ICE Edge has launched the first ever ICEvision competition right here on Sketchucation! They have worked closely with their friends at 3Dconnexion who have very kindly supplied some fantastic prizes for you to literally get your hands on. Grand prize: 3DConnexion SpacePilot™ PRO mouse ($409.99 USD value) & an additional three-month [...]

The Open Beta of Thea Render has finally been launched as has been posted on the Thea Render website. As you may know, the development of Thea Render started a while ago (see our “related artickles” below) and now has come the moment when it si finally released for beta testing to the public. The [...]

In collaboration with MEDIARS, Inglobe Technologies will sponsor the 2nd International Workshop on Interactive Media Art, Technology, Cultural Heritage to be held in Contigliano, Italy from July 10 to 23, 2010.
Inglobe will donate the Augmented Reality plug-in for Google SketchUp ($ 100 license value) to each participant at the full program.
CALL [...]

As was announced today, the new, second beta of Podium 2 had just been released. This build represents a stable code base where all features are working, although some may need some modification before final release. There will be additional features as well. V2 uses a new, higher-quality render engine. [...]

Render Plus is launching a new IRender nXt rendering contest. It starts on Feb 15, 2010, and will run until March 15, 2010. Results will be announced on March 30, 2010. You do not need to own IRender nXt, Render Plus will provide a free copy during the contest.
This years contest is [...]

The winner of the latest Speed Modelling Challenge was Kostas (”kostas_designer”) with the above entry (see larger version in his original forum post). Well deserved glory, congratulations!

As developer Jernej Vidmar has just announced, a new version of Modelur, a revolutionary 3D application for parametric urban design, has been released. Version 0.2.2 brings some serious performance optimizations (i.e. 10-50 times faster opening of large models) and fixes some minor issues. It is also available in Chinese now, thank to Huaqiao [...]

A new version (1.8) of LighUp, the realtime rendering plugin for SketchUp, was released as developer Adam Billyard has just announced in the SketchUcation Community Forums. The  new version that introduces the first in a series of GPU-based features like adjusting Exposure, Contrast, Saturation and Temperature all inside SketchUp during realtime navigation.
Other features include:

Realtime [...]

Not even a fortnight ago, forum member Jack B. Erhart – aka “Jax” or “Jaxcoffee” after his Coffee House and Roastery in Paso Robles CA – started a project; to model all existing Carnegie Libraries in the US. As a first step, he started with his home sate of California and already three members of [...]

As Whaat (Dale Martens), author of the plugin announced, Skindigo 2.2 for the rendering application Indigo 2.2 has just been released. Usability has been greatly improved along with integration with the Indigo material database. Main features are

Integrated Indigo Material Database Search
Sun Position Override Tool
New Color Picker Interface for Emitter Color
Custom Light Layer Names
Save Custom [...]