You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereGrand Theft Auto 6 is already posed to be the biggest entertainment launch in history, according to highly-paid industry analysts. While Rockstars long-awaited follow-up will undoubtedly make a huge impact for publisher Take-Two Interactive, its release is a terrifying event for every other games publisher.GTA 6 is going to be a challenge for publishersIn an interview with Game World Observer, KRAFTON advisor and Professor of Interactive Media at the University of Southern California, Mike Fischer, explained that the upcoming launch of GTA 6 is actively keeping him up at night.GTA 6 is going to be so big and so successful it may suck up all of the time and all of the money of all gamers, the publishing advisor explained.Fischer explained that hes not alone in the worry that games outside of Grand Theft Autos genre will be massively hit by the launch of Rockstars game. The publishing advisor explained that the release of the new open-world game is an unknown territory due to the titles all-encompassing nature.When GTA 6 ships, it will be a challenging disruption, Fischer said. Hopefully, there will be a larger audience as a result, but its literally an unknown territory, so well just have to wait and see.Fischer explains that the release of Fallout 4 ended up distracting gamers from other AAA releases back in 2016. While that was an issue then, gamers are going to be far more rabid for the release of a Grand Theft Auto game over a decade in the making.I remember when Fallout 4 shipped and Microsoft was shipping their exclusive Tomb Raider game, they said. Theyre different genres, but I think the blast radius from Fallout just ate up much of the demand for Tomb Raider, which, as a result, missed some of its potential. So whenever Rockstar ships GTA 6, there will never have been a game as big, as immersive, as incredible, as all-encompassing as [it].The new Grand Theft Auto game still doesnt have a release date, and its PC release will happen sometime afterwards.Grand Theft Auto 6Platform(s):PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Action, Action AdventureSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Built by William Randolph Hearst in 1929, the California Parks Service also confirmed that Topanga Ranch Motel has been destroyed in the Palisades fire. The bungalow cabins, which represented Californias coastal charm, were scheduled to be renovated. There were more than 30 structural losses across Topanga State Park and Will Rogers Historic State Park, according to the park service. We are deeply grateful to our parks staff and all partner agencies for their swift actions. Our top priority remains the safety of the public, our employees, and the responders bravely battling the fires, Quintero said.Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann HouseIn a statement released early Thursday morning on January 11, representatives for Villa Aurora, a historic artists residence offering fellowships for creators in various disciplines, reported that it was partially harmed, though the extent of the damage was still being assessed. There are first indications that parts of Villa Aurora were able to withstand the destructive fires. However, the building continues to be in the danger zone, the statement reads. Another historic home on the property, the Thomas Mann House, was undamaged as of Thursday morning. This, too, is a momentary snapshot, as the situation can change any time: The building continues to be in the danger and evacuation zone, a representative warned. As of Monday, January 13, the area surrounding Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann house is at elevated risk for fire weather, though not at critical or extreme risk.The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical GardensSurrounded by 120 acres of botanical gardens, the Huntington is a cultural and research center in Pasadena. According to a statement on Instagram, the property has lost a few trees due to high winds, but is otherwise undamaged. While we are currently outside the range of active fires, our buildings are equipped with features designed to enhance the safety of our art and library collections. Our HVAC systems continue to maintain safe collection storage environments, including the filtering of outside air, the post shared.Keeler HouseAnne Keeler confirmed to The New York Times that her Ray Kappedesigned residence was lost in the fires. Its gone, she said. Kappe cofounded the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and was known for his progressive approach to design. The Keeler home was one of his seminal works.Gamble HouseRecognized as one of the finest examples of Arts and Crafts design, the Gamble House was the residence of David and Mary Gamble of the Procter and Gamble Company and designed by Charles