html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Autodesk has released 3ds Max 2026, the new version of its 3D modelling and visualization app.Its another iterative update, with workflow and performance improvements to 3D modeling, retopology, texturing and animation, and updates to the Arnold and USD plugins.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250326_3dsMax2026_3Dmodeling.mp43D modeling: use Vertex Weld on splines as well as meshesIn the 3D modeling tools, the Vertex Weld modifier has been updated to support Spline objects as well as Mesh objects.Using Vertex Weld to close a spline means that it is still possible to apply further modifiers to the spline, including Extrude, Bevel, or Bevel Profile, and still have a successful result.There is also a new three-point method for creating spline Rectangle objects, which enables the object to be created at angles other than world-aligned right angles.Retopology: Monthly limit on Flow Retopology jobs increased3ds Max 2026 features updates to the softwares retopology plugins, including the new Flow Retopology plugin introduced with 3ds Max 2025.2 last July.It mimics the functionality of the existing Retopology Tools, but makes it possible to submit retopology jobs to run in the cloud, rather than on the users machine.The current version, Flow Retopology for 3ds Max 1.2, is now bundled with 3ds Max 2026, and the usage limit has been raised from 30 to 50 cloud retopology jobs per month.Version 1.6 of the Retopology Tools plugin itself updates the Mesh Cleaner Modifier, and reduces processing time when using the ReForm algorithm.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250326_3dsMax2026_OSLMaps.mp4Shading and texturing: Default surface shader switched to OpenPBRFor texturing, the main change in 3ds Max 2026 is that OpenPBR is now the default material.Support for the open material standard, intended as a unified successor to the Autodesk Standard Surface and Adobe Standard Material, was originally added in 3ds Max 2025.3.There are also three new Open Shading Language (OSL) maps, including the Perlage map (above), which creates grooved circular patterns like those found inside antique watches.The Substance plugin, for editing procedural materials in Substance format inside 3ds Max, has also been updated, with Substance 3.0.5 making it possible to import materials from the online Substance 3D Assets library directly into 3ds Maxs Slate Material Editor.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250326_3dsMax2026_Animation.mp4Animation: Performance updates to CAT, Biped and key modifiersFor animators, the changes in 3ds Max 2026 are very similar to those in 3ds Max 2025.3: more bugfixes to the CAT and Biped toolsets.There are also more performance updates to key modifiers, including the Array, Conform, Displace and Skin Modifiers.3ds Max Fluids have been updated for a processing speed improvement of up to 10%.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250326_3dsMax2026_Workflow.mp4Workflow: Quality-of-life improvements to modifiers and searchOther general quality-of-life improvements include a new Preserve Stack Position toggle to return to the modifier previously selected for an object before selecting a new object.The Create section of the Command Panel gets a new Object Search widget.Rendering: Updates to Arnold for 3ds Max3ds Max 2026 also ships with an updated version of the integration plugin for Autodesks Arnold renderer, with MAXtoA 5.8.0 introducing support for the Arnold 7.4.0.0 core.Key changes since the release of 3ds Max 2025.3 include a new transmission_shadow_density parameter in the OpenPBR Surface and the Standard Surface shaders, to control the look of shadows cast by transparent objects, as shown in the image above.Global Light Sampling (GLS) now takes material glossiness into account, which greatly enhances render quality, especially in scenes with many small lights.Arnolds support for ID matte-generation system Cryptomatte has also been improved, with a new internal implementation adding GPU support, and improving performance on CPU.Other changes include improvements to MaterialX and USD support, to the implementation of OpenPBR, and to the MAXtoA plugin itself and the Arnold RenderView. However, Arnold 7.4 is a compatibility-breaking update, so shaders, procedurals, and other plugins compiled against older versions of Arnold will need to be recompiled.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250326_3dsMax2026_USD.mp4Pipeline integration: new Layer Editor and light linking in USD for 3ds max3ds Maxs Universal Scene Description plugin has also been updated, with USD for Maya 0.10 adding a new Layer Editor for managing USD layers, and support for light linking.The plugin is also now bundled with 3ds Max, rather than being a separate download.Price and system requirements3ds Max 2026 is compatible with Windows 10+. It is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $235/month, up $10/month since the previous release, or $1,945/year, up $70/year.In many countries, artists earning under $100,000/year and working on projects valued at under $100,000/year qualify for Indie subscriptions, which now cost $320/year, up $15/year.Read an overview of the new features in 3ds Max on Autodesks websiteRead a full list of new features in 3ds Max 2026 in the online documentationHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

