Quad meshes from AI + Cyber Monday picks for 3D Artists

Black Friday means my inbox, and probably yours, is full of sales from every tool competing for attention. Some are worth your time and money, and some are a distraction. So here are my top picks for building bigger, better worlds faster that happen to have a big discount right now. But first, the weekly roundup.

New tech updates

Hunyuan 3D Studio upgrades to 1.1

Tencent's Hunyuan 3D Studio updated to 1.1 with the PolyGen 1.5 model, aimed at moving AI-generated meshes closer to production-friendly topology rather than concept sculpts. It learns native quad topology end to end, producing cleaner loops and more readable wireframes to cut down on retopo before a game engine. It is another step toward AI you can actually rig, UV, and bake, though not a replacement for manual cleanup yet.

Cascadeur updates to 2025.3

Nekki shipped Cascadeur 2025.3. Inbetweening was reworked into the Timeline Interpolation system so you can combine it with standard interpolation per track, AutoPosing now officially supports quadrupeds, and an alpha of Google's Filament renderer landed in the viewport with better lighting, shadows, and ambient occlusion.

RealityScan overhauls mobile and desktop

Mobile 1.8 added an AR point-cloud overlay while shooting, an Object mode with automatic background removal, better in-app cleanup, and focus peaking with a capture timer. Desktop 2.1 added support for mixing photos with LiDAR and SLAM data, classified point-cloud import, cleaner UV unwrapping, and new export controls with CLI and API hooks for batch processing.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday picks

None of these are affiliated or sponsored. They are just what I use and would buy again at full price.

• Dash by Polygonflow, my favorite Unreal worldbuilding plugin, is 30% off perpetual plans, with a new full demo scene.
• Marmoset Toolbag 5 is 20% off all licenses, and a prior v4 upgrade code stacks with the discount.
• Premium asset kits: Kitbash3D is 40% off, and Big Medium Small's entire catalog is 40% off.
• William Faucher's Easy suite, including Easy Toolbag, is 30% off on Fab.
• Ultra Dynamic Sky, a full sky and weather system for Unreal, is 50% off through the weekend.
• HardOps and BoxCutter, the add-ons that moved me from Maya to Blender, are 30% off on Superhive.
• RizomUV, my go-to for fast UVs and packing, is 30% off until December 7.
• Courses: Blender Bros is 50% off, CGCookie is 30% off, and Unreal Sensei's masterclass is 50% off.

New video: Black Friday picks for 3D artists

If you would rather watch a deeper walkthrough of these tools and resources, I made a dedicated Black Friday video over on YouTube.