This month, Maxon unveiled the new Cinema 4D S24.

The new version of C4D brings new updates to scenes and key animation workflows, making viewing, placing and managing assets easier, intuitive and quick to use. The node system has not stopped upgrading, becoming more powerful.

01. Placing tools

Cinema 4D provides creators with intuitive and powerful placement tools for placing objects in a scene. Creating environments and adding items and toolkits is as simple as dragging objects onto each other, smeating them on surfaces, or letting them fall in place with the help of dynamics.

Place the tools

The Placement tool efficiently and intuitively places objects on the surface of existing scene elements, which can be easily scaled and rotated using a gamepad. You can even place objects directly from the asset browser and interactively copy and place objects in the scene. Objects are automatically placed based on their bounding boxes or defined axes, with selectable offsets.

Spread the brush

Scatter brushes allow you to easily distribute a single object or selected object to any surface by simply dragging through the view. You can control the spacing and arrangement of each object, the frequency, and change the placement, rotation, and scale of the object. Draw with randomly distributed or well-defined strokes. Too much or in the wrong place? No problem, just use the Remove tool to clean up the scene, or use the Place tool to move objects separately.

Dynamic placement tool

Dynamic placement tools provide the ultimate option for visually placing objects into a scene, and high-performance dynamics calculations provide actual collisions between objects. With the dynamic placement tool, you can take advantage of Cinema 4D’s physical simulation capabilities to bring objects together or naturally land on surfaces. Simplified proxy geometry is automatically generated to achieve fast and accurate dynamics calculations.

02. Asset Browser

The Asset Browser provides easy access to a preset library of content stored locally or online, including a wide range of 3D objects, materials and nodes available to Cinema 4D users. The library can be browsed or searched, and each asset includes rich keys. Assets are downloaded on demand, so there is no need to download a large asset library up front. They’re also cached on your local computer, so your favorite assets can be reused immediately.

Keywords, search, and filtering

Keywords can be added to your assets to make the content easy to search. Save the things you search for frequently in smart folders, and when assets with the same keywords are added later, they will be automatically added to those folders.

Asset versioning

Extremely useful in complex production pipelines. Assets can be updated as the project progresses. Going back to the previous version or updating the scene with the latest version can be as simple as a few clicks.

Object, instance, or reference

Insert object-based assets as objects, instances, or references for extremely flexible and efficient workflows.

Add your own assets

Create your own asset libraries and add your own assets by dragging them directly into the assets folder.

03. Scenario Manager

Let you experience the more intuitive workflow of Cinema 4D under the new core. Cinema 4D’s Scene manager uses powerful, node-based assets to build procedural geometry objects or entire scenes in a hierarchical view. The Scene Manager will eventually provide a fast and creative workflow, just like Cinema 4D’s traditional object manager, which you can easily integrate by dragging traditional C4D objects into the Scene Manager. Everything you do in the scene manager creates a corresponding node graph in the scene nodes, so you can choose whichever workflow or work requirement you like.

Scene node

Using Cinema 4D’s scene node core, you can manage relationships and dependencies between objects, build and modify geometry, and build reusable assets.

Debug the scene node

You can effectively debug the scene node system with information overlay, a port debug panel in the node editor, and a powerful data inspector window for detailed introspection on arrays and other complex data types.

Distribution, nodes, and capsules

The real power of scenario nodes is that TD-level users can scale the ecosystem without a line of code, and as scenario nodes mature, they expand the possibilities and serve as useful examples of the types of tools users can expect.

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