Maxon is making life easier with v. 11
Makers of the venerable Cinema 4D (C4D) 3D software just launched version/release 11. This software has become the defacto solution for Hollywood filmmakers using digital mattes for both special effects integration and total scene creation.
The best way to describe this update is “solid”. There were no OMG! features and, in fact, some of the feature sets have been available in other software for awhile. However, Maxon has placed user experience at the top of their list. New features and improvements are chock-a-block with thoughtful nuances that proves they’ve tested these things in the real world. That’s worth something.
Never leave C4D
The most significant production improvement is in the area of their real-time painting in Camera Projection mode (called Projection Man) which essentially allows you to display/create photo realistic mattes upon very basic 3D geometry making believable scenes fairly quickly. You can now actually do painting while still in C4d into Photoshop formats, create layers and target surface qualities (specular, diffusion etc.) manage and use Photoshop brushes as you do it. C4D also fully uses the new Wacom toolsets. Way cool. While C4D has always respected Photoshop files and their layers, being able to author and modify them without leaving the program is a huge time saver.
Misery loves company
New capabilities are great and I’ll cover more in a second. However, understanding how they really benefit you is another matter. At the special presentation for us media types, Steve Matson, Lead Matte Painter from Sony Pictures Imageworks, took us through a segment of Beowulf and described how and when they used C4D on the project. It’s so nice to know that the Big Name operations have the same problems we do, tight budgets (sure it’s a different scale of numbers) and tight timelines. He indicated that Sony requested so much time to be spent on the CG characters that when it came time to create the environment, more than 2/3 of the budget was spent and they had six weeks left and 3 people in the department. Enter C4D and Projection Man.
The original intent was to model the whole Beowulf CG world. No time, no money. So, the Sony shop used the low res geometry and simply projected digital mattes onto it. Then, for close camera moves, the up-rezed the mattes and added geometric detail as required. Fast, slick and efficient. What an eye-opener for integrating CG environments easily and cost effectively for the MicroFilmmakers of the world. If any of you know Chris Stoski (tutorials available at the Gnomon Workshop) you know that he does a ton of fake aerial shots and matchmoves for the movie industry to match real film footage. (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ring, Star Wars III). Suddenly, prohibitively expensive shots are within the reach of more modest budgets. (Note to readers: this is one of those items that should be considered a Poison from the “Short Cuts and Poisons” comments mentioned earlier in this article)
Already have C4D?
There have been some other tasty enhancements. Non-linear animation which lets you create “transportable” animation clips with the ability to be independently retimed within your project, repeated or moved to new projects. There’s a new Global Illumination engine with faster overall render speeds. How about a spiffed up BodyPaint 3D - the dedicated paint program that works hand-in-hand with Projection Man, Mac OSX 64 bit performance, CineMan (a plug-in to port C4D to Pixar’s RenderMan Pro Server), Collada support, and a ton of tutorials to reduce the learning curve. Nice.
For more on this, go to: www.maxon.net
