Maxon releases Cinema 4D 2025
Maxon’s overview video for Cinema 4D 2025, the latest version of the 3D animation and motion graphics software. Later sections of the video also cover features added in previous releases.
Maxon has released Cinema 4D 2025, the latest major version of its 3D software for motion graphics, VFX and visualization work.
Cinema 4D 2025.0 updates Cinema 4D’s procedural modeling toolset, and adds a Field Driver tag for procedural animation, plus new options for particle, Pyro and rigid body simulation.
In addition, the full GPU version of the Redshift renderer is now included with every subscription.
Redshift GPU now included with every Cinema 4D subscription
Arguably the biggest change in Cinema 4D 2025 is not to the core software, but the fact that every subscription now includes the full version of the Redshift renderer.
Previously, only the CPU version of Redshift was included with Cinema 4D, with users requiring a separate paid subscription for the full GPU renderer.
Maxon removed the option to subscribe to Cinema 4D alone as part of a series of price changes rolled out at the start of the month, with every subscription now including Redshift.
For users who previously only subscribed to Cinema 4D, the cost has risen by $15/month; for those who previously subscribed to Cinema 4D and Redshift, the cost has fallen by $7/month.
Cinema 4D 2025.0’s new Field Driver tag – shown here controlling friction between cloth objects and an underlying surface – opens up new procedural animation workflows.
New procedural modeling and animation workflows
Cinema 4D 2025.0 itself features smaller includes updates throughout the core toolsets, including a number of updates to procedural modeling via the Scene Nodes architecture.
They include a new Noise Modifier for deforming surfaces, and improvements to spline modeling, including the option to set splines as open or closed.
For procedural animation, a new Field Driver tag makes it possible to control object parameters using Fields.
Fields were previously used to control clones created using Cinema 4D’s MoGraph toolset, but can now be used to control any object or tag parameter, opening up new workflows.
The Follow Spline modifier is intended to make particle simulations more art-directable.
Updates to particle, Pyro and rigid body simulation
Cinema 4D’s Unified Simulation System also continues to evolve, particularly the new particle simulation toolset introduced in Cinema 4D 2024.4.
The latest release features a number of changes intended to make particle systems more art-directable, particularly a new Follow Spline modifier for guiding particles along spline paths.
The update also adds a new Point emitter shape, and new control attributes for several existing modifiers, including Surface Attract and Pyro Advect.
The Pyro simulation system itself, for simulating fire and smoke, gets new Sparse Surface and Sparse Volume emission types.
The modes, which make use of NanoVDB, NVIDIA’s simplified representation of the OpenVDB data structure, can “lead to faster processing and reduced memory usage”.
Rigid body simulations now support the Force Object, making it possible to have rigid bodies attracting or repelling neighbouring objects.
In addition, rigid bodies generated from particles can now inherit their speed and orientation.
Performance, workflow and pipeline integration improvements
TDs get a new Object Profiler, intended to help troubleshoot performance bottlenecks in complex scenes by displaying the execution times for each object and tag.
There are also a number of workflow improvements, particularly to OCIO color management.
For pipeline integration, USD support has been extended, with users now able to export instances and skeletal animations – including skin weights for characters – in USD format.
Price and system requirements
Cinema 4D 2025 is compatible with Windows 10+ and macOS 13.6+. The update is available rental-only, with Cinema 4D subscriptions now costing $109/month or $839/year.
Read a list of new features in Cinema 4D 2025.0 in the online release notes
Read more about the new features in Cinema 4D in the online manual
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