I've been plowing through Maxon Cinema 4D version 10.5 Studio ($3500 retail) for a few weeks now, and I'm pretty impressed with the whole experience. The most important feature I needed was MoGraph ($399 retail), a separate module for procedurally animating arrays of objects, much like how Trapcode's Form animates arrays of particles. Demo's I've seen of Form are awesome, and I think you might be able to do the same thing with MoGraph, (though it'll take forever to render). The interface for these procedural animations is probably the easiest to grasp of any 3D application. I get good performance on my MacBook Pro, but I've run out of RAM 3 times, based on excessive polygon counts. Sub-division surfaces, or HyperNURBS in MAXONspeak, was the method of my RAM-busting. I haven't tried distributed rendering yet to see if that avoids my memory issues.

The Materials Editor is the most straightforward I've come across and is a pleasure to use, especially for adding material libraries posted on the net. The Hair module is pretty straightforward, and renders quickly. Most of my older C4D files opened fine in 10.5, and the speed gain over my Dual 2.0 G5 was notable.

For what you're getting, I'd like more than a single "Getting Started" printed manual. The online documentation follows the menu bar and command options, less the job or technique you want to accomplish. There are many free tutorial resources on the web, and the included training DVD's are quite helpful getting you out the gate.

I'll be the first to admit Cinema 4D isn't the cheapest solution around, especially with the Studio configuration. If you're into character animation, Maya is still the bread and butter of VFX facilities, but MAXON's character tools get better each release, and for a high-end 3D app, nothing out there easier to pick up quickly. I'm all about the ease of use. It blows LightWave 3D out of the water. Sony Pictures ImageWorks standardized on MAXON's BodyPaint, which is now simply a part of C4D Core. There are competitive upgrade offers, and until June 30, you can get Core and one optional module for $1135; look at the web page.

Labels: Maxon Cinema 4D, reviews