Got mail from Maxon yesterday, that the R12 is out.
They have scipped the modular approach and now sell 4 fixed packages.
One other change is that they no longer support bones! So the question is weather I can update and still use Cinema4d to create/edit skinned meshes and export them to unity. As far as I know Unity needs bones and R12 can only produce Joints.
Any experiance anyone?
Joints or bones are practically the same, the difference is just in Cinema4D as “bones” are related to the old animation system and “joints” are the new one.
But both will be exported to Unity as a boned based animation.
As BIG BUG said: bones and joints are exported as bones to Unity. One more thing worth mentioning is that bones can be exported only by FBX6 plugin and joints only by FBX2010, IIRC.
We’re planning to test R12 with Unity a bit later this week.
Yeah, and I think they bumped the price up a bunch too. I swear I looked at it a few weeks ago and it was $1000, now the lowest priced of the 4 editions is $1700. Not good for those of us on a budget. 
Nope, prime is still $1000:
Overall the prices are about the same as before, but the mid level versions have different features than before (visualize, which is about equivilent in price to the old xl version no longer has thinking particles, but has sketch and toon… there’s other changes too)
Any results yet about compatibility to Unity 3.0?
^What he said.
Result: Unity doesn’t work with Cinema4D demo (since demo version doesn’t work with -nogui option). No results for properly licensed yet - we’re waiting for our licenses 
I’m getting ready to buy C4D, so I’m anxiously awaiting your results. Hopefully everything works ok out of the box, but if not I hope Unity/Maxon (whoever’s problem it is) addresses whatever issues quickly, since this seems to be a very popular workflow.
On a side note, I noticed that Maxon says that you can continue to use your C4D 11.5 license alongside R12. Unfortunately, since I’m a new user, I only have the option of purchasing R12. Does anyone know if R11.5 is available to new users as a downgrade until R12 is compatible (if there are indeed any problems)? I know I need to ask Maxon this, just thought I would throw it out in case anyone here already knew the answer.
I have ordered R12 yesterday anyway.
As I live in Germany I expect to get the version next week and I will post any problems/success as soon as possible.
I also have called Maxon itself whether they have tested Cinema with Unity and zthey told me that this is not in their test plan :evil: . So no info from them.
So let’s see who gets any experiances first :lol:
To be honest, given that Unity has a big reliance on FBX as part of its workflow, why is UT not being more proactive in building relationships with the big 3D app companies, getting onto their beta teams to ensure any issues with FBX are solved before new releases are launched?
Am I missing a key point here??
Yes you and not only you are missing a key point
I dont want to be pedantic on this topic but it is a matter of fact that Cimema 4d staff do not care that much about the compatibility even with the most popular Indie game engine for the simple reason that Cimema 4d has been designed for movies not for games
It is true that also high end packages are more and more intersted in the game market but it is also true that the core of these softwares, most of their features, as well as the file formats ect are far away from the needs of real time graphics applications
It is not that easy to convert their complex data structure into something usable also by the game engines
These softwares have been designed to be self standing
FBX and Collada should in theory guarantee the data exchange but in the year 2010 it is still a theory
I do hope that these comapanies sooner or later would release a simplified version of their software,suitable for our use, stripping off all the redundat features
artzfx, you have a fair point. We’re working on establishing these relationships. Frankly I completely missed the release of R12. If I had know that it is coming, I would have joined the beta list. My fault. You should understand that we’re not lazy - we aren’t overstaffed. We were very busy last months trying to complete Unity 3.0. It’s in our best interest to release best software! 
Please help us - raise these questions earlier. Just as someone did with Blender 2.5. It’s in beta, but we have checked the compatibility already.
AlbertoT, you’re right too, but we should make clear that there are two separate things:
You’re talking about #1 and you’re right - I would expect software to be compatible by 2010. Situation is not perfect, but it’s not so bad too;) I believe R12 will be as compatible as R11 or even better.
Regarding #2 - it’s more complicated we (and the makers of 3d tools) have to make sure that direct import is posible. It doesn’t happen automatically - we have to write special code for every tool.
I have to say my experience of your support Paulius has been stellar over recent months from my own dealings. My post above was after spending 2 very long days knocking out, working around various issues with r11.5 fbx exporter hence I displayed some of that frustration unfairly.
