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For those who don’t know the tool: Cinema 4D is Maxon’s 3D modelling, animation, motion-graphics and simulation application. Its MoGraph system handles procedural clones, Fields and Effectors, and the 2027.0 release gives them some new colleagues.
Cinema 4D is the one I wanted to look at first in Maxon’s 2027.0 release. There is a native Scatter system, secondary liquid effects, and a way to build Fields and Effectors with nodes. All three fit neatly into what I enjoy about Cinema 4D: set up a few rules, adjust their relationships and see how far the result can go. In this case, perhaps as far as a forest, a breaking wave or a convincing glass of beer. For an overview of the tools, start with Maxon’s Cinema 4D 2027 What’s New page. Here I’ll concentrate on what the controls do and where the caveats are.
Our Maxon 2027.0 overview, “More Trees, Fewer Detours”, covers the whole family. Here we are opening the Cinema 4D toolbox properly: placement rules and clustering, spray and buoyancy, procedural Fields, scene inspection, CAD exchange, texture reprojection and the changes that affect everyday work. The enthusiasm is ours; the technical behaviour below comes from Maxon’s release notes and documentation, rather than an invented afternoon of “benchmark results”.
Liquid FX: finally, a proper C4D beer or bath
Naturally, I started with the beer. Soory, the new foam and Liquid tools. Liquid FX adds spray, foam and bubbles to a liquid simulation you already have. It does not simulate the underlying liquid: a Liquid Flow Emitter or Liquid Fill Emitter still has to do that job. What Liquid FX adds is the smaller-scale activity that makes a pour look aerated, a breaking wave feel energetic and our hypothetical pint look rather less like tinted resin. Maxon’s What’s New showcase has the official moving examples; the interesting bit here is how those effects are generated.
Two objects handle different jobs. The Liquid FX Emitter derives secondary particles from the simulated liquid, using estimates of trapped air and wave crests. The Liquid FX Modifier converts existing particles into Liquid FX particles, allowing the artist to decide where and when they enter the system. Automatic emission follows the liquid’s activity; direct conversion supplies a more deliberate art-direction route. Both still depend on the liquid around the particles.
The Emittern distinguishes three behaviours. Spray moves by inertia where there are few neighbouring liquid particles. Foam follows the surrounding velocity field while maintaining an offset from the surface. Bubbles move with the liquid and rise through buoyancy. These are changing states: the system reclassifies particles every frame according to their liquid neighbours. A droplet falling back into the liquid can become foam or a bubble; a bubble reaching the surface becomes foam. The glass has a small career ladder.
Spray, foam and bubbles are managed in three separate Particle Groups, created and linked when the emitter is added. That allows separate colouring, rendering and processing without treating the three behaviours as unrelated simulations. Their relationships remain important when adjusting the look: increasing a source of bubbles can also increase surface foam, and foam thrown clear of the surface can become spray. There is no independent “more beer head, same everything else” amount slider that bypasses those relationships.
Trapped air, wave crests and how much is enough
The Emission controls separate overall quantity from the conditions that generate particles. Resolution multiplies the emitted particle count; doubling it doubles the amount. Seed changes the random distribution rather than the number. Spread controls how widely the new particles are distributed around their moving source. That gives artists distinct controls for density, variation and spatial spread rather than asking one parameter to impersonate all three.
Source thresholds decide which liquid particles qualify to emit. Age Threshold can prevent secondary particles appearing immediately at a freshly emitting liquid source. Speed Threshold restricts emission to faster movement, while its range softens the transition. Neighbours Threshold and its range affect how densely surrounded a source must be. Lower neighbour thresholds allow thin, breaking regions to contribute more spray and foam; higher thresholds reduce emission and shift the balance. These controls are useful when the splash needs detail but the quiet body of liquid should remain comparatively calm.
