Unreal Engine 5.8 Now Available

Epic Games has officially released Unreal Engine 5.8, continuing to push real-time 3D creation forward with updates aimed at filmmakers, game developers, and virtual production teams.

This latest version focuses on improving efficiency, scalability, and visual fidelity while refining the tools artists rely on every day.

Key Highlights

• Improved performance and stability across large-scale projects, helping teams work more efficiently with complex scenes
• Enhancements to Nanite and Lumen for more realistic lighting and geometry handling in real time
• Expanded virtual production toolset, making in-camera VFX and LED stage workflows more flexible
• Updates to animation and rigging tools for smoother character workflows
• Better interoperability and pipeline integration, supporting modern content creation workflows

Built for Real-Time Creativity

Unreal Engine 5.8 continues Epic’s focus on bridging high-end visuals with real-time performance. Whether you’re building immersive environments, producing cinematic content, or developing interactive experiences, the update delivers tools designed to streamline production without sacrificing quality.

Get Started

Unreal Engine 5.8 is available now as a free download. You can explore the full release details and start working with the latest version today.

The post Unreal Engine 5.8 Released: Faster Performance, Better Nanite & Lumen appeared first on .

Sound Radix Summer Solstice Sale
25% Off All Products – ENDS JUNE 22

To celebrate the longest day of the year, Sound Radix is offering 25% off all their audio products. Sale ends June 22, 2026.

Sale ends: June 22, 2026

Save now

Maxon 40th Anniversary Sale
40% off New Individual Annual Subscriptions – Ends June 28, 2026

Maxon is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a rare opportunity to save 40% on new annual subscriptions to Cinema 4D, Red Giant, Redshift, ZBrush, or Maxon One.

Sale ends: June 28, 2026

Save now

iZotope Summer Sale – Ends June30, 2026

Shop the iZotope Summer sale for deals on creative tools for technicolor tracks. Go from dull mix to vibrant masterpiece with deals from $25. Plus, get the Limited Time Creative Effects bundle for only $99, featuring Plasma, FXEQ, Vocalsynth 2, Trash, Neoverb.

Sale ends: June 30, 2026

Save now

The post Summer Sales at Toolfarm – What’s on Sale Now! appeared first on .

The fine print:

* Renewals, RLM, Floating (including Teams Floating), and Educational/Classroom licenses are NOT included.
* New Teams licensing IS included in the sale. For Teams licenses, please contact sales@toolfarm.com.
* Customers needing five or more licenses of any Maxon product must purchase Teams licensing.
* The promotion applies only to new annual subscriptions and does not apply to renewals.
* Sale of Maxon products is excluded in China
* Sale ends June 28th, 2026.

The post Maxon 40th Anniversary Sale: 40% off New Individual Annual Subscriptions thru June 28, 2026 appeared first on .

Make 3D trails behind moving layers in After Effects

The trails are composed of 3D copies, or “echoes”, of the Leader layer. The preset can be applied to shape layers, solids, text, footage, or precomp layers. When applied to footage or precomps, you can choose to freeze each echo’s timecode or allow it to play normally. Alternatively, you can apply a “progressive delay” to create wavy, flowing movements along the trail. Each echo initially inherits the Leader layer’s transform properties, and with the built-in controls, you can customize the trails to twist, drift, and fade in captivating ways.

Compatible with After Effects 2022+

Get the Freebie

The post Freebie: Echo Trail from Creation Effects appeared first on .

Compatibility: SketchUp 2026, SketchUp 2025, SketchUp 2024, SketchUp 2023, SketchUp 2022

The post Freebie: Simplify Your Workflow with Solid Inspector² for SketchUp appeared first on .

