Maxon One Announces 2023 Product Updates

Maxon has released a comprehensive update to Maxon One, offering new features and workflow enhancements across the entire product line.

According to Maxon CEO David McGavran, users should “expect improved performance, enhanced workflows, advanced tools for animation, rendering, sculpting, and much more. By equipping artists of all levels with industry-leading tools, we aim to empower our community to create stunning visual content like never before.”

Check out Maxon One’s Spring Release 2023 video:

Here’s the rundown:

Cinema 4D

• Commander:  Updates include faster and easier access to Maxon Capsules and users’ assets and presets. Adding Redshift materials allows for using Maxon’s Node-Based Capsules like Backdrop primitive and Spline tools.
• Thicken Generator:  Now enables users to add extra dimension to models, especially good for setting up floorplans and 3D prints. This object generates a procedural shell based on an existing mesh and preserves corners and perpendicular edges. Its support of vertex maps and polygon selections allows for multiple uses.
• Node UI: Now offers a cleaner Node UI that helps navigate node setups with a cleaner interface featuring more prominent color coding, making it easier to work with nodes and create efficient node-based capsules.
• Unified Simulation System: The system received several improvements, including Pyro previews in Cinema 4D’s viewport now supporting color and lighting, helpful in setting up a sim or sharing a high-quality preview render. Emitters now support Maxon Noise and vertex maps, and the Destructor Force limits Pyro to the inside or outside of a box. Pyro Output generates automatically for Redshift renders and can be switched easily between Simulation Scenes. Balloon sims also now support vertex maps, allowing you to create seams and control areas of inflation.

Red Giant - Universe

Universe 2023.1 introduces Symbol Mapper, a new stylization tool to rebuild footage using letters, numbers, and symbols based on source brightness values. This release also includes many new presets for various Universe tools.  

• Universe Symbol Mapper allows for great Matrix style effects or retro-type-based graphics.
• Refreshed Dashboard and Preset Browser now provide access to Maxon’s Cloud Capsule Service, allowing users to leverage a growing library of assets. In addition, with new search function, artists can more quickly find what they need from Universe’s collection of tools and presets.
• 42 new cloud presets for the Electrify, Line, Long Shadow, Prism, Displacement, and RGB Separation tools.

VFX

VFX 2023.3 introduces anamorphic lens support to Real Lens Flares, allowing for a premium AAA movie production look and bringing support for adjustment layers to Supercomp.

• Upgraded lens simulation engine now supports anamorphic lenses in Real Lens Flares – when doing 3D renders, shooting video, or motion graphics, users can add Real Lens Flares to shots. At the same time, all users of Real Lens Flares can make their footage look like it was done at a AAA studio, with increased artistic control while creating realistic-looking lens flares.
• Supercomp now supports adjustment layers replacing displacement layers and applying their effect to anything below them in Supercomp. Especially good for region-based color corrections, displacements, and heat blur.

Trapcode

Trapcode 2023.3 includes performance optimization for light emitters, bug fixes for Particular, and a new collection of Atomic Age sprites.

• Atomic Age sprites new collection is reminiscent of a mid-century design aesthetic.
• Light emitters in Particular have been optimized for performance resulting in up to 3x faster render times.
• Bug fixes enable support for the new curve, and color presets in secondary systems and previewing model sequence animations in the Designer.

Magic Bullet

Magic Bullet 2023.2 improves the Magic Bullet Looks Strength slider and includes numerous enhancements across platforms.

• New strength sliders for all individual tools provide greater look control.
• New set of presets for Looks optimize ACES handling.
• Bug Fixes with an emphasis on Resolve users.

Redshift

Redshift 3.5.14 introduces a new Sky and Sun Model, Flakes Shader, and Camera Backplates, as well as workflow improvements and stability enhancements.

• PRG Clear Sky model allows artists to simulate sunsets with Redshift’s improved Sun and Sky - it provides the most accurate simulation of sky radiance and color, offering rich red sunsets as the sun dips just below the horizon.
• Flakes shader for improved rendering of everything from metallic car paints to glitter-filled superballs. The 3D shader generates Voronoi- or dot-shaped flakes at random angles and surface depth to add detail to renders.
• Custom Backplates are now available in Redshift for C4D, offering compositing control. Artists can choose whether background footage is incorporated into the render or added before and after post effects. In addition, renders can be matched to an existing backplate with the Post-Composite mode.
• Node UI update makes crafting Redshift materials easier with a cleaner UI and new commands to select upstream and downstream nodes. C4D’s Preset system allows users to easily apply favorite node settings and quickly build networks with a new option to keep wire connections while duplicating a node. New pop-out panels make browsing and adding nodes easier, as well as edit node attributes.
• The Redshift Camera is now available in Houdini, offering simple physical controls to modify exposure, focus distance, motion blur, and bokeh.

ZBrush

The latest release of ZBrush features two new tools in 3D sculpting workflows.

• Proxy Pose provides a dynamic method for quickly modifying the topology of models while implementing Proxy Pose reduces polygon density, so artists can quickly and efficiently manipulate your ZBrush models and then convert back to a high-density mesh. 
• Drop 3D function combines the technology of Sculptris Pro with the 2.5D functionality of the ZBrush canvas to produce a new workflow that allows for enhanced creativity, increased local mesh density for high-resolution details, and the fusing of the elements of both 2D and 3D design. Drop 3D lets users explore design concepts aligned with illustration techniques, surface detailing, and 3D modeling.  

Forger

Forger's latest release includes new lighting features, effects for more realism, and the integration of ZBrush’s ZRemesher.

• Lights: This release adds the ability to create multiple custom lights, including directional lights, point lights, and spotlights. It can also be enabled to cast shadows.  
• Viewport VFX: Forger has added Viewport FX, which includes effects like Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, Bloom, Chromatic Aberration, Grain, and Vignetting. All effects work in real-time while modeling and sculpting without rendering. 
• ZRemesher: Borrowing technology from ZBrush, the desktop sculpting tool, has now been brought into Forger. Users can manually direct the new topology using guides or by painting density maps. 

Capsules

The latest additions to Capsules include:

• New Swirl Modifier, a dynamic Capsule created by Rocket Lasso, acts like a deformer to create twisted effects on any mesh or spline, offering a wide range of possibilities for creating and art directing objects from ice cream cones to spinning vortexes.
• 16 Redshift carpet materials created by visualization experts Fuchs and Vogel.
• 24 ceramic materials.
• New Redshift Shaderball look development scene allows artists to create material previews.

Cineware

The Cineware update, focused on Unreal 5.0 and 5.1, is part of Maxon’s efforts to ensure their products work seamlessly with the tools used on production pipelines.

• Importing Cinema 4D files straight into Unreal Engine is now more intuitive and smoother, incorporating animated characters and cameras and embedding it as part of a larger cinematic sequence in your Unreal project.
• Distinct Level Sequences for Geometry Caches can now be inserted seamlessly into a main Level Sequence.
• Cinema 4D Viewport, now when imported into Unreal Engine, is immediately identically configured with no further modifications or camera settings necessary.
• Animated Render Visibility lets users decide which components to turn on or off in Cinema 4D scenes in Unreal Engine after import.
• New Geometry Cache option allows the import of static meshes from Cinema 4D and the morphing topology and animated MoGraph Cloner setups.

Source: Maxon

Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.