Wednesday, March 26th, 2025Posted by Jim ThackerAutodesk adds Golaem 9.2 to its Media & Entertainment Collectionhtml PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Autodesk has added Maya crowd simulation plugin Golaem to its Media & Entertainment Collection product bundle.The change makes Golaem commercially available again, if not as an individual purchase, the old Golaem online store having been closed when Autodesk acquired the software last year.Autodesk has also released Golaem 9.2, its first update to the plugin.An intuitive crowd animation tool making use of standard Maya workflowsLaunched in 2011, Golaem was designed to provide an intuitive approach to crowd animation, with users able to use Mayas native tools to control crowd behaviour.Later updates added toolsets for building custom AI logic, generating automatic variations of crowd characters, and interactively previewing and editing simulations.Its output is compatible with Arnold, Guerilla Render, Redshift, RenderMan and V-Ray; and users can output to other DCC tools for rendering, including 3ds Max, Houdini and UE5.Recent movies and TV series on which the software was used include Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and The Mandalorian.Now included in Autodesks Media & Entertainment subscription bundleWhen Autodesk bought Golaem last year, it looked like its availability as a plugin had come to an end: its old online store was closed, and Autodesk announced that it planned to integrate Golaems key IP directly inside [its] current product offerings.That has proved not to be the case, since the firm has just made Golaem commercially available once more, as part of its Media & Entertainment Collection.The subscription-only product bundle also includes Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, ReCap Pro, and access to online services like Autodesk Character Generator.Pricing for the Collection remains unchangedAlthough Golaem used to cost $9,000 for a perpetual license or $5,000/year for a subscription, the price of the Media & Entertainment Collection has not changed. Subscriptions currently cost $335/month or $2,700/year, following a small price rise in January.However, it is no longer possible to buy Golaem individually: while it has a new product website (and Autodesk product logo), the online FAQs state pretty firmly that you can only access the Golaem plugin with a subscription to the Media & Entertainment Collection.Golaem 9.2 removes the need for a license to use Golaem Lite featuresAutodesk has also released a new version of the software, Golaem 9.2.The main change is that you no longer need a license to use the feature set from Golaem Lite, the old lower-priced edition of the software for layout artists.In addition, the old watermarked Personal Learning Edition has been replaced with a standard 30-day Autodesk trial version.There are also a number of workflow updates and bugfixes, listed in the online release notes.Price and system requirementsGolaem 9.2 is compatible with Maya 2022+ on Windows 10+ and CentOS, RHEL, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux 8.Golaem is available as part of Autodesks Media & Entertainment product bundle, which is available rental-only. Subscriptions cost $335/month or $2,700/year.Read a full list of new features in Golaem 9.2 in the online changelogRead more about the Media & Entertainment product bundle on Autodesks websiteHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Latest NewsAutodesk releases 3ds Max 2026Check out the latest changes to the 3D modeling and rendering app, including updates to retopology, shading and animation.Wednesday, March 26th, 2025Autodesk adds Golaem 9.2 to its Media & Entertainment CollectionMaya crowd simulation plugin goes back on sale as part of Autodesk's product bundle for VFX and games work. Check out its new features.Wednesday, March 26th, 2025Autodesk releases Maya 2026 and Maya Creative 20263D modeling and animation tool gets updates to the ML Deformer and liquid simulation in Bifrost. Check out all the new features here.Wednesday, March 26th, 2025Zen Masters releases Zen UV 5.0Check out the new features in the free update to the popular Blender UV editing toolset for games and visual effects work.Tuesday, March 25th, 2025Peregrine Labs ships Yeti 5.2Check out the latest features in the popular Maya fur and feathers plugin, including new nodes for resolving intersections.Monday, March 24th, 2025Check out new open-source 3D character generator CharMorphPromising free Blender add-on generates rigged 3D characters with skin materials and hair, suitable for games, animation or VFX work.Monday, March 24th, 2025More NewsPolygonflow releases new free version of DashUnity unveils its 2025 product roadmapUnity previews Unity 6.1Character Creator to get new MetaTailor pluginNVIDIA unveils Blackwell RTX PRO GPUs with up to 96GB VRAM5 key features in Blender 4.4Sketchsoft releases Feather 1.1GIMP 3.0 is out after seven years in developmentAdobe releases Substance 3D Modeler 1.21Adobe releases Substance 3D Painter 11.0Free tool: Lens Cap for BlenderCelsys releases Clip Studio Paint 4Older Posts

