Blender vs. Cinema 4D

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blender
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite available in under the GNU General Public License. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Blender Cloud is a related service accessible via subscription, and is a training and content platform providing access to expertise from the Blender Institute for advancing one's use of Blender.
$11.50
per month
Cinema 4D
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Maxon, headquartered in Germany, offers Cinema 4D, an animaton suite for 3D artists, which the vendor states is suitable for beginners and seasoned professionals alike, who can take advantage of Cinema 4D’s wide range of tools and features to achieve stunning results for demanding, fast-paced 3D production.N/A
Pricing
BlenderCinema 4D
Editions & Modules
Blender Cloud Membership
$11.50
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BlenderCinema 4D
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BlenderCinema 4D
Considered Both Products
Blender
Chose Blender
Blender is just as good as Cinema 4D. One huge advantage Blender has is that its free and you don't have to worry about upgrades or license upgrades when wanting to download or purchase the latest version
Chose Blender
Again, Blender wins over its competition in the number of users and its large community because it is free software. Whether you like it or not, that's a kickstart that makes a noticeable difference.
But, indeed, its competition is usually much more powerful and professional, …
Chose Blender
We selected Blender for most of use cases because it's availability and ease of use. Having no commitment in terms of plans or pricing also gives us more freedom to try it out, and we ended up staying with Blender.
Chose Blender
As already mention , a Wide range of features and complete set of tools without paying anything .
Suitable with any operating system.
Getting started with Blender is also easy.
Chose Blender
Blender is a more user-friendly version of these programs; not only that, but the community behind blender is great; posting everything you need on youtube or offering courses has made it so much easier to learn new ways to make renders or assets, also there are plenty of free …
Cinema 4D
Chose Cinema 4D
I've found other modeling programs to be cumbersome and difficult to wrap your head around at first. While Cinema 4D isn't an "install and run" kind of program, it does lend itself to being easily learned without the expense of being limited or beginner focused. The integration …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
BlenderCinema 4D
Small Businesses
Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.0 out of 10
Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.0 out of 10
Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Rhino
Rhino
Score 9.1 out of 10
Rhino
Rhino
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BlenderCinema 4D
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(23 ratings)
9.7
(5 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BlenderCinema 4D
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Blender is an excellent tool for everything from simple to complex 3D animations, the creation of 3D images, etc. It performs excellently in all of these areas. In the realm of 3D modelling, animation and rendering, there is very little that Blender is not suited for.
Read full review
Maxon
Photorealistic Rendering (it takes a LONG time to render for print, but it's insanely realistic). Commercial Production Graphical Integration into print materials (and digital) We did a lot with brochures and billboards. Hi Res rendering takes hours, but the output set us FAR apart from the run-of-the-mill competition we had.
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Pros
Open Source
  • Creating complex polygonal geometries is very easy in Blender.
  • Edit Mode and Sculpt Mode helps in creating non uniform surfaces for objects like rocks, surfaces, terrains etc.
  • Blender can use various external plugins to make it work in more smoother way. For example to import any 3d object one can use sketchfab plugin and easily import the free assets from web after logging in.
  • Blender has a better rendering engine known as Cycles, it is far more better than any other stock rendering engine which can generate realistic lightning, shadows and reflections.
  • The animations can easily be generated with blender animation toolbar and also it incorporate any other animations made in any other software.
  • The bone generation and its behavior of animations can be achieved easily in blender.
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Maxon
  • Seemingly endless selection of tools
  • clear and powerful manipulation tools
  • effect use of hotkeys for navigating the 3D space
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Cons
Open Source
  • It's really a hard question, but it could be: a game engine. Older versions used to have it; I would use it to simulate machines game-like.
  • I'm struggling to find another one; maybe the fact that it is so powerful and has so many features that learning it can be daunting; better documentation WITH examples and/or a map of Blender capabilities would help to know where you are in terms of knowledge and the planning the roadmap to where you want to go.
  • Precision modeling. Coming from CAD and using Blender as part of my design workflow, I'd love to be able to model inside Blender as I model with CAD tools. At this moment, it's simply impossible.
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Maxon
  • Weak UV mapping interface.
  • Redshift integration is not 100% seamless yet.
  • Weight-mapping is a nightmare.
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Usability
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Maxon
For reasons mentioned before: an intuitive interface and speed of the viewport, speed of loading, and ease of plugin integration. The MoGraph module encourages experimentation and the creation of highly modifiable scenes. Crashes are extremely rare and the support team and community are hyper-responsive to requests for help. For real... Maxon's staff hangs out in Slack and Discord communities, regularly assisting users with issues. No support ticket required.
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Support Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Maxon
Maxon's staff regularly hangs out in Slack and Discord communities, ready to assist. This goes beyond the support ticket system, which is also extremely robust. Hundreds of optimizations and bugs are fixed in every patch, even when the user experience is already 99.9% smooth. This is a proactive, not reactive, support and engineering team at Maxon.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
We've only used the consumer (non-pro) version of SketchUp, which we love, but is very limited in features and output capabilities compared to Blender. While Blender's learning curve is MUCH steeper than SketchUp, it feels like truly complete, professional design software.
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Maxon
Well, I go for cinema 4D if I want to create dynamic animation instead of Autodesk 3ds Max as I can easily create that animation compared to Autodesk 3ds Max.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • As it is a beginner-friendly software with increasing demand in the animation sector again, it positively impacts the business.
  • Except in some specific cases, no one will use Blender on their own at a professional level.
  • When I was a beginner, it took me a lot of time to learn, consequently designing the creation. But if we want to learn to master Blender, we can do it. As long as we have time and a lot of willpower, since, we repeat, it is not a simple program and hides thousands of tools and possibilities.
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Maxon
  • Producing quality training content reduces mistakes and improves ebitda for our restaurants
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