Digital-Tutors released a sneak-peek of a preview of their upcoming new training course called „Introduction to Softimage 2012“. This tutorial gives an in-depth look at all of the fundamentals of Softimage and the latest tools and techniques in the 2012 version. Digital-Tutors instructors will guide you through this course and help you build the foundational skills and vocabulary you’ll need to work within Softimage. This tutorial also focuse on to cover modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, ICE Dynamic, lighting and then rendering your own animation in Softimage.
Autodesk released an updated version of the LayoutTools 2012 for Maya. The LayoutTools are in simple very similar to the Layer system which you can find inside Photoshop. It is a toolset that is widely used for basic layout and assembly of objects within a scene (e.g. building game levels, assembling sets, building out architectural spaces, populating environments with objects, etc...). The new LayoutTools provides new features and functionality with the Maya's existing features and a user friendly interface. One of the new features is support for multiple renders when creating icons including the new Viewport 2.0 renderer and redesigned UI.
With the upcoming release of Vue 10, Paula Sanders published a well explained tutorial about the new feature and discuss there the impact of various factors around Vue 10's new Physical Sea Water and Underwater Caustics. Physical water adds absorption and scattering parameters to allow for realistic light absorption in the body of water. Ocean waves now accurately affect incident light to produce realistic underwater caustics. He is comparing the Default Metawater against the Physical Sea Water and discusses the settings and parameters inside each one.
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.