Cinema 4D 10.5

Maxon tends to release a .5 upgrade every year rather than the full version offered by other packages. This makes it look as though not a lot has changed, but in fact Cinema 4D 10.5 adds as much new functionality as this year’s 3ds Max update, which was billed as a full version.

Apart from all the modelling, subdivision, rendering, character animation and texturing tools you’d expect from a modern 3D application, Cinema 4D now comes with the addition of BodyPaint 3D as standard. It’s one of the best tools around for painting textures onto 3D objects. You can paint in 3D or onto the flattened texture, and it includes layers, a range of paint tools and a smooth interface.

Version 10 made a big point of character animation, and 10.5 boosts this with some new deformers. These offer ways to fake soft-body dynamics, enabling you to produce wobbling flesh, elastic stretching and cartoon-style squashing.

The Lighting tool is new in version 10.5 and makes lighting your scene much easier. You can also select your lights by clicking on the objects that they light.

Version 10.5 also includes a few tweaks to UV mapping in BodyPaint and streamlining of the Timeline animation tools. The HAIR module has also been upgraded and now supports multiple processors, so is much faster to work with.