Maxon Computer GmbH


Maxon Computer GmbH is a German software company that produces the 3D software Cinema 4D.

History

Maxon was founded in 1985 by three college students, Harald Egel, Uwe Bärtels and Harald Schneider. They had purchased their first computer, an Atari ST, and agreed to write a book about the basic programming language that ran on the ATARI ST, the GFA-BASIC Buch.
The first issue of ST-Computer was released in January 1986.
In 1991, after two years of development, the first version of Cinema 4D was launched in December 1993. This was followed in May 1994 with an upgrade to Cinema 4D V1.5, with improvements in rendering quality. Cinema 4D became Maxon Computer's flagship product.
In January 2000, Nemetschek, a leader in architectural CAD Software, bought a 70% stake in Maxon in order to acquire a high-quality renderer for their CAD models, as well as to enter the multimedia market and later introduced version 6 of Cinema 4D XL
Cinema 4D Release 10 was presented in 2006.
Announcement of Cinema 4D Release 11 at Siggraph show, Los Angeles, in 2008.
The company's program Cinebench is used to test computer hardware capabilities. The most recent version is R21 released in 2019.
Maxon is considered one of the major companies in 3D animation and graphics.
Maxon acquired Redshift in 2019.