Trapped Air is estimated from neighbouring particle velocities and their interactions. Its Threshold sets the minimum condition for emission, Range controls the transition to full strength, and Rate sets the amount at that strength. In calm liquid, the estimated value may remain below the default threshold, so lowering it gradually can be the difference between visible bubbles and a very expensive still life. Wave Crest has its own threshold, range and rate, responding to estimated local surface curvature. It commonly supplies much of the secondary activity, including more than just airborne spray.
Lifetime controls then determine how long the particles remain visible, provided Limited lifetime is enabled. Lowering a type’s Lifetime Decay keeps it around longer; increasing bubble Buoyancy brings bubbles to the surface sooner. Those adjustments shape persistence and movement rather than simply adding another source of particles. For a pour, that distinction matters: generating more activity and allowing existing activity to survive longer can produce quite different results. The client may call both “more lively”. Fortunately, the software gives us more precise vocabulary.
The bubbles-in-a-glass setup is actually documented
Maxon’s Liquid FX Modifier includes a particularly relevant example: place a Basic Emitter at the bottom of a glass containing liquid, emit particles without initial speed, and put a Liquid FX Modifier in Enable mode beneath that emitter’s Particle Group. The converted particles inside the liquid become bubbles, rise through buoyancy and turn into foam at the surface. Their quantity is controlled by the original emitter’s rate. Finally, a help-page example that understands the assignment.
One small evaluation detail to keep: newly converted particles are classified as spray on their first frame, then take the type determined by their surroundings on the next frame. They do not retain a permanently assigned identity. The modifier also has Set Properties and Disable modes, which change existing Liquid FX properties or return particles to standard particles, respectively. Properties can persist when particles change groups, so a change made to bubbles can influence the foam they subsequently become.
That provides a useful starting point for deliberately placed rising bubbles, rather than relying entirely on a turbulent pour to generate them. It is an artistic setup, not a claim that Cinema 4D is simulating brewing chemistry or automatically producing a finished beverage advertisement. Glass, liquid shading, lighting, scale and the desired foam appearance still need work. We are very happy about the prospect of a proper C4D beer; the renderer has not yet been authorised to sign off the taste test. Thankfully, here in Munich, a proper brew is never far away. See you later.
Let’s get on with it: There is also a consequential caching condition. The Liquid FX Emitter evaluates liquid Particle Groups calculated in real time, not groups already being used as a cache. Its scope is the liquid in its Simulation Scene; separate Simulation Scenes can isolate liquids that should receive different treatment. Maxon recommends working at low secondary-particle Resolution while tuning, then increasing it for the final simulation and recalculating from the first frame after changes. Establish that evaluation order before committing the shot’s cache workflow. A beautifully organised cache that prevents the intended emission is still the wrong cache.
Scatter: controlled disorder on a much larger scale
The new Scatter Generator and Scatter Tag make procedural surface population a dedicated Cinema 4D workflow. Distribution options include Surface Grid, Area Weighted, UV Grid and Spline Projection, with density maps, relaxation and overlap removal. Instances remain connected to MoGraph, so Effectors and Fields can still vary and animate them. You can see the intended workflow on Maxon’s Cinema 4D What’s New page. The useful part isn’t simply adding a thousand trees. It’s being able to move the path afterwards without manually deleting the trees that decided to stand in it.
Position, rotation, scale and colour can vary per instance. Alignment can follow surface normals or Look At targets, while vertex maps provide local control. These are the ingredients for treating a hillside, a designed pattern or a debris field as an editable arrangement. A surface full of identical copies may be technically populated, but it often looks as though the landscape has been approved by procurement.
Filters add placement rules based on altitude, slope, curvature and distance to mesh boundaries. Each has a Breakup control to make transitions less abrupt. That lets a distribution respond to the shape of the environment rather than merely covering it. A vegetation setup can exclude unsuitable steep regions or soften an edge; a more abstract graphic can use the same relationships for a deliberately structured pattern. The system supplies geometric rules, while the artist supplies the reason for them.
