Maxon CINEMA 4D is a comprehensive 3D graphics software offering large sets of advanced tools, flexible workflow, and broad integration capability. The Studio version provides the complete CINEMA 4D toolset, and R17 (Release 17) adds a large variety of new tools and features, including a highly updated timeline, new shaders and splines, enhanced motion tracking, and Houdini Engine and SketchUp integration.
Create character rigs and advanced character animations, add hair and fur, and much more. A powerful physics engine allows you to perform complex collisions and interaction between objects, whether a few or thousands. Network rendering lets you take advantage of all the computers on your network to help render your animations faster. Although an advanced 3D application, CINEMA 4D is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, as well as fast, with much of the work being done for you in the background. For example, hair will automatically swoosh and sway as you move your character around.
Note:
This discounted upgrade is valid for existing owners of CINEMA 4D Visualize R15.
New Features in CINEMA 4D Studio R17
Rendering
- New Variation Shader
- New Display Color Shader
- Filter Shader: New Checkbox to switch color grading on/off
- New Formula Shader
- New Lens Distortion Shader
- New Lens Distortion render effects
- New Take System
- New Token System
- Global Material Override
- Team Render Improvements
- Watermark Post-Effect now support Takes
Modeling
- New Spline Sketch Tool
- New Spline Pen Tool
- New Spline Arc Tool
- New Spline Smooth Tool
- New Spline Boolean Commands: Subtract, Union, And, Or, Intersect
- Spline Mask supports new boolean modes
- Spline Mask now supports more than two splines
- New behavior of the ESC key
- New Trackball navigation mode
- Mesh Check Enhancements
- Poly Pen Enhancements
Animation
- New Euler Filter
- New Autotangent modes
- Timeline Enhancements
- Powerslider Enhancements
Animation Timeline Enhancements
- Tab instead of space bar to switch between Dopesheet/Fcurve
- Improved shift behavior
- Space bar now plays but only when Timeline is active
- The interactive update now also work in Dopesheet mode
- General speedup
- Now there are 2 Timeline commands (to open Dopesheet or FCurve)
- Zoom to cursor
- Extended marker to range markers and added color
- Show tangents of selected curves
- User Data groups are now also displayed in the Timeline
- When the preference "Track Color" is set to Track Color, the tracks names are also colored in the list views
- HPB should now has the correct color order
- There is a new deselect command so that CTRL-Shift A can deselect everything
- The Timeline now remembers the last active area (Object area or main area) and then selects/deselect all accordingly
- New "Lock Ratio" command for locked zooming in FCurve Mode -- shift toggles between locked/not locked ratio
Sculpting
- Erase Brush: New "Erase Masked" button
- New "Sculpt To PoseMorph" command
- Grab Brush: New Surface Distance Option
- Stencil Tile Preview
- Flatten Brush: NewFixed Plane Option "Custom Plane"
- Radial Symmetry supports a custom center point
- Sculpt Brushes now Support Guide Snapping
- Backface Sculpting Option
- Edge Detect Option
- Mask Brush Improvement
- Symmetry Dialog: New "Find nearest point" option
Python
- BrushDabData
- SculptBrushParams
- SculptObject
C++
- lib_sculptbrush.h
- SculptMouseData
- Spline Brush SDK Example
- Other Additions
- lib_sculpt.h
Motion Tracker
- New Graph View with Top-Down and Graph mode
- Lens Distortion Tool for Camera Calibrator and Motion Tracker
Exchanges
- New OBJ Import/Export with support for materials
- New SketchUp Import
- FBX now supports Takes
- AE now supports Takes
Pipeline
- Integration of the Houdini Engine
Workflow & Interface
- New Color Chooser
- Bitmap Shader has a new function to locate the file in Finder/Explorer
- "Locate Image..." now works correctly for presets
- Naming tool now also works with Tags, Materials, Layers, and Takes
- Enhanced Camera HUD
- Rendersettings HUD
- Attributes Manager: New Layer mode
- Material Editor: Presets for refraction
- The last selected objects gets a different highlight color in the Object Manager
- The Texture Manager now can remove links to Textures (e.g. Textures in deactivated channels)
- The PictureViewer now also displays the frame number of the rendered frame.
