C4D Cafe: C4D Cafe

Hi everyone. The wait is over. MAXON has announced Release 12. In addition to the new enhancements and new features modules have been done away with and there are now 5 versions of Cinema 4D. They are:
Prime – (Basic version)
BodyPaint
Visualize
Broadcast
Studio

Here’s a graph of what comes with each version.


Release 12 Major Enhancements (Full list from documentation at the bottom of this post)
New rigid and soft body dynamics system using the Bullet engine. This also includes Motors, springs and forces. The old Dynamics module is gone. The new Dynamics system can interact with MoGraph dynamics. Oh yes. It’s easy to use

Here is a 6 minute video showing most of the new Dynamics in action. (33mb Best to right click and save as)

http://www.cafedownl...R12Dynamics.mov

Everything in the video is in real time. I actually had to slow the car simulations down as they were too fast so that you could see them better. Soft body dynamics however do slow things down quite a bit depending on your mesh density.

I have put together an 65 minute long video tutorial of me playing around with some of the new dynamics toys Since the videos contain a lot things moving the tutorials are large. To assist members the tutorial is split into 2 parts. Part 2 shows how to do the dynamics for the cars that I used in 6 minute demonstration video.

Click here to go to the download page. You will need to be a Cafe member to download. 230mb in total

New Deformers. Mesh deformer, Smooth deformer, Camera deformer, Surface Deformer, Correction deformer. Trust me, these are seriously cool enhancements. Cafe Admin Horganovski has put together a 26 minute video of him playing around with the new deformers.

Click here to go to the download page. You will need to be a Cafe member to download. 68mb

OpenGL enhancements – OpenGL 3.1 support (for graphics cards that support it). This means faster viewport speed
Linear Workflow – More accurate and better quality images.
Integrated Python Scripting – Python scripting is now officially part of CINEMA 4D
Rigging / IK enhancements – Freeze / Dual transformations, New IK Dynamics system . Plus more. Check out Horganovski’s 17 minute video on the enhanced IK system.

Click here to go to the download page. You will need to be a Cafe member to download. 46mb

Picture Viewer (render window) enhancements

Notes (as people are bound to ask)
There are no modelling tool enhancements apart from some bug fixes
There are no enhancements to BodyPaint although UV's can now be animated using the new Pose Morph tag
Release 12 scenes cannot be opened by Release 11.5 or earlier because of changes to file structure
Plugins for earlier versions won’t work. They need recompiling to be compatible (an easy job I gather)
As mentioned the old Dynamics module is gone
Bones have gone
Old Mocca IK Soft IK has gone.

Here's what R12 looks like. Very similar to R11.5. Menus have been tidied up.


As usual there are lots of minor enhancements. Full list below (taken from the R12 documentation)


 New Center option for display safe (Action Safe, etc.).
 New interpolation mode for background.
 Material colors for objects without materials can be defined.
 View Clipping can be used to clearly display any region of the scene.
 Integrated linear workflow in CINEMA 4D.
 Integrated color management in CINEMA 4D.
 Program preferences now with filters and additional functionality.
 A hard drive memory limit and a save path can be defined for the Picture Viewer.
 Import settings for scaling for CINEMA 4D files.
 You can scale during FBX import and export.
 Null Object display can be disabled in the Viewport.
 CINEMA 4D supports frozen transformations (dual transformations).
 White balance.
 Light source color can be defined via its color temperature.
 Support for IES lights.
 New Camera Deformer.
 Several methods available for restricting the The Jiggle Deformer’s effect.
 New Smooth Deformer.
 New Correction Deformer.
 New Mesh Deformer.
 New Surface Deformer.
 Modified behaviour for distorted coordinate system.
 Scenes can be scaled as a whole.
 New command for creating absolute animation layers.
 The particle modifiers can recognize mass in conjunction with Dynamics.
 New handling of conversion commands.
 New conversion command.
 The Joint tool can automatically place joints at the correct view depth.
 Several new Mirror tool functions.
 New Weights Manager for easy handling of Weights.
 New Constraint tag mode ("PGW").
 New Constraint tag options ("Überobjekt").
 New Contraint tag mode, Bounds.
 New command: Reset FK
 Parameters for the prevention of IK chain flipping.
 IK Tag now offers dynamics behaviour.
 The Pose Morph tag offers more than the previous Morph and Posemixer tags combined.
 The Point cache can loop cached animations or play them backwards.
 Expanded functionality in the Weight tag’s Joint list.
 The Render Queue replaces batch rendering.
 Images can be assigned any available color profile when saved.
 Numerous additions for After Effects export.
 The Bake tag can now bake displacements.
 Python scripting language now integrated into CINEMA 4D.
 New Coordinate Manager mode.
 Improved texture settings for camera mapping (Film and Pixel Aspect).
 The number of tiles can now be defined in the Texture tag.
 Several new functions added to Normals tag.
 Command for loading textures for all materials.
 New stone pavement shader.
 New brick shader.
 Interactive selection process for link fields.
 Multiple Picture Viewer windows can be opened.
 Navigator/Histogram in the Picture Viewer.
 Display of Title Safe / Action Safe / Pixel Aspect in the Picture Viewer.
 Display filter in the Picture Viewer.
 Full Screen Mode for the Picture Viewer.
 New Dynamics functionality, including Soft Bodies, new XPresso Nodes and baking.
 Dynamics recognizes MoGraph selections.
 New Trigger Velocity Threshold parameter defines collision strength required for Dynamics to take effect.
 MoSpline contains an L-System for simulating growth processes.
 2 commands for assigning a new color profile to images/textures.
 Texture color profile can be modified in the bitmap information dialog window.
 Enhanced OpenGL: Improved and faster display in Viewport and beyond.