It’s the day we’ve been waiting for. Maxon has announced Cinema 4D R20! Always exciting to see what the mothership has lined up for us. R20 is scheduled for September 2018 for macOS and Windows. Here are some resources to get you up to speed. Here are the main highlights:

Node Based Materials

Cinema 4D R20 Update Announcement Material Nodes

From simple references to complex shaders, you can build extraordinary materials in a node-based overview. Complex effects created via nodes can be wrapped as assets and delivered as simple materials, with just the necessary parameters exposed. Release 20’s node-based materials have the power to change the way you work, whether you directly create amazing shaders through nodes or simply make use of assets shared by those who do.

Mograph Fields

Use more than just simple shapes to control effectors, deformers, weights and more. Fields will revolutionize the MoGraph feature set, making it easy to create complex effects by combining falloffs. You’ll never use Cinema 4D the same way again. Falloffs are one of the most powerful aspects of Cinema 4D and the MoGraph feature set, making it easy to adjust an effect based on simple shapes. Fields allow you to layer those shapes, link them to multiple effects, and so much more. It’s a whole new world of possibilities.

CAD Data Import

Cad Import Cinema 4D R20

Say goodbye to conversion woes – most popular CAD formats can be imported with a simple drag-and-drop. Get the models you need, with the quality you want thanks to the robust and flexible import of STEP, Solidworks, JT, Catia and IGES files. Just drag any CAD file into Cinema 4D and get started. You’ll almost always get something usable with the default settings. For more power and precision, you can dial in all sorts of options to control the Normals, hierarchy tessellation and more. And of course, there’s the most important option – swapping the Y and Z axes so everything is right-side up.

 

Volume Modeling Powered by OpenVDB

Volumes and Fields Cinema 4D R20

Better Booleans are only the beginning – create models by combining shapes, splines, particles and noises. It’s all thanks the power of voxels and OpenVDB. Import and export VDB and even use volumes to control MoGraph effects. Create complex models by adding or subtracting basic shapes in Boolean-type operations, or create animated growing effects by turning noises and the new MoGraph Fields into actual geometry – it’s all possible thanks to Cinema 4D’s OpenVDB-based Volume Builder and Mesher. Volume Modeling offers a completely procedural way of creating objects you couldn’t even imagine before.

ProRender Enhancements

ProRender Maxon Cinema 4D R20 Release

The next generation of native GPU rendering is here – and it’s packed with production-level features to help you get the job done. Render sub-surface scattering, motion blur and multi-passes on your super-charged Nvidia PC or your state-of-the-art iMac. R20 has updates to ProRender Subsurface Scattering, Motion Blur, Multi-pass Rendering, Out of Core Textures, Shadow Catcher etc.

os

Here are some videos I have collected that show various features of the Cinema 4D R20 update.

 

Cinema 4D R20 Full Feature List

I’m going to leave you with the complete update list. This is a comprehensive list of ALL of the updates and it’s massive. So, as you can see, R20 is one of the biggest updates EVER. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as me. It’s always exciting to see what Maxon has for us, and they did not disappoint with R20!

