Cinema 4D XL: Maxon's mid-range system evolves. (reviews).(Software Review)(Evaluation)

MAXON GOT a late start in the 3D business. While many of the major modeling and animation packages have been around for a decade or more, Maxon's Cinema 4D XL has existed for only about five years. In this time, however, the company has created a robust and competitive package.

Although I conducted this review on a dual-processor Windows 2000 machine, Cinema 4D runs on Macintosh systems too. Dongles are not required, and the software supports multiple processors as well as OpenGL. The one setup glitch involved my ancient CalComp graphics tablet. When the tablet driver was running, the application wouldn't start. As soon as I removed the driver, everything worked perfectly. I think it might be time for me to get a new tablet.

Cinema 4D's interface is user friendly and efficient. Like many advanced packages, its menus are customizable, which enables you to create your own interfaces for specific applications such as modeling or character animation.

For modeling, the software supports a wide variety of geometry types, including polygonal and NURBS objects. The NURBS implementation, however, is basic. Although the software supports the typical extrude, lathe, and loft surfaces, most advanced NURBS tools, such as curves on surface, blends, fillets, and surface continuity, are not supported.

In addition to NURBS, Cinema4D has a feature called HyperNURBS, which are actually subdivision surfaces. Personally, I prefer this method of modeling over traditional NURBS in any package because it is easier to use. One nice modeling tool is Matrix Extrude, which enables you to extrude faces on a model automatically with user-defined offsets.

Another type of available geometry is metaballs. These were popular a few years ago, but have fallen out of favor with most modelers because they create dense and complex surfaces. However, metaballs are good for a number of visual effects in which objects need to "blob" together, such as liquids and other particle system effects. The metaball implementation in Cinema 4D allows for spheres, splines, and points to be made into blobby objects.

Animation is well supported. For character animation, Cinema 4D supports inverse kinematics and mesh deformation tools. The skeletons created with the IK system tend to resemble those created in NewTek's LightWave, with each bone having a "target" to point at. In a simple arm, for example, the biceps would point to the elbow, and the forearm to the wrist. For more complicated setups, Cinema4D allows bones to point at ...