AlbertoT, unfortunately you are not the only one who thinks Maxon are focusing on the MoGraph side of things. Back when I started with C4D I never intended to venture into games. There’s always the possibility of learning Maya but its fbx into Unity doesn’t seem without issue either.
Paulius, Maxon usually give beta access and early advice on upcoming release features to their plugin developers. I am sure Unity could be classed as such a developer
I ran a test tonight just to try things out, but I’m not 100% sure this is a valid test, so let me know if there is something else I should do. I am a noob at C4D, so keep that in mind.
Setup - C4D Prime R12 Demo, Unity Pro 3.0-f1, control model is an existing FBX 2009.3 file I bought from 3DRT, which is fully rigged and animated (>2000 frames).
Test 1 - First I brought the control model into Unity directly, adjusted the scale, assigned the material, dropped it in a scene. Result, character rendered and animated fine.
Test 2 - Brought control model into C4D, saved as a native file and exported to an FBX 2010.2 file. Imported the new FBX file into Unity, etc. - same result as Test 1!
Test 3 - Tried bringing the C4D file directly into Unity. I didn’t really expect this to work, and it didn’t. After launching C4D and waiting forever, it gave an error about C4D not being able to convert to an FBX file. I suspect this was a timeout issue and a generic error response. Maxon says there have been a lot of changes to the plugin API in R12, so it didn’t surprise me that the current Unity plugin didn’t work. That’s ok, I can live with FBX import for now, if everything works as smoothly as this test did.
So right now I’m encouraged, although like I said this is nowhere near an extensive test.
Paulius and artzfx
First of all I appreciated your rational comments
As you may know I am against the use of high end packages for Indie game developers
In my opinion, they are absolutely redundant tools
Anyway it would be silly of me to deny that they offer also some (minor ) advantages vs low end packages even for low polys real time application
For this reason I am also interested in C4D thanks to its ease of use and reasonable price
The point is the I / O module is ( seem to be )buggy
I tested the C4D 11.5 demo
Some models and animations which I could import in Fragmotion without any problem , were completely messed up in C4D
My only explanation is that C4D data structure is too much complicated
C4d having being designed as a stand alone product
Apart from such, more or less technical,explanation
Do you also come across such issue ?
To me I /O module is quite important because I normally buy models on Turbosquid in different file formats and I make extensive use of .bvh files
As you can imagine it would be disappointing to spend 100+ usd for a model and not being able to import it in c4d
Thanks in advance
That’s the most important functionality for us or actually the only one that we can affect:) The second test I expected to work out of the box, unless they messed up something badly in the FBX exporter.
Your test is not entirely valid, because you’re using demo version - it doesn’t support -nogui option which is used in our pipeline.
As I said I’m still waiting for my license, but don’t hold your breath - I don’t think support for direct import from Cinema4D R12 will make into Unity 3.0, because we’re so close to the release and we are making only critical fixes. I’m quite sure we will fix it for Unity 3.1.
I actually changed gears and ordered Lightwave instead. It was a tough choice - they are both excellent packages.
Just a note to the Unity devs – Maxon has released (well, pretty under the radar, but it’s still out) a new toolkit called Melange which does this (and I quote from the docs):
So perhaps you guys can give that a shot instead of trying to go the FBX route. That would presumably only help people who are using R12, but AFAIK, none of the C4D FBX exporters have worked really 100% (or anywhere close to it). I know that R11.5 works better than R11 (can’t even exported an animated model in R11 – we used Blender for our character animation) but it’d be great to see something more native that may work better than FBX.
There are also some developers in the C4D community who have done quite a bit with character animation (Cactus Dan and Keith Young in particular) who may be able/willing to write a custom export module if encouraged (i.e. paid) to do so, which might even work for R11 and up (I know I’m still on R11 and not necessarily planning to upgrade anytime soon, if I can help it, unless they make some major changes).
Anyway, don’t know if this is the proper place for that, but hopefully that’ll help you guys get pointed in the right direction. I’m a huge fan of C4D and would love to see proper integration with Unity, rather than being the app that’s quickly becoming known for it’s bad Unity support.
The problem with Unity’s importer is that it’s a jack of all trades, master of none. It has wide support, but your animations don’t import (as an example).
I think the best way of doing this is to handle the import process in the same way Pixologic handles importing/exporting of zbrush models and 3d app models through GoZBrush. Can we have something along the lines of GoUnity, please?