Chaos Group announces the new and significantly improved version of their grid-based simulator Phoenix FD. Phoenix FD is a powerful tool for fluid simulations. Aimed to meet the needs of VFX artist to simulate fire, smoke, explosions as well as liquids, foam and splashes, it has now become universal simulation software for every production house. Phoenix FD offers exceptional flexibility and speed. With an adaptive grid, complete interactivity, a GPU accelerated preview and a fully multi-threaded displacement algorithm it stands out as one of the top solutions for fluid simulations in the visual effects industry. It supports Max platforms 9 – 2012.

Pixologic announced the release of ZBrush4 R2b in in the second half of December 2011 as an free update for all registered users. According to Pixologix the release of ZBrush4 R2 was tested by their users on many different system configurations and workflow, by this they found 'rough corners' which we would like to polish. Even that the patch should fix issues with the new features found in ZBrush4 an official announcement of fixes is not available yet.

4 new blender features were added to trunk. Most of Blender users have probably heard rumors of these features for a while, but now they are finally available to play with. These features are significant andopen the new ways in using Blender in the future.

Cycles- New improved rendering engine, more realistic renders

Cycles is a completely new way of rendering in Blender that produces far superior results to the outdated internal renderer. Bounce lighting, caustics and glass are now available as standard without any messing around. Cycles will eventually replace the internal rendering engine, becoming the standard that every Blender user will soon use.

GenArt releases the newest version of Sapphire to include support for Apple Final Cut Pro 7, The Foundry Nuke, Sony Vegas, and other open effects (OFX) systems.  With this release, Sapphire v6 is available on all major editing systems to give editors, motion graphic artists, and compositors the flexibility to create high-quality visual effects for their projects in less time.  The GenArts SolutionTM now powers Sapphire across all platforms to deliver the optimum combination of high-quality effects, contemporary VFX looks, and professional expertise in a single solution.