Cinema 4D which is the latest version?

[walkero]

Lately, I am doing some research and tests on Cinema 4D and I am using the version that came with CU Amiga back in 1997, with version number 4.2 Pro FP 26.4.1997. I was under the impression that this was the last Amiga version released but I found a Cinema 4D German CD on the internet archive website (https://archive.org/details/cinema_202201) which has an Amiga release dated 1.6.1998. Unfortunately, this is a German version and there is no documentation of the possible changes.

So, my questions:
1. Does anyone know which is the latest version released?
2. Does anyone have a newer English version, than the one that came with the CU Amiga final CD?
3. I gave up searching for the English books, and I decided to try and translate the German ones, although I do not speak German at all. I will use automated translations and then work on the text, and with try and error will try to make a meaningful translation. This is a huge process and I might never finish it. But before I start doing it, does anyone know if there are any translated texts anywhere, or does anyone have the English manuals? Would anyone be interested in these manuals?

[Lord Aga]

Couple of years ago, I was at the same spot

Unfortunately, I gave up as it all seemed too overwhelming

Maybe something will come out of it this time
Cinema 4D is my favorite program of this kind.

[fxgogo]

So your prayers have been answered Walkero. It just so happens I have an English manual and English addendum to that manual in my grubby little hands. This is thanks to Jonah over at Amiga Addict who lent them to me to scan. He recently bought an Amiga job lot from a reader who has sadly passed on.

It will be a while before they are scanned as the manuals are thick and it needs to be done in a non destructive way. But they will arrive.

As for the last version on the Amiga, I only know of 4.2. If there is a later one, it might be something that was only released in Germany or a beta version. Have you tried running this version?

[walkero]

It just so happens I have an English manual and English addendum to that manual in my grubby little hands.

That's really awesome news. You save me from so much work. For which versions do you have the books? v2 seems to be the big one, with all the details, and the v3 and v4 book has only the changes and enhancements.

What is the status of the scanning process? I don't mean to push you, but is it something that just started or you have advanced on that?
As you understand I am looking forward to hearing from you, and if possible, getting those scans if Jonah decides to release them of course.

If there is a later one, it might be something that was only released in Germany or a beta version. Have you tried running this version?

I did and seems to work pretty well. There doesn't seem to be any major change that can be seen instantly, and the language is a barrier, unfortunately. What I found is that the binaries from the CU Amiga CD have as a creation date 1996 and that release in Amiga Plus CD have files created in 1998. Now, this might doesn't mean anything at all, but it seems of being a newer version. It might be a bug fix version, but not sure to be honest.

Did anyone ever try to contact the original developers?

[Lord Aga]

Good news indeed

[fxgogo]

Of course the scans are going to be free for everyone. I would not do it if it was any other way. So I only got the books last weekend so it is going to be a while before they are ready I am afraid. Life and my many projects get in the way.

I think you are right about the big book being for V2 and V3 and V4 is covered in the addendum. The original developers are still going. Cinema 4D is a major tool in the motion graphics industry. I did try the U.K. resellers as they have had a long history with Maxon, but got nowhere. To be honest, I am not sure they are interested in their past as much as the future.

Can you point to the two different versions you found so we can do some further investigations.

[Oxygene]

Another fan of Cinema 4D here. I actually bought v3 and v4 back in the day, sadly the media are long gone. Anyway, what I remember from those days:
Cinema v4.2 is the last released version for Amiga. V4 for Windows is the first version for Windows and the only Windows version that will open projects created with Amiga version. There was lot of talk about v5 for the Amiga back in late 90's, but it would be just a small update to v4.2, not incorporating changes from Windows v5 version (v5 XL was a significant upgrade compared to v4). If there ever was a v5 for Amiga, it was a pre-alpha version at best.
Some time ago I uploaded v4.2.7 for Windows on archive, so you might wanna check it out.

[fxgogo]

Thanks for that info Oxygene. Very interesting.

