CGI News & Updates — This Week in 3D
hello guys and welcome to cgi news and updates, there’s plenty this week from live gaussian splats, ai assisted animation, dlss 5 in 3d rendering, superhive introducing addon subscriptions, photoshop 3d and a lot more
Superhive Introduces Addon Subscriptions
https://superhivemarket.com/?ref=311
lets begin with superhive’s rollout of addon updates, the blender addon marketplace is rolling out a new update structure where there will no longer be lifetime support for addons, instead customers will have to pay for updates on a yearly basis, this means say you buy my addon true image editor, you own the version you bought forever but any future updates after one year you will have to buy, this has been met with mixed reactions from the customer base and addon developers, the reasoning behind this is that while lifetime support is great for customers, it also increases the chances of addons being abandoned by their developers since there is no incentive to keep them updated, i mean look at blender’s simulation and rigid body tools, they have not been updated in years, there are talks to revise the whole thing, so this is a space to keep watch of.
Live Gaussian Splats Are Here
starting with live gaussian splats, these point clouds are quite versatile aren’t they, from replacing photogrammetry, supporting video playback and now live streams, this is going to change live streaming, especially for live performance, you are not stuck with what the director wants you to see, you can take a walk around the performer, around the stage and beyond, this setup is by gracia.ai and they have shown a behind the scenes of the setup they use to record the realtime splats, while the setup is not exactly mobile or portable, it’s less than what i would have imagined, it includes a dozen smartphones on a stand capturing different angles, if you need full 360 degree coverage, you do need to add more stands but i’m sure this combined with ai generation means you will likely need less and less as the tech grows.
DLSS 5 in 3D Rendering
dlss 5 is here, and the gaming community has mixed views about it, in contrast, the blender community was amazed by it and could not wait to get their hands on it, and now the houdini community is getting the same treatment, tech demos that may never amount to anything, it seems dlss 5 is coming to houdini but since promises for it coming to blender were made even earlier i would not hold my breath, it does cut render times by nearly 90% if there is no movement and turns any path tracing rendering engine like cycles into a realtime render engine, it kind of does the same for gaming, but on top of that it also uses ai to relight frames, add shadows, makeup, and detail that was not there, obviously a lot of artists and gamers did not like this because it completely changes the original design of the game and already the hashtag ai slop filter has been used to describe dlss 5, and the memes are relentless, the biggest fear is that it’s going to make games look the same and in other cases look completely different on different hardware since dlss is only on nvidia cards, even when other cards offer similar technology it’s very unlikely that the side by side results will look identical, moving on.
AI Animation in Cascadeur
cascadeur is bringing unlimited ai generation to artists, everything is done on your machine, no tokens no credits, no cloud. if there is any place where a lot of artists are comfortable using ai it’s in animation, obviously not all animation, mostly the repetitive parts like walk cycles, run cycles, and cascadeur’s ai promises to do even more than that, you can throw out your mixamo logins and motion capture suit now, because here you just type the action you want and you get it in seconds with unlimited variations.
Instamat Update
https://instamaterial.com/?theme=dark#pricing
moving on, a new version of instamat was released a few days ago, this comes at a time where artists are looking for alternatives to quixel mixer which was shut down by epic games a month ago, fortunately instamat is not just a good alternative it’s actually better with more features than quixel mixer, it comes with a graph editor similar to substance designer that you can use to make procedural materials, a materializer that converts any image into pbr texture, a painting workflow that is nearly a copy of substance painter, and a pbr mixer works exactly like quixel mixer so in one free package you get substance painter, designer, materializer and quixel mixer
Twinmotion
if you can stand offline rendering but hate working with unreal engine and eevee is too slow for you, then twinmotion might be exactly what you need, it sits between applications like blender and unreal engine, it’s simple, realtime and comes with a large library of assets, and like most epic games tools it’s also free to use if you make under 1 million dollars in revenue.
JangaFX Artist Assistance Program
speaking of people not making a lot of money or any at all, jangafx the makers of embergen, liquigen and other products are giving away their software to artists who have been laid off or are struggling to find work, they did this last year supporting over 100 artists to update their portfolios after being laid off by giving them free access to all their tools at no charge, seeing how much the program was helping struggling artists, they have extended their assistance program to be a permanent part of their business, giving us one more reason to love their products even more, though i wonder how they are verifying layoffs here, because of course some people will try to cheat and abuse the system, either way it’s really great to see such programs in the community.
Photoshop Goes 3D
photoshop goes 3d, in their new update photoshop introduced a feature where you can change the rotation and angle of any object, it does not matter what, cats, people, objects, just select it, generate the 3d version and rotate it in any way you want, and this supports different styles from vector drawings, stylized renders, 3d renders and more, it does not end at rotating the object, it also relights the object, adds shadows and corrects the color, but of course demos are different from real use, and users have shown the feature fail sometimes, if you are using a pirated version of photoshop, so long soldier because all ai features go through their website, which first verifies your account, i guess they somehow managed to break piracy, i don’t know where this leaves stock image websites like adobe stock and shutterstock because most images they sell come with versions in different angles at an extra cost
Addons — New & Updated
Flip Fluids
https://superhivemarket.com/products/flipfluids?ref=311
flip fluids have had some amazing updates including a new custom force field system designed specifically for popular fluid effects, they use volume forces for forming liquid shapes giving artists more control, there is also a new color mixing plugin added to generate vibrant multi color liquid effects and more.
Arborea
https://superhivemarket.com/products/arborea?ref=311
the arborea library is also growing with new premium nature assets and procedural tools for 3d environments in blender, it’s now at 769 assets and counting.
True Image Editor
https://superhivemarket.com/products/true-image-editor?ref=311
true image editor also got a ui and workflow update introducing procedural textures like noises, voronoi, waves that can help in creating masks, a new drag and drop feature for importing images easily into the canvas, a new material workflow, and more
Final Thoughts
and thats it thanks for watching see you in the next one
