Here we go again! Jumbla has taken the time to carefully curate a list of what’s hot right now in the world of animation and motion graphics.

Following on from the recent Siggraph conference, this week’s round-up is for fans of the latest and greatest tools and technologies in the industry.

MAXON unveils Cinema 4D Release 19 with new rendering capabilities

MAXON has announced Cinema 4D Release 19, which brings a host of features and enhancements such as new rendering capabilities both in the viewport and for final rendering.

Screen-Space Reflections and OpenGL Depth-Of-Field now make it possible to produce preview renders in real-time, while support for AMD’s ProRender engine has been added to improve output rendering.

Cinema 4D Release 19 also features a spherical camera for rendering 360 content, additional features for Voronoi Fracturing, and a new Sound Effector.

Red Giant releases Trapcode Suite 14 for After Effects

Red Giant has released a new version of its Trapcode suite for After Effects, which now includes a total of 11 powerful tools for 3D motion graphics and visual effects.

Three popular plugins - Particular, Form, and Tao - have all been upgraded to enable faster rendering, more realism, and a better user experience.

“We wanted this update to live up to the high expectations of our community of users, and to help propel them into their next level of creativity,” said Chad Bechert, Red Giant CEO.

NVIDIA announces external GPUs for laptops

Creative professionals who like to work on a laptop but struggle with underpowered graphics will soon be able to increase their portable power thanks to NVIDIA’s new external GPUs.

This will also allow for better and faster interactive rendering, VR content creation, video editing, AI development, and much more.

NVIDIA’s Quadro eGPU solutions will be available through qualified partners from September onwards.

Illustrator creates animated GIFs for every episode of Games of Thrones Season 7

It’s the biggest TV show in the world right now, but what could make Game of Thrones even better? That’s right, animated GIFs summarising each episode’s most shocking or surprising moment.

Credit goes to Tel Aviv-based illustrator and animator Eran Mendel, who told DigitalArts that GIFs and loops are how he chooses to express himself.

“I like to interpret plot highlights that revolve around the characters,” Eran added. “If something surprised me when I watched the episode, or made me laugh, that would be a good starting point.”

Jumbla creatives score one-two at LoopdeLoop’s Melbourne screening

At the recent Melbourne screening of Loopdeloop - a global animation challenge - two of Jumbla’s own creatives scored first and second place in the audience vote.

For her winning animation, which had to be based around the theme ‘pizza,’ Tracey Theseira recalled a painful personal experience of ordering too many pizzas and having to eat the leftovers every day.

Runner-up Alyssa Smedley also embraced how it feels to eat too much pizza with her ‘Food Baby’ animation.

Food Baby from Horrible Horris on Vimeo.