- The rendertime display moved to a more prominent place in the PictureViewer
- The cursor keys can now be used to navigate the Texture Manager
Other
- Metaball Enhancements: New "Line" and "Triangle" types, "Accurate Normals" method
- Threaded redraw of texture custom user interface
- Automatic network proxy detection
- Viewport Dither
- New command line parameter to render Takes
- Merge now supports Takes
- New Override Node for XPresso
- New OpenGL base system Context, OpenGL 3.2 required
- Image loaders are now interruptable (this allows early exit for threaded user interface updates)
Take System
The new Take System goes beyond the functionality of a regular Render Layer System. Whether you use Cinema 4D or a third-party render engine, you will enjoy the flexible scene management offered by the Take System. Create numerous independent takes of your scene and change almost any parameter for intuitive variations -- all saved in one scene file eliminating file management hassles and wasted disk space. Nested parent-children take relationships let you easily hierarchize your versions, while the new Token System takes care of the file naming headache when rendering multiple takes in one go. Maintain complete versioning and variation control while saving precious time exploring all possibilities and responding to client change requests.
New Color Chooser
Color your 3D world using a color wheel, photo reference, screen picker, customizable swatch library, or one of many color models. Simplify any image using Photo Mosaic mode and quickly generate color swatches from a photo. Pick out harmonies in a way that will really complement your scene. Your colors highly enhanced.
Houdini Engine Integration
The new seamless connectivity with Side Effects' Houdini Engine allows you to use Houdini Digital Assets delivered from your TD or downloaded from the Orbolt Store natively within Cinema 4D. You can concentrate on the creative process, while Cinema 4D and the Houdini Engine work hand in hand in the background.
SketchUp Integration
Import SketchUp objects directly. Quickly populate your scenes by accessing free, ready-to-use objects created and made available by the SketchUp user community.
New Spline Tools
Working with lines is now a lot more intuitive in Cinema 4D. Manipulate points, lines, tangents, and arcs with an intuitive user interface. Convert to polygon shapes. Leverage Boolean operators like Intersect, Subtract, Union.
Variation Shader
Use the new Variation Shader to quickly and easily apply randomness across all attribute channels of a single material.
Formula Shader
With the new Formula Shader you can use mathematical expressions to apply surface attributes based on object coordinates, world coordinates, and time. From simple geometrical patterns to highly sophisticated simulations, the possibilities are endless.
Material Override
Generate clay renders with just a few clicks of the mouse using the new Material Override. Replace all or only selected materials from your scene with a basic material with an easy and intuitive workflow. You can also exclude specific channels such as transparency, alpha, displacement, and others from the material override, if desired.
Sculpting Enhancements
Dozens of new features and improvements make sculpting more intuitive and efficient. Use Sculpt to PoseMorph, for example, to speed up character animation. Easily sculpt hard-surface models with Edge Detection.
Edge Detection
Apply your sculpting, and let Cinema 4D take care of the edges. The new Edge Detection feature lets you paint more freely and with broader strokes, providing for faster and more accurate work.
Sculpt to Pose Morph
Sculpt, and skip the in between stuff. No need to convert your sculpted objects to polygonal objects. The new Sculpt to Pose Morph feature automatically creates morph targets for each sculpt layer. You can quickly transition from character design to character animation.
Animation Workflow
Animate faster and with more precision. Simply control F-Curves with weighted tangents and the option to automatically remove overshoot. Easily eliminate Gimbal lock with Euler filtering, define animation regions via range markers, and master your animation workflow with new Timeline preferences.
