Cheetah 3d 5.1

I rigged the figure on the left by using C3d's old auto-weight and then spent hours tidying up by painting weights. The one on the right was heat-skinned in a few seconds by clicking a button.
I rigged the figure on the left by using C3d's old auto-weight and then spent hours tidying up by painting weights. The one on the right was heat-skinned in a few seconds by clicking a button.

Cheetah 3d 5.1 came out yesterday, a less than two months after 5.0 came out. While it doesn’t complete the planned 5.x feature set (normal maps, more up-to-date FBX support, and particles are among the promised outstanding features) it represents a substantial improvement over 5.0.

5.1's node-based shader system now lets you preview anything, which is a huge improvement.
5.1's node-based shader system now lets you preview anything, which is a huge improvement. Once volumetrics and sub-surface scattering are added, C3d will have one of the most capable and easy-to-use shader systems around.

In particular, the biggest single problem with the animation system (the inability to move keyframes on more than one object at a time) has been fixed (you can now move all keyframes down a hierarchy from the current selection), and automatic vertex weighting  has been updated to support heat-mapping (the same algorithm implemented in Blender 2.46), which is just ridiculously nice.