We can't possibly list and discuss every new enhancement in Release 11.5 as there are too many. The following are some of the more important and or more interesting enhancements.
Project Settings (Edit Menu>Project Settings or Ctrl +D) used to be in a pop up window. They now appear in the Attributes Manager. In addition there is a new Info tab where you can input information about your scene. There are options to enable / disable scene parameters like Use Generators. If you have the MoGraph module the scene settings for using MoDynamics are on a MoDynamics tab.
Release 11.5 Project Settings
Unique object names - When you Ctrl drag to make a copy of an object in the Object Manager or copy and paste from the Edit menu the new object gets a suffix added it so that copies have their own unique name. This is one really handy feature and makes working with similar objects much easier.
Copy and pasting objects appends a unique suffix number on the end
New Connect and Delete Command - In the past when you selected 2 or more objects and ran a Connect command to create a new connected object you often didn't want the original objects and had to go back and delete them. The new Connect and Delete command does all this in one operation. The original Connect command is still there should you wish to retain the original objects.
If you're running Windows 7 then Font Selection has been improved. This isn't actually a CINEMA 4D enhancement but we thought it worth mentioning since Windows 7 came out at more or less the same time as Release 11.5. The dialog below shows how you now get a preview of the font. This will work for earlier versions of CINEMA 4D as well.
Improved font selector (Windows 7)
What we would like to see especially as CINEMA 4D is used so much in the Broadcast industry is that when you select a font in the font selector dialog, that the text spline or MoGraph Text object updates to show the new font. Currently you need to change and apply the font. To try out another font you need to reopen the font selector dialog again.
Materials can be replaced by Alt+dragging from the Content Browser or Material Manager. This is a great time saver. If you want to replace a material that's applied to lots of objects just Alt+Drag the new material on to the old material.
Numeric values can be modified using the arrow keys. Yet another handy enhancement. Just click in any number field in the Attributes Manager and use the keyboard up and down keys for more precise control over changing values. If you are like me and the up / down spinners (arrows) to change numeric values I often go past the value that I want and have to mess around to get the correct value. I can now use the up and down keys. Note that you can hold the keys down and zoom through the values and then stop when you get near the value you're after then single click to get it. Tip: Shift+arrow will increase/decrease in 10 unit amounts, Alt+arrow increase/decrease .1 of a unit amount.
Filtering parameters in the Attributes Manager - This is a really clever enhancement. Many objects have many settings and finding the right settings can be tricky especially for people new to CINEMA 4D. The image below shows where I have used the filter (Magnifying Glass) to show all Shadow settings for a light. I would like to see something similar for XPresso.
New Filter options for Attributes Manager
Overall speed optimization in various areas - If you're into animating then you should notice animations play back quicker in the viewport. Some of the issues like having the Timeline open which caused slower playback have been resolved. Check out the Timeline section of the review for more on this.
Double-clicking on the edge of a manager window will automatically reposition the manager window. Say you resized the Attributes Manager by dragging its border upwards, double clicking the border between it and the Object Manager will make the Attributes Manager and the Object Manager both the same vertical height. This also works on Viewport windows and can be used for example to resize a 4 view layout so that all 4 windows are the same size.
FBX importing and exporting has been upgraded and now supports FBX 2010.0.
Improved After Effects and Motion Support - Quite a few enhancements here to make working with Adobe After Effects and Apple Motion even better.
Sticky in Full Screen Mode. Full screen mode has been enhanced and is much more useful. Previously full screen mode just maximized one window. It is now possible to create a group of windows and managers to be maximized e.g. Viewport and Object Manager. To do this you right click on any manager or the 16 square grid of dots and select 
Sticky in Full Screen Mode. Now when you either press the full screen mode button in the top right hand corner of the interface or press Ctrl + Tab those windows and managers you added to the sticky will appear in full screen mode. All other windows and managers will be hidden. In addition if you Ctrl + Tab click on a manager or window that you didn't apply the sticky mode to, that window or manager will be temporarily added to the full screen view. This all sounds more complex than it is. Once you have done it a few times it's a piece of cake.
Another full screen mode option is Full Screen (Group). This is where you can create a new empty group window. Into that window you add managers and toolbars. Now when you press the Full Screen mode button when the mouse cursor is over the group window the group window will be maximized. Alternatively you can press Ctrl+Shift+Tab. Just pressing Ctrl+Tab gives you one manager full screen rather than all of the managers and toolbars that you added to the group window. Typically you would use group windows when have 2 monitors and you create a group window on the second monitor.
New Iterations parameter in Cloth tag - In older versions of CINEMA 4D it was possible to use values over 100% for cloth stiffness. In Release 11.0 the maximum value was restricted to 100%. This meant when you wanted very rigid cloth it was difficult to make the cloth rigid enough. The iterations option is basically a stiffness multiplier although using a value of 2 doesn't make the stiffness twice as rigid.
New in the 11.528 free update - OpenType fonts now supported. If you have never heard of OpenType Fonts, Wikipedia describes them OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. No doubt this will be very welcome by a number of people.
BodyPaint 3D is now at version 4.5. The previous version was version 4. Despite the 0.5 increase there aren't in fact any enhancements apart from support for reading and writing to 32 bit files with layers. The logic behind the 0.5 increase is to do with version numbers since BP was integrated into C4D:
This means that when Release 12.0 comes out BodyPaint will be Release 5.0 whether it has any improvements or not. The only difference between buying the standalone version of BodyPaint and the core version of CINEMA 4D is the BodyPaint version starts in a BodyPaint layout. Apart from that it's the same program as the core version of CINEMA 4D.
I would hope that in Release 12, BodyPaint gets some serious attention. Many parts of it are falling behind the competition e.g. modo. UV editing needs some attention as other apps do it better, more easily and importantly with a less steep learning curve. BodyPaint still doesn't feel integrated properly. You cannot for example add HUD elements for BodyPaint tools. Painting with symmetry doesn't exist as it does in modo. The workaround of painting on half an object with a symmetry object, then making it editable is terribly clunky.
I should mention that in the recent bug fix upgrade, the long standing Interactive Mapping bug has finally been fixed. Interactive Mapping hasn't worked correctly since Release 9. Unfortunately the Auto Realign option in the Relax tool when enabled, realigns not just selected element but unselected elements. It should in fact only align selected elements if their UV points or UV Polygons are selected. This appears to be a bug.
Review by C4D Cafe © 2009