Maxon Computer GmbH is a German software company that produces software for content creators. The company’s product lines include the 3D software

Cinema 4D Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only a single version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Stu ...

, the Red Giant tools for editing, motion design and filmmaking,

Redshift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and increase in frequency and e ...

renderer and the digital sculpting and painting software ZBrush as well as the mobile sculpting app Forger. The company’s cross-platform benchmarking application Cinebench is used by developers, reviewers and users to evaluate hardware performance.

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 Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

, 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.Rick Parent, David S. Ebert, David Gould, Markus Gross, Chris Kazmier, Charles John Lumsden, Richard Keiser, Alberto Menache, Matthias Müller, F. Kenton Musgrave, Mark V. Pauly, Darwyn Peachey, Ken Perlin, Hanspeter Pfister, Jason Sharpe, Mark R. Wilkins, Martin Wicke, Nicholas Woolridge, Steve Worley. 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

Release 11 at

Siggraph SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

show, Los Angeles, in 2008. The company's program Cinebench is used to test computer hardware capabilities. The most recent version is R23 released in 2020. Maxon is considered one of the major companies in 3D animation and graphics. Maxon acquired

in mid-2019, merged with Red Giant, creators of unique tools for editors, VFX artists, and motion designers later that year, and acquired Pixologic, the makers of ZBrush in 2021.

References

{{Authority control German companies established in 1985 Software companies of Germany