  • General
    • Faster Picture Viewer playback
    • Speed and memory optimizations
    • Installer Command Line Interface (CLI) mode
  • Exchange
    • SketchUp
      • Update to SketchUp 2018 SDK
      •  Null objects with only one child polygon object now create one combined object instead
    • Alembic
      • Update to Alembic 1.7.7 SDK
      • Performance improvements by caching matrices
      • Users can now bake selected objects to Alembic
      • New animation retiming controls
        • Set Frame (for manual animation control via keyframes)
        • Offset Animation
        • Playback modes (Play, Loop, Ping Pong)
        • Speed setting
        • Time Remap Curve Interface
    • FBX
      • Update to FBX 2018.1.1
      • Support for instances
      • Axis preferences:
        • Flip Z Axis
        • Up Axis (Default, X, Y, Z)
    • New CAD imports (CATIA V5, JT, Solidworks, STEP, IGES)
    • Houdini upgrade to 16.5.536
    • AI importer: Illustrator splines now load in at the correct scale
  • Modeling
    • Enhanced modeling kernel
      • Several commands migrated to the new modeling kernel provide much better preservation of surface attributes (UV, etc.)
        • Delete Components command with much faster performance and better behavior (e.g., deleting disconnected points)
        • Triangulate command
        • Triangulate N-gons
        • Re-Triangulate N-gons
        • Remove N-gons
        • Align Normals
        • Reverse Normals
      • Several tools migrated to the new modeling kernel
        • Extrude Polygon
        • Extrude Inner
        • Matrix Extrude
      • Primitives now use the new modeling kernel
      • Sphere (Icosahedron, Octahedron mode), Platonic and Pyramid primitives now generate non-overlapping UV coordinates
        • An option is available to convert legacy primitives from old scenes to use the new behavior
    • The Structure Manager now automatically switches the Component mode (Points, Polygons, …) to the mode selected in the Structure Manager
    • Custom Data tag
      • A new API allows 3rd-party developers to create custom Data tags, which store surface attributes and can also provide interpolations functions.
      • Commands and tools using the new modeling kernel will respect these surface attributes and use the interpolation functions provided
    • OpenVDB
      • Volume Builder Generator
        • Converts a polygon object, spline object, particle object or a Field into a Volume object
          • Can create Signed Distance Fields and Fog volumes
          • Several parameters of the resulting Volume object can be controlled (e.g., Voxel Size)
        • Filter Objects
          • Smooth Filter / Smooth Layer
            • Different Filter Types
              • Signed Distance Field: Gaussian, Mean, Median, Mean Curvature, Lablacian Filter
              • Fog: Gaussian, Mean, Median
            • Different Filter Accuracy settings for Signed Distance Fields: First Bias, Second Bias, Third Bias, WENO 5, HJWENO 5
          • Reshape Filter / Reshape Layer
            • Different Filter Types
              • Signed Distance Field: Dilate / Erode, Close / Open
              • Fog: Offset, Range Map, Curve
            • Different Filter Accuracy settings for Signed Distance Fields: First Bias, Second Bias, Third Bias, WENO 5, HJWENO 5
        • Objects and Filters can be layered using different mix modes
          • Signed Distance Fields (Union, Substract, Intersect)
          • Fog (Normal, Max, Min, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide)
        • Volume objects can be referenced as a Field Layer
      • Volume Mesher Generator
        • Generate a polygon object from a Volume object
        • User can control the Voxel Range Threshold or the Surface Threshold
        • Meshing can be adaptive
      • Import / Export .vdb
        • Volume objects can be imported and exported from and to the industry standard .vdb file format.
      • Volume Loader object
        • References and loads volume files and volume file sequences
      • Volume Mesh command: Remeshes and combines polygon objects using a volume-based approach.
  • Rendering
    • ProRender
      • ProRender now supports:
        • Subsurface Scattering
        • Linear & Angular Motion Blur
        • Sub-frame Motion Blur
        • Out of Core Texture streaming to render textures that exceed the total GPU memory
        • Multi Instances
        • Texture Selection tags on instances
        • MoGraph Color shader
        • Physical Sky
        • Compositing passes
          • Direct Illumination
          • Indirect Illumination
          • Emission
          • Environment
          • World Coordinate
          • Texture Coordinate
          • Geometry Normal
