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MillimeterEdit Review: Maxon Cinema 4D R10.5
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon
New professional animation features added to easy-to-use industry favorite.
The Maxon Cinema 4D content browser lets you look through scenes and objects on your drive easily. The top window showcases some of the many lighting options.
After 10 revisions, Maxon Cinema 4D (C4D) has blossomed into nothing less than a state-of-the-art rendering and animation system. Results can be seen in thousands of productions — on TV as well as movies such as Spider-Man 3; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe; Monster House; Fantastic Four; and Superman Returns. The program owes part of its charm and legacy to its fast rendering abilities, extensive modules, and dynamite output. It doesn't hurt that Cinema 4D is fairly easy to jump into and use.
But all this comes at a price. The program is a bit expensive as it stands, and adding two or three modules (also offered by Maxon) could strain the budget of many studios and boutiques. However, it's a worthy investment, because Cinema 4D is one of the best 3D programs currently shipping for both Mac and PC. This new dot-five version adds a host of new professional features.
One test of any 3D program is its “figure-it-out” factor. Can you jump in without documentation or prior knowledge and start to develop, render, and animate a project? With Cinema 4D, you can. Maxon has continually revised the interface (very notably when it reached version 10) to make the icons color-coded and easily recognizable and to put the menus where you would expect to find them.
Standard operations work as they do in other programs such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. You have a layers palette that lets you work on specific objects without disturbing others, and a keyframeable timeline works as you would expect it to. Customizable interface layout presets are built around animation, painting, modeling, etc., so you can switch the program's interface around to focus on what you are doing. The ease of getting into the program makes it very appealing to video production people who may be first getting into 3D. Maxon knows that to expand its market share, it needs to appeal to the masses and the constant refinement of the interface makes it digestible for video producers who don't have a long history of working in 3D. Couple this with knockout renders that look amazingly professional, and it's a program choice — without a steep learning curve for smaller- and medium-sized production houses — that delivers million-dollar-budget output.
As for features, Cinema 4D does not disappoint. For working with files, you have a content browser that generates thumbnails of scenes and objects so you can visually search and browse. Interaction with other programs is very extensive; every major 3D format is supported, including Autodesk 3ds Max, NewTek LightWave 3D, Adobe Shockwave 3D, Wavefront Explorer, as well as just about all variations of bitmap and vector (including EPS and Flash). Modeling is extensive, with a generous supply of primitives as well as every polygon tool imaginable. Recently, I was able to bring in some animated backdrop objects I had sculpted in 3ds Max and import them directly into Cinema 4D. The objects came through perfectly, allowing me to use the powerful rendering of C4D using existing objects. This interplay between C4D and other programs is important to video producers who want to repurpose or re-animate existing objects. I recently had a client who wanted a logo animation for a web project. Having already animated the object in 3ds Max, I was able to bring in the logo object and, in C4D, render it out as a Flash SWF animation. Having this one-click option to export to HD-video format or Flash-web format on the fly is especially compelling to video people who want to cover all the new media bases.
