The friendliest piece of 3D software I have used (Maxon Cinema 4D 9.5)

Member Name: scola_p

Product:	Maxon Cinema 4D 9.5
Date:	06/08/07 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use and cheaper than the competition

Disadvantages: Not as widely used in the industry

Just to give a little background, I have been dabbling with 3d packages, on and off for the past 17 years. I started back in the halcyon days of my Amiga before I left school, and then got back into it for a while at University. Then was a bit of hiatus.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I bough a PC magazine which had a free copy of Cinema 4D 6 on it, and since then I have been hooked & upgrading ever since.

There are a few packages available on the market at the moment, but I have to say that C4D is by far my favourite.

It has all to tools you would expect from a professional 3d package (although the names differ from one to another), and can match almost everything any other package can do, but the basics are so much easier to learn. The likes of 3D Max and Maya have a very steep learning curve, and can appear very daunting to a beginner, or even some one experienced who is not used to them. This is where C4D stands head and shoulders above the competition.

Everything you can do in C4D can be done in the other packages, but not as intuitively and consequently the learning curve for C4D is much shallower, making it ideal for someone new to 3d.

This, combined with the very powerful tools that are hidden within, make this a great choice. Once you have got to grips with the basics of modelling and animating, you can use Xpresso (a simple, object orientated language contained within the software that is all displayed visually) to take some of the hard work out of animating. The simples application of this is to prevent a characters foot going through the floor, but the same tolls are used to create stunning particle effects. One application I used this for was to animate a boat crossing a rolling sea, and Xpresso made the boat sit on the waves correctly, rather than having to manually record all the data.

And once you have conquered this, ther is a scripting language built in to make your own tools!

The optional modules that are available make the possibilities of this package almost limitless.

All in all, if you are looking to buy a professional yet inexpensive piece of software for 3d animation, I would heartily recommend Cinema 4D

Summary: An excellent & user friendly piece of software

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