampling regular features. The user interface and therefore also the workflow was improved too and adds stroke sculpting support to the Grease Pencil, implements OpenVDB caching for both volumetric and smoke simulations, and it now offers a redesigned progress bar, thus completing the design overhaul.

IntegrityWare, Inc. / nPower Software announces the release of a new software platform (Cyborg3D), and three new products developed on that platform: SubD2CAD creates and converts subdivision surfaces into CAD formats. CAD2Print converts CAD formats into high quality STL files for 3-D printing. CAD2Poly converts CAD parts and assemblies into polygonal formats for visualization and gaming applications. For many years the software developed by nPower Software has helped 3D engineers and designers improve productivity through its popular, award winning plugins (Power Surfacing for SolidWorks, Power Translators for 3ds Max / Maya / MODO, Power SubD-NURBS for 3ds Max / MODO, Power NURBS for 3ds Max, etc.) for 3ds Max, Maya, MODO, and SolidWorks. Cyborg3D combines the above mentioned plugins to a new standalone 3D modeling software platform that uniquely combines organic surface modeling (subdivision surfaces) with precise, parametric CAD (NURBS solids & surfaces) modeling. The strength of Cyborg3D comes from its unique, patented technology for converting between organic geometry and precise NURBS geometry, and for calculating and maintaining complex relationships between diverse types of geometry. The new interface is very intuitive and easy to use making the learning process much easier, and empowers users to optimize their productivity. A new accurate conversion technology provides the possibility of processing various formats from diverse 3D modeling systems; it can import and export CAD models (STEP, IGES, SAT) and mesh models (OBJ, STL).

Basefount, a company obsessed with animations, VFX technologies and software development, announced the release of Miarmy 4.5. Miarmy (read My Army) is a Human Logic Engine based Maya plugin for crowd simulation, AI & behavioral animation, creature physical simulation and rendering. Using Miarmy you can create human fuzzy logic network without any programming and node connecting supporting a standard production pipeline, reference, HumanIK and Motion Builder. Using the integration of PhysX: ragdoll, RBD emitters, force field, cloth, wind, fluid, you are able to create awesome crowd VFX using Maya particles, field, fluid and transform. The new version comes with some new special features and improves lots of features already seen in the previous versions of Miarmy. Between the new features belongs a new jump system allowing agents to jump among the trees in the forest. It’s therefore easy to create randomize actions of climb and jump and also allowing us to determine which trees the agents can jump on or not. The best of it at the end, Miarmy 4.5 is free of charge forever.

Few days ago, Sitni Sati has released FumeFX 4.0 for Autodesk's Maya platform. FumeFX is a fluid dynamics engine designed for simulation and rendering of realistic fire, smoke, explosion and other gaseous phenomena. Basically, if you want to put something on fire, this is the tool for it. The engine features a very intuitive and robust workflow making it a perfect solution for the most demanding tasks in the computer graphics industry. The core engine allows user to interfere with simulation computation at the lowest level. It’s available for both Autodesk’s 3ds max and Maya. The new version offers many new features that help simulations to run faster and with more detail. Between the new features belongs QCG solver which is up to twice as fast as the CG solver found in FumeFX 3.0. Along with other enhancements and simulation optimizations, FumeFX 4.0 is generally faster in all kind of simulation present inside the engine than the previous versions.

New vorticity type has additional control over vortices which helps user to fine tune the final result. The highly optimized Spline Follow force field allows various special effects that were impossible before. A new Black-body radiation shader and new burning model that includes Oxygen has been built-in for achieving realistic fire and explosion animations. Additional sharpening options directly at render-time will bring out maximum possible detail from your existing caches. An optimized and fully multithreaded cache pre-processing will result in significant time savings across the render farms.