Conclusion

Release 11.5 is easily MAXON's best .5 upgrade that they have produced. The focus in R11.5 is in the Core version and the MoGraph module. In the Core version MAXON have continued development of the render engine. We now have Bucket Rendering which is much more memory efficient. With the addition of Render Instances scenes with millions if not billions of polygons of cloned objects can be rendered without the dreaded "Out of Memory error". Couple with this is the excellent new Picture Viewer that allows comparisons of renders and simple image enhancements. As usual there are many minor but useful enhancements.

MoGraph 2 adds so many new things the enhancements could have been a module in their own right. That probably explains the fairly steep upgrade price. Once you get over the upgrade price of the module the enhancements are superb. Centre stage is MoDynamics. MoDynamics are fast, easy to use and gives excellent results. The PolyFX object / deformer adds a new dimension to motion graphics and the animations in the review were put together by the Cafe reviewers after very little use of PolyFX. The MoSpline object can create some nifty images and animations and understanding it will take many hours of experimenting. This is one where we wish there had been some included tutorials as there originally was when the MoGraph module first came out. The other MoGraph enhancements are just icing on the cake and a very tasty cake at that!!

MAXON have tweaked a few things under the hood and Viewport performance is improved. There is still a way to go here but any improvement is most welcome. CINEMA 4D works much better under Windows Vista and Windows 7. The trick of disabling Windows Aero / disabling Desktop Composition is no longer required although you may want to disable the 2 Smart settings in the Preferences.

As usual there is still a lengthy "To Do" list of things that CINEMA 4D needs and some of them are fairly urgent. Number one for many users would be Modelling Tool enhancements. CINEMA 4D is now significantly behind other 3D applications with its modelling tools and we can only hope that get some love and attention in Release 12. One can only hope that the excellent MoDynamics in MoGraph 2 are a taste of what's to come in a new Dynamics module. MoDynamics uses the Open Source Bullet Dynamics engine. This engine supports both rigid and soft body dynamics so let's hope an upgraded Dynamics module also has soft body dynamics. BodyPaint is also looking a bit tired in places. It is still the King when it comes to 3D painting but things like UV editing are easier and better in a few other 3D applications. It still isn't properly integrated. You can't for example add a HUD element for paint tool settings. Again let's hope BodyPaint gets some attention. A few other things like Depth of Field and Motion Blur also need enhancing.

So you should you upgrade to Release 11.5? Yes definitely. The upgrade prices for both the Core version and MoGraph are on the high side but the enhancements are excellent. As usual stability wasn't an issue and problems are few and far between. Since it was released and at the time of publishing this review there has been 1 free maintenance update that addressed many bugs. All in all, MAXON have done an excellent job with R11.5 and we eagerly await Release 12 some time in 2010.

You can get pricing information from MAXON's site here.

MoGraph MoSpline

Review by Nigel Doyle / 3DKiwi, Alan Harris / Rantin Al and Brian Horgan / Horganovski