and Henry Greene. A National Historic Landmark, the home was unharmed as of late Friday. The house is safe. Our surrounding neighborhoods have taken savage blows, as have numerous others throughout Southern California, which deeply saddens us. We are in awe of first responders who have been working tirelessly for days to save lives and structures, read an update on the homes official Instagram account.The Bunny MuseumA quirky and whimsical Altadena institution, the Bunny Museum, which celebrated all things rabbit, was lost in the Eaton fire, according to the LA Times. We lost our wedding albums, my wedding dress, and 46,000 bunny objects, Candace Frazee, who owned the museum with her husband, Steve Lubanski, wrote to the publication in an email. In a statement on X, the owners vowed to rebuild the beloved attraction, adding tomorrow will be hoppier with so many good wishes.The Hollywood SignThe Hollywood sign was not on fire, despite fake images that appeared to depict flames around the landmark.Christian Adams

Projects to Look Forward to 2025January 13th, 2025Development, NewsDalai Felinto html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Planning session 2025.One of the long-standing traditions of the Blender project is to start the year announcing what to be expected in the coming period. It gets artists excited (and developers anxious) to think of everything that will be soon possible.Are we going to see new features, or a focus on stability? Improvement in long-standing areas, or investment in new tech?Last year the focus was on finishing up long-standing projects, and that was a success! All the projects announced for Q1-2024 are now available in the latest release.Projects to Look Forward to 20242025 started with the Winter of Quality project, aiming at stability and documentation of all areas of Blender. We can now shift focus to start (and finish!) brand-new projects.Some of them are regular module work, and projects previously agreed on. While others are development targets for the Blender Studio upcoming open projects, which helps with direction (and testing) in the traditional Blender fashion.The proposed projects for this year are organized into the following areas:Node SystemsIntegrate the node-systems across different workflows.Better integration across node trees will allow node groups to be shared between different types of node systems, like Geometry Nodes and the compositor.Hair dynamics represents a major milestone: Geometry Nodes is set to reach feature parity with the legacy particle hair system. This will be the first step towards replacing the existing high-level simulation systems.Node-based image/texture Data-blocks will introduce procedural texture generation (think texture nodes 2.0), possible thanks to the GPU compositor development.Make productions more accessible for small and medium-sized studios.Project Setup, meaning project-wide variables and environments, will provide a unified way to share settings and properties across multiple .blend files within a single production. This will make asset management and shot creation more efficient and ensure consistency throughout the pipeline.Online Remote Assets will allow artists to access resources directly from online libraries such as third-party, community-curated content and various stores. This feature will also help remote productions that need their own asset libraries. This is the next step for the Extension Platform.Overrides will be simplified and re-iterated upon to provide an intuitive way to define properties dynamically for specific contexts, such as files, scenes, or collections. These improvements will reduce the need for external tools to handle override conflicts, making production pipelines smoother and more reliable.PerformanceBring more responsiveness into asset creation.While improving performance is an on-going effort, there are two areas in particular that currently are blocking for some productions requirements.EEVEE material shader compilation is currently a blocking operation for certain production requirements, especially during look development with heavy assets. The focus will be on enabling parallel compilation, investigating issues with the shader cache, and optimizing material compilation in complex production scenes.Shape Keys are another area requiring attention, particularly for character pipelines that rely on multiple shape keys for finer details and adjustment layers. The current storage system significantly impacts scalability. The plan is to modernize their storage, transitioning it to a more generic attribute systemsimilar to the approach used for UVsand implement sparse storage, ensuring that only the parts of a shape key that differ are stored.SculptingNon-destructive sculpting with layers, and better keyboard-less workflow.Multires propagation spikes remain a critical