Today MAXON has announced the immediate available of the new Release 12 of CINEMA4D and BodyPaint 3D.
“Today’s release marks a significant milestone in the development of MAXON‘s professional 3D software and is a testament to more than two decades of programming excellence,” remarked Harald Schneider, CEO and co-founder of MAXON Computer. “Our development team made every effort to bring customer requested features that are easy to use, stable and powerful. Creative professionals from all industries will find unparalleled solutions to help them meet the challenges of today’s fast-paced production environments and create award-winning content.”
This new version has several new features like a new dynamics engine based on Bullet that adds in a whole new world of physics and soft body systems to allow for deformable and springy systems. They’ve also added full support for IES lighting systems and and linear workflow, adding several degrees of realism to their scenes. A new python interpreter is there for scripting, as well as a Turtle system for L-System usage that works great for trees and brush. Support for OpenGL3.0 is included as well, if you have appropriate hardware. They have a great list of the new features on their site.
Perhaps the biggest, and possibly most controversial, change that MAXON has made is in their new product system. Previously, all of MAXON’s tools were highly modular. First buy CINEMA4D, then Modyn, maybe Sketch & Toon, and a few other modules and wind up with a working toolsuite. However, each product was individually licensed and keyed meaning you wound up with a dozen different registration codes to keep track of, as well as individual maintenance and support information.
Upon careful review and speaking with customers, they found that less than 10% of their customers were actually taking advantage of the modular design. Most people bought some specific collections of packages, and in fact several customers were simply leaving in confusion upon not knowing what to buy. To remedy this, they’ve completely done away with the previous modular design and now offer 5 distinct packages.
- CINEMA4D Prime – $995 – CINEMA4D, MoGraph, ambient occlusion and MOCCA
- CINEMA4D Broadcast – $1695 – CINEMA4D Prime + GI Rendering and an extensive material & object library
- CINEMA4D Visualize – $2295 – CINEMA4D Prime + Advanced Render, Sketch & Toon, & NET Render 3
- CINEMA4D Studio – $3695 – Everything
- BodyPaint3D – $995
Now you’ll just buy the bundle, and get a single serial number to license all of the parts. The end result is hopefully something that’s more friendly to newer users, and makes life easier for the more advanced users. Plus, now the “baseline” edition comes with the previously-separate MoGraph and MOCCA systems. If you’re looking for more information, be sure to check out their “Product Comparison” chart which breaks it all down.
It looks like a great new offering from MAXON, but I’m very curious to see how seasoned customers will react to the new bundled distribution packages. It seems like a very good idea, particularly for newer users, but I suspect some users will be upset by losing direct access to some of the more specific packages.
Sound of in the comments, what do you think?
the issue i have, is you can no longer get both mograph cloner and sketch and toon without buying the full studio package for 3k. i get the need to make things easier, but why remove the option of plugin modules altogether?
probably i’ll buy the broadcast upgrade, and have to lose the sketch bits. seems like a poor deal to me.