In 2013, the Curiosity rover drilled this hole, which measures about 0.6 inches wide and 2.6 inches deep, into martian rock. The sample is now thought to contain long-chain organic molecules. NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSSWhen scientists revisited an old Martian rock sample collected by NASAs Curiosity rover, they were initially hunting for evidence of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But they ended up discovering something else entirely: the largest organic compounds ever documented on Mars. The compounds date to 3.7 billion years agoaround the same time that life first emerged on Earth.Although they could have been formed by either biological or non-biological activity, these compounds join a host of other tantalizing clues to the potential existence of ancient Martian life. The discovery is detailed in a study published Monday in the journal Curiosity collected the sample in 2013 from a rock dubbed Cumberland, at the site of a bygone lake now known as Yellowknife Bay. By re-examining this pulverized rock, the researchers were surprised to discover the hydrocarbon molecules decane, undecane and dodecanewhich contain chains of carbon atoms in groups of 10, 11 and 12, respectively.The rovers on-board mini lab had burnt the molecules down while processing the rock sample, but the team suspects they may have originally been parts of carboxylic acids, or fatty acids. On Earth, fatty acids perform various functions in living organisms, including the formation of cell membranes.This is an amazing result, Monica Grady, a planetary scientist at the Open University in England who didnt participate in the study, tells Sciences Paul Voosen. If the molecules truly are the broken-down leftovers of fatty acids, then we are seeing something very exciting indeed, she adds.Largest Organics Yet Discovered on MarsWatch on To test the feasibility of this hypothesis, the researchers mixed a fatty acid into Mars-like clay and processed it in a lab back on Earth. They used an approach thats akin to how Curiositys mini-lab processes rock on Marsand as theyd suspected, it yielded the molecule decane. Previous studies also show that undecane and dodecane could have been produced in a similar manner. This adds strength to the idea that these molecules came from fatty acids.While the existence of fatty acids does not necessarily point to life, it remains a real possibility. If we have long-chain fatty acids on Mars, those could comeand its only one hypothesisfrom membrane degradation of cells present 3.7 billion years ago, lead author Caroline Freissinet, an analytical chemist at the Atmospheres and Space Observations Laboratory in France, tells the Guardians Ian Sample.However, the fatty acids also could have either been formed by geological processes on Mars (non-biological chemical reactions such as from hydrothermal activity) [ or] delivered to the surface of Mars from meteorites, Daniel Glavin, a senior scientist for sample return at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of the study, explains to Gizmodos Isaac Shultz. Or they are the organic remnants of an ancient Martian biology.The molecules do appear to show some promising patterns. Most fatty acids in Earths organisms have an even number of carbon atoms, so finding this feature on Mars could point to the potential existence of life. Undecane would have come from an even-numbered fatty acidand intriguingly, the team documented a slightly higher presence of undecane compared to the other two molecules. Additionally, chemical (and hence non-biological) processes usually produce shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons. A graphic of the discovered organic molecules and a selfie from the Curiosity rover NASA / Dan GallagherEven if the molecules didnt originate from cells, the discovery remains important, because the large compounds suggest organic chemistry on Mars achieved higher complexity than what scientists had previously observed. It also confirms that potential evidence of life can survive on Mars for billions of yearslong enough for scientists to discover it.Our study proves that, even today, by analyzing Mars samples, we could detect chemical signatures of past life, if it ever existed on Mars, Freissinet says in a statement.The findings reported in this paper present the best chance we have seen for identifying the remains of life on Mars, explains John Eiler, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research, to the Guardian.Still, scientists cant make a conclusion from merely three molecules. And the kind of analyses that could reveal the origin of the fatty acids noted in the study require advanced instruments that Curiosity doesnt have. Thus sealing the deal absolutely requires return of such samples to Earth, Eiler adds.Luckily, NASA and the European Space Agency are currently working on a Mars Sample Return project, though its timeline is undetermined.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Aliens, Chemistry, Cool Finds, Geology, Mars, NASA, New Research, Outer Space, Planets, Solar System

Groq partners with PlayAI to deliver Dialog, an emotionally intelligent text-to-speech model that runs 10x faster than real-time speech, including the Middle East's first Arabic voice AI model.Read More

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Rivian announced the creation of a new micromobility company called Also. The deal includes $105 million in Series B funding from venture capital firm Eclipse and will focus on the development and production of lightweight electric vehicles like bikes and scooters. For the world to fully transition to electrified transportation, a range of vehicle types and form factors will be needed, said Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe in a statement. I am extremely excited about the innovations developed by the Also team that will underpin a range of highly compelling micromobility products that will help define new categories.Rivian says its started a stealth program focused on micromobility several years ago, recognizing a massive need for more smaller, light-weight