issue. These occur when changes to lower subdivision levels are not properly reflected in higher levels, leading to infamous artifacts. Fixing this problem is a priority to ensure the multires modifier works reliably in production.Sculpting Layers are a natural next step now that sculpting mode can handle more data, thanks to last years performance improvements. Adding support for mixing multiple layers will enable higher levels of detail and deforming layers essential for animation workflows, giving artists greater control and flexibility.Tablet pen support is important for workflows like sculpting, painting, and 2D animation. While the mouse can often be replaced by a pen, Blenders heavy reliance on keyboard input makes it cumbersome to use. Even more so for display tablets and, in the future, portable devices. The initial focus will be on supporting touch inputs, with basic gestures for navigation, undo, and redo.Storyboarding and basic camera editing from the VSE (video sequence editor).Sequence data-block.Quick access to Grease Pencil drawing for the active scene strip.Edit/animate scene strip camera from VSE.Storyboarding tools (e.g., easy of use to create new scene strips).Editorial and Storyboarding are key to film production. Inspired by the Storypencil add-on, and with Grease Pencil 3.0 complete, some of the team is now shifting the focus to editorial tools. The goal is to create a seamless workflow for storyboarding, combining sketching, timing, and editing to help artists bring their stories to life efficiently.On-going ProjectsThere is on-going maintenance and development in the modules. Here are a few of the areas being worked on.Rendering (Cycles, NPR, ).Vulkan (including a presentation at Vulkanised 2025).UV syncing and other improvements.HDR support in all the editors.Layered Animation.USD and game interoperability via glTF.Blender 5.0 backward incompatible changes.Other module work.ReleasesWhile projects dont target specific releases, Blender Foundation follows the cadence of 3 releases a year. The planned releases for 2025 and their initial dates are:Blender 4.4 (March) will be focused on stability and polishing.Blender 4.5 LTS (July) to wrap up the Blender 4 series.Blender 5.0 (November), to kickstart a new development cycle.On top of this, LTS release updates are expected throughout the year:Blender 3.6 LTS until June 2025.Blender 4.2 LTS until July 2026.Blender 4.5 LTS until July 2027.In 2024 there were 24 LTS releases among Blender 3.3 LTS, 3.6 LTS and 4.2 LTS.Blender ConferenceIn other news, the date for the traditional Blender Conference in Amsterdam moved to September this year. Learn more.Make this PossibleAll of this progress is made possible thanks to the donations and ongoing community involvement and contributions.The ambitious plans for 2025 reflect the growing scope of Blender, but they are also limited by the current resources available. While Blender is a community-driven project, much of the work is carried out by developers employed by Blender Institute or working with development grants.Further, some of the targets outlined here may need to be delayed or put on hold if the development team gets too busy managing ongoing maintenance or dealing with unforeseen delays.The same applies to certain development goals that have been proposed over the years, such as Blender Apps and Layered Textures, which are not feasible with the current team size. Support the Future of BlenderDonate to Blender by joining the Development Fund to support the Blender Foundations work on core development, maintenance, and new releases. Donate to BlenderTo follow new developments keep an eye on theBlender Developers Blog.On behalf of everyone, I hope we have a great 2025, and happy Blending!Dalai FelintoHead of Product, Blender

Behind the Scenes: Afghan Girl Likeness By Alina Khan on January 13, 2025 Behind the Scenes Discover the intricate art process behind Gndzs 3D modeling of the iconic 'Afghan Girl' photograph, where every detail, from texture mapping to lighting, brings a new depth and dimension to Steve McCurry's timeless image.INTRODUCTIONHello, my name is Volkan Gndz.Before diving into 3D, I graduated from the Industrial Design department. During my final year at university, I realized that creating 3D models for manufacturing didn't suit me, so I transitioned to mesh modeling, and later, I moved on to digital sculpting.Switching to something completely different from the principles I was used to was challenging at first, but knowing that the possibilities are endless and trying out new things has always excited me.After graduating, I was unemployed for a while, which affected me emotionally, but I didnt stop working on improving my portfolio. Eventually, I received a job offer via social media from the studio I currently work with. I am still collaborating with them as a freelance