Hello to any 3D followers out there, this one’s for you! As an advanced user of Cinema 4D I’ve been asked by Packt Publishing to write a short review on one of their new books geared towards those who have knowledge of 3D software but are new to Cinema 4D or just interested in what it has to offer. The book is called the Instant Cinema 4D Starter which you can find here. It’s a very short book intended to show you a basic overview of the critical elements in the software also giving you a nice run through of the common task of building a 3D logo, then taking it a step further by breaking it apart with some of C4D’s great tools. This is a great first project for a new user to explore, however the books greatest downfall is that we don’t get to anything really useful until page 23(of a 64 page book) when we start talking about the User Interface. Everything before this is about purchasing options which can be found on Maxon’s website and installation which feels a bit unnecessary. It is nice that it packages all the info you need in one place, however, someone brand new to Cinema probably won’t even understand a lot of the feature options they’re looking at until they’ve really gotten in and used it for a while. The book does do a good job of showing a lot in a little amount of time, most of the major areas are covered, though a little more depth on topics such as Mograph and Dynamics wouldn’t have hurt. I do think this book will give someone new to Cinema 4D a good feel for how powerful and user friendly it can be, hopefully knowing when they’re done that they’ve only experienced a small fraction of what it’s capable of.
You can find the book on Packt Publishings website here: Instant Cinema 4D Starter