Best for 3D Beginners (Maxon CINEMA 4D Release 8 WIN)

Member Name: ianous

Product:	Maxon CINEMA 4D Release 8 WIN
Date:	28/06/04 (1763 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to Learn, Lots of Technical Support Available, Cheaper end of 3D software field

Disadvantages: Still quite exspensive, Some limitations in performance

Cinema 4D is by no means a new 3D package mostly used in German broadcasting and hasn?t yet taken off in the UK with the animation and design companies. With the release of 8.5 and the rumoured release of 9, cinema 4d has what it takes to stand up to the big guns of 3d software. What makes the package so easy to use is he intuitive layout that allows the beginners in 3D to dive in head first and produce some professional looking graphics just through completing some of the many thousands of tutorials that there are now out there helping newbie?s get a head start in learning the used techniques of the animation industry.

Cinema 4D is compatible on both PC?s and Mac?s which for me is excellent as I am a Mac user, as long as you have a fairly up to date PC or Mac you wont have any problem running the application. I think the chap that previewed this before me has listed the platform requirements so please take a read through his if you are interested to know, otherwise visit Maxon the makers at; www.maxon.net.

Now maybe because Cinema 4D is still making headway in the industry the price of the package is not quite as outrageous as some of the others (i.e. Softimage and 3D Studio Max) As I write this article the price for the full suite is only £2000 pounds. This is for the base application and add-on modules such as particle physics, mocca (character animation tool) and many others, which are very useful at saving you or your company time, after all time = money.

And for those students out there the full package educational cost is a mere £150. Now for me this is absolutely amazing, many might of already used Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition), which is free but quite annoyingly places a rather lovely logo overlay on any rendering you do.

The reason why I found Cinema 4D so easy to use, was the simplistic menus with easy to understand metaphorical icons used on buttons throughout the application, which really helped when you have

no idea which option to use. The layout is very similar to that of Maya and as a user of both, I found the transfer from using the two applications at different times very easy to switch back and forth and not find myself lost in the maze options and lingo I didn?t understand.

The package is able to export work or models to 3d studio max format although they are not nice enough to offer the same service without having to use and extra. And for those out there that might use macromedia director you are also able to export your work as a Shockwave 3D file, which would allow you to create 3d interactive worlds a little like VRML in director and compress them for web use either on your or your companies site.

Textures are also another key area of what makes cinema 4d a fantastic first 3d package to really get your teeth into. Bodypaint allows you to directly paint and draw on the models you have created. Or you can even use it to implement textures you may have created using Photoshop and saved out as psd format. Not just used for colouring you can use Bodypaint to make intricate bump maps, which allow the user to implement finer details to the models they have created and with realistic lighting a sense of reality can start to be achieved.

If you have a tablet and prefer to use that for your deign work, cinema 4d makes it easy to quickly create models and edit/ create textures to add to them, with the well laid out keyboard shortcuts you?ll look like Johnny 5 in no time at all.

I am not saying that cinema 4d is the best 3d package out there as I haven?t had the chance to use some of the more industrial strength solutions like Softimage and Lightwave but from speaking to many people and from my own experiences as an beginner/ intermediate 3d designer I would strongly recommend using cinema 4d or at least trying the free 30 day trials and see for yourself what I am ranting about. If you ever manage to make it into the world of 3
D eve
n if you or your company isn?t using it you would have had a better chance at picking up the industry techniques in environment and character generation.

If you have any questions as a beginner about the package I would be more then happy to try and offer my assistance, so just pop me a quick email.

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