Cinema 4d 13 is the one for filmmakerS!
The new animation tools and ESPECIALLY the CMotion system coming in Cinema 4d 13 is going to be AMAZINGLY useful for animated filmmakers... Here's CMotion in action in the hands of an animator and NO KEYFRAMES were used 0_0
c4d R13 + cmotion + builder + biped cycles 01 from Pete Circuitt on Vimeo.
The CMotion system seems to be PERFECT for me because I already do a lot of procedural animation using Vibrate tag's, Xpresso, Mograph, and a few other tricks... but this system is BUILT as a PROCEDURAL CHARACTER ANIMATION TOOL so yeh its SUPER DOPE!
AND there's a new Character tool which is pretty much an awesome AUTORIGGING system... it has presets for bipeds, quadrapeds, spiders, birds and MORE... I'm not even joking! It even has an AUTOMATIC walk creator which is CMotion then you can tweak the walks to your hearts content.... another it does that is VERY useful is that it will automatically make the character walk along a path at the correct speed with NO foot slippage 0_0 AND it can make them walk over surfaces as well!
If I sound excited I AM! Because these new tools are PERFECT for the way I work... so it'll allow me to work like twice as fast ^_^
For coverage of the new version click on over to C4dcafe
To me Cinema 4d was ALREADY the BEST 3d application for solo animator, one man army's like myself but NOW with the updated Xref's I predict many more 3d animation studios making 3d animated films will pop up... because they are really making character animation and 3d filmmaking VERY accessible and I'll even have to say they are making it EASY ^ ^
Lots of creative/design types use C4d but I think that with previous versions they were a little bewildered by the character animation tools OR the limited xref's in previous versions put a damper on a truly collaborative workflow when working on films with teams of people...
BUT now that the upcoming version of Cinema 4d supports fully rigged characters with Xref's... so THIS changes everything! It makes C4d a very powerful production tool for teams of artists... AND it's also useful to a solo filmmaker like me...
So yeh if you or your company/studio wants to get into making 3d animated films and character animation and you want to do it all in-house than I say Cinema 4d 13 is the one for you! I've now made two feature films, and countless short films with it.... AND I still love it! ^_^
I was able to do this in six days by myself with Cinema 4d 12... I imagine with version 13 I could do it in three ^_^
Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.