Motion Tracking
Better results in less time. The new Graph View highlights problem track points in a simple-to-use graph and lets you easily remove them from the calculation. When integrating 3D elements into videos or photos, manually correcting for optical distortions like curved and plunging lines can take up valuable production time. The new Lens Distortion tools make it easy to generate a distortion profile for any image. You can remove distortion for tracking and scene creation, then add distortion back in when rendering. Use the intuitive graphical interface to calibrate just once, and save the settings for that lens for future use. Enjoy a complete lens distortion workflow, entirely in Cinema 4D.
Updated Content Libraries
Updated with ready-to-use objects, materials, surfaces, scenes, and presets. Parametric objects such as book shelves -- including the books -- let you drag and drop a completely customized living room in a snap.
All Features
Platform
- Cross-platform support for Mac and Windows
- 64-bit architecture
- OpenGL 3.2 support
- Extensive API: C++, Python, C.O.F.F.E.E.
Interface & Workflow
- Context-sensitive, fully-searchable HTML help
- Commander
- To Do List
- Multiple projects open at once
- Customizable toolbars, layouts, menus
- Light and dark interface schemes
- Unlimited view windows
- Heads-up display
- Custom pop-up menu
- Non-modal tools with real-time feedback
- Collapsible Managers & Palettes
- Selection / display filters
- Custom User Data per object
- Doodle viewport annotation tool
- Layer system for object and material management
- XRef external instancing / referencing system
- Tablet support for Wacom and other pen tablets
- 3dconnexion 3DMouse support
- Stereo display in Viewport
- OpenGL Viewport
- Object highlighting
- Available in 11 languages
- Arabic interface support
- OS X Lion full screen support
- Retina icons
- Solo button
- Annotations tag
- User Participation
- New Crashhandler
- Take System
- New Color Chooser
Camera
- Camera, Target Camera, Stereo Camera
- Motion Camera
- Camera Composition Helpers
- Camera Focus Picker
- Camera Calibrator
- Camera Morph
- Camera Crane
Data Exchange / Format Support
- QuickTime support
- AVI support (Win)
- Image formats - float with layers: PSD, TIFF, OpenEXR
- Image formats - float: HDR, DPX, RLA, RPF
- Image formats: BMP, IFF, JPG, PICT, PNG, TARGA
- QuickTime VR object, panorama
- CINEWARE compatible
- After Effects compositing exchange with 3D data
- NUKE exchange
- Photoshop exchange
- Apple Motion compositing exchange with 3D data
- Apple Final Cut Pro compositing exchange (Mac)
- Digital Fusion compositing exchange (Win)
- Shake compositing exchange
- Houdini Engine Support
- SketchUp Importer
- Support for DXF, DWG, 3DS, DAE, FBX, DEM, LWS, STL, VRML2, OBJ, COLLADA, Alembic
- IGES importer
- Okino connection - seamless CAD file import via optional PolyTrans software (Win)
- BodyPaint 3D exchange - 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave
- Support for most current FBX and Alembic formats (FBX 2014 & Alembic 1.5)
Modeling Tools
- Parametric object primitives
- Scene Objects: Floor, Sky, Environment, Stage, Foreground, Background
- Parametric spline primitives
- Extrude, Lathe, Loft, Sweep
- Polygonal modeling tools with N-gon support
- Subdivision surfaces
- Generators: Metaball, Boolean, Symmetry, Array, Atom Array, Instance, Connect, Spline Mask, Python
- PolyPen Tool
- Spline Tools: Pen, Sketch, Smooth, Arc, Boolean Commands
- Bevel Deformer
- Enhanced Cogwheel
- Improved Symmetry Object
- Deformer Falloff
- Mesh Check
Sculpting