artist.INSPIRATIONThe "Afghan Girl" photograph has been a deeply impactful image for me since my childhood. The green color of her eyes, the way the light falls on her face, and most importantly, the striking message it conveys... Because of this, Ive always wanted to create a piece inspired by the Afghan Girl.From a digital sculpting perspective, creating a model based on a single reference image is a real challenge, which makes it even more significant. Being able to achieve this is also important because, when working on likeness projects, it can sometimes be difficult to find sufficient reference photos.This combination of technical difficulty and the emotional impact of the Afghan Girl photograph is what motivated me to undertake this project.PROCESSSoftware ZBrush ZWrap Blender Camera SettingsIn this project, I first focused on setting up the camera and creating the base shapes through it, as I only had a single reference, and it was crucial for the model to match it exactly. I started by adjusting the focal length and position of the camera in Blender to determine the placement and distance. Once that was set, I created the primary forms of the base mesh in Blender.Afterward, I transferred the mesh to ZBrush for detailing. Using ZWrap, I wrapped the TexturingXYZ base mesh onto my sculpt.TexturingFor the texturing process, I edited it node-based in Blender. In some areas, I adjusted the exposure, while in others, I used projections from the original reference image to create the textures.(Yes, a lot of nodes )DistortionThe most challenging part was ensuring that the model didn't distort when viewed from other angles, as working from a single reference can easily lead to such issues. Preventing this distortion was the biggest challenge throughout the process.And that was it! Below is the final render and clay render.RENDER: Afghan Girl Likeness Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or feedback, please dont hesitate to share your thoughts.About the Artist Volkan Gndz is a character artist from Turkey. He is currently working as a freelance 3D artist at Jpeq Studios. Links

A hacker compromised an administrative account on the website for popular game Path of Exile 2, which allowed them to reset the passwords on dozens of players accounts, according to comments from developer Grinding Gear Games (GGG) made during a podcast on Sunday. This access would have given the hacker the ability to steal powerful and rare items from those players, with some players spending hundreds of hours grinding for valuable in-game currency.The news comes after a wave of Path of Exile 2 players complained on the games forums and social media about being hacked and their inventories emptied. The comments also show how the hacker compromised the account shortly before the games launch, seemingly laying in wait for players to build up their stashes of items before pulling off their heist.We totally fucked up here, Path of Exile 2 game director Jonathan Rogers said during a podcast recording with action roleplaying game (ARPG) content creators GhazzyTV and Darth Microtransaction.Rogers said the hack started with the compromise of a Steam account. That Steam was linked to an administrative account on Path of Exile 2s website, he said. This gave the hacker the ability to do things like reset players passwords, meaning they could then log into the game as those players. Effectively what they had access to was the same stuff that customer service had access to, Rogers said.Ordinarily, whenever a member of Path of Exile 2s support staff makes a change, that event is added to a list for potential later auditing. But when it came to resetting passwords, a bug meant that change was saved as a note and not an event, Rogers said. The hacker was then able to delete the note saying a password had been changed, an apparent attempt by the hacker to cover their tracks too. Because of this, it wasnt immediately obvious to GGG what was happening with these account compromises, Rogers said.Do you know anything else about this hack? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at +44 20 8133 5190. Otherwise, send me an email at joseph@404media.co.66 notes were deleted, so that would imply that 66 accounts were compromised, Rogers said, although caveated that GGG only keeps logs for 30 days. Interestingly, the compromise was all prelaunch of POE2, Rogers said, meaning that the hacker gained access before the game was even available to the public.Path of Exile 2 has been in the news lately after mounting evidence that Elon Musk, who presents himself as a high level ARPG player, has likely been cheating in the game.Path of Exile 2 launched in early access in November and has remained one of the most popular games on Steam, reaching between 250,000 and 290,000 players over the past week, according to data on Steam player