I've Used Both BLENDER and CINEMA 4D for Years, and here's What I Really Think

In today's video we will see which 3D software is best for animation between Blender and Cinema 4D. If you are a beginner or an expert and want to know which 3d animation software to use for your 3d model, you are in the right place. Blender or Cinema 4D? Which is better? Let's see...
Today we will talk about this topic taking into consideration the different aspects that interest us, like modeling, sculpting, rendering and animation 🎭
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#blender #cinema4d #3dmodeling

[@cerebralvision]

I started in 3D Studio Max many years ago, and then switched to Cinema 4D full time, tried maya for a little bit, and now completely switched to Blender. Main selling point, zero overhead and more money in my pocket. Blender has come a long way in the last five years and we've been mostly switching to Blender at work. Blender will only keep getting better with funding and works great if you design stuff for Mozilla hubs, unreal engine, unity, etc... All the other tools are great also, but the barrier to entry with Blender is much simpler when you're looking at licensing overhead for a whole team of people. Blender creates the opportunity for a lot of studios and artists in other countries that normally would not be able to afford it. Blender was created for the love of people at it's heart. There's huge support for it and it fosters creativity far greater than the other for profit apps since it's so accessible to anyone with an idea.

[@cygnus3D]

👌

[@shamaiahellis8810]

I just think the software is only as good as the artist that uses it.

[@cygnus3D]

That's true👌

[@Mettsemmel]

But Cinema4D is worse than the artist that uses it ;)

[@Daniel_WR_Hart]

There's a lot of truth to that, but no sane person would make a highly detailed painting in MS Paint

[@autofocus4556]

@@Daniel_WR_Hartexcept that Japanese guy who made incredible paintings in excel lol

[@Daniel_WR_Hart]

@@autofocus4556 but was he sane?

[@permork5643]

I struggle to hear what you say. The background music a tad too high :(

[@cygnus3D]

I'm so sorry. I will fix that on the next videos

me too, but the CC helped a bit :)

[@MMMM-sv1lk]

Cinema 4d simulation environment is superb, everything works seamlessly... you can apply a rigid body tag to an object put it in an emitter and have each element act physically... something you cant do in blender... all the effectors work with both physics, emitter and mograph modules. In blender these are all separate rigid body world is total bs... Blender needs a big overhaul in that department, which they did announce they will look into so hope they do... Lathe nurbs, loft nurbs other nurbs modelling works intuitively, with blender these types of modelling never works intuitively... try getting a curve to sweep along another curve in blender... you end up rotating the curves a thousand times till it gets it right... such a nightmare... Blender is like an all you can eat buffet... with mediocre food... Cİnema 4d is refined dining... in comparison. But in time I am hopeful blender will get there..

[@cygnus3D]

I'm waiting for Blender become more efficient. It is quite confusing at the moment

[@yasunakaikumi]

Blender is doing those physics sim changes bit by bit, as you know the community is building the whole thing and not always the dev by then self. Basically the whole community of Blender are also the developers of it, the foundation is only there mostly for fixing bugs and making it stable and keeps it up to date for everything, while new stuffs are mostly done by random contributes from what I saw using it for 14 years... tho right now there is a thread of one dude making the effort of replacing the Smoke sim to a GPU accelerated one, and maybe later on the fluid sims too, so bit by bit it's making a progress there

[@MMMM-sv1lk]

​@@yasunakaikumi very good point indeed that's a fact... 😊👌 I use a couple of plugins to speed up or improve my work flow in blender... Some amazing stuff out there. 😌🚀

[@lennyjoseph7382]

@@cygnus3D That's what I thought, it seems like you don't really know Blender. Just the claim that C4D is better at modeling than Blendr is lunacy. There are software that are better at modeling than Blender (depending on who you ask) but C4D is objectively not one of them, it does mograph stuff great and its good for simple objects but once things get complicated, modeling in C4D is a nightmare.

[@LambdaHDvideo]

You mentioned parametric and volume modeling as advantages of C4D But Blender also has Geometry nodes, which is pretty similar to parametric modelling, and within that you have volume to mesh nodes, where you can create fractal shapes etc purely with mathematical expressions So Blender has plenty more modeling options tham just the basic vertex modeling

[@immineal]

I have the feeling this script was written by an AI

[@cygnus3D]

Why?

