News: More Details on Maxon Cinema 4D Release 19

Press Release

News: MAXON Unveils Cinema 4D Release 19

Features Overview

Exchange

• Alembic Generator
  • Alembic R19
  • Alembic module is now based on Alembic 1.6.1 SDK
  • Alembic now supports subframe interpolation
  • “Other Attributes” option enables the import of additional point attributes
  • Export now supports the LOD Object
• Alembic Generator
  • “Other Attributes” option enables the import of additional point attributes
  • Several workflow improvements
• FBX R19
• Alembic Morph Tag
  • FBX module is now based on FBX SDK 2017.1
  • Support for FBX LOD Groups added (import/export)
  • “Selection Only” option added to only export the selected objects
  • “Global Coordinates” option added to save objects with global instead of local coordinates
• New Media handling
  • DDS exporter added
  • RPF can now save Material IDs
• OBJ
  • New option “Groups (combine name collisions)
• Houdini Engine Integration
  • Updated to Houdini Engine 16.0.633
  • The Integration now also supports particle rotation.

Workflow / UI

• New Feature highlighting
  • Highlights new features in the current and previous version
  • Highlights can fade away when used
  • Custom highlight sets can be created
• New Media Handling Core
  • Better media support in Cinema 4D
  • Data gets loaded more efficient
  • Layerset chooser now supports multi page/stream images (e.g. in multi page TIFF files)
  • Layerset chooser now allows access and selection of streams in a movie
  • Support for an arbitrary number of alpha channels
  • Format Presets for all Image/Movie formats
  • Option to adapt the Movie Data Rate if the resolution changes
  • Textures can have their own color profiles
  • Embedded color profiles for textures can be loaded
  • Anamorphic formats can be recalculated in the Picture Viewer
  • TIFF files can be compressed
  • Pixel aspect ratio can be saved/loaded
  • Better support for CMYK and YUV images
  • 3D texture view supports the grayscale color profile
• New “Load Substances from Folder” command in the Substance Asset Manager
• Various new behaviors when inserting an object with multiple objects selected
• Image/movie options of loaded files are remembered, images and movies can be saved with the same settings
• The Content Browser now marks Substance assets with an overlay
• The Vertex Color tag has a new option with which the vertex colors can be constantly shown
• The save dialog window in the Picture Viewer can now handle anamorph videos

Animation

• Weighting Improvements
  • Improved Weight Mirroring
    • Joint Matching Algorithms (Hierarchy-based, Coordinates-based, Name-based)
    • Improved Point-Matching Algorithm (Improved Nearest Point, Normalized Closest Point)
    • Mirror Tool Integration /w 1-Click functionality
    • Weight Manager Integration
  • Weight Manager Improvements
    • Several workflow improvements in the Weight Manager
    • WM Refactoring: Separated Weight Manager from the Weight Tool, Weight Manager per scene
    • Multiple Weight Manager Windows
    • Improved Joint List workflows (More Consistent, Custom List Order with new Weight Tag sort including folder support, list supports hiding joints)
    • Improved Spreadsheet workflow (More consistent filtering, new filters)
    • Expose functions to the scripting API
• Weight Tool Improvements
  • Tool refactoring and performance improvement
  • Normalization Fixes
  • Select Joint Influences in the Viewport
  • Improved Smooth Workflow
  • Improved Picker workflow
  • New rigging specific layout
  • Improved commands (Bind Multiple Objects)
• Character Morphs
  • PSD (Pose Space Deformation) added
• Undeformed version of an object can now be used for rigid body simulations

MoGraph

• Improved Voronoi Fracture
  • “Auto Connector” to automatically create a setup of Connectors between pieces.
  • “Geometry Gluing” to merge pieces together
  • “Detailing” to give pieces a more realistic look
  • “Sorting” has been moved to a new Tab
  • New sorting mode “Object”
  • New “Piece Scaling” functionality, to scale Voronoi cells
  • The effect of “Offset Fragments” can now be inverted, this will create one object consisting of the gaps.
  • “Hull Only” can now have a thickness
  • The fracturing results can now be saved in the .c4d file
  • Vertex maps can now be created for inside face selections, outside face selections, and edge selections.
  • Much better performance when fracturing high polygon count objects.
• New Noise Falloff
• New Sound Effector
  • New User Interface
    • New, interactive Frequency Graph
    • Sampling the sound with several probes. Sampling modes: Peak/Average/Step
    • Different modes to map probes to clones (Iterate/Distribute/Blend)
    • Different ways to colorize the Clones
• Improved precision for source fall off for effectors
• Improved speed of the volume effector

Materials

• New UV Tile Offset Mode for the Variation Shader
• Variation Shader now also work in Hair Materials

Rendering

• “ProRender”, a new GPU based render engine
  • Based on OpenCL 1.2, working on Nvidia and AMD cards on Windows and AMD cards on macOS
  • Multi GPU support with a very effective scaling
  • Interactive Preview Render in Viewport
  • Support for native materials and lights
  • New PBR based Light and Material type
  • Firefly filter
  • Bucket rendering for large resolutions
• Viewport Enhancements
  • Faster and nicer reflectance channel preview by Physically-Based Shading
  • Reflectance channel roughness map support.
  • Reflectance channel per-layer bump map support.
  • Fast and accurate illumination from rectangular area lights.
  • Depth of Field effect with Bokeh (support for Diaphragm shape), matching the Depth of Field in Physical Render closely.
  • Screen Space Reflections
  • Area Lights can be now shown as solid in the Viewport
• Spherical Camera
  • New Camera option to create 360° and Dome renderings
  • New Field of View helper in the Viewport
  • Supports different mapping formats (Lat-Long, Cubic-Cross, Cubic-3×2, Cubic String)
  • Supports stereoscopic rendering
• TeamRender improvements
  • Support for Frame Steps
  • Changed reordering strategy
  • Clients continue rendering, even if the server is not reachable
  • Support for encrypted web connections
  • New automatic Service Discovery
• New Tonemapping Post-Effect
• Speedups for Standard Renderer
• Speedups for simple transparencies in Physical and Standard Renderers
• Supersampling setting for the Hardware OpenGL Renderer
• Shadowmap filtering improvement for the Hardware OpenGL Renderers
• Instant material updates