count site SteamDB. In it, players command a variety of classes like Sorceror, Warrior, or Witch, and trawl through dungeons looking for ever increasingly powerful loot, much in the style of other ARPGs like Diablo.Path of Exile 2 differs slightly in that it has a much stronger emphasis on trading with other players, which is basically essentially for making a character stronger unless players deliberately avoid trading for the increased challenge. This trade is facilitated by the official Path of Exile 2 website.Players typically trade items for a rare consumable called a Divine Orb which can further improve their gear, making it the de facto currency of the Path of Exile 2 economy. A side effect is that many websites exist where people can pay real money for Divine Orbs, which they then use to trade for gear on the Path of Exile 2 trade site.Multiple Path of Exile 2 players have recently complained of hackers breaking into their accounts and emptying their stashes of Divine Orbs. My exalted and divine all gone, one person wrote on the Path of Exile 2 forum in December, with Exalted Orbs being another in-game consumable.We totally fucked up here.In other cases hackers have stolen gear from players. In one a hacker stole a particular ring. That player then found what they said was the exact same ring being sold on the Path of Exile 2 trade website, according to a post on the Path of Exile 2 subreddit. That post has since been deleted by the subreddit moderators, and moderators have also deleted similar posts on the official forum. In some cases these posts named what victims believed was the hackers account.Rogers said GGG is immediately adding two-factor authentication to all of its support accounts. You can bet on that, he said. Rogers said he also wants to introduce two-factor authentication for player accounts, but that comes with the additional complexity of implementing ways for players to recover their account when they inevitably lose that second factor, such as a backup code or phone number.GGG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Joseph is an award-winning investigative journalist focused on generating impact. His work has triggered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines, shut down tech companies, and much more.More from Joseph Cox

Happy New YearWarframe has added its most fantastical grind yet: kissing another humanFinally, another person who'll be impressed by my Arcane collection.Image credit: Digital Extremes News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Jan. 13, 2025 Warframe has added its most ambitious feature yet, one that offers a truly fresh and otherworldly experience. Having a new year's kiss with someone you like. Finally, a real relationship with someone who thinks my Chroma Prime melee crit build is cool. Thanks Aoi.This addition comes as a small but impactful update to the Warframe 1999 expansion. For those unaware, a major part of Warframe 1999 is getting to know a cast of colourful characters fighting back against Techrot and Scaldra in a grunge-inspired city on the edge. These characters, who start as abrasive strangers, can be won over to your side, building strong friendships and yes, even romantic relationships.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. This kiss scene acts as a sort of climactic pay off to those who've gone out of their way to take the romantic route with one of these characters, although a friendly alternative scene exists for those who wanted to keep things strictly professional. All jokes aside, it's a cool ittle bit of pay off for those who spent their New Years playing the game and farming Cyte-9 blueprints that never drop.It's also a nice little bonus for players that's a little bit off the beaten path. It's not the only example in Warframe 1999, those who solo the secret Scaldra tank using one of the featured warframes (Mag, Excalibur, etc) have earned themselves a special cosmetic for their account and hangout. This, alongside the new kiss scene, just adds layers of depth to an already intriguing update. Well worth checking out, if you've not tried the game out yet.Personally speaking, I recommend getting friendly with everyone's favourite British sniper Quinncy, giving him a kiss, then throwing him headfirst into the Helminth for that sweet, sweet subsume ability. Quinncy would surely love that. You can even buy the new Protoframe skin so it looks like Quinncy while you do it! Talk about romantic!Meanwhile, while we're all having fun here smooching people and blowing up tanks, Hunhow is still alone in the ocean. Where's his new year's kiss, huh? He's just swimming around, hitting on fish. Did you even think to invite him to your new year celebration? Did you grab him a pizza? No. Goes to show how good of a friend you really are. The Second Dream was years ago bud, fogive and forget.