[@immineal]

@@cygnus3D Is it the case? Cause I've done that before to see if it works and I swear this sound awfully similar

[@vowel8280]

I used Cinema 4D for about 8 years and switched to blender, reasons: - 2 render engines, one ray traced and one real time, which is good for motion graphics - material editor is much cooler and you can do more crazy stuff easily, cinema's material editor is a bit weak - performance seem to be better with large scenes than in cinema 4d in allot of cases - tons and tons of addons, free and cheep, and tons of free library resources which, as an artist, it will help you allot - with the new geometry nodes system you can make much complex motion graphics and procedural modeling, although to be fair cinema's motion graphics system still remains the most intuitive and easy to use - the modeling tools are way better than cinema's modeling tools, especially the sculpting tools (cloth brush is insane) - blender also has a compositor and a video sequencer, not very advanced (yet) but still good enough to make a complete video Now i'm not saying that blender is better than cinema, these are just my personal preferences, cinema has the most intuitive interface and tools, which is why I choose it over that trash 3D max, but for me blender helps me accomplish more things that i like

[@cygnus3D]

In my opinion the choice of software is a very subjective preference, even if in several cases you end up using different ones

[@ahmedshakib3883]

I mastered both and I love both .Both are similar and different in good ways .But if we talk about growth , blender has come really far , I just wish its loop cut was similar to c4d.

[@darenzd4939]

How so? I find it to be much easier to model in blender than c4d?

[@terrordisco2944]

Great video. Sticking to C4D for now, since I’m still learning.

[@ShrikeGFX]

Both have large advantages but also large disadvantages in different areas. Its really good to be able to use advantages of both.

[@cygnus3D]

Exactly 👌

[@goodguywithagum]

@@cygnus3D bullcrap to use both

[@thirdofherne9232]

Can't hear what you're saying because of the music. Gave up half way through.

[@cygnus3D]

I'm so sorry for the music...

[@BasilHomadi]

Awesome video but please next time try to lower the volume of the background music because it makes it hard to listen to what you are saying

[@cygnus3D]

Yeah, several people have already told me about this problem. I will solve in the next videos

[@psychoblackhole]

Thank you very much! I am a child with a bit of money (getting paid to clean cat litter boxes lol) & I am doing animation in Blender, & was considering buying C4D, but didn't want to buy it going in blind, thank you so much! You've helped me make my descision!

[@hypersonicmonkeybrains3418]

I sometimes watch C4D tutorials just to emulate them in Blender because why not, Blender can do most things that C4D can, and most is transferable skill.

[@cygnus3D]

👌

[@NaderTaghinia]

"Great tutorial! I'm not sure if it's just my computer, or if the background music in the video is too loud, making it difficult to hear the spoken words. Apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the comparison."

[@Deadliermlg]

I wonder if it's possible to make something similar to visualdon's creations in C4D but in Blender. 🤔

[@ExacoMvm]

Recently had to work with Cinema 4D R24 and R26 + OctaneRender and damn the experience is sooo bad, I don't know what happened but C4D became so much worse ( before maybe around R19-21 it used to be my favorite and most stable packages I've seen ), it's super unstable with pretty much any render engine ( Arnold, V-Ray, Octane ), octane doesn't even support most effectors ( refresh glitch happens which prevents from using IPR properly ) also C4D doesn't have any kind of proper animation cache which is pathetic ( MoGraph Cache is trash )... there's abc/fbx but it doesn't work with some real-time simulations properly ( some frames gets skipped and the anim also glitches out e.g. object teleports or disappears in middle of the sequence ) but you still can render fine at least, only can't export or cache. I would recommend using Blender since it's more stable, it's free, it has rapid development ( Vulkan API is coming soon ) and most importantly it's far more powerful than C4D because of recently implemented Geometry Nodes ( which is like piece of SideFX Houdini built-in, you can even build solvers using geo nodes which is crazy ), there's also so many free plugins/scipts. But Blender is obviously harder to learn if you really want the most of it, it's kinda made for programmers, game devs and nerds in mind also it has a lot of features "hidden" and odd workflows ( reason why ppl call Blender kinda crap thinking it doesn't offer much even they only seen the tip of the iceberg ). I personally don't use Blender for this reason too, I kinda don't have the time to learn how 3D Packages work under the hood from math/physics standpoint to be able to utilize Blender fully. Maya simply has a button/tool for what I wanna do and that's perfect :D

[@cygnus3D]

How long have you been modeling in 3D?

[@bubulcumcum98]

im a blender user, and i want to move to cinema 4D for more professional 3D commercial thing. one thing that i dont really like cinema 4d is the lack of tutorial, its hard to find decent tutorial for learning the software. thats it, but i want to learn it so bad lol

[@lty1914]

i used both ,Blender do better at modelling ,Cinema 4d is painful

[@MarceloMoran787]

hummmm Cinema has always have better a more quality tutorials, just recently CF COokie, cg bost and other has been producing good courses

[@hubris04]

​@MarceloMoran787 that's wrong the most Cinema 4d tutorial are older than 5 Years. You can find almost unlimited content on Blender, and this is not even an Argument just straight facts, go and make some research you will see.

