ZBrush and Cinema 4D to support Snapdragon processors natively
The Filmmaking Masterclass session from the 2025 Snapdragon Summit. You can see Maxon’s announcement that Cinema 4D and ZBrush will soon support Windows on Snapdragon at 32:30.
Maxon has become the latest CG software developer to announce native support for Qualcomm’s ARM-based Snapdragon processors, used in a growing range of Windows laptops.
Both Cinema 4D and ZBrush will natively support Windows on Snapdragon from spring 2026.
Powering a new generation of laptops capable of hardware-intensive CG tasks
The Windows on Snapdragon platform comprises devices running the Windows on ARM OS on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series processors like the X Elite and upcoming X2 Elite.
Snapdragon X Elite processors use an all-in-one design, combining a multi-core Oryon CPU, an Adreno GPU, and a Hexagon NPU (Neural Processing Unit) to accelerate AI processing tasks.
Windows on Snapdragon powers a growing range of Copilot+ PCs – primarily laptops and 2-in-1 tablets – including systems from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro range.
They promise a better performance-to-power-consumption ratio than conventional systems, making it feasible to do more hardware-intensive CG work on thin, light mobile devices.
Native Windows on Snapdragon support due in Cinema 4D and ZBrush in spring 2026
A growing range of CG applications now support ARM processors natively, including Affinity Photo, Blender, DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop.
To that list, we can soon add Cinema 4D, Maxon’s 3D animation and motion graphics software, and ZBrush, its digital sculpting app, widely used in concept art, game development and VFX.
Speaking at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, Maxon Director of Product Rick Barrett revealed that both Cinema 4D and ZBrush will ship with native Snapdragon support in spring 2026.
According to Barrett: “Native Snapdragon support uses 1.5GB less memory, with performance gains of more than 50%.”
Maxon is now optimizing the new AI asset search capabilities in Cinema 4D’s Asset Browser, introduced in Cinema 4D 2025.3, for the Snapdragon processors’ Hexagon NPUs.
During its presentation, Maxon also showed a live demo of a 310-million-poly character being manipulated in real time in a preview build of ZBrush running on a laptop with a Snapdragon X2 Elite processor: you can see it at 40:00 in the video at the top of the story.
The firm didn’t announce any specific optimizations within ZBrush, although in a blog post, it notes that touchscreen-and-pen devices are a good fit for digital sculpting on the move.
Price, system requirements and release date
Windows on Snapdragon support is due in Cinema 4D and ZBrush in “spring 2026”.
If Maxon follows the same release schedule as it has done in recent years, that’s likely to be around Cinema 4D 2026.2 and ZBrush 2026.2.
You can find current pricing and system requirements in our stories on the latest releases of both applications, Cinema 4D 2026.0 and ZBrush 2026.0.
Read more about the upcoming support for Windows on Snapdragon in Cinema 4D and ZBrush
Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.