News: Cinema 4D And Cinebench Available In 64-Bit

CINEMA 4D R9 64-Bit final release version for the Windows 64 operating system

(MAXON, May 17, 2005) MAXON Computer today released its software in a 64-Bit final release version for the Windows 64 operating system. Being the first 3D animation software developer to release a 64-Bit version, MAXON once again demonstrates its technological advancement and forward-looking development. Users will benefit from increased available memory and improved speed thanks to optimized performance for 64-Bit processors.

Consequently, the 2 GB memory limit has been topped, making up to 1 Terabyte (1024 GB) RAM available for especially large projects. CINEMA 4D users are free to create scenes without worrying about; the size of objects or how many objects are in the scene, shader settings (eg; SubPolygonDisplacement), texture size, Multipass-Rendering or eye-catching particle systems. BodyPaint 3D users have even more freedom than before in their selection of size and number of layers for textures.

As a result of the optimized performance for 64-Bit processors, improved rendering speeds of up to an amazing 20% have been achieved.

The benchmark application CINEBENCH, used internally by Intel to test the newest generation of CPUs, is also available in 64-Bit and lets proud new owners of 64-Bit systems put their computers to the test.

All 64-Bit CPUs such as Intel's Pentium 4 and Xeon with EM64T expansion as well as AMD 64 and AMD Opteron are supported. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition or Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition is reqired.

CINEMA 4D's modern technological foundation lets it quickly adapt to the newest technological advances. As such, MAXON was a leader in the rapid integration of DualCore, HyperThreading, Multiprocessing and numerous other technologies.

Registered CINEMA 4D R9 users can contact MAXON to request their own free 64-Bit version. A free download of the benchmark software CINEBENCH can be downloaded at http://www.cinebench.com.

About MAXON Computer
MAXON Computer is the developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions. Its award-winning products have been used extensively in the film, television, science, architecture, engineering and other industries. MAXON products have been used for and in Polar Express, The Flight of the Phoenix, Hero, Van Helsing, King Arthur, Spiderman, Spiderman 2, Haunted Mansion, Cat in the Hat, Charlie's Angel's-Full Throttle, Star Wars 2-The Attack of the Clones, The Mummy Returns, Gladiator, Tomb Raider, the new Columbia-TriStar Film Logo, the On-Air Packages for Comedy Central, Monday Night Football, Discovery Channel Canada, Lucky, Touching Evil, King of Queens, Def on Demand, Power Puff Girls Music Video, Cher

No Mac love, but it's not Maxon's fault. This from Apple's site:

"It is important to note that in Tiger, the support for 64-bit programming does not extend throughout the entire set of APIs available on Mac OS X. Most notably, the Cocoa and Carbon GUI application frameworks are not ready for 64-bit programming. In practical terms, this means that the "heavy lifting" of an application that needs 64-bit support can be done by a background process which communicates with a front-end 32-bit GUI process via a variety of mechanisms including IPC and shared memory."

As Maxon mentions on their site, only command line applications can run in 64 bit mode. This is disappointing as a G5/Tiger user. I didn't realize Apple only had "sort of 64 bit" support.

Hi,
>Since the GUI of Cinema 4D doesn't need to be 64 bit and since most of the processing is done by modules (and plugins), there isn't any technical reason that Cinema 4D on the Mac can't be made 64 bit.

Sorry, this is plain wrong. The modules need the complete API that comes with CINEMA so in the end you need to make the complete program available once for 32 bit GUI and once for 64 bit nonGUI. Maxon as well as all plugin programmers would need to create modules/plugins for both of these platforms, thereby doubeling the effort of code mainatinance, debugging and installation.
You are right in that Maxon does not want to redesign CINEMA for an incomplete 32/64 OS that most likely will be made completely 64 bit within a short time.

Cheers
Bj

> Apple's Motion 2 is 64 bit. I wonder how they did it.

I can't find any hint on this on the Apple website or in the Motion 2 technical specs. One should think they would advertise the fact of having the first 64 bit video fx software.