          • Shading Normal
          • Depth
          • Object ID
          • Object Group ID
          • Material ID
        • Anti-Aliasing can be enabled for
          • World Coordinate
          • Texture Coordinate
          • Geometry Normal
          • Shading Normal
          • Depth
          • Object ID
          • Material ID
          • Object Group ID
        • Shadow Catcher
        • 2D Noises: users now can use all 2D noises except ‘sparse convolution’ in the legacy base shader.
      • New Seed setting: users can now specify a seed that is used for rendering.
      • Ray Depth can now be restricted (Diffuse, Glossy Reflection, Refraction, Glossy Refraction)
      • Shadow Ray Depth can now be set
      • Support for Metal 2
      • Compiling kernels on demand, shaders that introduce a big chunk of GPU kernel code will not be included in the initial kernel compilation. The kernel compilation is triggered when such a shader is added.
      • Scenes are now cached when animations are rendered to the Picture Viewer.
        • New Reload Scene per Frame option to enforce R19 behavior
      • General performance enhancements
    • Physical Renderer
      • Improved progressive rendering performance
  • Materials
    • General
      • Immediate low-resolution baking for Viewport
      • Improved shader / material baking for the Viewport
      • Updated Material previews
        • Updated scene setup
        • Several new scenes
      • MoGraph Beat Shader now accepts float values for BPM
    •  New node-based materials
      • Over 140 nodes available
      • Projection nodes can be visualized in the Viewport
      • Node networks can be turned into material assets
      • Node based Materials can be edited in the Node Editor, Material Editor and Attributes Manager
    • New Node Editor based on new UI framework
      • Attributes Area, displaying the parameters of the selected nodes
        • A specialized version of the Attribute Manager
        • New connector element showing dependencies within the shading/rendering context
        • The Connector context menu allows to:
          • Connect Nodes
          • Textures
          • Load Textures
          • Replace Nodes
          • Insert Converters
          • Copy
          • Paste (Link)
          • Paste (Duplicate)
          • Remove
          • Mute Ports
          • Propagate Ports
        • Basic tab
          • Name
          • Asset Version dropdown shows the different versions of a node (if available)
          • Custom Node color
        • Inputs tab
          • The input attributes of the selected node
          • Nodes can have a dynamic number of inputs (e.g., the gradient can have a variable number of Knots)
          • The command Show Sub-channels can switch the layout to also show sub-channels of a parameter (e.g., Color.R, Color.G, Color.B, Color.A for “Color”)
        • Context tab
          • Enables users to replace the context of many Nodes, e.g., to change the UV mapping for this node.
      • Asset area
        • Lists all available assets provided by MAXON or stored by the user
        • The asset list can be filtered by name and keywords
        • A keyword filter can set certain parameters in a node (e.g., a search for “Buya” will show a Basic Noise Node with Buya set as the Noise type)
        • Context menu
          • Create New category
          • Create Node
          • Import Assets
          • Create New Database
          • Mount Database (Folder / Zip File)
          • Unmount Database
          • Export Database
      • Nodes area lists all the Nodes in the current setup
        • The Nodes list can be filtered
        • Nodes can be cut, copied, pasted, deleted and duplicated
      • Info area, displaying information about the selected Node / asset / Wire (name, version, warnings, …)
      • Nodes commander, allows the user to search for assets by name and keyword
      • Node view
        • Nodes
          • Header (displays the title, preview and node state toggle)
            • Can be colored to give users a way to organized their Node networks
            • Naming of the Node can be changed
          • Body (includes in- / out-port groups, port bars, port slots and port names)
            • The body can display all ports, no ports or only the connected ports
          • Nodes can have two major states (full and collapsed)
          • Nodes can be displayed in vertical or horizontal layout
          • Ports
            • Node ports can have different states (unconnected, connected, propagated, converted, group ports, error)
            • Node ports are color coded  to make it easy to differentiate between different types of ports.
            • Ports can be renamed
          • Wires
