Cinema 4D 10 review

Cinema 4D’s latest incarnation represents a considerable overhaul of how the program looks and works. First impressions are good – the redesigned interface, with its flat 2D buttons and unobtrusive grey background, is readable and refined compared to the untidiness of previous versions.

The interface can be customized too, so you can set it up to suit your working habits. Toolbars feature a knurled tab that collapses if you control control-click them, giving you quick access to more screen space.

The version 10 update is about more than just looks, though. The program has undergone two core changes to the way Cinema 4D works. The first is concerned with object and scene management, while the second affects animation. Cinema 4D’s Object Manager is the heart of the program, and is as important to creation and modelling as it is as a simple organizer. However, on complex scenes the old Object Manager was inefficient and unwieldy.

The new system gives you much more control over your scene items, and makes organizing and finding objects much easier. It’s far more sophisticated, too. Layers let you organize items into colour-coded (non-hierarchical) groups, so you can easily display or hide items in the list. A new flat tree mode does away with hierarchies, and displays objects either alphabetically or in order of creation.

Benedict Cambell

Interactive rendering has been in all the other major 3D applications for some time, so Maxon is a little late to that party. However, the addition brings the program up to speed with its competition.

Interactive rendering functionality is based on the Sniper Pro plug-in previously available for Cinema 4D, and gives you interactive rendering in the viewports via a floating render marquee. It’s fast, and supports most rendering options. A quality slider on the side lets you optimize performance, and in use it works a treat. You can even save the renders to disk if you want.

There’s plenty more in this update to make existing users happy, such as BodyPaint updates, relative paths for textures, a new Fur mode for the Hair Module, and the inclusion of Pyrocluster’s Advanced Render module. The new animation and object management features are genuine revelations though, and will make a real difference to your work.

Check back here on Thursday October 26 to read our review of Maxon's new BodyPaint 3D 3, the 3D painting system that works with 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, LightWave, Maya, and Softimage|XSI.

Character animation tools: Mocca 3

Cinema 4D has leapt forward in terms of character animation in version 10. The toolset has been revamped with the new Mocca 3 module. The new joints system is generally a lot easier to use – setting up rigs is simple compared to Mocca 2.
The joint tool lets you create and edit joints simply and easily – just click and drag the joint nodes to reposition them. Once the skeleton is created you simply select the joints and the mesh and click Bind. The results are excellent. New muscle deformers can be used to create secondary skin animation and muscle flexion.

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