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Another View of SIGGRAPH

by Michael Muwanguzi

[Note from the Editor: Both Mike and Mark found Maxon and Cinnafilm to be interesting. While Mark focused on the entire trade show, Mike focuses on these two companies exclusively. Since both writers offer different insights, we felt it was appropriate to publish both accounts in their entirety. -JH]

MAXON Cinema 4D R11
This year at SIGGRAPH 2008, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a demo of the latest version of Cinema 4D release 11. Up until this point, I had never had the opportunity to see Cinema 4D in action, although I had heard about it through ads and the occasional appearance in a conversation. That said, I had no inhibitions or preconceived notions concerning the software and was delightfully surprised by the programs offerings. After a brief overview of Cinema 4D’s background, our speaker and demonstrator, Maxon’s president, Paul Babb, revealed to us some of the new features that have been improved upon with this newest iteration.

The people at Maxon Cinema 4D pride themselves on a providing a robust toolset that not only meets the needs of the film and broadcast community but is also easy to use. Some of the major points that were highlighted were improvements to workflow and pipeline integration, non-linear animation system, a brand new global illumination render engine, as well as improvements to the overall render engine being used throughout the program. These subjects were all touched upon briefly, but the real gem of the demo was new Projection Man matte painting system that had been developed for Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Projection Man allows artists, in particular matte painters, to convert their 2D imagery into 3D space, but in a much easier way to create and manage the aspects of the project. Working in close conjunction to Adobe Photoshop, an artist can set up the elements of their matte painting on separate layers and save out the finished PSD file to be imported into Cinema 4D. Once inside the 3D app, the image can be brought in on a background plane as a reference to build the digital set. With the use of geometric primitives and planes, an artist can easily assign parts of the matte painting to different surfaces and cameras. To make sure everything is seamless, you can test the scene by having the camera fly through it to find any glitches. When problems or gaps reveal themselves, you can easily take the section back into Photoshop to comfortably modify your work. A straightforward workflow coupled with industry-proven results make this tool a must-have for any artist looking to bolster their skill-set.

Aside from the excellent presentation from Paul, I had the good fortune of speaking with Steve Matson, a matte painter for film. Steve demonstrated to us how Cinema 4D’s Projection Man had been extremely necessary to him and his colleagues as they worked on the feature film Beowulf. He explained how the studio had originally wanted to do all the backgrounds in 3D, but due to time constraints and budget they turned to Projection Man to help them get the job done efficiently. Thankfully, Cinema 4D was very accessible to the artists that were working on the project; many of them having little to no experience with 3D prior to the project. So judging from the results it is a safe assumption that the tool can produce professional results. This is great news considering that Cinema 4D will be reasonably priced when it’s released this September. (Check out the pictures on the next page to see the overall workflow for Cinema 4D Release 11 using ProjectionMan.)

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