Autodesk has taken the wraps off of 3ds Max 2012, the next major upgrade of its professional modeling, animation and rendering suite. One planned improvement is the switch to a new, multithreaded graphics engine, claimed to improve both speed and quality. The engine should better exploit modern GPUs and CPUs.
E-on has launched a public beta of its new EcoSystem-based 3D plug-in, Carbon Scatter. The plug-in renders mental rays and V-rays for 3ds Max, creating complex populations of native instancing with high detail. It supports automated smart scattering, placing objects according to the relief of the underlying geometry, and it can paint objects and plants with EcoPainter, the EcoSystem painter tool. Carbon Scatter offers advanced EcoSystem controls, allowing for complex nature painting that accounts for variables such as slopes, altitude and plant sizes. Fractal noise and bitmapping can be used to control distribution, while time can be factored in as well.
Developer Luxology has announced a upcoming COLLADA plug-in for its imminent 3D rendering suite, modo 401. COLLADA is an XML scheme, used to ensure that art output created with one program can be edited by another, where normally filetypes would be incompatible. The plug-in will support layered transform stacks, and text profiles of modo items, channels and animation envelopes.