electric vehicles like bikes and scooters. It couldnt have been that stealth, considering Scaringe was on stage at Tech Disrupt in 2023 talking about his interest in multimodal transportation, including e-bikes. The company has also filed a trademark for e-bikes and scooters, signaling its interest in expanding its product lineup. Rivian is known for its flagship EVs, the R1S SUV and R1T truck, both of which are very big, very heavy, and very expensive. The more affordable R2 and R3 vehicles are under development and expected to enter production starting in 2026. An even more lightweight personal mobility device would be a welcome addition for Rivian fans, who love the companys outdoor, adventure-themed image. Rivian says it will retain a substantial minority ownership stake in Also, and expects to feature the companys products at its own retail locations in the future. Scaringe will serve as chair of Alsos board of directors. Despite the revenue opportunity presented by the new category, car makers have yet to find any notable success with their e-bikes despite brands likePorsche,Mercedes,Jeep,GM,Hummer, and others all giving it a go. The e-bike industry is going through some growing pains, too, with VanMoof filing for bankruptcy and Rad Power Bikes cycling through a series of executives. To read more about Rivians e-bike plans, check out this thorough rundown in TechCrunch.

Security cameras can be helpful for spotting package thieves, letting you know when your kid got home from school, or scaring off that rascally raccoon rustling around your chicken coop. But constant notifications from these devices can make them more annoying than useful.Notification fatigue once made me ignore the repeated motion alerts from a camera when I was enjoying an Easter egg hunt with my kids. I got home to find a dog had killed all my chickens. Now, if those alerts had said dog chasing chicken rather than just motion detected, I would have paid more attention.This is the problem that Wyze is attempting to solve with its new No Big Deal (NBD) AI filter, which is launching today to owners of its security cameras with a Cam Unlimited Pro subscription.The NBD Filter can be turned on in the Wyze app. Image: WyzeThe idea is that Wyzes AI filters the events the camera sees and only alerts you to the most important ones, such as Person breaking into car or Baby climbing out of crib. Wyze says it also wont repeatedly send you the same alerts for example, if your kids are playing ball in the front yard for a couple of hours, it will only send an additional notification if a new or unusual activity is detected. The NBD Filter is part of Wyzes $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year Cam Unlimited Pro subscription. Wyze says it provides an intelligent layer of discernment to decide whether a notification is no big deal or worthy of alerting the user.The company says it trained its AI model to rank detected motions on a scale from one to five, only sending users notifications for highly ranked events that require attention. (Recordings of all events are still stored in your app.) Examples it shared include:Score 1: For events of low importance, such as routine activities like a robot vacuum cleaning, bugs flying by, passing cars, or even the user entering the room.Score 3: For events that might warrant your attention, such as a package delivery or your baby crying.Score 5: Important, critical situations such as glass breaking, a gunshot, or an unknown person lingering near your door.The NBD Filter builds on the companys AI-powered Descriptive Alerts, launched in January. These alerts send detailed descriptions of events rather than simply alerting you to motion or that a person, pet, or vehicle has been detected. With the filter, the system uses those descriptions to decide whether to alert you.The new filter builds on the Descriptive Alerts feature Wyze launched earlier this year. Image: WyzeThe company added AI-powered search last year, allowing you to search recorded footage by keyword. Last year, the company also suffered from a number of security issues, including inadvertently letting unauthorized users see into other peoples homes. A number of well-known security camera companies have been adding generative AI-powered features to their systems over the last year, but Wyze is the first to launch this type of notification filter.When the camera chooses what to show you, you will not be happy if it misses something importantRing launched an AI-powered search feature last year, and Google Nest cameras added descriptive alerts powered by Gemini as a beta feature last summer. Arlo also recently added AI-powered personalized alerts, and a new company, Seemour.AI, provides descriptive alerts for Ring cameras for free. Well likely see filtering functionality come to more companies soon, but it also carries a fair amount of risk. While cutting down on the number of alerts a camera sends you is definitely a step in the right direction, its a big shift to go from sending you notifications for everything you asked to be notified about to deciding what you should be told about.When the camera chooses what to show you, you will not be happy if it misses something you deem important. Its also not clear what type of control the user will have over Wyzes NBD Filter. For example, I want to know every time my cat is at my back door, but it seems like Wyze would consider that an unimportant event. Ill be testing out Wyzes new feature, as well as those from Ring, Arlo, Nest, and others, and will report back soon.See More:

