Save up to 75% on artlantismembers.com subscriptions

Artlantis Members is a web store offering thousands of high-quality Artlantis objects and shaders for sale or for free with a subscription membership. When artlantismembers.com went online 3 years ago, they started out with only 500 objects. At that time, the cost of a subscription was the same as it is today: $80 for a 6-month subscription and $160 for a 12-month subscription, which is a very good deal for access to a collection that size. Today, the collection has grown to over 4,800 objects and will soon surpass 5,000 objects, which at today's prices is an incredible value! To keep up with that growth and the increasing demands on their servers, they have decided to increase their membership subscription prices on July 15, 2013.

You may be aware that subscribers are able to download up to 15 items per day for free from their Artlantis media section. If you are a subscriber, this gives you access to all of that content, but helps manage the bandwidth usage on the site. What you may not be aware of are some of the great things going on behind the scenes. The Artlantis Members team have been hard at work creating localized versions of their store for different markets, including Japan, Europe, and the U.S. This is a massive undertaking and requires ongoing maintenance, but the end result is a better shopping experience for customers in those regional markets. They also continue to recruit new talented developers to the team, which means that you will see more new products added at an even faster pace.

Here is a breakdown of today's prices and the new pricing that will take effect on July 15, 2013:

6-month subscription:
Currently $80, will adjust to $140 (77¢ per day)

12-month subscription:
Currently $160, will adjust to $250 (68¢ per day)

So for less than the cost of a pack of gum, you can have access to 15 beautifully crafted and carefully optimized objects and shaders for Artlantis each and every day. That's less than 5¢ per object! We wanted to make sure to mention that while this offer is open to new customers, we are also able to extend the subscriptions of existing members, as well, at today's lower prices. We hope you'll take this opportunity to add or renew and artlantismembers.com subscription today.

 Purchase the 6-month artlantismembers.com Subscription

 Purchase the 12-month artlantismembers.com Subscription

 Preview the Artlantis media section on artlantismembers.com

Get Ready for the Revolution!

A tantalizing new website appeared recently, along with a series of mysterious tweets and posts offering this compelling call to action: Get Ready for the Revolution! For Artlantis fans who have anxiously been awaiting word on the next release, your wait is over: Artlantis 5 is coming soon!

The website features a release date countdown timer, along with a series of letters that form the word "REVOLUTION." Over time, each letter will unveil sneak peaks of some of the exciting new features of Artlantis. The first letter, R, links to an eye-popping video of a new feature that many users are sure to appreciate: relief mapping. We witness a stone wall transforming from a flat texture mapped surface to a truly 3-dimensional surface with plenty of depth. The video is short but impressive, and succinctly illustrate the vast potential for this feature to be used on a wide variety of building materials that architects and designers specify on a regular basis.

Visit the new website and while there, be sure to sign up to for the email list so that you can learn about other exciting Artlantis 5 announcements.

 Witness the REVOLUTION...visit Artlantis5.com

10 Free HDRi Spherical Skies Maps

This comes by way of blogger Ronen Beckerman. 10 half-sized resolution spherical environmental maps of the original commercial pack, VizPeople HDRI v1, are available for free download and non-commercial use. These are full 360˚ HDRI skydomes that integrate flawlessly into Artlantis 4.1 and can be used to light the scene, one of the key new features in the v4.1 update. Try them out and see how they work!

To download the files, you'll need to scroll to the "Share to Download the FREE HDRI maps" portion of the page, about 1/3 down the page. From there, either like on Facebook, tweet on Twitter, or share via Google+, and a "Get the Files!" link will immediately appear afterward. After downloading, install them by unzipping and dragging the folder into your programs folder: Artlantis/Media/Images.

To apply the HDRI backgrounds into the Artlantis scene, go to the Perspectives Inspector and either double-click the Background Environment box and load the desired .HDR file, or drag-and-drop the HDRI from the Media Catalog into either the Background Environment box or the background of the 3D preview window. There may be a brief pause while the new HDRI loads into the scene. Finally, to use the HDRI as a light source in the scene, click on the HDRI button and check the "Use HDR Image Lighting" checkbox in the resulting dialogue. If you want the scene to be lit only by the HDRI background, deactivate the current Heliodon, but if you want shadows cast from the sun, leave it on and be sure your Heliodon's sun position matches that of the sun in the HDRI.

 See the full article for the download link