Pros
Nothing like a free update for an already wonderful program!
Cons
I have no qualms.
Summary
This was released way back at the beginning of December 2010! My Cinema 4D automatically detected the update December 3rd. Why is this just now being announced (Jan. 7, 2011)?
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
(my comments apply to the studio bundle - some features may not be available in smaller configurations)
I've put v10 through its paces over the course of a three-week all-night build/animate/render session for a small contest. I'm really impressed. Though there were several crashes (usually related to extreme angles while editing objects, and i'm attributing them to my graphics cards), all but once the built-in recovery function managed to save the scene file (see the "debug" folder by the side of the apps' location) before it went boom.
My personal favourites:
The new "visual selector" tag. A real time-saver. Especially with characters, dragging the bones you need to pick often into it, creating a "switchboard" of click-and-it's-selected items with a basic human shape in the background is bliss. The only way this could be better would be to be able to actually grab the objects on a touchscreen :)
The new timeline. Takes some time getting used to, but after that, it's easier than the old one.
The new elements browser.
Muscles (part of Character module)
Not too happy with:
- the new joints. They're a nice addition, but don't work with my personal preferences for rigging and animating. i.e. they can't influence meshes that contain mirror elements, because they calculate their influence from weighting maps (which the mirrored object seems to miss). The older bones system is still available, so no problem here.
- the new IK system. Fast, stable, great. But doesn't play nice with e.g. hip-to-feet chains. Feets keep rotating in sync with the hip axis. May be my fault, but with "legacy" MoccaIK and target vectors, they don't. So, again, nice to have, but doesn't fit my workflow.
- the decision to turn the manual into HTML help.
All in all, it's an excellent update that i'm very, very happy with. Here's hoping on the next maintenance update to smooth the edges.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I've had major problems with this update. Cinema has hung on a number of animations right as it was about to complete the file. Today, it froze the entire system. I haven't had a system freeze since the OS9. Be careful saving any of your 9.5 projects to 10. This is not worth it!
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
The release 9 features a whole lot of improvements, which i'm still discovering each time i use the program. Looking at the manual, and the tutorials on Maxon's web page, is highly recommended! The new HUD interface options went almost unnoticed by me, even though such nice things as side-floating sliders that stay with their objects are real time-savers when animating... same goes for the two-keystrokes shortcuts (try U or M, for example).
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Seems to grow by leaps and bounds with every revision.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
C4D has always (well okay, at least since I discovered it a year ago) had the most flexible interface that makes it a joy to use, and has been heroically stable, unlike a lot of other apps I've used. And you don't need a dongle, woohoo! - For a recent project I happily began my modeling work at Starbucks...
The 8.5 upgrade adds a bunch of nice features, my favorite of which is currently the Layer shader which makes mixing a bunch of textures together a no-brainer. Utterly convenient. There's lots more in the upgrade than that, but that's the one I'm playing with the most right now.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I was skeptical at first, but this is turning into a great 3D package. Great particles with pyrocluster and the dynamics too. Very impressed!
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
For me, the update required a clean install right off the 8.0 disk, but that was (almost) all the trouble i've had with the update. A word of warning, though: Being one of these impatient users, i've installed the update *before* finishing a render sequence, and picked up the rendering again with 8.2. This caused a few textures to "jump" in the animation where the switch from 8.1 to 8.2 took place. Looks like there's some modification to the texture placing algorithms (most likely to adapt Cinema to BodyPaint 2).
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This software gets better and better, and for something so complex it is one of the most stable apps I have ever seen. Fast beautiful renderer. Elegant and technical interface. I got my copy of Bodypaint3D v2 in today, and it came with the 8.2 upg.
Together, C4D and bodypaint make for really nice 3D, though the FlashEx thing does suck, the After Effects and ShockWave3D exporters work really well. Nicest 3D package going, bar none.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This is a nice surprise. The download appeared to stall with a 'waiting for data' message just before completion. Despite this, I was able to unstuff the downloaded .sit file and it installed without a hitch. The improved material manager is a joy to use, and the option to group materials into sets is a real mouse saver. Go, Maxon!
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