Maxon announced today immediately availability of a new plugin for Adobe® After Effects® CS5 and CS5.5 that allows motion graphics artists to export projects directly into Cinema 4D R13. According to Maxon this new plugin will allow the domination of Cinema 4D’s as the industry-leading 3D motion graphics toolkit with seamless connectivity to popular 2D motion graphics and compositing tools. The export using the new plugin will appear directly inside After Effects® containing 3D layers, cameras, lights, solids, nulls and footage. All major layer attributes are included in the export including animations (rotation, position, parameter, anchor points, POI, etc.).

Laurent Renaud has updated his popular scripts earlier made for Reactor now for Autodesk 3DsMax 2012 MassFX. The scripts are simple for destruction and explosion and you can compare them to a simply version of RayFire tools. The tools enable artists to create simple animated shattering effects by adjusting few simple parameters. The firs of the scripts Kaboom i used for „destruction“ objects and the second Krumbler for animated „destructions“ like collapsing bridges for example. Booth are free for download and so far in alpha stage.

Maskarad is a automatic markerless facial performance capture software for Windows. If you are creating games or producing a movie, this software lets you eaisily create expressive, realistic facial animations from video. Maskarad autotmaticly converts the detials of the actor to animation data and this can be used in your favorite 3D program, like 3dsmax, Lightwave, maya, Softimage and MotionBuilder. Maskarad uses state-of-the-art technology to automatically locate and track head motion as well as facial expressions and precise lips movements. 

Tree C Technology has released a new version of VR4MAX, its virtual reality content-creation plug-in for 3ds Max. Thie release includes great new features, like  the Atmosphere System and a LUA Script Engine. Atmosphere System allows you to add realistic stunning  and weather conditions, including clouds, precipitation and wind. The LUA script engine provides a flexible way to perform custom actions that involve logical reasoning and allows you to reuse the defined functions with no effort. This version will be able to download soon.