System Requirements

The system requirements for Cycles 4D are:

Cinema 4D version

Cycles 4D will work in these Cinema 4D versions:

  • R14
  • R15
  • R16
  • R17
  • R18
  • R19
  • R20 (using the Insydium Bridge plugin, which is supplied with Cycles 4D)
  • R21 (also using the Insydium Bridge plugin)

Hardware

A 64-bit machine is required, but you need such a machine anyway for Cinema 4D R16 and later.

Graphics cards

Cycles 4D can render on the CPU in any machine or on the GPU if you have a suitable graphics card. What then is a suitable card for rendering with Cycles 4D?

nVidia cards

Most, though certainly not all, PCs use nVidia cards. Which card is "best" for rendering with Cycles 4D is not an easy question to answer, especially since it tends to vary as the graphics drivers and the CUDA SDK are updated.

Note that the Blender 2.8 core in this version of Cycles 4D requires OpenGL 3.3 or later. This should not be an issue with any recent card as drivers for the GeForce 400 series and above support OpenGL 4.6.

The latest version of Cycles 4D also supports nVidia RTX cards (e.g. the 2080 Ti).

As a general rule, when choosing a card for this purpose look at the card processing power, usually measured in gigaflops or teraflops (1000 gigaflops = 1 teraflop) and the amount of video memory (VRAM) on the card. The more of each the better, but if you have to compromise on one, choose the faster card rather than the one with more VRAM. The latest version of Cycles 4D can render on the GPU and CPU so that if memory is insufficient on the GPU, it can switch to the CPU instead. You can also look at various benchmarks which have been published for Cycles, which are easily found on the net.

Those Macs which use internal nVidia cards also work perfectly well and you can render on the GPU without problems.

It is possible to equip a Mac with an external nVidia GPU (an 'eGPU') but support for these devices from Apple is limited and at the present time we cannot recommend the use of an eGPU or state with confidence that Cycles 4D will work with one. Please try the demo version to ensure it will work with your eGPU if you use one.

AMD cards

Previous versions of Cycles used OpenCL to render on the GPU on AMD cards, and OpenCL support was also available for nVidia cards. Unfortunately, the lack of support from Apple for updated drivers on OS X meant that the Blender core developers have withdrawn support for OpenCL on OS X. This is a decision beyond our control, so as things stand, GPU rendering is not available on the Mac unless the machine has an nVidia card.

There is no support for OpenCL on nVidia cards in Cycles 4D, but that doesn't matter as CUDA is available on such cards. In theory, OpenCL will work on a PC with an AMD card but we cannot guarantee that OpenCL will render on such a GPU, and in the event that you have such a machine we strongly recommend that you try the demo version before purchase.

Operating system

The minimum requirement is for 64-bit Windows 7 or a later version of Windows.

For Macs, OSX 10.10 Yosemite is the minimum recommended version to use with the Cycles engine.

Please note that these are the requirements for Cycles 4D. The requirements may be higher for Cinema 4D itself, depending on the version you are using.

Internet access

Cycles 4D must validate your licence after installation and from time to time after that. Therefore to use it your machine MUST have access to the internet before you use it for the first time and sufficiently often after that to enable repeat validation. It does not require constant net access all the time.

The periods for which Cycles 4D can be used while offline are for two days if 'Close Seat on Exit' is checked in the preferences, and 14 days if that switch is unchecked.

Needless to say, internet access is required for the on-line updater to work, but you don't have to use the updater if you don't want to.