            • Several ways to connect a Wire to a port:
              • Connect a Wire straight to a port
              • Release a Wire on the port name
              • Release a Wire on the group port name. A pop-up will appear with compatible ports of the group the Wire can connect to
              • Release a Wire inside the empty area of the Node. Again a pop-up with all compatible ports will appear
            • Wires can be displayed as Linear or Bezier curves
            • Wires can be muted (displayed as a dotted line)
          • Special Nodes
            • Start Node: the Node’s attributes will be displayed in the Material Editor and the Attribute Manager when the Node material is selected
            • Solo Node: allows the system to use the data from this Node to be displayed in the Viewport and previews
            • Group Node: a Node that contains a nodal network
            • Asset Node: Group Nodes can be converted into Assets
        • Users can use different techniques to navigate the Node View, including touch gestures.
        • Navigator mini map shows an overview of the complete Node network, can be used to quickly navigate the Node network
        • Group bars on the left and right sides of the Node View can be used to propagate the ports to the outside of the group.
        • Nodes can snap to the grid when moved
        • Toolbar shows:
          • Breadcrumb display of the path to the currently edited Node
          • Filter Field
    • Uber Material
      • Material Asset, build with the new Node system
      • Three reflection channels
        • Diffuse Channel: renders diffuse reflections
        • Reflection Channel with three reflection modes
          • Artistic – blends between two user defined colors
          • Dielectric – for dielectric reflections, such as plastic
          • Conductor – for conductors, e.g., metals
        • Coating channel, a simplified dielectric reflection layer to render effects such as a clear coat
      • Emission layer for emissive effects such as luminous materials
      • Transparency for refractive materials such as glass
      • Opacity to control the material’s opacity
      • Bump to control global bump mapping
      • Normal to control global bump mapping
      • Displacement to control the displacement of the material
    • New Node materials
      • Car Paint
      • Ceramic
      • Concrete
      • Cutout
      • Emission
      • Gold
      • Granite
      • Marble
      • Metal
      • Plastic
      • Rock
      • Wood
    • Material Manager
      • New commands in the Create menu
        • New Uber Material
        • New Node Material
        • Node materials (displays all materials in the asset repository folder)
      • Can now open the Node Editor
  • Workflow/UI
    • Compositing tag now has a ProRender tab
        • Shadow Catcher Alpha
        • Light Portal
        • Object Group ID
    • Multi Instances
      • New Instances integrated in the Cloner object, Instance object and supported by all internal Render Engines
      • Multi Instances are stored as one object internal, resulting in higher performance and less allocated memory
      • Supports different render modes in the Viewport (Off, Points, Matrix, Bounding Box, Object)
      • Supports the Color shader and MoGraph colors
    • Project Settings
      • Use Color Channel for Node Material”´ setting
    • New Console
      • Categories provide more overview
      • Python console can now completely replace functionality of the Command Line
      • Output can be written to files
      • Drastically improved performance
    • New gradient
      • Updated interface
      • Gradient color bar can be displayed in 3 different sizes (small, medium, large)
      • Selected knots now have an orange outline
      • If more than one Knot is selected, selection handles appear. The allow to move all selected Knots at the same time to to scale the range
      • New Double Selected Knots and Distribute Selected Knots command in the Context menu
      • New Interpolation mode Blend
      • Interpolation can now be set per Knot
      • Intensity renamed to Brightness (only available in the Legacy gradient)
      • New options if gradient is used in User Data”´ (COLOR, ALPHA, NOEDITCOLOR, NOPRESET,NOINTERPOLATION, NOKNOTPOSITION, NOBIASPOSITION, NOBRIGHTNESS)
    • New Gradient Node
      • Can display textures and shaders in the gradient color bar
      • Can display alpha
      • Color Chooser is extended with an Alpha slider
      • Blending Space can be set to Linear or sRGB
      • Knot symbol changes: if this Knot is driven by a Node input
    • Enhanced Color Chooser
      • Color Chooser now can store alpha values in swatches
      • Color Picker now is always available when the Color Chooser is collapsed