- Sculpt functionality
- Sculpt Brushes
- Baking
- C++ Sculpt Brush API
- Python Support for lib_sculpt
- Sculpt To PoseMorph
- R17 Sculpting
UV Editing
- UV Editor
- Interactive UV mapping by projection types
- Optimal UV mapping to automatically remove seams
- LSCM unwrapping and relaxing
- ABF unwrapping and relaxing
- UV Peeler
- UVs for Caps
- UV Enhancements
Materials & Texturing
- Transparency with absorption, total internal reflections, exit reflections
- Blurry reflections and transparencies
- Normal Maps: tangent, object, or world
- Displacement: intensity (centered), red/green, and RGB
- Choose Photoshop PSD layers per usage
- Animated textures (MOV, AVI, sequence) with Viewport preview
- Selectable viewport resolution and channel display per material
- Shading Models: Lambertian, Oren-Nayar
- Fresnel Shader including physically correct IOR
- Noise Procedural shader with 32 different noise algorithms
- Layer shader
- Proximity-based Proximal shader
- Procedural surface shaders
- Texture Baking: surface color, illumination, Ambient Occlusion, Normals, displacement, and more
- Sub-polygon displacement
- Sub-Surface Scattering
- Terrain Mask shader
- Brick, Wood, Weathering, Pavement and Normalizer Shaders
- Sketch & Toon Art, Hatch, Spot (halftone) Shaders
- 3D Painting with layers, all blend modes, and Photoshop file compatibility
- Multi-brush painting of multiple material channels in single stroke
- Raybrush painting directly onto rendered result
- Projection painting
- Exchange projections with Photoshop
- Camera Mapping
- ProjectionMan camera mapping workflow tool
- Texture Manager
- Brick Shader Enhancements
- Grass Material Shader
- Reflectance Channel
- Formula Shader
- Variation Shader
- 12 Material Channels: Color, Diffusion, Luminance, Transparency, Reflection, Environment, Fog, Bump, Normal, Alpha, Glow, Displacement
Lighting
- Light Types: Omni, Spot, Infinite, Area, Square Spot, Parallel Spot, Square Parallel Spot
- Hard, Soft, Area shadows
- Visible, Volumetric, and Inverse Volumetric lighting
- Noise within light illumination and/or visibility
- Include/exclude light diffusion, specular, shadow per object
- Custom lens flares
- Caustics
- Color temperature in Kelvin
- Photometric brightness setting in Candela and Lumen
- Support of IES light data
Rendering
- Render up to 128,000 pixels square / 32 bits per pixel
- Bucket rendering
- Render instances
- Color profile support
- Camera white balance
- Linear workflow
- Adaptive anti-aliasing
- Multi-Pass output
- Object buffers - specify unique alpha channels per object
- Ambient Occlusion
- Global Illumination (IR 2.0, QMC, mixed)
- Physical Renderer with physical camera, high-quality depth of field, high-quality motion blur
- Stereo rendering
- Depth of Field post effect
- Vector Motion Blur post effect
- Position Pass
- CineMan Renderman-compliant bridge
- Sketch & Toon non-photorealistic rendering
- Pyrocluster volumetric particle rendering
- Physical Sky
- 3D Sound Rendering
- Picture Viewer: RAM player, color correction, image merge, anaglyph preview, and more
- Watermark post effect
- Render Queue batch rendering system
- Universal Sampler (GI-QMC)
- Radiosity maps
- Subsurface-Scatering
- Embree Integration
- Light Mapping
- Normal Pass
- Team Render (Number of Nodes) (unlimited)
- Team Render Server (Number of Nodes) (unlimited)
- BiRender - Non-Photorealistic Rendering (Sketch and Toon & Hair)
- Global Material Override
Animation
- Easy one-click keyframe Position, Scale, Rotation, Point Level animation, and user-defined parameters
- Record dot animation of all animatable parameters
