David Sudd takes us through Vicon's latest version of boujou to see how it tracks.

Brad Clark test drives the new Maya Entertainment Creation Suite featuring Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox all in one package with refinements and additions.

Brickyard VFX's Gina Downing provides a first-hand glimpse of how Autodesk Flare's serves as a companion to Flame and Inferno.

Dean Grubb tests the new Houdini 10, which offers Motion FX, an enhanced Python and a few more cool features.

Pixar's stereoscopic gurus discuss the studio's embrace of Up and the Toy Story franchise in Disney Digital 3-D.

This month, Andrew Farago reviews Keith Reynolds Can't Make It Tonight, Shaman, Sweet Dreams and Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death.

This week I received the new 3ds Max 2010. I will be putting it through the paces, paying specific attention to the new additions. As you may have seen in Autodesk's press notes for the product, there are more than 100 new additions to the modeling toolset alone, so I will have lots to cover. 3ds Max 2010 is available as of this week for $3,495 or as an upgrade from 3ds Max 2009 for $895.

As a graduate of Caltech (specializing in physically-based modeling) and former Pixar animation scientist (building the Slinky Dog model for Toy Story, developing lighting technology and working on other software R&D), Ronen Barzel is tailor-made for chairing this year's SIGGRAPH. The 36th annual show will take place in New Orleans (conference: Aug. 3-7; exhibition: Aug. 4-6) at The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Barzel spoke to VFXWorld about what's new this year (including more emphasis on music and audio), the challenges of coping with the economic downturn and what technological advancements are of particular interest.

OK, so you've seen The Seven Samurai, Ran, The Hidden Blade, or one of the many samurai movies out there. Well, forget them! Shigurui redefines the samurai flick.

For Knowing, Animal Logic created realistic disasters, particularly a spectacular plane crash and subway collision along with… the end of the world?