      • Color Chip context menu now offers option to enable/disable Alpha (where applicable) and to copy & paste a color
      • The Color Chooser in the unfolded state is now responsive to the size of the manager it displays
      • In the Color Wheel mode it is possible to click on the number on the right side to define the amount of color samples directly
      • The Hex mode now can be enabled directly in the Color Chooser Interface
      • Linear Numeric Values switch allows to display the color sliders linearly in the nodes interface
      • Alpha slider in the nodes interface
    • Texture Manager
      • Channel column is renamed to Material Path, also supports node-based materials and displays the path within the material
      • Edit menu now contains commands formerly only available in the context menu (Show File in Explorer/Finder, …)
      • New Open File in Manager behavior – a new command and Show in Attribute Manager now displays the attributes of the bitmap shader / Image Node.
      • Open Material in Manager is now exposed as a command.
      • Preview shows resolution and bit depth now and small images are centered
    • Attribute Manager was adapted to the Nodes’ workflow
      • New Connector interface to handle node connections
    • Preferences
      • Interface: new dropdown menu Field Remapping Graph (Hide, Show, Hide in Field lists)
      • Input devices: new setting to enable touch devices
      • Files / Path: new Fields lists for file assets and database search paths
      • Plug-ins: new Field list for plug-in search paths
      • Units / default sets: new Alpha mode and Hexadecimal mode check boxes
        • New group Gradient
          • Size drop-down menu (Small, Medium, Large)
          • Selection handles check box
        • New group Alpha
          • Grid Color drop-down menu (Light, Medium, Dark)
      • Renderer / ProRender: new group Out of Core Cache
        • Custom Location check box
        • Location path
      • Material (previously Material Preview)
        • New group Node-based Materials
          • Node Preview Size drop-down menu (Small, Medium, Large, Huge)
          • 3D Preview Scene drop-down menu
          • Node Previews check box
          • Preview HUD check box
      • Modeling/Sculpting (previously Sculpting):
        • New group Modeling
          • Disconnected Points on Delete drop-down menu (Remove (press Shift to preserve), Preserve (press Shift to remove))
      • Import/Export:
        • Settings for new CAD formats:
          • CATIA (*.CATPart, *.CATProduct, *.cgr) Import settings
          • IGES (*.igs,*.iges) Import
          • JT (*.jt) Import
          • Solidworks (*.SLDPrt,*.SLDAsm,*.SLDDrw) Import
          • STEP (*.stp,*.step,*.p21) Import
          • Settings include:
            • Settings to enable/disable the import of geometry, splines, instances, helper and hidden objects
            • Settings how to import Normals, display colors, layers and materials
            • Combine by None, Original Bodies, By Topology, By Color or By Layer
            • Heal and Stitch
            • Optimize Hierarchy
            • Setting to import Source Mesh
            • Settings to import LOD with JT
            • Settings to influence the tessellation, also scale-based tesselation
        • FBX (*.fbx) Export
          • General: new Instances check box
          • Additional: new Flip Z Axis check box and new Up Axis drop-down menu (Y Axis (default), X Axis, Z Axis)
        • FBX (*.fbx) Import
          • General: new Instances check box
          • Additional: new Flip Z Axis check box and new Up Axis drop-down menu (Y Axis (default), X Axis, Z Axis)
        • Volume (*.vdb) Export
          • Scale input field
          • Animation check box
          • Name drop-down menu
          • From and To input fields
          • Selected Only check box
        • Volume (*.vdb) Import
          • Volume Grids list field
          • Scale input field
          • Animation check box
          • Name drop-down menu
          • From and To input fields
          • Group Objects check box
          • Import to Project Location check box
      • Assets
        • Node-based materials and Node networks can be stored as Assets
        • Save Assets dialog
          • Name: name of the Asset
          • Version tag: the version number of the Asset
          • ID: Asset ID
          • Database: the database the Asset will be stored in
          • Category: Asset Category (Color, Context, Conversion, Generator, Info, Material, Math, Shape, String, Surface, Uncategorized, Utility, New Category)
    • General
      • Send to PictureViewer now supports all Viewport renderings (also OpenGL)
