Hi, i'm really impressioned by some image made with cinema 4D (specially for the light and radiosity features...), someone tell me what's the principal characteristics of this sw, and your opinion, pro and cons... 10x a lot...

well, i post this in the vue forum, beacause i'm a vue user and i want to compare Vue with Cinema 4D

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Maybe as a first step you compare the price :))). Cinema is in the league of Lightwave or 3D Studio Max. I would call it upper mid-range, high class is Mayo or Softimage or those ones. It is very hard to compare Cinema with Vue because Vue is a highly specialised landscape rendering program, Cinema the classical "full service" 3D package. With nurbs modeling, particle system, animation tools, high sophisticated lighting systems etc etc. Some months ago there was a free copy of Cinema 6 (the actual version is 8.5) on several magazine CDs. Maybe you try to get one of those and try it out. Or how about trying the demo version? I enclose the link to the demo download here. If you have specific question feel free to ask, i am using Cinema 4D version 8 here as well - from time to time. Walther

10X Walther... well, price is the first problem, but second is the complexity of program... i know 3d studio Max.. but how many time for create a landscape with sky and some vegetation ?? i will download the demo of Cinema... hope cinema are not to hard to use.....

I fear it is - these type of programs are all very similar. In a way - and i hear the complains of the specific users already. I did 3D animation for a living a long time ago. Now it is only a hobby. I decided to stay with Vue because it is so easy to use. I want fun, not high sophisticatic intelectual riddles. But thats of course my very personal pov! If you want to do landscapes with vegetation and sky in Cinema you probably will need some plugins. Like Ozon from E-on or XFrog for vegetation. These are add-ons to offer some capabilities that Vue does have. The same with Poser files. I think there is a plugin from Curious Labs. I am on Mac and CL was not able to offer a plugin that would run under OS X for years now. So i dont know how that works or still exists. Maybe someone else knows. Again, if you need help or have specific questions, ask me. Absolutely no problem. Walther

I've used the version (Cinema 4d 6CE) that came on the 3dworld cd (I forget what issue) and I'd have to say that it is a lot more intuitive (at least for me) than 3d studio was, there were some great tutorials that came with the cd too, I wish I had more time to devote to actual modeling but sadly by the time I get home from work (where I do 2d CAD and have started doing 3d modeling) I'm just about too burned out to put in the effort. Overall though Cinema has a lot of really nice features and I would say that based on using the CE version it would be well worth the money.

Well i had also received the CE version with 3D world mag, i then upgraded it to CE+, and now i have the R8.5 XL package. Compared to a lot of apps Cinema is priced good. And the module system is great, you buy simply what you need. I have been using Cinema since version 6, and have tried out other apps like 3ds max, maya, softimage. But i will stay with Cinema. Also like mentionned you cannot compare a high end 3d app to a program that is specifically for landscapes and such. But i do use Vue for landscapes!