New 3D software released this week!

Vue 10 is now officially available from E-on Software with several new features to improve on its predecessor, including:

• Spline and Road Tools – for EcoSystems, terrain effects, building roads and creating objects. The automatic path-finding algorthm can also be used to build realistic roads and the surface of terrains
• Dynamic Rocks – a library of dynamic rock templates can be used to instantly create single rocks, groups of rocks, or used in EcoSystems. Each time you create a rock from a template, a new and unique variation will be generated!
• Physical Transparency and Water Shaders – Physical Transparency adds absorption and scattering paramters to allow for realistic light absorption in water, while ocean waves can now accurately affect incident light to create realistic underwater caustics
• Render Comparison – a new render display dialogue lets the user stack and compare previous renders, and use HDR difference tools for in-depth analysis. Lightweight render clones can also be created to test various post-production effects without altering the original
• EcoSystem Phase and Lean-out Control – individually control the phase (animation offset) of animated elements inside the EcoSystem populations to create more natural animations
• Terrain Editing improvements – you can now precisely view the active zones when painting with a brush that has Environment Constraints applied. The new Custom 3D Terrain brush has also been added to the brush collection. Material painting has also been markedly improved, and a new Strata3D node has been added for the creation of realistic canyon walls and stratified rock formations. Plus more!
• Edge-based Anti-aliasing – the new edge-based anti-aliasing algorithm is added to complement the previous colour-based anti-aliasing strategy

Improved depth of field and motion blur, plus up to 30% faster rendering speed add to this impressive list of Vue 10 features and improvements. Vue 10 is available now in two packages for 3D artists:

• Vue 10 xStream
• Vue 10 Infinite

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Maxwell Render 2.6 hit the streets this week with a free update for Maxwell Render 2.x clients, and featuring many exciting new features and improvements for achitects, designers, engineers and VFX artists. New in 2.6, we have:

• Hair rendering – the new procedural primitive for rendering hair is compatible with most popular hair systems, including Shave & Haircut, Maya Hair, Max Hair, Ornatric and Cinema Hair
• Particle rendering – the new procedural primitive for particles is compatible with most popular particle systems, including RealFlow particles, Maya particles and 3ds Max
• Support for Vector displacement
• Motion blur – hugely improved and much faster!
• Referenced MXS files – it’s now possible to load references of MXS files in your main scene, which are added only at render time, dramatically reducing export times – especially for animations – and reducing scene transfer times when network rendering
• Support for referenced materials has been added
• Scripting – Maxwell Render SDK now includes a standalone Python editor and scripting examples
• Displacement – a new, faster displacement algorithm has been added

Other major enhancements include improvements in image processing, filtering and aliasing, with faster image generation and a new interactive parameter to control the aliasing. Check out the full features list for Maxwell Render 2.6 to find out more.