Check out our other Top 5 Under $100 posts for more great deals:

• Top 5 Under $100 – After Effects Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – Audio Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – Avid Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – Final Cut Pro Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – Premiere Pro Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – DaVinci Resolve
• Top 5 Under $100 – Maya Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – 3ds Max Plug-ins
• Top 5 Under $100 – Photoshop Plug-ins

Shop all products for $100 or less

Video Copilot Pro Shaders 2

Unleash the power potential within Element 3D with 300+ Tiled Materials

With Video Copilot Pro Shaders 2, easily bring your 3D creations to life with a huge selection of 300+ realistic materials. From metal and plastic to stone, plaster, fabric, and concrete – now you have everything needed for an ultra-realistic result! Create creative surfaces that make what you dream up come alive in Element 3D!

MSRP: $99.95  Toolfarm Price: $94.95

Learn More | Purchase Pro Shaders 2

Video Copilot Pro Shaders for Element 3D and Cinema 4D

200 Tiled Materials for Element 3D. Metal, Plastic, Translucent, Fabric, Concrete, and More!

Transform your 3D modeling projects with Video Copilot Pro Shaders! Give any object in Element or other applications a realistic look and feel – reflective ice, concrete textures that pop, glossy metal surfaces – all of this can easily be achieved. With 200 tiled materials to choose from you’ll have no trouble finding the perfect finish for whatever project is next on your list.

MSRP: $99.95 Toolfarm Price: $94.95

Learn More | Purchase Pro Shaders

Lasse Lauch AEC4D PRO

The most advanced Cinema 4D to After Effects importer.

AEC4D PRO is the most advanced C4D -> AE Importer, compatible with C4D R17 – 2026 & AE CS6 – 2026

AEC4D-PRO optimizes the workflow between Cinema 4D and After Effects.

Compatibility:

• After Effects 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, CC 2019, CC 2018, CC 2017, CC 2015.3, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC, CS6
• Cinema 4D 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, S26, R25, S24, R23, S22, R21, R20, R19, R18, R17

MSRP: $39.99

Learn More | Purchase AEC4D Pro   Try it for free!

Kengo Ito Motion Manager

Animation Plugin for Cinema 4D

Motion Manager enhances the efficiency of animation workflows in Cinema 4D. It is packed with features to speed up keyframing, such as copying and pasting easing, creating bounce and elastic animations, live preview, and more.

Compatibility:  Cinema 4D 2025, 2024, 2023, S26, R25, S24

MSRP: $29.00

Learn More | Purchase Motion Manager  Try it for free!

3DToAll MaxToC4D

From 3ds Max to Cinema 4D with ‘2 clicks’.

MaxToC4D is a plugin to transfer 3DsMax current scene to C4D with 2 clicks, solving common problems between import/export automatically, to get the best results in the fastest way and with the less effort possible.  This plugin will make your life easier, speed up your production, and bring you a new world of possibilities.

Compatibility: 

• Windows Only
• 3DsMax supported versions: 2015 to 2026
• Cinema 4D supported versions: R17 to 2026

MSRP: $19.00  Toolfarm Price: $18.05

Learn more | Purchase MaxToC4D

Runners Up

Pixel Lab Aura II: Professional 3D Environments

10 Stunning Backplates for Cinema 4D & Octane Render

Introducing Aura II, a very special product that has high-quality, professional-level 3D environments for your animations or product shots. Aura II has 10 environments. These are perfect backplates for stunning product renders! This is created for Octane Render and Cinema 4D.

Every studio has an Xpresso rig so you can use sliders to easily modify the lights, temperature, color, glows and many other properties.

Compatibility:  Octane 2023+ and Cinema 4D R26+

MSRP: $99.00  Toolfarm Price: $94.05

Learn More | Purchase Aura II

Rocket Lasso Mesh To Spline

Convert your meshes to splines

Don’t mesh around. Mesh To Spline!

