The bots are back in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and ILM tells Bill Desowitz how it rose to the challenge of animating and getting superior performances.

Vfx vet Kevin Mannens tells us what distinguishes his new production-based online school for TDs from its competitors.

Bill Westenhofer talks about raising the dino bar for Rhythm & Hues in this new take on the old Sid & Marty Krofft series with Will Ferrell on the loose.

Matt Jacobs of Tippett Studio divulges what it was like opening up hell for the new Sam Raimi shocker. Includes major spoiler images.

In the latest excerpt from Maya Plugin Power, author Mark Jennings Smith explains liquid simulations using Next Limit's RealFlow plug-in.

ILM has moved beyond making great photoreal robots and on Terminator Salvation a more efficient and accurate toolset was created for shading, lighting and redering.

Three years ago, the first Night at the Museum turned to Rhythm & Hues to create its fantastical CG characters. From a playful T. Rex skeleton to talking Easter Island heads, the crew was charged with the responsibility of bringing the exhibits of New York's American Museum of Natural History to life after hours. Now, with the sequel, Battle of the Smithsonian, the plot expands to include the entire Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and Rhythm & Hues has returned to significantly up the stakes.

eyeon Founder Steve Roberts discusses the immense challenge of efficiently tracking, visualizing and managing data and metadata throughout the entire post-production/vfx pipeline.

The VFX stakes were raised for this race against time, Vatican thriller, and Alain Bielik has the scoop.

Star Trek's lead creature designer discusses coming up with Big Red and Polarilla along with a few other surprises.

Mitch Suskin and his vfx team brought a greater sense of reality to the fantasy world of Lost this past season.

Terrence Masson discusses how he's a vfx supervisor in reverse on UFO Hunters.

Read how ILM was tasked with putting Star Trek on vfx steroids for J.J. Abrams' bold re-imagining.

In the latest excerpt from Maya Plugin Power, author Mark Jennings Smith shows us how to use RenderMan with Maya.

The origin of Logan becoming Wolverine required a myriad of vfx by 17 vendors, and here are the highlights.

Lots of sci-fi, the return of a beloved franchise and a wizard named Harry and plenty of robots are part of our summer sneak peek.

London-based Men-From-Mars cranked out 1,454 shots with only a team of 30 for Mutant Chronicles. We find out how they did it.

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.

A mere month after the end of Battlestar Galactica, Universal offers the unrated pilot to prequel Caprica on DVD, and Tara Bennett gets the scoop from VFX Supervisor Gary Hutzel.