NEWBURY PARK, CA — Maxon has unveiled Cinema 4D Release 14, (R14), the latest version of its 3D motion graphics, visual effects, painting, and rendering software application.
The release — set to ship in September — features a new, fully integrated sculpting system and new camera matching functionality. It also marks the debut of exchange plug-ins to two key applications: The Foundry’s Nuke and Adobe’s Photoshop Extended. In addition, R14 offers improved integration with Adobe After Effects.
"With improved and added tools such as digital sculpting, camera matching and tighter integration with leading third-party applications, R14 offers the innovation on which individual artists and design teams have come to rely to create compelling 3D content for any medium — from film and broadcast to architectural visualization and mobile games," notes company co-founder and CEO Harald Egel.
Maxon is offering four versions of Cinema 4D, each catering to the needs of 3D artists in different industries. The new release includes over 200 improvements over the prior release.
Dynamic sculpting tools give artists complete control to create finely-detailed models. New interactive work plane modes, dynamic guides and a completely redesigned snapping system offer a powerful, unified 3D workflow to model faster and accurately align elements.
The new Camera Calibrator in R14 offers an integrated solution to match a 3D camera image to a 3D environment, which is helpful to architects and designers. The new Motion Camera, Morph Camera and Camera Composition Helper tools help to quickly frame a 3D scene following artistic rules or easily create realistic and dynamic camera animations. The new Camera Focus Picker gives users control to interactively set focus distances.
R14 includes several enhancements in rendering. New and improved shaders and materials are now available for simulating wood grain, weathering effects and normal mapping. Global Illumination has been enhanced with new technologies such as Radiosity Maps and the unified sampler from the Physical Renderer, to let users achieve higher-quality renders in less time and with greater accuracy. New render effects also power up the post-processing workflow.
System requirements for R14 include Windows XP, Vista or 7 running on Intel or AMD CPUs with SSE2-Support; Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher running on an Intel-based Mac and 1024MB RAM, DVD ROM drive and an OpenGL graphics card. Standard DVD installation can take up to 7GB of disk space.