Mesh To Spline tool from Rocket Lasso lets you unlock edges, polygons, and outlines from your meshes as parametric splines. Create the splines exactly where you want them through Fields, Selection Tags, angle thresholds, and facing angles from any mesh. Extract splines from even animated meshes where more power is unleashed with splines that stick directly to the surface of your characters. Favorite 3rd party renderer doesn’t have anything like Sketch & Toon? Create complex stylized looks by outlining models, finding hard edges, showing only the front or backside, or simply drawing every single polygon. Speed up your final renders by utilizing the speed of C4D’s native Hair Render or Sketch & Toon on splines. Or use the blazing speed of rendering a spline through your favorite 3rd party renderer.

Compatibility: Cinema 4D R20 – 2025

MSRP: $97.00 Toolfarm Price: $92.15

Learn More | Purchase Mesh To Spline

Looking for more Cinema 4D Plug-ins?

Shop all products for $99 or less here

You can find all the Cinema 4D Plug-ins that Toolfarm carries, on our dedicated C4D plug-ins page.

Shop Now

The post Top 5 for Under $100 – Cinema 4D Plug-ins appeared first on .

New Premiere Pro Plugin – Sync sound to picture. Automatically

Now available as part of your Krotos Studio subscription.

• Stay in Premiere Pro from start to finish.
• Hit ‘Analyze and Render’, and get a full sound mix automatically.
• Royalty-free sounds added to any project, in sync, automatically

How it Works – Cinematic sound. Four simple steps

01 Set your in/out points

Mark the section that needs sound with the in and out markers.

02 Pick elements

Choose the sounds to add to the section.

03 Analyze & Render

Real, Non AI-generated, royalty-free sounds land in your timeline.

04 Customize and Tweak

Swap out sounds to better fit the moment with total ease.

Watch the full walkthrough

The post Update: Krotos Video to Sound – Now in Adobe Premiere Pro appeared first on .

What’s new in Placemaker Version 4.0.0

Version 4 is here with huge improvements, including point cloud data and a new Web version!

• A new unified PlaceMaker experience for SketchUp, Revit, and the now the Web
• New Preview of Google Earth imports
• New Preview Terrain before importing
• Google Earth import no longer requires an API key (also now available for EU users!)
• New Data Source: Google Terrain
• New Data Source: Nearmap Point Cloud
• Nearmap historical imagery available upon request for your specific area of interest
• Optionally use your own API keys for Nearmap imagery or Google 3D Earth to save PlaceMaker credits
• AI Features (aka SmartSite) from Ecopia now delivered within days with a much lower cost.
• Access your recent imports from the new History tab from any device.
• When accessed from the web, past imports are also available in GLB and geoJSON formats for easy import into most 3D and GIS apps.
• Enhanced license management and license sharing features for teams.
• Since your imports are now saved to the cloud, you can re-import for free if SketchUp or Revit crashes or if you forget to save.
• We are now using an improved geo-coder service for quick and easy search navigation to any address in the world.

The post New: mind.sight.studios PlaceMaker v4 – Huge Improvements, New Web Version, More appeared first on .

What’s new in V-Ray for Blender update 3?

• V-Ray Wrangler: Speed up your node-based shading workflow with the same handy keyboard shortcuts you already know from the Node Wrangler add-on.
• Parallax Interiors: Add realistic interior depth and lighting to your exterior renders without the heavy geometry, keeping your scenes fast and lightweight.
• Plus, V-Ray now fits seamlessly into any production pipeline and hardware setup with Linux support, Blender 5.1 compatibility, and V-Ray GPU support for AMD graphics cards.

V-Ray Wrangler

V-Ray now ships with its own native alternative to the Node Wrangler add-on. Save valuable production time in the Shader Nodes editor by using the same handy keyboard shortcuts you already know to instantly connect, swap, and preview complex node setups.

The post V-Ray for Blender, Update 3: Work Faster Than Ever appeared first on .

Control at your fingertips.

The system now offers enhanced Bitfocus integration and faster production control. It is built specifically for operators who need speed.

Which Captivate edition is right for you?

The post NewBlue Captivate 2026: Smarter Graphics for Live Production appeared first on .