Maxon announced a new, feature-laden release of its Cinema 4D VFX software. New features include new ways to fracture shapes, a variety of knife tools, object tracking, and more.

"The last couple of versions [of Cinema 4D] didn't have a lot of big tools," Maxon US President and CEO Paul Babb said at a press briefing on the new release. "This one's got so much in it, and the response has been incredible."

Voronoi fracturing (named for mathematician Georgy Voronoi) is a non-destructive native Mograph method for breaking up objects into procedural fragments. and C4D's cloning tools now have a Push Apart Effector that keeps clones from overlapping using a variety of methodologies.

Meanwhile, Cinema 4D's camera tracking has been augmented with the capability to track objects in video, and a new thin-film shader can be used to nicely render oil on the surface of water, or fingerprints on the hood of a car.

You can find a complete feature list at the Maxon website. Cinema 4D Release 18 is scheduled to ship early in September. 

Maxon showed a demo video created by London design studio ManvsMachine to get SIGGRAPH showgoers in the C4D spirit. Check out the wildlife, above (be sure to watch until the end, when things get odd), for a sample of what dedicated users can accomplish with the software.