[@superwalnuts2855]

Having used max and maya before switching to Blender, I'd say if you get good at really understanding the fundamentals of what you want to specialize in, those skills will transfer relatively easily between software. If you make amazing work for free with blender as a student, companies could very likely hire you regardless of what they use. It wouldn't hurt to watch videos about your specialization in other software as well. Some software I'd never used before, but after watching many videos when it came time to actually use it i was already fairly comfortable

[@cygnus3D]

You're right, in fact I'm also creating videos on other software besides Blender

[@iamleek]

I really love 360 environments, which I have no idea about. I am a hobbyist photographer and 360 video in a simple way. Really want to learn 3D creation. Blender is free and really comes a long way, been watching a video here and there. I want to learn the fundamentals of Blender. Where will be a good place for me to start?

[@cygnus3D]

@@iamleek I have a full course for beginners. You can find it in the channel

[@iamleek]

@@cygnus3D definitely, Thank you Thank you.

[@cygnus3D]

@@iamleek You're welcome!

[@m4r_art]

Cinema 4d is the better tool when you want rapid images and results fast. Blender requires a lot of setting up which Maxon's doesn't know how to hit at. You could get artsy results like visualizations, CGI renders and stylized results faster in Cinema, the standard render, sketch and toon, and let's not event mention redshift and octane. Cinema always gets more saturated, fuller images. Cycles has better realism than standard render but is at least 5-6 years behind Redshift. Eevee is better in realtime and has better visuals than standard render as it will give you a better shading algorithm, but other than that Blender gives more desaturated and duller visuals because of its default color mode. Cinema 4d is better for making ads, anime, 3d typography, VJ loops, matchmoving. Blender is better for claymotion, realistic 3d with some realtime. Blender is more stable for Unreal workflow but Cinema 4d is catching up. 2-4 years from now I think things will be more even but Cinema 4d is the definite motion graphics tool.

[@FuoridagliSchemi]

What do you think about 3DS Max instead?

[@cygnus3D]

I make a video about this topic last week. You can fint it on the channel

[@FuoridagliSchemi]

@@cygnus3D 👍

[@jagz888]

12 years as a 3d artist I know both tools very well, you will find far more employment opportunities at companies using Maya C4d houdini blender is not industry standard many studios will not shift their pipeline just because the tool is free. Regardless of blenders perks you learning a tool that creates more opportunities makes more sense.

[@cygnus3D]

Yeah, you're right. Did you start with Blender?

[@TheKevphil]

USE PERIODS.

[@richardmorganwrites]

I'm poor, so I'm forced to travel the road of the 3D artist with Blender. From where I sit, it SEEMS, and I stress SEEMS, that the bigger advantage of C4D is a business one. Take a super-talented artist that knows their way with both packages, but their preference for C4D might land them a job sooner.

[@cygnus3D]

Exactly. Personally I prefer Blender

[@iforgot87872]

Why is the sound on this vid so ass though haha, way too much bass

[@ericevangelista6568]

I use them both.

[@Guitartube25]

I wish, with the already questionable microphone quality, you would have halved the music volume, so that it's not a constant fight between your voice and the music.

[@cygnus3D]

Sorry, I tried to improve in later videos

[@kaanocal3129]

Can anyone tell me, which option's rendering is better, regardless of it's price ? I will learn one of them and license fee is not an issue for me.

[@colinwilloughby4321]

You’re going to want a third party render engine regardless. Blender comes with cycles which is powerful. Most people would go with Octane, redshift, Arnold, etc.. and you can get these for either.. so basically: they’re both the same for rendering if price is no issue. It’s always just going to come down to price. One is free and one isn’t. They both are crazy good tools. Cinema is more intuitive and beginner friendly in my opinion, but blender is fantastic, and again.. it’s free

[@psclip3309]

1.Octane (easy realistic look, super realistic result, amazing node system really dive into procedural) 2.Redshift (fast GPU render, look like eevee render or unreal, but more advanced) 3.vray (mainly for vfx and interior) 4.renderman (for movie animation) 5.Arnold (this is very sophisticated render engine built for maya, super realisticm but slow to render)

[@melok12]

I think Blender is better, but I'd like to learn how to use Cinema 4D. Could you make video tutorials on Cinema 4D too?

[@cygnus3D]

Sure!