Cheers
Bj

It seems Motion is taking advantage of OSX's partial 64 bit capability here to access more memory. I agree with Bjorn; if this were a true 64 bit app, Apple would be telling everyone and their brother about it.

Considering Maxon's stellar (as far as I'm concerned) track record concerning Mac support, it seems logical that if it were reasonably easy to make a Mac 64 bit version of Cinema, they'd do it. You can't knock them for not creating a version of Cinema to take advantage of OSX's partial 64 bit support when they could simply wait for Apple to add full 64 bit support. Let's face it; Apple wants us all to think that Tiger is a full 64 bit OS, but it's not there yet. When it's there, the apps will come.

I'm as disappointed as anyone about this situation, since I have this G5 which is 64 bit capable, but I've been waiting for a year and a half for the OS to catch up to the hardware in this area. Looks like I'll be waiting a while longer... ; )

Gotcha.

Yes, that's an interesting question. If it's not terribly difficult, having access to more RAM would be a nice addition while we wait for true 64 bit support. This applies to apps like After Effects as well.

I hope we don't have to wait until the next major revision of OS X to see true 64 bit support, but it wouldn't surprise me...

I don't disagree with your assessment, but if developers like Maxon are hedging moving forward with 64 bit versions of their apps because of Apple's 64/32 bit approach, then there is a problem; possibly just one of communication between Apple and its developers. If Apple is going to stay with this 64/32 bit approach for the forseeable future, then hopefully they are communicating this to developers like Maxon, who seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop so they can go ahead and make a totally 64 bit app and not have to double their efforts first supporting the 64/32 bit OS and then the totally 64 bit (including GUI) OS.

The document which I quote above states "Cocoa and Carbon Application GUI frameworks are not ready for 64 bit programming." The wording of this leads one to believe that they will be eventually. I can understand a developer hesitating in light of this.

One other point - isn't Maxon keeping two different code-bases for Cinema on Windows now? 32 bit and 64 bit? That wouldn't be necessary with Cinema for Tiger that accesses more than 4 gigs of RAM like Motion 2 does. Maybe Apple's method is better for that reason alone?

I'm confused.

The 64 bit of Cinema for Windows is a separate version and 3rd party plug-ins require updating to work with it. It requires a 64 bit Windows and a 64 bit X86 processor.

You have a 64 bit version and a 32 bit version, for Windows.

If that's not separate code base, what is? Maybe I'm wrong. I'm no CS major, obviously, so any explanation is very much appreciated. :) Maybe "code base" isn't the proper term.

But if Maxon were to update Cinema for OS X Tiger, there would still only be the one version of Cinema for the Mac. Like Motion 2, the one Cinema 4D would work in Tiger on a G5 and give us more than 4 gigs of RAM, and it would also work in OS 10.3.9 on a G4. I also noticed that Motion 2 for OS X uses 32 bit plug-ins just fine.

BTW, why doesn't Cinema use more than 2 gigs of RAM? Thanks!

Thanks for answering the questions.

I don't know how Motion 2 does it. It's clearly a 32 bit binary, but it can utilize more than 4 gigs of RAM for things like RAM preview, which is displayed in the main application to the end user.

This developer article would seem to indicate otherwise: 64-bit Porting
Read the section entitled "Who should read this document" in the intro, especially the 64-bit myths.

Since few applications will benefit from being fully 64-bit, and as the 32-bit GUI can handle the 64 bit data, it's unlikely that Apple will make major changes to the GUI any time soon. Reading that developer guide, it's pretty obvious that the Cinema 4D could be ported to 64 bit. Cinema 4D is exactly the kind of application that would work well under the 32-bit GUI/64-bit processing model. The 32-bit GUI and underlying 32-bit libraries can already work within the 64-bit codespace, they just can't access more than 4 GB of RAM.

Even if Apple creates an entirely 64-bit OS, Maxon would have to maintain 2 codebases, I seriously doubt they want to stop creating applications for Tiger and older versions of Mac OS X. Also unless Maxon creates the ability of it's 64-bit apps to work with 32-bit plugins, plugin developers will have to create both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.

Well, it sounds like your saying that we won't see a 64-bit version for the Mac any time soon. Is that right?