MAXON’s Next Generation Cinema 4D Release 20 Available Immediately

MAXON, one of the leading developers of professional 3D modeling, rendering, animation and 3D painting solutions, this week announced the immediate availability of Cinema 4D Release 20 (R20).

“Cinema 4D R20 delivers the next steps in our core modernization development efforts and provides our customers with the most robust and intuitive toolset for 3D content creation,” said David McGavran, CEO MAXON Computer GmbH. “The groundbreaking advancements in R20, especially those to the celebrated MoGraph toolset, offer professionals meaningful improvements to workflow and creative freedom.”

Big New Features in Cinema 4D Release 20

The latest Release 20 offers users big new features in three primary areas, new volume-based modeling, CAD file importation, and new motion graphics features, along with other key features.

Here are some of the highlights of the latest new features and improvements:

• MoGraph Fields — these offer unprecedented content creation possibilities to the procedural animation toolset in MoGraph. The Fields feature in Cinema 4D R20 makes it possible to efficiently control the strength of the effect using any combination of falloffs – from simple geometric shapes to shaders and sounds to objects and mathematical formulas. Fields can be mixed and combined with one another in a layer list. Effects can be re-mapped and grouped in multiple Fields to control Effectors, Deformers, weights and more.
• Volume-based modeling — The OpenVDB-based Volume Builder and Mesher in Cinema 4D R20 offer an entirely new procedural modeling workflow. Any primitive or polygon object (including the new Fields objects) can be combined to create complex objects using Boolean operations. Volumes created in R20 can be exported sequentially in OpenVDB format and can be used in any application or render engine that supports OpenVDB.
• CAD Import — Cinema 4D R20 offers seamless drag and drop import for common CAD file formats such as Solidworks, STEP, Catia, JT and IGES. The scale-based tessellation feature of the import function offers individual control of the level of detail for impressive visualizations.

The material system in Release 20 now features a Node-based material system. More than 150 different node-based shaders offer customers a new and streamlined workflow to quickly create shading effects from simple reference materials to highly complex shaders. The existing standard material system’s interface can be used to get started with the new node-based workflow, aiding existing users’ experience in making a transition to a node-based material system. Importantly, node-based materials can be made available as parametric assets with a reduced interface.

There are also ProRender improvements in Release 20. The GPU-based ProRender in Cinema 4D lets customers utilize the power of the GPU to create physically accurate renders. Release 20 introduces Subsurface scattering, motion blur, and multi-passes. Other enhancements in ProRender include an updated code base, support for Apple’s Metal 2 (API) graphics technology and the use of out-of-core textures.

Core Modernization

The modernization of the core code and architectural technologies of Cinema 4D announced in 2017 are now more tangible and mature in release 20. Signifying this are items like the API adaptations, the new node-based material system, and the modeling and UI framework changes.

European Premier at the IBC 2018

Maxon will debut Cinema 4D Release 20 in Europe at the IBC 2018, taking place 14 – 18 September 2018, at the RAI Convention Center, Amsterdam. Maxon’s booth is in Hall 7, A59. There will be many internationally renowned 3D artists showcasing their work with Cinema 4D, including artists who have worked on Avengers: Infinity War. Detailed information on the booth happenings at IBC 2018 will be shown here.

Cinema 4D R20 Pricing and Availability

Cinema 4D Release 20 is available directly from MAXON or one of its authorized resellers. Customers whose MAXON Service Agreement (MSA) is active on September 3, 2018 will automatically receive the upgrade to the new version. Cinema 4D is available for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, and Linux nodes are also available for rendering pipelines. Price and upgrade information is available at www.maxon.net, as well as information about system requirements.

To learn more about Cinema 4D Release 20 visit here.

Architosh Analysis and Commentary

In the past, many CAD professionals, particularly from the MCAD markets, wanted to import their CAD models into Cinema 4D for visualization purposes. In general, they got mixed results, often because of issues resulting from understanding the sourcing of the data. Okino Computer Graphics has produced a conversion product—which is their specialty in the computer graphics market—called PolyTrans-for-Cinema-4D. The goal of that product was to simply import load and render, operating from a range of leading MCAD tools. 

Now it seems Maxon has created its own simplified importer technology that enables the same thing as Okino’s product but even better. SolidWorks, STEP, Catia and JT are all supported for simple drag and drop import. This compliments IGES improvements, SketchUp importer improvements (support for SketchUp 2018) and DXF, DWG, FBX 200xx, STL, Collada and Alembic x.x. 

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