Maya rigging vs Cinema4D?

#1

I started with Cinema4D when i got into 3D FMW :frowning:
Recently as i do more rigs in Cinema i’m missing easy solutions to setting up controls/ user data mechanics and wondered if the grass was greener on the other side.

Can anyone with experience with Maya and Cinema4D give me a breakdown on what advantages Maya has if any?

The most advance character rigging system in Cinema is the “Character” object that allows for easy bone adjustments with user data for foot roll etc. For corrective shapes we have to use corrective morphs/ tag to sort it out.

I’ve played with/ seen some amazing rigs in Maya with a massive amount of control sliders for virtually every need with animations, I wonder if Cinema4D might ever catch up but then again i don’t know how these things are setup and whether it’s 3x more work and troublesome than the best Cinema has to offer.

Any info on this subject will be helpful, I’ve had to accept zBrush wont be toppled any time soon and have had to move away from Mudbox. rip
Now i wonder if i may need to move away from Cinema4D for character rigging and animation.

#2

yes its 3 times more work if you do it from scratch in maya… but most riggers does have scripts to do all kind of rig elements…
and to create the crazy feature film rigs you need some special tricks… if you like to take a look into the world of highend rigging watch the cult viedeos here…

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0OBmpsTUCeGaTDbHSb88g/videos

#3

Cinema has a built in ‘auto rigger’ for a few versions now, the rigs it builds (using the ‘Advanced’ biped template) are pretty decent. In Maya there isn’t a direct equivalent but there are loads of Auto-rig scripts out there for Maya that will build rigs just as good if not better. Personally I quite like the Advanced Skeleton system.

I started in C4D too but transitioned to Maya over the last few years. The biggest issue with rigging in Cinema for me, is that once you’re finished the rig then you have to animate in Cinema :slight_smile: Compared to Maya the workflow for that leaves a lot to be desired IMO.

That aside there are lots of gotchas with the rigging tools in C4D, like a lot of the application they are easy to use but lack depth and functionality when you try to use them in situations they weren’t expressly designed for. While Maya might require more learning to get to grips with rigging (and scripting, really it’s nuts to rig in Maya without knowing some basic MEL or Python IMO) the tools are much deeper and give you much more control when needed.

Hope that helps,
Cheers,
Brian

#4

Wow thanks for the replies, It really put things into perspective.
So Cinema4D has its modular rigging system built in but doesn’t have the fancy bells and whistles, Maya folks have the same with the fancy stuff but from the community instead.
At the end of the day the functionality is the same, adjust components to match your mesh, bind and refine weights and presto you have the use of all the fancy control features!

As you said Horg the question then becomes whether you’re comfortable animating with that fancy rig in that given software.

My comfort zone is Cinema atm and some animation features in maya is very appealing, timeline features, animation layers etc. Cinema is a bit more work to get to the same destination but i’ll see. If i can build my own component for the character object with the extra control bits i want then it may become a non issue.

It would be nice if Cinema did add the fancy bits etc, But i guess we have the feature in the first place compared to Maya folks.

Thanks again guys, Some crazy technical rigs out there wow :open_mouth:

#5

What are the rigging features in Maya that are missing in C4D? I am just curious.

#6

IMHO biggest issue with Cinema 4D in animation is the playback speed. Maya is much faster.