At 3December, Alias|Wavefront announced that they are giving away copies

of their Maya Paint FX plug-in for free. The 3D Paint FX tools will

be present in the next major release of Maya. But as Jill Ramsay,

product manager for Maya and Brush Technologies explained, "We wanted

to make this powerful brush-based technology available to our

customers as part of our 3December celebration, instead of waiting

for the next major Maya release." So for registered users of Maya the

plug-in can be downloaded free of charge from either the 3December or

Alias|Wavefront Website. This means that they can enhance the popular

Artisan tool-set using the plug-in beyond the already successful

Paint Effect technology and can now paint color and bump map details

onto geometry without rendering and switching between programs.