Large language models are powering a new wave of digital agents to handle sophisticated web-based tasks. These agents are expected to interpret user instructions, navigate interfaces, and execute complex commands in ever-changing environments. The difficulty lies not in understanding language but in translating that understanding into precise, sequenced actions while adapting to dynamic contexts. Success for long-horizon tasks like booking travel or retrieving specific web data depends on managing a sequence of steps that evolves with each action. Despite major progress in language capabilities, creating agents that can effectively plan and adapt at each step remains an unsolved problem.Composing broad goals into actionable steps is a major issue in building such agents. When a user requests follow the top contributor of this GitHub project, the agent must interpret the command and determine how to navigate to the contributors section, identify the relevant person, and initiate the following action. This task becomes even more complex in dynamic environments where content may shift between executions. Without a clear planning and updating strategy, agents can make inconsistent decisions or fail entirely. The scarcity of training data that shows how to plan and execute long tasks correctly adds another layer of difficulty.Previously, researchers attempted to address these issues with models that either relied on single-agent strategies or applied reinforcement learning to guide actions. Single-agent systems like ReAct attempted to merge reasoning and execution but often faltered as the model was overwhelmed by thinking and acting at once. Reinforcement learning approaches showed promise but proved unstable and highly sensitive to environment-specific tuning. Collecting training data for these methods required extensive interaction with environments, making it time-consuming and impractical to scale. These methods also struggled to maintain performance consistency when tasks changed mid-process.Researchers from UC Berkeley, the University of Tokyo, and ICSI introduced a new PLAN-AND-ACT system. Companies like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Intel supported the work. This framework splits task planning and execution into two modules: a PLANNER and an EXECUTOR. The PLANNER is tasked with creating a structured plan based on the users request, essentially outlining what steps need to be taken. The EXECUTOR then translates each step into environment-specific actions. By separating these responsibilities, the system allows the PLANNER to focus on strategy while the EXECUTOR handles execution, improving the reliability of both components. This modular design marks a significant shift from previous approaches.The methodology behind PLAN-AND-ACT is detailed and focuses heavily on scalable training. Since human-annotated planning data is limited, researchers introduced a synthetic data generation pipeline. They began by collecting action trajectories from simulated agentssequences of clicks, inputs, and responses. Large language models then analyzed these trajectories to reconstruct high-level plans grounded in actual outcomes. For example, a plan might specify identifying the top contributor, while the actions linked to it include clicking the Contributors tab and parsing the resulting HTML. The team expanded their dataset with 10,000 additional synthetic plans and then generated 5,000 more targeted plans based on failure analysis. This synthetic training method saved time and produced high-quality data that reflected real execution needs.In testing, PLAN-AND-ACT achieved a task success rate of 53.94% on the WebArena-Lite benchmark, surpassing the previous best result of 49.1% from WebRL. Without any planner, a base executor only achieved 9.85%. Adding a non-finetuned planner boosted performance to 29.63% while finetuning on 10,000 synthetic plans brought results up to 44.24%. Incorporating dynamic replanning added a final 10.31% performance gain. Across all experiments, the data showed that most performance improvements came from enhancing the PLANNER rather than the EXECUTOR. Even with a base EXECUTOR, having a strong PLANNER led to substantial success rate increases, validating the researchers hypothesis that separating planning and execution yields better task outcomes.In conclusion, this paper highlights how identifying the gap between goal understanding and environment interaction can lead to more effective AI systems. By focusing on structured planning and scalable data generation, the researchers proposed a method that solves a specific problem and demonstrates a framework that can extend to broader applications. PLAN-AND-ACT shows that effective planning, not just execution, is critical to AI agent success in complex environments.Check outthe Paper.All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,feel free to follow us onTwitterand dont forget to join our85k+ ML SubReddit. NikhilNikhil is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is pursuing an integrated dual degree in Materials at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Nikhil is an AI/ML enthusiast who is always researching applications in fields like biomaterials and biomedical science. With a strong background in Material Science, he is exploring new advancements and creating opportunities to contribute.Nikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces GRPO-based Open-RS: A Low-Cost Reinforcement Learning Framework to Enhance Reasoning in Small Language ModelsNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/Qwen Releases the Qwen2.5-VL-32B-Instruct: A 32B Parameter VLM that Surpasses Qwen2.5-VL-72B and Other Models like GPT-4o MiniNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper from NVIDIA Introduces Cosmos-Reason1: A Multimodal Model for Physical Common Sense and Embodied ReasoningNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper from UC Berkeley Introduces TULIP: A Unified Contrastive Learning Model for High-Fidelity Vision and Language Understanding

