A BRIEF HISTORY OF CINEMA 4D
We get the lowdown on Cinema 4D’s past, present and future, courtesy of Andres Hildebrandt
Andres Hildebrandt at MAXON details the humble beginnings of Cinema 4D and its ongoing progress
“Our community is unlike anything else, i have never seen such a friendly bunch” andres Hildebrandt, vice director of marketing
“It actually didn’t really start as a software company at all,” says MAXON’S vice director of marketing, Andres Hildebrandt. “MAXON started as a publishing company, when three students were made an offer to write a book about the Atari ST computer in 1986.” After deciding that magazine publishing was a faster and more lucrative endeavour, the trio founded the Atari ST magazine. Having quit their studies and started another magazine dedicated to the Commodore Amiga, business was booming.
“They held frequent programming contests,” explains Hildebrandt. “One contest was won by two young brothers from eastern Germany, Christian and Philip Losch, who had written a raytracer called Fastray.” Although the software was incredibly basic in this early stage, the industry at large was blown away by the speed at which Fastray could render.
This was the nucleus for Cinema 4D. As more and more features were added to Fastray, it became a fully fledged 3D application. Hildebrandt adds, “The Atari and the Amiga were on a decline. The decision was made in 1996 to port the software to Windows and Mac. This was the birth of Cinema 4D as we know it.”
The world came very close to not having Cinema 4D at all, as Hildebrandt explains: “The brothers flipped a coin to decide if they were going to make a spreadsheet software or a raytracer. Fortunately the raytracer won, otherwise we would have something like MAXON Excel today.”
These days Cinema 4D is an allencompassing application with a wide range of uses; Hildebrandt highlights the areas of medical and architectural visualisation as being among the most exciting in 2018. MAXON continues to improve Cinema 4D by listening to those that use it regularly, resulting in one of the industry’s most vibrant and vocal communities. “Someone once said that our community is unlike anything else, because when you ask a question you can’t get people away, everyone wants to help,” exclaims Hildebrandt. “I’ve worked for other software companies and I have never seen such a friendly bunch of people. They are very enthusiastic and always share their knowledge.”
The only downside of having such an involved community is that it’s impossible to meet every demand. “We can’t please everybody, that’s the nature of the game as a software developer,” adds Hildebrandt. The fact that most of Cinema 4D’s users are generalists puts increasing pressure on the developer to cater for a range of requests – something they try to achieve across numerous releases each year.
Hildebrandt maintains that a steadfast belief in their claim ‘3D for the real world’ has driven them to keep delivering the best possible product, in an ever-changing industry. In the eyes of those at MAXON, being accessible and userfriendly trumps the technical sophistication placed front and centre by other developers. “I had three days of training in Cinema 4D and it took me to a way higher level than I had ever reached in all the years I’ve been working with software.”
The desire to please their audience and stay ahead of the curve will continue to propel Cinema 4D into the future, something Hildebrandt is cautious to reveal too much about. “One of the focuses that might be obvious is that we want to reach out to the 2D community,” he admits, also teasing exciting new updates due later this year. “They’ll probably be very nice for most people. It is definitely a remarkable release, unfortunately I can’t tell you more… yet.”