If you are into Character Animation then upgrading to 10.5 is a no brainer and you should order it without hesitation. The Mocca 3.1 / character animation enhancements take CINEMA 4D further along the road to being a serious application for Character animating. Add in the rigging tutorial DVD and things just get better. If you're not into character animating then the upgrade to 10.5 is probably a bit less compelling but there's still some very useful enhancements. XRefs being the main one. We can imagine anyone into Architectural Visualization would probably upgrade to 10.5 just to get XRefs. Similarly anyone into Motion Graphics would probably find the MoGraph enhancments a good reason to upgrade. Then there are a smattering of other enhancements that would be useful to all users.
Release 10.5 fixes a few bugs not fixed in the previous 10.1 bug fix upgrade and this is good to see especially the BodyPaint presets bug. You get the feeling that a few of the enhancements, especially for the timeline, were probably meant for 10.0 but never made it in time. 10.5 brings with it a few bugs in some of the enhancements and we have mentioned some of these during the review. One would hope that a bug fix is not too far away that addresses these. A little disappointing was the number of spelling mistakes in the documentation and most are in the 10.5 enhancements. Surely it's not that hard to load up the html pages in a html editor and run a spell check? Some of the mistakes are German spelt words which should have been in English.
BodyPaint is now at 3.5 and the enhancements while very few in number are good enhancements. However BodyPaint 4 needs to be a big upgrade with more than just a few bits and pieces added in. There are a number of things seriously lacking and other applications are doing some things better.
It was pleasing to see a couple of modelling enhancements with the Connect (Points / Edges) command, the Dissolve command, the Spine Edge command but Release 11 needs MAXON to spend a bit of serious time on the modelling tools. There are some tools that other 3D applications have that just work better and / or have more options.
There were no rendering enhancements in 10.5 and now that Character Animation has more or less been fixed in CINEMA 4D the call in the forums is for some work to be done on Rendering / Advanced Render module. VRay for CINEMA 4D has recently been released and this may help out some people but it is mighty expensive and could well be beyond the pocket of hobbyists. It is for the Cafe reviewers. Another module in desperate need of some work or throwing out and a complete rewrite is the Dynamics module. We actually never expected anything for Dynamics in 10.5 as it's such a basket case that only a major rewrite will fix it. Who knows what MAXON has planned for this module and if and when a replacement module comes out, it could be a separate product release on its own.
The 10.5 upgrade saw more work done on the timeline and animation controls. The timeline just keeps getting better but missing is the ability to specify the number of loops for sequences as we had in earlier versions. So too is the ability move sequences around, i.e. Non linear animation editing. Another one missing is motion blending of imported motion captured files. One can only assume that there is more to come for the timeline in Release 11.
The new Lighting Tool is a great new tool and as far as we know, no other general 3D application has anything similar. It is very encouraging to see MAXON being innovative and coming up with something unique. We wouldn't be surprised to see other 3D applications copy this tool.
Release 10.5 is very stable and the 3 Cafe reviewers all running PC's encountered no problems. However at some point in the future Vista support will need to be improved to make CINEMA 4D work properly with nVidia graphics cards.
If you have made it this far reading the review you should have picked up by now that there's quite a bit in the 10.5 upgrade and a lot more than is apparent just by reading the "What's new in 10.5" list. There is also a lot more in the 10.5 upgrade than was in the 9.5 upgrade hence our review of 10.5 is a lot longer than our 9.5 review. As mentioned the 10.5 upgrade comes with a rigging tutorial DVD. It's certainly not the definitive rigging tutorial and there are opportunities for one or two more rigging / character animation tutorial DVD's at least. The audio quality has a few problems and many things aren't explained that well. The rigged rabbit that is produced is exceptionally well rigged and shows that Character Animation in CINEMA 4D has come of age.
For USA customers the upgrade price is US $250, UK customers the upgrade price is ex vat £109 with vat £128.08. When you throw in the tutorial DVD this is pretty good value. Something MAXON should be commended on is only announcing 10.5 when they had it ready to ship. There is nothing worse than a 3D application being announced and then the users being forced to wait ages for it to be finally released.
Review by Nigel Doyle / 3DKiwi, Rene Rijk / Rich_Art and Kathie Berry / Damsel
Review by C4D Cafe © 2007