Clustering uses a Voronoi noise function to create denser regions. Per-object Cluster IDs determine which source assets occupy those regions, and the Scatter Tag adds individual probability, filtering, transform and cluster settings. This is useful when a mixed population should have recognisable patches rather than uniform randomness. A forest can contain groups of related plants instead of looking as though every species was selected by the same enthusiastic dice roll.
Proximity controls use splines or other Scatter Generators to mask instances or change their scale by distance. Roads, obstacles and clearings become relationships in the setup. Combined with overlap removal and the filtering controls, this moves much of the cleanup into rules that can respond when the environment changes. It is a particularly welcome direction for art-directed landscapes: “move the path” should ideally mean moving the path, not spending the evening deleting all the trees that have suddenly developed an interest in traffic.
The MoGraph connection also makes Scatter useful beyond static environments. Fields and Effectors can shape and animate the resulting population, so the same procedural approach can serve graphic reveals and transformations as well as vegetation. Maxon has not supplied a universal scene-size benchmark in the release notes. The useful claim here is the supported control structure, not a promise that any number of detailed assets will fit into whatever GPU happens to be under the desk.
Nodes Fields and Effectors: build the behaviour
Ever wanted a Field that does something very specific, only to discover that the available controls almost, but not quite, get you there? Nodes Field lets you build one from a Scene Nodes graph. Nodes Effector brings this approach to MoData, including optional custom strength and selection weights. Sample Field evaluates Field lists and batches samples inside loops, and all three provide an Array Mode for more advanced setups. In other words, you can build a reusable behaviour visually rather than writing Python for every unusual variation. Maxon shows these tools in its 2027 What’s New overview. You still have to know what behaviour you want, of course.
The practical thing is being able to build a reusable behaviour visually when a stock control does not express the relationship you need. Maxon positions Nodes Field as more efficient than Python Field and more capable than Formula Field; that is the vendor’s comparison, not a measured speed claim from us. The broader point is access to a node graph as the construction environment, without requiring a Python implementation for every custom Field.
Nodes Field and Nodes Effector are also MCP-compatible. That builds on the built-in server introduced in Cinema 4D 2026.4, which we covered in our Cinema 4D MCP article. It is an additional route to building native procedural tools with assistance, rather than a reason to stop understanding what the graph does. A helpful assistant can reduce setup work; it cannot make an unspecified creative intention more specific by enthusiastically connecting another socket.
The Object Manager gets some overdue kindness
Tag grouping collapses an object’s tags into visual groups without changing their existing order. Hovering reports the count, clicking opens a list, and tags can be selected or dragged from that list. Whole groups can also be dragged to reorder tags; the Filter Manager controls which types group. Tags restricted to a single instance, such as Phong, are excluded from grouping. That distinction matters because a cleaner display should not secretly change scene evaluation.
Tag Content Preview draws polygon, edge and point selections, vertex maps, vertex colours and soft selections in the viewport without making the object editable. Procedural selections on primitives and generators are supported too. In grouped lists, hovering exposes the preview; for an individual tag, selecting it does the job. Highlight colour and opacity are configurable. For anyone who has repeatedly chosen the wrong selection tag in a complicated asset, this is the sort of small feature that earns affection very quickly.
Random Shading gives objects distinct viewport colours without overwriting their Display Color. Occluded selections can now remain visible behind other polygons or objects, with configurable opacity. Tool Hints add a collapsible HUD describing mouse actions, modifier keys and component restrictions. None of these features requires a spectacular demo scene to justify its existence. Being able to see what is selected and remember how a less frequently used tool behaves is a perfectly respectable production improvement.
CAD arrives, textures survive the rebuild
CAD import expands to 3MF/AMF, 3D Experience, CREO, IFC, Inventor, NX and Solid Edge, alongside the existing Catia V5, Open JT, IGES, STEP and SolidWorks support. CAD import also becomes available on Windows ARM. For product visualisation, the benefit is a wider range of source data reaching the scene without an extra conversion stage. That is format support, not a guarantee that every engineering assembly will arrive as the ideal animation asset. We know how much crap the engineers carry in their files!
