Rive Does 3D Now + The Fastest Glow Plugin EVER? | Motion Mondays

Rive shipped a 25-kilobyte GPU layer that competes with Unity, X-Particles is coming to Blender, and there is a new After Effects glow plugin that makes the built-in one look embarrassing.

Rive's GPU Canvas adds custom shaders, 3D imports, and rendering pipelines at 25 kilobytes. Insydium, the company behind X-Particles, launched Nexus for Blender in beta. A Disney Animation lighting artist built a single-node painterly render filter in his spare time, officially shipping in Blender 5.2. Mikey Borup's Element Glow is a new, insanely fast After Effects plugin with near-real-time glow and hue, saturation, and luminance targeting.

Also, Higgsfield pushed its AI tools inside Premiere and After Effects. Adobe's NVIDIA partnership promises faster Photoshop and Premiere. The co-founder of Frame.io is building a storage tool called Strada that directly undercuts Frame.io's pricing. Finally, we'll look at cool work from The Heist, Studio Dumbar, and a live Rive installation on an EuroLeague basketball court. Plus our student spotlight is on Sorcha McGlinchey, a motion designer and Celtic Award winner from Toronto.

New FREE Tool: Node Ninja for C4D

School of Motion just launched its first free Cinema 4D plugin - and it solves one of the most tedious parts of working with Redshift. Node Ninja reads your texture folder and builds a complete, production-ready Redshift material automatically: every map connected, every node wired, color spaces set correctly. One click. Done.

GET NODE NINJA FREE →

Please Note: Node Ninja is a free download - no credit card required. Works on Mac and Windows.

Did you know?

School of Motion has two FREE courses!

Path to Mograph is an in-depth look at a career as a Motion Designer, aimed at students who are ready to start their mograph journey.

Level Up is for motion designers who've already gotten started, but need to figure out the next step in their career.

If you decide to take the plunge into All-Access, then you'll also get access to our Jobs Board, as well as monthly livestreams and workshops with industry experts!

All that on top of joining our amazing SOM Community, and access to ALL of our courses, with unlimited (real human!) coursework critiques!

🎓 School of Motion Courses Mentioned

• School of Motion All-Access

• School of Motion Team Training

• Node Ninja (free C4D plugin)

• Cinema 4D Basecamp

• Courses & workshops coming soon

🗒️ Show Notes

• Rive GPU Canvas (video)

• Blender Paint Filter (tutorial)

• Nexus for Blender

• Element Glow

• Higgsfield Adobe Plugin

• Concept to Vector (Illustrator)

• AI Brush Simulations (3D Bonfire)

• Adobe + NVIDIA announcement

• Strada

• Blender 5.2 Roadmap

• CozyBlanket Pro

• Psyop Independent Media Group

🎨 Artist Spotlight

• The Heist - Brand + Anthem Reel

• Studio Dumbar - Apple Football Design System

• Javier Oliver - EuroLeague Final Four (Rive + GlassCourt)

• SOM Student of the Week - Sorcha McGlinchey

• Sorcha McGlinchey's Portfolio