[@ahsanulturzo7783]

No matter what you say, blender is better if you know how to use it. It is so powerful!

[@wallacesousuke1433]

LUL

[@adimaralimuddin96]

other comparison videos exalts blender while some including this one exalts cenima 4D. and i can see how they are a bit bias and not providing enough comparison details and tradeoffs which is not helpful for us viewers at all.

[@dirkjan7048]

Good vid but the music is too loud with the VO mate.

[@jimmyblimmy]

The music on this video makes it quite difficult to understand what is actually being said.

[@hasanhuseyindincer5334]

Definitely BLENDER. He's come a long way. Plus it's free. I can do everything with it. Doing a good job depends on the skill of the user.

[@cygnus3D]

Yep

[@oguzhanyazanlar9798]

hocam peki siz ne iş yapıyorsunuz

[@horriblypink]

Music's a Tad loud

[@cygnus3D]

Thanks for the feedback!

[@samuelshasa]

Definitely.

[@_casg]

Cinema 4d is like a new BMW And Blender is like a a custom Nissan GTR

[@s.p.ace.official]

It seems like one of the biggest things people use to prop up blender is that it's free, but everything is free on the internet, you just have to know where to look. But, as other people have noted, if you understand the basic concepts of 3D artistry, you can use any program efficiently, just depends on which UI you like best. I started in C4D, got corporate jobs with my C4D portfolio, then learned 3DS Max and Maya with Vray a week before each new job. If you are trying for photorealism, which is the true test of 3D artistry, VRay and Octane are the best bets right now.

[@gardenfilms1]

Pirating sucks. Don't do it.

[@s.p.ace.official]

@@gardenfilms1 that's cute, just don't be an idiot about it

[@mostafamahmoud8099]

Blender is the future Habibi

[@tonetburac]

The viseo5 is obviously in favor or C4d

[@abregadoatseri4974]

Not exactly if you know what you wanna do c4d is actually easy and good to go, but it's people choice, like blender is free so everyone is in favor blender I can say that too,

[@suhasanimation6193]

Decrease your background music. The research Is good.

[@swrcPATCH]

good video but the audio is bad, sadly

[@Prajwal____]

The bg music is loud

[@cygnus3D]

I'm sorry. I'll fix that

[@User-pq2yn]

music is too loud

[@bradybro1423]

The resources of Blender are SO much better, learned both C4D and Blender and Blender was 10,000 times easier because of the vast amount of information and support from the community. Also, Blender is going to surpass C4D in no time because of all the updates and add-ons. Maxon issn't keeping up.

[@vladimirlavrentyev9206]

1:18-1:28 is houdini not blender

[@abregadoatseri4974]

Next time make the music really low it was little difficult to understand

[@sicfxmusic]

Hello scroller, here's the answer in case you missed it: IT'S UPTO YOU TO DECIDE!! 🤣🤣

[@cygnus3D]

ahaha

[@TemaShahov]

BG sound is disturbing

[@cygnus3D]

I'm sorry. I'll fix in the next video

[@mistertamura6190]

While I personally don't know anyone who prefers Blender over C4D, Maya or Houdini, I love that Blender exists. The fact that it is very good and yet free, forces the more mature but often expensive applications to continue to up their game, and hopefully lower their prices over time. Also, from an outsider's perspective, the Blender community looks amazingly good in terms of plugin and script developers.

[@dariuszgospodorz7421]

The music is much too loud. Couldn't watch till the end because of that. Sorry...

[@cygnus3D]

I'm so sorry

[@Mattiasbaldi123]

dude that music makes it hard to hear what you are saying

[@cygnus3D]

I know, I'm sorry

[@IndianCitizen04]

All VFX of famous Indian movie RRR has been created in Blender and rendered in Cycle as far my knowledge goes.

[@yasunakaikumi]

Nah i think both Blender and C4D are capable of doing large cinema projects, I mean if you havent watch Blender bob, Next Gen movie, RRR movie... IDK anymore it's just that they function different from each other and mostly I can say an anti-DCC tool to each other because if you learn C4D/B3D you'll get frustrated with 3DS and Maya also just like Blender user does...

