Take a Look Everyone: Cinema 4D Release 18

Here is a brief overview of the latest features – you can read a full test in the new issue of DIGITAL PRODUCTION, which will reach subscribers tomorrow.

• The Voronoi Fracture Object – a native MoGraph function in Cinema 4D that works with Dynamics, allows the user to break objects of any kind into individual procedural parts and control the shape of the fragments via splines, polygon objects or particles.
• Interactive cutting tools – allow the user to mark cuts across individual or multiple objects and to check, reset or change the cutting points using an interactive preview. The various tools can be called up using shortcuts or the Cinema 4D Commander.
• Shaders and surface effects – expand the render repertoire with iridescent rainbow effects such as on soap bubbles and oil puddles, shadow capture for more efficient compositing, parallax mapping for improved bump effects and Inverse Ambient Occlusion for creating masks for worn edges.

Substance Engine Integration – The implementation of the Substance Engine enables significantly higher flexibility and performance in texturing. Substances can be downloaded directly from the Allegorithmic website for editing in Cinema 4D and cached on hard disc to increase performance.

Into the bakery

The “baking” theme runs through several areas of the programme. Animations can be baked, as can sculpting or other surface properties such as shaders and textures. Internal changes have been made here in many areas. Let’s start with baking animations. Loaded Alembic animations can now also be converted into PLAs, i.e. point level animations, using the baking function of the timeline. The only requirement for this is that the number of points and sequence on the animated object remain constant. In this context, it should also be mentioned that Alembic can now also be used to transfer colour information per point and save it in vertex colour tags. If a geometry is imported as a particle cloud, new Thinking Particles channels are created which can be used to evaluate this alpha and colour information. In addition, the point and edge weightings of a subdivision surface object are now also transferred via Alembic. The same applies to the export to Alembic format.

But let’s continue with the text on baking: Anyone who has had to deal with somewhat more complex sculpting geometries in Cinema 4D and wanted to bake them into normal or displacement textures will certainly be familiar with the problem. This could lead to artefacts in the textures. The baking algorithm has therefore been extended and now works partly with ray tracing. This particularly benefits the calculation of normal and displacement textures in the intensity, centred intensity and red/green modes. In general, a considerably more robust texture calculation can be expected for more complex sculptings.

Behind the scenes

Some time ago, Maxon launched a behavioural analysis embedded in the software to find out which options and numerical values are often changed from the default settings. The first fruits of this analysis can now be observed. For example, the new limit angle for the phong shading of surfaces is 22.5°. The lasso, rectangle and polygon selection methods allow the selection of hidden elements by default. The OpenGL selection outline effect has been switched off. Such small changes to the default settings run through the entire programme and should save the cross-section of users many clicks.
Equally useful is a new option in the programme preferences that allows the current layout to be saved automatically when the programme is closed. Cinema 4D then welcomes us the next time we start it with the same window layout as when we left it.
A global colour palette can also be defined in the colour fields area, which is automatically available in all colour dialogues. If this colour selection is to be retained even after a new program start, an option to save this palette can be activated.

In and out

Import and export functions are essential for productive work in today’s working environments. We have already briefly reported on the enhancements to the Alembic format. The situation is similar with the popular FBX format, which has now been adapted to the current version 2016.1.2. Support for point colours and subdivision surface weightings have also been added here. The DDS format, which stands for Direct Draw Surface, a texture format developed by Microsoft, is a completely new addition to the range of import formats. It has been specially optimised for use with DirectX and is primarily used in computer games. With OBJ import and export, you can now also create your own presets, which can then be called up more quickly. Previously, only presets for importing OBJ data from 3ds Max were available there.

See more

The graphics card is particularly in demand when it comes to the real-time visualisation of material properties. Until now, the lighting effect of lights and their shadows could be displayed directly. New features include Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO for short), extended reflectivity options and real-time tessellation for the display of displacement in the editor. The display of models in BodyPaint 3D, the UV and painting environment of Cinema 4D, has been similarly upgraded. The display is now also in the enhanced OpenGL quality, so that gloss and reflections, bump and normals and even transparency and alpha can be inspected directly during painting.
In general, all of the improvements to the display quality in the editor are OpenGL functions that run via the graphics card. But what can you do if you are still using an old model? No problem, because Cinema 4D has implemented a new software emulation for OpenGL, with which OpenGL commands can also be executed on the CPU. Although this is slower than the native calculation on the graphics card, it guarantees an adequate editor display even on smaller netbooks or older computers.

Edgy

The old knife tool, which could be used to create additional subdivisions along a simple line or a loop, has been replaced by three new tools, each of which offers a specific cutting path. Similar to the old solution, cuts can still be created along a line, a plane or in a loop. What is new, however, is the interactive component. The clicked waypoints, the so-called control points of a section, can still be touched and moved afterwards. It is even possible to navigate in the view window in order to place the control points of the section with spatial precision. Shortcut keys can also be used to insert new control points or remove superfluous points at a later stage. All of this can also be combined with snapping.

Cut or in one piece?

The functions of the MoGraph system are very popular and have certainly helped Cinema 4D to attract particular attention recently, as they can be used to click together animations with many objects involved. First, the desired number and distribution of object copies is created and then effectors are used to manipulate them. The system can be combined with dynamic properties, e.g. to make the objects collide with each other or fall to the ground in force fields. What was missing until now were tools to further divide objects and break them into fragments. As you might have guessed, these fragmentation tools have now found their way into MoGraph. MAXON has not done things by halves, but has integrated a very complex system with which the subdivision of objects can be controlled down to the finest detail. The well-known Voronoi algorithm is used here, but straight cutting edges can also be created to divide the object slice by slice.

Pursuit mania

There are also innovations in motion tracking. The tracker is now also capable of simple object tracking, meaning it can track not only the movement of the camera, but also that of selected objects. Simple shapes with sufficient contrast to the background or even specially applied markings are useful for this. The current functions are certainly not yet sufficient for tracking facial expressions, but for simple objects, such as the side tarpaulin of a passing lorry or a cardboard panel moving in front of the camera, it is certainly enough.

Conclusion

Among the new features, the new MoGraph functions are particularly fun and open up new options thanks to the convenient fragmentation possibilities and the extended placement options for clones. Since clone weightings can now also be applied with a separate painting tool, several cache tags can be blended together smoothly and the new ReEffector can fade or cancel out the effect of several effectors, varying clone animations has become even easier.

New shaders and enhanced options for existing shaders are always welcome and benefit all users who work with the integrated renderer. The same applies to the improved display quality in the editor with real-time ambient occlusion, reflections of HDRIs or skies and a displacement tessellation as well as the updated BodyPaint 3D display when painting and projecting textures. In addition, many entries in the content browser have once again been updated or supplemented and once again increase the value of this free content. All in all, this is another solid update that has something exciting in store for many user groups.

If you want to see the new features “in real life”, you can attend the Vision4D presentation at the Arri cinema in Munich on 1 September!

Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 25, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.