- Automatic keyframing
- Cappucino - real time keyframing
- PowerSlider animation toolbar for playback and keyframe manipulation
- Timeline - up to 4 timeline windows with customizable track display and dopesheet or F-Curve view modes
- F-Curve Snapshot and Reduced Modification curves
- Constant Velocity option per track
- Keyframe reduction
- Keyframe baking
- ASCII animation import
- Non-linear animation / motion mixing system
- Constraints: PSR, Up-Vector, Clamp, Mirror, Parent, Aim, Spring
- Driver tag
- XPresso - node-based Expression Editor
- Virtual Walk-through tool - first-person scene navigation and animation
- Interaction Tag
- Animation Dots
- Motion Tracker
- Graph View for Motion Tracker
- Lens Distortion Support for Motion Tracker
Dynamic Animation
- Basic particle system
- Thinking Particles node-based particle system
- Rigid Body dynamics for MoGraph objects
- Rigid Body dynamics
- Joints, Springs, Motors
- Soft Body dynamics
- Aerodynamics forces
- Plastic & Breaking Springs
- Breaking Connectors
- Cloth dynamics and dressing functions
- Hair dynamics
- Spline dynamics
MoGraph Tools
- Cloner object
- Fracture object
- Matrix object
- MoInstance object
- MoText object
- Tracer object
- Spline Mask object
- MoSpline parametric spline generator with L-system functionality
- Effectors for Position, Scale, Rotation, Color, Time using Falloff, Shader, Random, Formula, Delay, C.O.F.F.E.E., Python, Inheritance, Sound, Spline, Step, Target, Time or
- Volume effectors
- PolyFX polygon fracture deformer
- MoGraph Selection tag
- Beat Shader
- MoGraph Multi-shader
- MoExtrude
Character Animation Tools
- Character object / autorigger
- CMotion - parametric walk system
- Joints with full dynamic IK
- Skin Deformer supports linear, spherical, and blended deformation based on joints
- Weight Manager and tools
- Auto weighting
- PoseMorph morphing and hierarchical mixing system
- Mirror, Naming, and Paint Tools
- Weight effector
- VAMP tool for translating weights, morphs, selection, textures, UVs, and vertex maps between different geometry
- Tension tag
- Quanternion tag
- Point Cache tag
- Muscle deformer
- Visual selector
Hair Simulation and Rendering
- Guide-based Hair system
- Hair instancing
- Feather object
- Fur system
- Hair Styling Tools: Move, Scale, Rotate, Brush, Comb, Clump, Curl, Cut, Push, Straighten, Add Guides, Mirror, Set Roots
- Hair dynamics
- Hair shading system with multiple speculars, texture-defined root and tip colors, and variable transparency, thickness, length, scale, frizz, kink, density, clump, tighten, displace, bend, curl, twist, wave, straighten
Content
- Essential presets and demo scenes
- Advanced presets and demo scenes
- Broadcast Library, including materials, cameras, and objects
- Visualization Library, including materials, presets, and architectural objects
- Lite Library, including materials, cameras, and objects
- Completely reworked Content Library
Natively Supported Formats
3D Formats
- 3D Studio .3ds (R/W)
- Alembic (R/W)
- Biovision .bvh (R)
- Collada .dae (R/W)
- DEM (R)
- DXF (R/W)
- DWG (R)
- Direct 3D .x (W)
- FBX (R/W)
- IGES (R) (does not support all possible variations)
- LightWave 3D .lws .lwo (R)
- RIB (W)
- SketchUp .skp (R)
- STL (R/W)
- VRML2 .wrl (R/W)
- Wavefront .obj (R/W)
- After Effects (3D)
- Final Cut (2D, Mac only)
- Shake (2D)
- Motion (3D, Mac only)
- NUKE (2D)
- Fusion (2D, Windows only)
- TIFF
- BodyPaint 3D
- Photoshop PSD
- Targa TGA
- HDRI
- DPX
- Open EXR
- BMP
- PICT
- IFF
- JPEG
- RLA
- RPF
- PNG
- QuickTime (if available)
- AVI (Windows only)
- Illustrator (R/W)
- EPS (R)