“Highly recommended for all C4D users,” by Maxon, Cinema 4D has introduced Cinema 2024 with a host of new upgrades and long story short, there are some great ones in here. Let’s look at some of the most essential upgrades to this popular 3D modeling/animation/simulation/ rendering application, and speaking of rendering, we’ll begin where the creative process ends.
Redshift
Have you been manually switching from Standard renderer to Redshift? If the answer is yes, we have good news. In Cinema 4D 2024, the outdated Standard renderer has been replaced by the new default renderer, Redshift 3.15.19. This update alone will save creators substantial time over manually switching. With Redshift, all new created scenes will feature OCIO Aces as default along with new default material being in Redshift Standard Node UI. Redshift also enhances CPU performance and the import/export of Redshift materials via different file formats. As for Standard renderer, it hasn’t completely disappeared, as it is still needed particularly because it’s the only way to employ toon shading through Sketch & Toon.
Rigid Body Tag Added to Unified Simulation System
Old dynamics systems Dynamic Springs, Connectors, Motors, and Force objects have yet to migrate to the new XPBD simulation system, but the welcome news here is that rigid bodies has. And with that migration, rigid bodies will now natively interact with all simulation types including Pyro. It will also determine when objects start to be simulated (immediately, on collision, or at velocity peak) set initial velocity, direction, and rotation for the object, collision parameters (friction, bounciness, stickiness, thickness) and more.
Pattern Selection
Among the key improvements to modeling is that it now allows creators to choose a pattern of polygons, so you no longer have to select polygon faces manually, or rely on a Fields setup.
Projection Deformer
This other key modeling upgrade enables projection of one object’s points onto another object’s points, unlike previous versions of C4D, where projecting a mesh onto the surface of another mesh required the use of Shrink Wrap or Surface deformers.
Phong Tag
Phong Tag now provides more options to help create better normal visualization. For example, the Area Weighted option offers improved sharing for beveled objects without the need to add more edges or subdivisions.
Accelerated Viewport Performance
Maxon says they have “fixed some stability issues” when switching between different views, but early reports also indicate that overall viewport performance is significantly faster. Look for benchmarks and users’ experiences to show up online soon.
Pyro Updates
The most important story here is that explosions will look better (and more realistic) than ever before because Pyro can now be generated off of the standard particle emitter or via Thinking Particles.
Those are the high points, but for a full rundown of C4D 2024 updates, visit the Maxon support page. Also, remember that in order to maximize these new features, it may be time to upgrade to a BOXX APEXX workstation purpose-built for Cinema 4D. Visit our C4D Solutions page to learn more.