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GLB3D Monthly News: SIGGRAPH 2025, Houdini 21, Blender for Tablets and Classic Games Return
0Article by Yuri Ilyin
As August fades away along with the summer of 2025, we take another look back at the month's most significant news.
SIGGRAPH 2025: Tech Papers Galore
SIGGRAPH 2025 took place on Aug. 10-14 in Vancouver, featuring a densely packed schedule of events and keynotes, along with multiple technical paper presentations that pushed the boundaries of computer graphics even further.
RenderHub was also present at the event, showcasing at Booth 603, where we had the chance to connect with creators, developers, and industry leaders directly.
Some of the presented papers were extremely technical, while others were more layman-readable - such as "Gaussian Fluids: A Grid-Free Fluid Solver based on Gaussian Spatial Representation" and "CAST: Component-Aligned 3D Scene Reconstruction From an RGB Image".
Interestingly, the lists of audience-favorited presentations and the award-winning ones are entirely different. Moreover, there was a video trailer of tech papers prepared for SIGGRAPH 2025, and it showcased yet another different collection:
Houdini 21 - The Major One, The Largest One
A lot of features were updated with this major release, spanning across 3D modeling, look development, character rigging and animation, VFX, shot layout, and rendering. The full list of changes exceeds 360 bullet points, making this release the largest in terms of newly added features in Houdini's rich history.
Notably, most of the new additions are production-ready this time, with less emphasis on experimental ones. SideFX VP Cristin Barghiel stated during her keynote at SIGGRAPH 2025 that the "production-readiness of the feature set across nearly the entire span of the CG pipeline" has been the focus of development efforts.
Among the highlights of the new version are streamlined character animation workflows in KineFX, including Motion Mixer, Animation Catalog, and improved ragdoll dynamics.
A new GPU-accelerated OTiS solver speeds up the simulation of muscles and soft tissues.
There are also many new features in the Copernicus framework, introduced in version 20.5, including some eyebrow-raising ones, such as the Flow solver that functions like a 2D fluid solver, although no actual fluid is involved.
Of course, the trendy use of AI is present as well: Neural Point Surface uses machine learning "to mesh point clouds generated by MPM simulations into 3D surfaces," with four ready-made AI models.
The full list of updates can be found on the SideFX website.
iClone 8.6
The character animation software Reallusion iClone has just reached version 8.6, adding compatibility with HD characters from Character Creator 5, another suite from the same developer.
New options have been added for adjusting the strength of expressions for individual facial parts, as well as new presets for exporting data in FBX format to Unreal Engine 5 and Marmoset Toolbag.
The new HD facial animation profile is fully compatible with the expression system for Unreal Engine MetaHuman characters, which makes facial animation from MetaHuman Animator importable to iClone in CSV format.
iClone 8.6 also includes an updated Blender pipeline plugin, along with the ability to export lights and cameras to Blender.
The full list of improvements can be found here.
Epic Games: Not Guilty, Your Honour!
In a somewhat unsurprising move, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney passed responsibility for Unreal Engine 5's lingering performance issues squarely onto game developers.
At the recent Unreal Fest event in Seoul, press members asked what Epic Games was doing to address optimization issues in UE5-developed games.
Sweeney responded that the "primary reason" for these issues is the "development process," suggesting that developers tend to aim for high-end hardware from the start, while testing on lower-end platforms comes only in the final stages.
That is true to no small degree: first, game development studios certainly sport top-level hardware, but at the same time, as PC Gamer's Nick Evanson points out, it is common for them to cling to older versions of the engine, since developing an AAA game may take years.
And while the optimization process should indeed start early, issues exist that cannot be attributed to the game development process alone.
"It takes time for Unreal Engine to be updated to include such [new and optimized] tools and features, and even if they're released quickly, game developers are unlikely to use that version of UE for their game", Evanson writes, adding that "At least Epic acknowledges the issue and it's trying to do something about it".
