DreamScape is a sophisticated set of Max plugins for creating and rendering realistic landscapes, seascapes, skies, clouds, outdoor lighting and more.

In contrast to other terrain creation tools for Max, DreamScape Terra uses new rendering technologies that occupy much less of your computers memory (RAM) making it possible to render large detailed terrains on even a modest system. An intuitive and friendly user interface will allow you to easily tweak terrain properties, interactively paint elevation, and even to apply erosion effects. DreamScape's Terra also allows importing standard DEM, SDTS and Terragen files. The possibilities are unlimited.

DreamScape's Sea Material is here to help you render very realistic sea surfaces including reflections, refractions, bump mapping, foam and underwater scenery. Sea Material is applied to the SeaSurface object that is powered by advanced FOV-based mesh creation algorithms. By using this method it is possible to render huge seascapes that are 'RAM friendly' as well. SeaSurface can create realistic water patterns and motion based on the oceanographic studies and observations.

DreamScape v1.0 is available for Max 3.1 and 4, and costs $495.

Chaos Group have announced the full feature list and pricing for VRay, their rendering plugin due for release February 2002. You can see the full feature list here.

There will be a 30% discount for the first 30 days to everyone, and for those who wish to pre-order a package before it officially ships, Chaos Group will provide 40% discount.

Absolute Character Tools (ACT for short) is a complete suite of plugins and technology to extend Max with advanced muscle and skin deformation tools for creating the most realistic character animations possible. It is also a complete, extensible, foundation technology designed to support a vast range of advanced character animation features in the future. In addition to including a whole set of plugins it also ships with no less than 9 deformation and dynamics engines that work within 3 plugin systems within ACT itself.

Through ACT, you can easily simulate simple tasks such as muscles bulging, you can add muscular detail to models easily, and you can even simulate difficult items such as skin sliding over muscles or simulate fat under the skin through the use of built in dynamics in the muscles themselves.

ACT is available for Max 4 and is on offer for the special introductory price of $995 (list price $1295). At the moment, no demo version is available.

This filter allows you to stamp your embossed image into every frame of an animation, similar to TV station ID's.

Di-O-Matic has reached an agreement with Yulsoft to provide Max users with a fantastic technology package at an irresistible price. Starting today and for a limited time period, Fatlips3D 2.0 and Morph-O-Matic can be purchased as a bundle for $795 (a saving of $199!) from Di-O-Matic's corporate web site.

Click the links for more information on Fatlips3D and Morph-O-Matic.

The HDRI Bitmap I/O plugin is used for reading and writing HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image) files in Radiance Picture format (*.hdr, *.pic).

I have no idea what's changed in v1.13b, as the readme files are still from last weeks version, but if I find out, I'll let you know.

Changes for v1.13 are:
- New checkbox in the Options panel to auto-unload plugins after exporting.
- Saved settings are now automatically loaded.
- The internal material limit has been removed.
- and much more...

Changes for v0.2.26c include:
- This is exactly the same as v0.2.26b, except that it resets the timelock so the renderer will work for another 60 days.

ArchVision are offering a free version of their RPC plugin, plus content, for a limited time.

You need to register at RPC.net to download the plugin, for full details go to the offer page.

EASYnat is a plant growth simulator capable of reproducing at a botanically coherent level, growth and seasonal changes among more than 500 plants from 5 continents.

Created from AMAP technology that was developed by the CIRAD, EASYnat uses both computer science and botany to achieve its end. Plants are calculated from a virtual seed containing an expression of their genetic information. EASYnat can therefore rapidly and instantaneously model botanically coherent plants that are photo-realistic.

EASYnat is available for Max 4 and costs $1100, including 10 plants of your choice. Additional plants are available for $100 - $150. A demo version is available here.

Sitni Sati have revealed the full feature list for their upcoming DreamScape plugin, scheduled for release this month.

The package consists of 9 plugins:
- DreamScape atmospherics
- DreamScape SubSurface atmospherics
- SunLight
- Terra object
- Terrain texmap
- SeaSurface object
- Sea Material
- Composite texmap
- Noise texmap.

Full details are available here.

Changes for v0.10.02011401 are:
- Fixed a bug in the stochastic motion blur sampler that caused improper rendering of transparent materials
- Fixed a bug that caused artifacts with fast rotating motion blurred objects
- Added a parameter for the number of geometry samples per frame for motion blur
- Added the possibility for reusing the irradiance map for faster fly-through animations
- Added loading and saving of irradiance maps

Digimation, Inc are offering their new Lume Tools Collection 1 v1.0 for a special price of $195 instead of $295 until the end of January. There is also a special offer price of $150 for owners of SeaScape or Digital Nature Tools, also until the end of January.

Collection 1 includes ocean, water, wet, submerge, and landscape shaders. Used in concert or independently, they can produce amazing animated bodes of water with correct reflective and refractive qualities both above and below the surface. The Landscape shader gives users unparalleled control over how their land masses are rendered from a material standpoint. In addition, Lume Tools also contains a Stain shader, which lets you use the intersection between a stain object and another object to define a new material on the non-stain object. This enables you to create wet and dry areas on a single object with ease.

Overall, Lume Tools provides you with many features that can be combined in many different ways to create thousands of realistic natural effects. Lume Tools also works very well with other Max plugins such as SeaScape and Digital Nature Tools.

Lume Tools Collection 1 is available for Max 4. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v0.10.02011002 are:
- Fixed a problem with shading of non-uniform scaled objects
- Motion blur is now supported
- Fixed a severe memory leak in the adaptive image sampler
- Fixed crash with translucency and irradiance map used together

Di-O-Matic have teamed up with Third Wish Software to enable direct import of Magpie Pro lip-sync files in the next version of Morph-O-Matic.

The Lume Tools Collection 1 is a series of shaders that provide a wide range of tools and natural effects for the Max scanline renderer. First developed for the softimage platform and in conjunction with the artist and animators of Cyan, Inc., for use in RIVEN, the sequel to the hit CD-ROM game MYST, the LumeTools collection provides highly realistic natural effects for real world 3D Productions.

This collection includes ocean, water, wet, submerge, and landscape shaders. Used in concert or independently, they can produce amazing animated bodes of water with correct reflective and refractive qualities both above and below the surface. The Landscape shader gives users unparalleled control over how their land masses are rendered from a material standpoint. In addition, Lume Tools also contains a Stain shader, which lets you use the intersection between a stain object and another object to define a new material on the non-stain object. This enables you to create wet and dry areas on a single object with ease.

The Lume Tools Collection is available for Max 4 and costs $295. A demo version is available here.

J. Antonio Amblés, author of the LightMesh plugin, has posted some AVI's demonstrating his new plugin project, a liquid simulator. The plugin is still in very early alpha stage, but the AVI's are impressive. You can see them here.

Dimension Design Animation Group have posted a great tutorial showing how to make trees using their Shag:Fur plugin. The tutorial, written by Dimitar Tzvetanov, can be downloaded here.

Here's wishing all visitors to this site a great New Year. All the best, Dave