[@AutodidactAnimotions]

Ask any serious Character animator (for games or films) why he is not using Cinema4D. Blender with two paid addons: ,Autorig pro( $40) and animation layers($29) becomes comparable to Autodesk Maya and Motionbuilder for animation and mocap retarget to a control rig from multiple sources. I Just had a long conversation with a C4D user who is having to write his OWN python script to make C4D retarget imported motion Data from Reallusion Iclone as FK play back Blender has two free addons that do the same for the native rigify IK/FK control rig and of course Auto rig pro doe this as well. Blenders native particle system puts Maxon to an embarrassing shame as does Blenders native sculpting tools. Yes Both Apps can import VDB smoke and pyro from Houdini Apprentice, but blenders native smoke and Pyro is actually viable with some effort. as well as Blenders Fluid solver “Manta flow” At $3500 USD or a monthly sub, Maxon should be ashamed to force users user to go buy yet another sub from a thatched barn in rural England ( Insydium) to get decent particles and fluids. And let not even begin to compare the viewport performance of EEVEE to C4D native viewport.

[@GeoffBolen]

lol now I need to see a pic of the Insydium hq covered in vines

[@alexneigh7089]

Music drowns the speech sometimes.

[@axelkarsten9828]

c4d better in modeling than blender? broda there you loose all my respect

[@AshieduJude]

Blender animation rendering takes forever

[@cygnus3D]

Yeah

[@jascrandom9855]

Unless, you are using Eevee. Then it's realtime.

[@parttimehuman]

Anyone who would choose Blender over C4D doesn't know about mograph.

[@jbdh6510]

a lot of people do not work in the ad industry and don’t need motion graphics

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@jbdh6510 only people who DONT work in the industry would choose Blender over any pro software

[@cazmatism]

things that are not mograph:

[@parttimehuman]

@@jbdh6510No, man. lol Literally the tools called Mograph in C4D. Lmao

[@jbdh6510]

I know what the MoGraph tools from c4d are. But you misunderstood me. I wanted to say, that a lot of people don't work in departments where they need these tools. They are of course needed a lot in the Motion Graphics industry@@parttimehuman

[@sridharerror]

If you start your 3d journey with blender Blender's workflow is better than other softwares "I Honestly say Blender is very Powerful "

[@radoman1234]

"I've Used Both BLENDER and CINEMA 4D for Years, and here's What I Really Think" :D Yet, on this channel are only Blender stuff. Bah, another click bait for Blender kiddies.

[@FeRusBand]

You are 2 years late.

[@blancostudio3d]

Cinema 4D IS NOT BETTER FOR MODELING, the REAL answer is YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT IN BLENDER, I can tell you over a hundred things Blender can do and Cinema 4D CAN'T but not of the things you mention can't be done in Blender and actually some of them can be done even better in Blender, you just need to end your middle school at less to make some math and use Blender Geometry nodes to generate procedurally things, to be honest for a software that do not offers ANYTHING exclusive is almost a CRIME charge for it, mostly because the INSANE price when you can get 3D COAT 1/10 of that price; Maya Cinema 4D and Zbrush needs to be worth of the price and right now NONE of them is in term of what is available in the market, plus in such scenario I will go with Houdini that is absolutely superior if I am able to pay for it while Cinema 4D will ends being short in long term and I will still need complementary software to get the job done

[@lennyjoseph7382]

I was about to comment the same thing, I lost it when they said C4D is better than Blender in terms of Modeling. Also Rendering, Blender has cycles built in, it's one of the best renderers on the market Yes you can get plugins for rendering for C4d but you can also get those for Blender. Mograph and an integration to After Effects is what makes C4D great to me. But for me Model in Blender Mograph in C4D and Render in Blender (Cycles).

[@lennyjoseph7382]

This video seems like they never used Blender to be honest.

[@wallacesousuke1433]

@@lennyjoseph7382 Blender is a laughable joke, no serious artist uses it

@@lennyjoseph7382 cinema4d has its own render engine (redshift), and these days it comes inside the program

[@HartmutNoerenberg]

Just wrong. C4D in a pipeline is a pain

[@bnernganmont]

c4d fanboy who doesnt know blender very well

[@wallacesousuke1433]

Blender is a kid toy compared to actual professional stuff

[@bnernganmont]

I understand. I used to say the same thing. 20 year maya houdini user here and i used cinema alot in television commercial work. The only thing C4D has over Blender is mograph. Which is a big thing for sure. Modelling, sculpting, shading and rendering are way better in Blender...Oh Cinema has zbrush now right...stilll Blender sculpting is ridiculously good so i rarely need to use Zbrush anymore and im a fan. Mograph in Blender isnt really there yet but I can do everythign I need with a couple of plugins. I consider myself an expert maya user and strong in cinema but i wouldnt go back to them. Good to use to be compatible with agencies etc but i NEVER work in them anymore. Workflow in Blender is amazing @@wallacesousuke1433

[@nurb2kea]

Wrong!

[@cygnus3D]

What?🤔

[@xanzuls]

@@cygnus3D The whole video