      • Camera 2D mode for the Viewport
      • New Export Selected Object as … menu entry in the Object Manager
      • The Compositing Project File for Nuke now supports Alembic
      • New Viewport display modes for the Texture tag (Simple, Grid, Solid)
      • Improved UVs for Sphere (some types), Pyramid and Platonic
      • New Bake as Alembic and Bakes as Alembic + Delete commands
      • New command Save as Default Scene
      • Updated Visualize layout
      • New Multi-Passes
        • Direct Diffuse
        • Indirect Diffuse
        • Direct Specular
        • Indirect Specular
      • Texture mode now works as the former Texture Axis mode. Texture Axis mode isn’t available anymore.
  • MoGraph
    • MoGraph Fields
      • MoGraph Fields replace falloffs in all areas where formerly Falloffs were used
      • Field Objects are Objects in the scene and can be freely placed and animated
      • Some Fields can have Sub-Fields, modifying one of their special parameters
      • Fields can write values into certain maps (Vertex Maps, Vertex Colors, Point/Edge/Polygon selections, MoGraph selections, MoGraph Weights)
      • Old falloffs are loaded as legacy falloffs, can be converted to Fields
      • MoGraph Fields UI allows for layering of Fields
        • Different Blend modes available (Normal, Min, Subtract, Multiply, Overlay, Max, Add, Screen, Clip)
        • Opacity slider
        • Value, direction (for certain Effectors) and color modification of each layer can ben enabled/disabled
      • New Field Objects (Box, Capsule, Cone, Cylinder, Linear, Spherical, Torus, Formula, Python, Radial, Random, Shader, Sound, Group)
      • New Modifier Layers (Clamp, Color Filter, Colorizer, Curve, Decay, Delay, Formula, Freeze, Invert, Noise Remap, Python, Quantize, Rangemap, Remap)
      • New Field Layers (MoGraph Object, Particle Object, Point Object, Solid, Spline Object, Step, Time, Variable Tag, Volume Object)
      • Fields Interface
        • Blending tab: here are the Blending options that are also found in the Field Layer interface.
        • Field tab: here are the field-specific parameters of the object
        • Optional sub-fields tab: this tab offers a Field Layer UI for the sub-fields
        • Remapping tab: this tab holds the integrated remapping parameters of the Field value.
        • Color Remapping tab: this tab holds integrated remapping options for the Field color
        • Direction tab: this tab holds integrated remapping options for Field direction
        • Optional View Settings tab: this tab holds the Viewport settings for the Field
      • Field object interface
        • Same as Fields Interface, minus the Blending tab, plus Direction tab
        • Direction tab: Direction Mode drop-down menu (No Remap, Custom Direction, Attenuate by Strength) and Normalize Direction check box
    • MoGraph Cloner object now supports Multi-Instances
  • Motion Tracking
    • Updated Motion Tracker layout
    • Simplified workflow to create a Motion Tracker object and to load the footage
    • Show dope sheet style data representation for selected track in the Graph Mode of Graph View.
    • The tracking direction can now be defined per keyframe
    • Tracks can now be frozen, to prevent them from being changed by other edits
    • Newauto re-keying options automatically inserts a key whenever the 2D error reaches a certain threshold toimprove tracking for tracks where the size or orientation of the surface changes significantly
    • New 2D Tracks editor mode
    • User Tracks list
      • Selected tracks are highlighted in the Cinema 4D standard way
      • Individual tracks can be renamed directly within the GUI
      • Full set of standard selection interactions supported
      • Ability for user to re-order tracks
      • Multiple column data display to show the main track settings
      • Support for folders
      • Cursor navigation
      • Ability to delete track(s) using the Delete key
      • Pop up context menu with relevant controls.
    • Tracking direction indication in Graph View
    • Multi-selection and editing of mask vertices is now supported
    • New dockable Track Window that shows the zoomed view of a 2D Track
  • SDK
    • C++
      • New MAXON API
      • Project tool
        • to generate project files for different operating systems
        • support (optional) style and syntax checks
    • Python
      • Integrated Python updated to version 2.7.14, including updated OpenSSL module
      • Script Manager: Python scripts can now also set the menu state, as it was possible in previous versions with C.O.F.F.E.E. scripts
      • Improved developer workflow due to better integration into external IDEs, including code auto completion
      • First exposure of MAXON API in Python