Cinema 4D

Any Cinema 4D users? Could use some help about hardware and software support.
Good, better, best combo best for for the platform.

What do you mean hardware software support?
Like which components to buy and OS to use?
If so, you can’t go wrong with an i7 and an nvidia gpu. People are gonna recommend alternatives, which is fine, but that would definitely be my choice if I were to build my brother (he’s a c4d pro) a PC.

Cinema4d is where I live :slight_smile:

Depends on how you are using the software and what package you have

if you have studio package you can use gpu rendering, it’s open cl based so it all comes down to how many tflops the graphics card can put out (higher the better - doesnt matter if amd or nvidia, tflops is the king).

If you are using the traditional cpu renderer then its cores / threads all the way (clock doesnt matter as much), cinema4d does not favour either intel or amd so no cpu has an architectural edge.

Viewport rendering is opengl based and I have noticed that c4d’s opengl gets significantly better fps if the gpu is paired with a high frequency intel cpu.

This doesnt really matter so much though as its just viewport rendering… as long as its over 20 fps its totally fine which even very modest amd / nvidia gpus can keep a scene with millions of polys at (especially if you are using LOD) …

focus on

  • cores
  • threads
  • amount of ram (ram speed doesnt really matter so much)

…and if you are going gpu rendering (which at the moment I cant recommend as its very limited in regards to texture support) then its all about the tflops / amount of vram the gpu has.

For reference I have

2700x
64gb of ram
Vega 64

the 2700x is a beast at c4d’s cpu raytracing, plenty of ram for scene complexity and the vega64 is a tflop monster for gpu rendering AND more than capable of handing millions of poly scenes at decent fps in viewport rendering.

Knowing your budget would be a great start though…

I would probably have different recommendations depending upon what your budget was.

Good low budget combo for someone starting out would be

  • 1600 or 2600 or intel equivalent
  • 32gb of slower ram (speed does not matter as much as capacity… which helps keep the cost of build down)
  • rx 570 or nvidia cost equivalent

If you are planning on doing gpu rendering then its either vega 56 or whatever nvidia card has the nearest equivalent number of tflops / vram.

2 Likes

Used it before, it’s really nice for motion graphics and generative stuff.

for renders it’s one of the only 3d suites that still really likes CPU so you cant go wrong with intel HEDT or AMD TR if you’ve got the cash for it.

Grab nv for the gpu stuff though.

in terms of plugins I’d look at the cycles engine integration one

https://insydium.ltd/products/cycles-4d/

oh and X-Particles of course.

https://www.software3d.de/insydium-ltd-xparticle.html