MAXON unveiled CINEMA 4D Release 14 (R14), a milestone release of the industry-leading 3D motion graphics, visual effects, painting, and rendering software application. Leveraging more than two decades of 3D graphics programming innovation, R14 delivers breakthrough performance offerings including a new, fully integrated sculpting system, new camera matching functionality, the debut of exchange plugins to two key applications -- The Foundry NUKE and Adobe Photoshop Extended -- and improved integration with Adobe After Effects. Packed with a number of other powerful workflow feature enhancements, creative professionals - motion graphics and visual effects artists, as well as visualization designers - will benefit from features that accelerate productivity to produce spectacular 3D content more fluidly, and the ability to collaborate with increased efficiency.
"CINEMA 4D R14 is a milestone release that harnesses MAXON's decades of leadership and programming experience to deliver the absolute best-in-breed 3D technology with the unified workflow capabilities our customers need to realize their creative visions, quickly and efficiently," says Harald Egel, co-founder and CEO of MAXON Computer. "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."
CINEMA 4D Release 14 Highlights:
MAXON offers four versions of CINEMA 4D, each catering to the needs of 3D artists in different industries. Note: The features listed below may not be included in every configuration.
Digital Sculpting: Dynamic new sculpting tools give artists complete control to create finely detailed models with tools like Pull, Wax, Smooth, Flatten, Inflate, Knife and Pinch. There are powerful preset options for brushes, stamps, stencils, and attributes for size, pressure, symmetry options and more. A powerful layer system allows for maximum flexibility in the creation process while the Bake option recalculates the millions of sculpted polygons into displacement and normal maps that can be applied to low-poly count base meshes for further use in renderings and animations.
Improved Modeling Toolset: New interactive work plane modes, dynamic guides and a completely redesigned snapping system offer a powerful, unified 3D workflow to model dramatically faster and accurately align elements. Controls to interactively position the world grid to move, scale and rotate objects, as well as the ability to intuitively snap objects and components to the grid plane, grid lines or grid points are provided along with other key parameters.
Camera Enhancements: The new Camera Calibrator in R14 offers an integrated solution to match a 3D camera image to a 3D environment - a perfect solution for architects and designers to present their creations. Users can integrate 3D objects into the photographed environment for visualizations or use CINEMA 4D's camera mapping workflow to create digital matte paintings and set extensions. The new Motion Camera, Morph Camera and Camera Composition Helper tools in R14 help to quickly frame a 3D scene following artistic rules or easily create realistic and dynamic camera animations while the new Camera Focus Picker gives users control to interactively set focus distances.
Better and Faster Rendering: Multiple enhancements in R14 bring digital artists a more flexible toolset to achieve greater rendering realism and compositing control that result in outstanding image quality. 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. Relight scenes, pull position-based mattes and reconstruct objects with the new Position Pass or perform quick and easy color correction with new interactive grading curves. New algorithms in R14 provide up to twice the speed for caustics, while further enhancements to subsurface scattering render materials such as milk, wax and skin more efficiently.
Integration: Brand new to CINEMA 4D, the highly anticipated seamless integration with The Foundry's award-winning NUKE compositing application allows R14 users to directly export a NUKE project file to reconstruct a multi-pass render and provides full support for OpenEXR and FBX files. The new Photoshop Extended exchange plug-in opens and manipulates CINEMA 4D scenes into a Photoshop 3D layer, offering new opportunities to illustrators, photographers, digital matte painters and motion graphics artists to share CINEMA 4D files with the broader Photoshop design community. Enhanced integration with After Effects brings new levels of performance to directly import and export native CINEMA 4D files.
Misc Productivity-Boosting Features: CINEMA 4D is renowned for outstanding ease of use. With numerous enhancements to the R14 interface, artists can perform common tasks faster and more efficiently.
R14 now offers greater levels of realism and control with increased versatility over dynamics with aerodynamic forces, plastic springs and breaking connectors. Users can now create much more believable animations of flying or breaking objects. The improved editor view now displays soft shadows and features new object highlighting options. Individuals and teams can manage tasks using the To Do list and the Commander, a filtered search box that appears directly under the cursor, which gives quick and easy access to all commands and tags. An improved XRef system offers options to offset the animation, scale or pivot of each referenced scene, which is especially useful for team collaboration. Finally, Arabic speakers can now use CINEMA 4D in their native language with new Arabic interface translation and a mirrored layout designed for right-to-left readers.
This is just a brief overview of the 200+ improvements CINEMA 4D R14 has to offer. Visit www.maxon.net [1] to learn more about the new features and watch informational videos.
System Requirements
Minimum system requirements include Windows XP, Vista or 7 running on Intel or AMD CPU with SSE2-Support; Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher running on an Intel-based Mac and 1024 MB RAM, DVD ROM drive and an OpenGL graphics card. Standard DVD installation can take up to 7 GB of disk space.
Availability and Upgrade Path
CINEMA 4D Release 14 and BodyPaint 3D Release 14 are scheduled to ship in September through MAXON and its authorized dealers. Customers with an active MAXON Service Agreement (MSA) valid through September 2012 will automatically receive the upgrade. Current customers who do not have an active MSA can purchase an MSA before the end of August and be eligible for a free upgrade. New customers who purchase R13 from now until Aug 31, 2012 are being offered a one-year MSA with their purchase at no extra cost incl. an upgrade to R14. Pricing and upgrade information is available at www.maxon.net [1].
Source: MAXON
Links:
[1] http://www.maxon.net