Cinema 4D English manuals

29 March 2022

Last few weeks I've been silent, without updating you much through my blog posts and I'd like to talk to you about what keeps me occupied.

I am working on a new project that doesn't have anything to do with development and programming, but with an old Amiga application and that is Cinema 4D. Since I tested it under AmigaOS 4 a month ago, I was fascinated by how modern and intuitive it is and all the nice 3D images you can create with it. Have a look at my video about it below.

Back then I started learning how to use it, but there was a problem. There is no English manual available anywhere. There are the German ones but unfortunately, I don't speak the language. So, I decided to start translating them using auto-translation services.

I found the manuals in a version where you could copy the texts and paste them, but the result was disappointing. I was not looking for the perfect translation, but one where the context will be understandable and the user will be able to have a small help while experimenting with the application.

I tried a few solutions but didn't go far. Then I realised that the reason was the structure of the OCR text. You see, every line in the OCR text is a new paragraph and there is no clear separation between the real paragraphs. Also, the author used to split the words with a dash at the end of the line if they didn't fit. Add on that some side texts appearing in the middle of a paragraph, or some wrong characters, like U messed with 0, or 4 messed with A, the source text was not good at all.

So, I had to do more work on making these texts translatable, as good as possible. The methodology I follow is to get each text by hand, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, correct the split words and auto-translate them. Add the side notes as well and set everything up similar to the original text.

After that, I get the translated text and copy it to an editor where I format it to look close to the original one and also fix some problems here and there with broken characters. The format I choose for the text is the Markdown because it is simple enough, it provides everything I need, it is working perfectly in a GIT repository and can be converted to whatever format I may need in the future. Also, supports embedded images and links, which can make the navigation even better.

Speaking about images, during this process I also update some of the illustrations with newer, colourful and better screenshots with higher resolution or even SVG vector graphics. But this takes a lot more time and I use the old ones as placeholders.

Of course, such work cannot be stored on my computer only. So, I set up a GIT repository for anyone to use, even while I am still working. Right now, you will find there the Cinema 4D v4 Manual 100% done and the first 200 pages of the v2 manual, which is much bigger and has all the necessary information and tutorials. You can find the English manuals at https://git.walkero.gr/walkero/cinema4d_docs

As I said earlier, I do not expect the auto-translated texts to be perfect, but I believe the context is understandable and if you experiment a little bit with the application, it will be easy for anyone to figure out how it works.

There is a discussion on English Amiga Board about these manuals and a fellow Amigan that has them in his possession is willing to scan them and share them with the world. That will be the most accurate and best solution, but I expect it to take time. So until then, I hope my work will be useful for others than me.

Git repo

Discussion at EAB

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