The Last of Us Season 2 introduces a new character into the TV show that has yet to appear in the video games: Joels therapist.Played by Schitt's Creek star Catherine O'Hara, the character Gail is a therapist living in Jackson.Warning! Potential spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 follow:Naughty Dogs Neil Druckmann has confirmed that Gail is in fact Eugenes wife, which marks a departure from the games. Eugene, who is mentioned in The Last of Us 2 but doesnt appear in person, is played by The Sopranos and The Matrix star Joe Pantoliano.But why does Joel need therapy in the first place?PlaySpeaking to IGN on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, Druckmann offered an explanation.The reason he goes to therapy is because he's trying to figure out why Ellie is icing him out, Druckmann said. And he's quite a bit in denial about the real reason what's happening there.IGN had asked Druckmann if he thought Joel went to therapy off screen in the video games, and Druckmann agreed he certainly would have done so if he thought it would have helped reconnect with Ellie.Well, I think if he had the opportunity, not for himself, Druckmann said. I think if he had the opportunity and if there was a way for him to reconnect with Ellie because that's his biggest motivation, everything that drives him is Ellie then he would.The Last of Us Season 2 Character PostersTheres an additional reason for having a therapist character in The Last of Us Season 2: because the showrunners wanted to expand on Jackson.Heres Druckmann again:Someone like Eugene, we had a take on that character to say, okay, well how does that expand Joel and Ellie's relationship? How does it expand the town of Jackson? How does that expand what the story's about, which is this idea of love and the extremes that love can take you to?And then likewise, we also wanted to introduce this idea of a therapist that exists within Jackson, also to allow us to expand on Jackson to try to get into characters minds. But it was such a compelling character. Like, hey, how do we ground this new character? Oh, let's tie her to someone that's really associated with the lore of The Last of Us: Eugene. And now these two characters are tied to Joel. If you've watched the first episode, they talk about Eugene and why that's important. And youll see even more of why thats important as the season goes on.Meanwhile, we asked Druckmann if hes willing to keep the TV show going past the games if theres no The Last of Us 3, and for a tease on Naughty Dogs Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Amazon is really jacking up the gaming deals in their Spring Deal Days sale, giving you the limited-time chance to buy a new wireless Xbox controller from just 35.99. While some of the other selections are 4.50 more, the whole selection of colours available for these Series X|S controllers has had a price reduction, so you're getting at least 33% off whichever one you like most.Xbox Wireless Controller Carbon BlackXbox Wireless Controller Astral PurpleXbox Wireless Controller Deep PinkXbox Wireless Controller - Electric VoltXbox Wireless Controller - Pulse RedXbox Wireless Controller Robot WhiteXbox Wireless Controller Shock BlueXbox Wireless Controller Velocity GreenAs a second or spare controller for your Xbox Series X or S console, along with supported games on PC, all those on sale at Amazon right now include the following colours:Astral PurpleCarbon BlackDeep PinkElectric VoltPulse RedRobot WhiteShock BlueVelocity GreenAlthough the standard Carbon Black and Robot Whitethose bundled with the Xbox Series X & S consoles respectivelyhave been reduced to the lowest price of 35.99, all of the alternative colors have been dropped to a slightly higher yet still impressive 40.49. If you're in need of a new controller to play the newest games, like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 which is on sale now as well, this is a fantastic opportunity.You have to flaunt Amazon a little bit more of your cash to add a splash of style to your setup with one of these vivid color schemes like Astral Purple, but it does seem worth it. What's more, these other models include the controller's updated design, featuring the X, A, B, and Y buttons being switched from their respective blue, green, red, and yellow colours to match that of their controllers' body.The original button colours are still shown as tiny dots next to each one, but this update overall gives the controllers a more modest, sleeker appeal that arguably justifies the slightly larger price investment.Xbox Wireless Controller Fire Vapor Special EditionFor those after a controller with a design that boasts more than one solid colour, Amazon UK also has the Special Fire Vapor Edition of the Xbox Series X|S controller as well, reduced by 20% to 51.99. Featuring titular vapor-like red-and-orange swirls, this bold colour scheme will invoke a little extra energy into your console setup if that's what you're looking for. Ben Williams IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.