MAXON Re-launches Their Popular Cineversity Website

MAXON Re-launches Their Popular Cineversity Website

MAXON Computer Inc., the US subsidiary of a leading producer of professional 3D modeling, animation and rendering solutions, has recently announced the re-launch of Cineversity, their excellent online training and educational resource for CINEMA 4D users. Cineversity was originally launched in 2006 with approximately 100 tutorials. Now, with the re-launch, there are "over 2000 tutorials, resources and learning materials created by some of the 3D industry's most celebrated and accomplished artists." And in addition to completely redesigning the Cineversity website, MAXON has also re-imagined it as well by giving the user more power to customize their own experience of the site.

"We're very excited about the artist-friendly changes to Cineversity that will not only let users quickly search and filter results but also customize their CINEMA 4D training with the creation of playlists," said Paul Babb, President/CEO, MAXON US. "We are committed to the CINEMA 4D community to provide educational material that will increase the artist's proficiency and productivity."

The new Cineversity site is beautifully designed in an appealing white/blue theme with green highlights making it very easy to read and to follow the clean design. Once you register at the site, you have a home page that lays out your information, activity at the site and any lists of videos you've seen and/or created. There's a convenient row of locations at the top of the page where you can click to go to tutorials, the wiki, the forum or Cineversity Live - the Livestream site where you can attend live tutorials and classes or review the archive of past sessions.

Here are some more highlights from the Cineversity re-launch. A full list of what's new for the relaunch can be found at the MAXON website.

• New User Dashboard – each user at Cineversity has their own homepage which gives you all of the essential information you need like new playlists, viewing history, profile, active playlists and any new tutorials provided by MAXON.
• Playlists – users can now create their own custom playlists of tutorials at the Cineversity site and save them with their own custom names. Teachers can create their own custom playlists for their students and make them private or public, depending upon their situation.
• New Searching and Filtering – it's now very easy to search and refine results in tutorials and playlists at the same time. These custom search results can also be saved as a special RSS feed.
• Wiki Knowledge Base – Cineversity now contains a wiki knowledge base where premium members can contribute and share information.
• Official Cineversity Playlists – similar to the older Cineversity playlists for various learning topics on CINEMA 4D, these playlists have now been updated and are much more easier to use. The actual player is better designed and provides all the information you need, plus the ability to add a playlist or create your own is very easy to do.
• Student Mangement Tools for Teachers – Instructors teaching CINEMA 4D can manage their students Cineversity experience by assigning special playlists and viewing their progress. Teachers can communicate with all or just a few of their students.

Paul Babb, the President/CEO MAXON US, gave me a guided tour of Cineversity on it's opening day back in December. He told me that many of the ideas for the new site came from a survey MAXON US conducted with users and educators on "what changes and features they most wanted to see on the site." They managed to accomplish almost all of what was requested, according to Paul.

It also took a long time to put the site together, as what MAXON US wanted was much different from the traditional learning sites you'd find from other 3D software companies. Paul told me that "we looked at travel sites, music sites and other tutorial sites for inspiration." Their site designer had worked with many iterations of the Cineversity site before they got it right. The results certainly speak for themselves as it's a huge improvement over the old site.

In past reviews of CINEMA 4D, I've noted that MAXON'S Cineversity site was an excellent learning site for the application. However, this new re-launch of Cineversity immediately makes the site THE standard for other 3D companies to match. It took a while, but the new Cineversity was worth the wait. Beautiful site design, intelligent additions and very smart re-imagining of what a software learning site should be.

I'm very excited about Cineversity and am looking forward to using it to further my own learning process with CINEMA 4D.

My Congratulations to MAXON US for their excellent work. A new logo, a recent Maxon website redesign, plus a very exciting new release to their very popular CINEMA 4D application (R13), puts the company front and center in the competitive 3D market. MAXON is serious about supporting their customers with the best possible software and the best possible support. A new, better-designed and more helpful Cineversity is just another way that MAXON US keeps themselves fresh and innovative.

Note: I'll be posting a review of MAXON's CINEMA 4D R13 here on Renderosity in a couple of weeks.

Editor's Note: Be sure to check out the following related links

• Renderosity's CINEMA 4D Community
• Renderosity's CINEMA 4D Gallery
• Renderosity CINEMA 4D tutorials
• CINEMA 4D products in the Renderosity Marketplace
• Download a Demo of MAXON's CINEMA 4D

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