0:04:21 Todd Perrys early inspirations and journey into visual effects0:08:36 Discovering computer graphics and transitioning to 3D work0:14:41 Breaking into the industry and first big projects at Imageworks0:20:06 Transitioning to supervising roles on films like Age of Ultron0:24:31 Working on Doctor Strange and insights into Black Panther0:29:51 Innovations in practical effects versus digital effects0:35:06 Todds approach to remote work and distributed VFX pipelines0:41:11 Highlights of Todds Oscar-shortlisted live-action short film0:46:31 How AI is reshaping tools and workflows in filmmaking0:54:21 Reflections on the future of mid-budget films and storytelling1:01:56 Closing thoughts and Todds current projects

It's a wild word out there.This year marks five years since the last mainline Animal Crossing game launched. Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out at the perfect time and made an absolutely huge splash worldwide. But with its fifth anniversary fast approaching, we're sure lots of fans are champing at the bit for a new game.So, if you were browsing the PlayStation Store over the weekend and thought you spotted an Animal Crossing gamer, no, your eyes weren't playing tricks on you. As our friends over at Good Vibes Gaming have pointed out, there's a game that looks an awful lot like Animal Crossing on there.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to reshape the social media space, a group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the control and influence of billionaires.The initiative, Free Our Feeds, aims to protect Blueskys underlying technology, the AT Protocol, and leverage it to create an open social media ecosystem that cant be controlled by a single person or company, including Bluesky itself.The goal of the initiative is to establish a public-interest foundation that would fund the creation of new interoperable social networks that can run on the AT Protocol, and build independent infrastructure to support these new platforms, even if Bluesky were to end up in the hands of billionaires.The campaign comes a week after Meta announced that it was dropping fact-checking and loosening its content moderation rules. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is publicly traded, but Mark Zuckerberg essentially controls the company through his ownership of super-voting shares, which make it hard for activist shareholders to oust him or push for changes. It also comes as Bluesky saw a recent surge in users who migrated over from X (formerly Twitter) after owner Elon Musk used the platform to promote the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and other political causes, including the right-wing AfD party in Germany.Free our Feeds launched with the support of several notable names, including actor Mark Ruffallo, director Alex Winter, writer Cory Doctorow, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Mozilla Foundation president Mark Surman, and more.Robin Berjon, an independent technologist and one of the projects nine custodians, told TechCrunch that Free Our Feeds was the result of conversations that he and other founding members were having around exploring ways to push for change in the way social media and digital infrastructure works.If you think of our road network, if all the roads were owned by one or two billionaires, and they could tax anything, decide whos allowed to go where, etc, then we would be in trouble, Berjon said. And digital infrastructure is not, as you know, obviously big and in your face as a road maybe, but it works in exactly the same way. It has the exact same dynamic, the exact same concentration of power. And so essentially, what were doing is making sure that this digital infrastructure, which is by its nature, a public good, is governed in the public interest.Although the team acknowledges that it shares the same values as Bluesky, they believe that the company is susceptible to venture capital pressure, and that if it were to end up under a billionaires control, users deserve alternative options backed by independent infrastructure. The team has been in contact with Bluesky, noting that the decentralized network is supportive of their mission to make the AT protocol billionaire-proof.Free Our Feeds wants to raise $30 million over three years, and has an immediate goal of $4 million to hire a small team and build independent infrastructure.The goal of operating infrastructure is to make sure that the AT protocol that underlies Bluesky can remain open, Berjon said. Theyve open sourced it, people can use it. But because theres only one big entity, thats Bluesky, theres no countervailing power, theres no one else to make sure it stays open. We intend to operate independent infrastructure from Bluesky thats compatible with them, that supports the entire network, so that its not only them having a major place there. The idea really is to continue raising money to become a credible actor in that space, and to use that money to essentially fund other applications.Berjon says the AT Protocol is currently mostly being used to build BlueSky, but it could also be used to build other types of social apps.Using the same infrastructure, you could build an Instagram analog, a Facebook analog, a Tiktok analog, or, you know, things that havent been invented yet, he said. And thats actually the goal. Its not just to copy things. And in inventing these new things, you dont need to reinvent user accounts or storage systems, etc. People can just use their existing accounts with your new thing, because its interoperable with the AT protocol. And so we really want to help people build these new applications.Free Our Feeds intends to have the independent foundation established and running by the end of the year. Berjon says that if the non-profit doesnt raise enough funds, it will return the money.

Breakdown & ShowreelsHere: VFX Making of by VFX Supervisor Kevin BaillieBy Vincent Frei - 13/01/2025 Go behind the scenes of Here with Production VFX Supervisor Kevin Baillie as he unveils the cutting-edge technology used to create the stunning visual effects (made by Metaphysic, DNEG, Luma Pictures and Crafty Apes) in Robert Zemeckis latest cinematic masterpiece. Discover how the team pushed the boundaries of storytelling through visual effects!WANT TO KNOW MORE?DNEG: Dedicated page about Here on DNEG website. Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025