Plugin

The development team by KeyShot did a great job by the new version of KeyShot 3 and now they released updated plugins for KeyShot. They’re now taking your models directly from SolidWorks, Pro/E, Creo, Rhino and SketchUp right into both KeyShot 2 and KeyShot 3. The main feature of all the plugins is that it will allow you to import your models with both the colors you assigned to it and the assembly/group/layer structure you gave it.

Portal exlevel.com offers some free models from their library. You can now use this collection of ready plants in your projects or customize them as necessary.

Exlevel is delighted to offer GrowFX - a new system of modeling and animating plants for Autodesk 3ds Max. It allows you recreate digitally a lifelike 3D model of any plant, from grass and trees to woodland using a refreshingly simple interface and an essential set of parameters that you can set up yourself. 

V-Motion has released Quantum Force, a new plugin enabling RealFlow users to art direct simulations, using forces to ‘sculpt’ the movement of a fluid. Quantum Force offers seven different force modes (indicated with satisfyingly chunky icons in the video above): Accelerate, Push, Pull, Attract, Heat and Filter – the latter of which can be used in two modes depending on whether you use grid cells to store force information. Quantum Force itself is compatible with RealFlow 5 and above, and is available now, price 399$. 

CoreCG has unveiled MentalCore, its production-level rendering plugin for Maya. It is a plugin that provides an alternative to the standard rendering workflow for Maya and Mental Ray. MentalCore allows you to focus on creating great renders in less time, and the shader library provides a wide range of material, texture and utility shaders to help you achieve the look you need. Features include a completely new node-based render pass system, including a viewport preview option or exposure of a number of hidden mental ray features via Render Globals. This release contains a complete colour-management system and shader library and also a number of built-in camera features.