Modeling

• New Modeling Kernel
  • First incarnation of the new, modern Modeling Kernel
  • Currently used by
    • Plane Primitive Generator
    • Reverse Normals Command
    • Align Normals Command
    • Polygon Reduction Generator
• New command option dialog with “Reverse User Normals” option for Reverse Normals and Align Normals commands.
• Level of Detail Object
  • Switching Level of Details Levels on different criteria (User Defined Level, User Defined Value, Screen Size horizontal/vertical/surface, Camera Distance, Project LoD)
  • Different modes
    • Children mode
    • Simplify Mode
    • Manual Group Node
• Polygon Reduction Generator
  • Polygon Reduction is now a Generator
  • New reduction algorithm
  • Reduction can be set as a percentage or as number of remaining polygons, edges or vertices
  • Better UV handling
  • Can handle multiple objects either as one object or each one separately
• Displacer has new options
  • Process Normal Tag
  • Type (RGB (XYZ Tangent))

Motion Tracking

• Scene Reconstruction
  • Reconstruction of the recorded scene, based on the Motion Tracking 3D Solve data
  • Creates a Point Cloud or a mesh
• Motion Tracker Enhancements
  • Manual Tracking now can work on R, G, B or custom channels
  • Footage can now be displayed as “Tracker View”, e.g. Red Channel only.
  • The Tracker can now work with a circular tracking pattern

UV Editing

• User Interface modifications
• Improved UV Selections including Grow/Shrink Selections, Select Connected and double click to select Islands for UV Polygons and Points
• Convert Selection now supports UVs
• Coordinate Manager now supports UVs
• New Numerical Editor for UV points

BodyPaint 3D

• BodyPaint is now based on OpenGL
• New BodyPaint save options

Demo Version

• Rendering Resolution Limitation has been removed, The Rendering will have a Watermark instead

System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D

Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or higher on Intel or AMD 64-bit CPU with SSE3 support or

macOS 10.11.6 or 10.12.4+ with 64-bit CPU running on Intel-based Apple Macintosh
4 GB RAM (8 GB or more recommended), OpenGL graphics card supporting OpenGL 4.1 (dedicated GPU recommended)

The GPU renderer requires a NVIDIA or AMD graphics card on Windows or AMD on macOS which supports OpenCL 1.2 or higher. We recommend at least 4 GB VRAM for GPU rendering.

USB port, Registration is required.

MAXON cannot guarantee support of new hardware and operating systems shipped after the release of this Cinema 4D/BodyPaint 3D version.

Cinema 4D on Windows 10

There are no known Cinema 4D issues that are Windows 10-specific but your user experience might differ, depending on your hardware. Our closed field test showed that some but not all GPU drivers or input device drivers work less reliably on the new operating system, especially when using third-party plugins that rely on these drivers. This can change anytime if these drivers are updated, which means that no general guidelines exist regarding which graphics cards will be affected. For users of Intel HD2500 / HD4000 GPUs, we don't recommend the use of Windows 10 because they will most likely not receive the necessary updates.

QuickTime: Some versions could not be used with Windows 10. However, we received positive feedback with regard to using the current version 7.7.9 with Windows and Cinema 4D. According to the website, there is no official support for Windows 10. Download: https://support.apple.com/downloads/quicktime

CPUs

Generally speaking, Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D support all currently available Intel and AMD 64-bit CPUs with SSE3 support. However, we cannot completely rule out the risk of compatibility issues for new CPUs (like AMD's latest Ryzen family of CPUs) that are released during a Cinema 4D release cycle. Nevertheless, we will provide updates for current releases to support these CPUs as quickly as possible.

Graphics cards

Generally speaking, Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D support all OpenGL 4.1-capable graphics cards. Nevertheless, we recommend using a dedicated 3D graphics card with an AMD or NVIDIA chip set. High-performance graphics chips are currently already available in mid-range laptops.

Make sure that you always use the most current certified graphics card driver (no beta versions).

To find out more about processing speed, CINEBENCH test results can be found online.

Important notice

MAXON is not responsible for the compatibility of individual graphics cards with the OpenGL mode. Due to the large number and types of available chip sets, operating systems and driver versions we cannot guarantee the compatibility of all systems.

The technical specifications of MAXON products are constantly changing. Please use the most current demo version of the software to test its compatibility on your computer.

Regarding NVIDIA 3D Vision

A quad buffered graphics card is required to use NVIDIA's 3D Vision Shutter glasses for viewing the stereoscopic display in Cinema 4D.

Videos

New in Cinema 4D R19: Top New Features and Updates in Cinema 4D Release 19

Cinema 4D R19 – Top 5 new features and updates – C4D Tutorial – Sean Frangella

Cinema 4D R19 Sneak Peek from Dimitris Katsafouros.