However, Mr. Sweeney's words seem to show that Epic Games are willing to share responsibility as much.
Blender Embraces the Tablets, V-Ray Now Supports Geometry Nodes
Perhaps long overdue, but Blender Foundation appears to have greenlit a fully fledged port of their free and open-source suite to tablets. Both iOS/iPadOS and Android devices will be supported. Tablet versions will, naturally, have very different controls from the PC versions, but there will be even more under the hood, given that tablets tend to have far less processing power than common PCs, and there is always the issue of limited battery life. Apparently, the code will be much more optimized.
The plans to bring Blender to tablets had been announced back in July, but one month later Wacom was announced as the newest Corporate Patron of the Blender Development Fund - a new partnership aimed at developing a "next-generation Blender experience for Android tablets" with an extra 210,000/year in funding for Blender.
The MovinkPad 11, an 11" Android drawing tablet by Wacom, will be among the first to be capable of running the Blender tablet edition.
EElsewhere, Chaos has revealed Update 1 of V-Ray for Blender (V-Ray 7.1 for Blender), which carries two key features absent from the initial release: support for Blender's Geometry Nodes system, and one-click conversion of Cycles materials for rendering in V-Ray - certainly great news for those accustomed to Cycle's straightforward workflow.
V-Ray, however, is a commercial solution: it is offered as a subscription starting at $33/month. Alongside the core application, it includes the Chaos Cosmos asset library and Chaos Cloud rendering.
Heretic & Hexen: The Blast from the Distant Past
Nightdive Studios, together with id Software, have reintroduced the venerable duo of dark fantasy-themed FPS titles from the mid-1990s for modern systems.
The games appear to be not just facelifted but significantly altered too, with new textures, lighting schemes, and even new enemies and levels. While the resolution is far above the original, the retro feel is well-preserved through intentionally pixelated graphics and tiled textures.
Otherwise, there are literally tons of new features, including (but not limited to) expanded multiplayer.
As usual, Nightdive Studios utilized their own KEX engine, which appears to be well suited for both 3D and 2.5D games like Heretic and Hexen.
Use of the custom engine immediately raises the question of whether mods for the old games would work with this remake. Nightdive and id Software say they would. However, it is likely that only vanilla-compatible mods will work, whereas those utilizing upgraded engines like GZDoom, with their multiple perks, will require a lot of tinkering to run.
The games are now available on Steam, and if you have previously purchased the original DOS titles, the new version is added to your library for free.
The package is also available via GOG.com. The original DOS versions of the games, along with the original WAD files critical for modders, are included in both the Steam and GOG editions.
ZibraVDB Goes Free for Indie Devs
ZibraVDB, its volumetric effects compression and playback software, has been made free for individual creators, hobbyists, and students, as the developer ZibraAI explains that the new licensing model is aimed at supporting experimentation with volumetric effects in real-time workflows.
"With advanced data compression and real-time, GPU-driven decompression, anyone can now bring CGI-class visual effects into Unreal Engine," vendor says.
It goes on to state that while OpenVDB effects - i.e., volumetrics - are common, they are quite rarely used (so how are they common then, one may ask, but that's a different story). The reasons are large file sizes and substandard real-time performance. This is what ZibraVDB is expected to fix.
It allows "to integrate volumetric effects into your projects without the need to convert them into flipbooks or constantly recreate them when your scene changes".
It also simplifies workflows down to a "drag-and-drop" level transition of volumetrics from Houdini to a real-time engine like Unreal. And last but not least, it dramatically reduces data size: what would take 2GB with OpenVDB can be slimmed to as little as 50MB with ZibraVDB - or so the vendor claims.
ZibraVDB is available for free under the Personal tier. To qualify, one must not have earned more than $100,000 USD in gross revenue from commercial activity in the digital content industry within the past 12 months.
The commercial version enables access to the SDK, custom feature development, custom integration, and on-set support.
Details are available on the vendor's site.
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