Resample Textures addresses another familiar handoff problem: transferring texture and material detail between similarly shaped meshes with entirely different UV layouts. Maxon describes the intended case as moving the look from a dense mesh with poor topology to a Remesh generator result, where Transfer Attributes is insufficient. The command can use existing UVs or reproject a new cubic or angle-based UV map. It writes textures with a resampled_ prefix to a chosen directory and assigns copies of the source materials to the target.
The similar-shape requirement is the significant condition. This is reprojection between corresponding surfaces, not a general promise to carry any material from any object to an unrelated one. Within that scope, it makes rebuilding an awkward asset less of a choice between usable geometry and the appearance somebody has already approved. The Bend Deformer also gains separate strength and rotation controls, a direction band, an angle HUD and unlimited rotation; Shift quantises using the modelling settings. A handle that does what the hand expects is always welcome.
Colour, Takes and details that keep a project legible
Colour management receives ACES 2.0 updates and changes to how colour spaces are stored and presented. Names are saved alongside indices so that the index can follow the name when a configuration changes. Lists follow configuration order rather than alphabetical sorting and can be grouped by family, with commonly used spaces collected together. Auto mode is removed from Bitmap, MoGraph Color and Vertex Map shaders; scenes predating 2026.4.0 convert it to an explicit mode on import. That makes checking older scenes a concrete migration task, not a generic ritual.
The Take system gains $take_hierarchy for the full concatenated hierarchy and $takeparent# for a parent a specified number of levels above. Save All Takes with Assets now uses hierarchical names for target folders, reducing collisions, and an interface colour can mark the viewport border when Auto-Take is active. These are small changes with a direct relationship to legibility: which variation is being edited, and where its assets will end up. A render directory should ideally require less interpretation than the client’s feedback.
Node Editor search now dims supporting elements as well as nodes and frames the result. Material-node Solo display dims nodes outside the upstream chain and outlines the selected solo node. Port and Data Inspectors work on unconnected Scene Nodes ports. UV Rectangularize processes multiple rectangular patches in one operation and reports islands it cannot handle. Together with fixes across UV tools, MoGraph, Takes and scene stability, this is a substantial layer of daily maintenance beneath the more photogenic foam.
An update we want to spend time with
What I like most here is that the new features don’t ask Cinema 4D users to forget everything they already know. Scatter works with MoGraph. Liquid FX stays in the existing particle and simulation workflow. Nodes expand what Fields and Effectors can do. And the Object Manager improvements should make complicated scenes a little less like archaeological fieldwork. It is also a good reason to spend time with the actual release instead of treating a feature list as a benchmark.
Cinema 4D 2027 also copies supported cameras, lights, primitives, planes, text and nulls into Autograph. Position, rotation and scale animation is baked per frame; MoText and text splines become editable Autograph text, while unsupported objects become nulls. It is a useful finishing connection, with the important boundary that evaluated motion travels rather than the original rig logic. Our companion Autograph article explores that side in depth. Here, it fits the same larger direction: keep useful scene information moving instead of rebuilding it at each handoff.
Availability and the first scene to try
Cinema 4D 2027.0.0 was released on 14 October 2026. The complete technical changelog covers the fixes and links to current system requirements; it specifically advises ARM users to update their GPU drivers. Maxon’s feature overview provides the official release examples. This is release coverage, with performance claims attributed to the developer, rather than a finished production review.
I wouldn’t switch an active project over just because the changelog sounds fun. Test representative Scatter assets, Liquid FX evaluation and caching, older shader colour spaces, plugins and render settings on copies of your own scenes first. Then, for the enjoyable experiment, try a glass and a controlled pour: get the base liquid working, add secondary effects, look at the bubbles and adjust the foam. Maxon’s official 2027 feature page is useful alongside the detailed documentation. We can call the experiment quality control at the brewery, but I still want to see the cache behave.
| Product | Cinema 4D |
| Developer | Maxon |
| Version | 2027.0.0 |
| Release | 14 October 2026 |
| Official notes | Technical changelog |
