LOS ANGELES — Ahead of the SIGGRAPH 2017 conference in Los Angeles, Maxon (www.maxon.net) announced Cinema 4D Release 19 (R19), the next generation of its professional 3D application. The new release delivers both tools and enhancements that artists can put to use immediately, and provides a peek into the foundations for the future.
Powerful developments have been made to viewport performance, a new Sound Effector and additional features for Voronoi Fracturing have been added to the MoGraph toolset, a new Spherical Camera introduced, as well as the integration of AMD’s ProRender technology. Designed to serve individual artists as well as large studio environments, Release 19 offers a fast, easy, stable and streamlined workflow to meet today’s challenges in the content creation markets, especially general design, motion graphics, VFX, VR/AR and all types of visualization.
With Cinema 4D Release 19, Maxon also introduces a number of re-engineered foundational technologies, which the company will continue to develop and bring to maturity in future versions. These include core software modernization efforts, a new modeling core, deeply-integrated GPU rendering for Windows and Mac, and OpenGL capabilities in BodyPaint 3D, Maxon’s professional paint and texturing toolset.
“For more than two decades Maxon has been dedicated to delivering 3D graphics solutions with rock-solid stability, outstanding ease-of-use, a fast workflow, and cross platform capability,“ says Harald Egel, managing partner at Maxon Computer GmbH. “Cinema 4D Release 19 expands on those core values with outstanding new features and a first look at foundations for the future.”
The new highlights in Cinema 4D Release 19 include:
Viewport improvements, which provide artists with added support for screen-space reflections and OpenGL depth-of-field in addition to the screen-space ambient occlusion and tessellation features (added in R18). Results are so close to final render that client previews can be output using the new native MP4 video support.
MoGraph enhancements expand on Cinema 4D’s toolset for motion graphics with faster results and added workflow capabilities in Voronoi Fracturing. An all-new Sound Effector in R19 allows artists to create audio-reactive animations based on multiple frequencies from a single sound file.
A new spherical camera allows artists to render stereoscopic 360-degree virtual reality videos and dome projections. Artists can specify a latitude and longitude range, and render in equirectangular, cubic string, cubic cross or 3x2 cubic format. The new spherical camera also includes stereo rendering with pole smoothing to minimize distortion.
New polygon reduction works as a generator so it’s easy to reduce entire hierarchies. The reduction is pre-calculated, so adjusting the reduction strength or desired vertex count is extremely fast. The new polygon reduction preserves vertex maps, selection tags and UV coordinates, ensuring textures continue to map properly and providing control over areas where polygon detail is preserved.
Level of Detail (LOD) Object features a new interface element that lets customers define and manage settings to maximize viewport and render speed, create new types of animations or prepare optimized assets for game workflows. Level of Detail data exports via the FBX 3D file exchange format for use in popular game engines.
AMD’s Radeon ProRender technology is now seamlessly integrated into R19, providing artists a cross-platform GPU rendering solution.
Modernization efforts in R19 offer the first glimpse into the company’s planned under-the-hood future efforts to modernize the software. This includes a revamped media core and native support for MP4 video without QuickTime. Export for production formats, such as OpenEXR and DDS, has also been improved.
A new modeling core with improved support for edges and N-gons can be seen in the Align and Reverse Normals commands. More modeling tools and generators will directly use this new core in future versions.
And BodyPaint 3D now uses an OpenGL painting engine, giving R19 artists painting color and adding surface details a realtime display of reflections, alpha, bump or normal, and even displacement.
Cinema 4D Release 19 is scheduled to ship in September and will be available for both Mac OS X and Windows.