[walkero]

Can you point to the two different versions you found so we can do some further investigations.

The two versions I have so far is the CU Amiga CD which is v4.2 from 1997 and the Amiga Plus Maxon Cinema 4D De which is v4 Pro FP from 1.6.1998 as found at https://archive.org/details/cinema_202201

Some time ago I uploaded v4.2.7 for Windows on archive, so you might wanna check it out.

Uploaded at the Turran FTP or somewhere else?

[yelworC]

The german Amiga Plus version was meant as a farewell gift to the Amiga community and i would guess it's the latest version that was available at that time.

Version String in exe only says "4". Maybe filesize can help finding out if its different to the other version you are talking about? My Amiga Plus executable is 986.160 bytes.

I guess i have a bit of a language advantage here since german is my native language I still have that original Amiga Plus CD.

[fxgogo]

Was Amiga Plus a German only mag @yelworC? Did the installer allow for other languages? I have seen Pro versions of C4D floating about on the Turran FTP, but the versioning is quite different to other versions.

[yelworC]

Originally Posted by fxgogo

Was Amiga Plus a German only mag @yelworC? Did the installer allow for other languages? I have seen Pro versions of C4D floating about on the Turran FTP, but the versioning is quite different to other versions.

Yes the mag was german only.

Have to look tomorrow but I think it was a german only version on this CD. There are no language files or catalogs or something like that. I think language is hard coded in the executable.

Version is Cinema 4D 4 Pro 1.6.1998 (which should be the release or compile date). No 4.x or something like that. Just 4.

[walkero]

@yelworC
You are absolutely right. The language seems to be hardcoded in the binaries and they never used catalogs for the translations. In the Amiga Plus CD there are no other languages, unfortunately.

The only way to convert it to English, as I see it, is to edit the binaries with a HexEditor. This is possible to be done, actually I already done some test edits, but the downside is that some times the English word or phrase doesn't fit in the same area of the German.

For the menus there is a way to copy the menu4.prefs to envarc/cinema, which is a plain text file and make the necessary changes in that.

If there is interest I could make those changes, although I haven't yet figured out if there are any actual changes between the 1997 version and 1998.

The executables of these versions have different size, but this might happen because of the language strings. If we had the German version of the 1997, then we could compare it with the one from 1998.

[fxgogo]

This is definitely worth looking into the differences between these two versions. I wonder if the way back machine might have any info. BRB

[walkero]

Right now the Wayback site is down, along with the whole internet archive. But a couple of days ago I managed to find the following page
http://home.t-online.de:80/home/p_lo...4dproject.html

This seems to be a personal page of Philip Losch, one of the original authors. There is not much info on that page, but there is a list of the released versions, and at Cinema 4D v5 Amiga is mentioned as having a version ready for it. Unfortunately, I could not find anything more about this release.

[fxgogo]

That just takes me to a news site.

[Pyromania]

Cinema4D is a great program on any platform.

[walkero]

Originally Posted by fxgogo

That just takes me to a news site.

Try https://web.archive.org/web/20040825...4dproject.html

[fxgogo]

Thanks Walkero. I must say, Maxon have always been good about coding practices in C4D. They have often dived in and replaced whole sections of the program. So many 3D applications are just a pile of band aids on top of band aids.

[walkero]

In case anyone is interested, I started using autotranslation with the German manuals and I create new ones at https://git.walkero.gr/walkero/cinema4d_docs

I did so far the v4 manual and I have it as a markdown file. I also created a few new screenshots.

As you can imagine the translation is far from perfect, and when @fxgogo finishes with the scanning of the actual English manuals, his work will be much more useful than what I am doing. From these translations, you can get the context of each topic and some idea of how the application works.

My next step will be the v2 manual, which is big and cover it chapter by chapter. And at the end, I will do the v3 manual as well. Also, I plan to fix the translations the best way I can, to be more understandable.

I needed something like that and I thought to share it with everyone. Hope someone finds it useful.