Sometimes photoreal is too real. Artists need options, clients want choices, and ideas rarely fit under one umbrella. And that`s can be found in Luxology’s^® NPR Kit for modo — a non-photorealistic rendering package that allows expressive, hand-drawn looks and animations to be achieved in 3D renderings. With this new all-in-one kit, modo 601^® users will now be able to access classic art styles when rendering anything from product visualizations to anime and fine art.

The first update to the new stable version of GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is released. The update brings several dozens of fixes to various issues of all scales. Most notorious bugs fixed are: not being able to remember JPEG saving options, slow canvas redraw, not showing page setup options on Windows. There's also a workaround for the bug that used to cause showing incorrect file size values on Windows.

Additionally developers did a lot of work to make a native build of GIMP for Mac a possibility. The official GIMP.app will be available soon

Allegorithmic releases the latest version of its popular non-linear texture and material processing software. With the addition of 2D painting utilities, and new batch processing tools that can automate away the most tedious of tasks, Substance Designer has become an even more potent ally to developers working on every type of game project, from mobile and web, to the next generation of AAA games.

Autodesk has announced new extensions for Autodesk Maya 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 3D animation software, which are included in the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites 2013. Available to users with active Subscription contracts, the extensions will help artists create more sophisticated physical simulations, and move data more easily through complex pipelines.