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No more Feature Requests / Suggestions?


cinomadic

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@Intenditore if you have never been part of this complex development process then you simply cannot understand the complexity of it and on top of that, for every new feature complexity rises. You would be suprised how much we actually listen. Now, just because you dont see your ideas in, doesn’t mean we do not listen. For UI changes you woud be suprised how complex it can be and why are you so sure your idea should be implemented or that your idea is so good? 🙂 While it might be the best idea ever in your head it doesn’t mean it make sense for majority of users. And I can assure you we all know what Cinema lacks and where Cinema excel. So sometimes, due to compexity, timeframes, deadlines, setbacks etc., development need some more time, which means you need to wait a bit more and thats life, not Maxon being bad guy. Also, there are a lot of beta testers that have been listened for years and now even more than ever before and they constantly have been posting and sharing ideas and pointing out issues, kudos to them, it would be much harder within them.

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I do so because I and many of my colleagues stumble on those things regularly. I spend a majority of my worktime in Timeline. And dope sheet often becomes very messy. For example, when I select an object there, all the children are selected too with all the keys they have. So I can't conveniently move parent's keys not touching children. And it has no logic behind - we can select all the children and parent with a single middle click. Now I have to tackle freaking rectangle selection every time which makes me mad often!

Also, I can't make children keys not appearing on the parent, so I see a total mess on it's track, not the keys belonging to parent object solely.

Soloing track animation does not respect the fact I might need other objects to keep moving. Also, it I'm in solo track mode and add than some more tracks, they are muted - confusing.

Folding and unfolding isn't synchronized between selected objects.

When I press play and go back (Shift+F) playback isn't stopped! It might be useful sometimes, but there's no option to turn it off when it disturbes.

No colour-coding for keys.

"Keep visual angle" is buggy and isn't on by default (when disabling it is a rare need), curves control isn't very friendly overall.

And so on and so on.. It's all trifles, but they make my work much worse. And I have much more to say, but I'm in doubt is anybody listening.

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1 hour ago, Intenditore said:

And I have much more to say, but I'm in doubt is anybody listening.

Perhaps read @Igor's reply again... just because you don't get feedback and thank-yous doesn't mean nobody is listening...

If you need an example of when MAXON listened, look no further than a month ago when they reinstated offline help entirely as a response to user feedback... did you also miss the recent tweet from our CEO which said 'YoU'Ve been heard' ?

 

I see evidence on a daily basis that MAXON constantly listens to their userbase and beta team.

 

Lastly, have you considered that perhaps some, or even all of your ideas might already have been suggested and might already be under discussion or development ? You wouldn't know until years later...

 

CBR

 

 

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1 hour ago, Intenditore said:

I do so because I and many of my colleagues stumble on those things regularly. I spend a majority of my worktime in Timeline. And dope sheet often becomes very messy. For example, when I select an object there, all the children are selected too with all the keys they have. So I can't conveniently move parent's keys not touching children. And it has no logic behind - we can select all the children and parent with a single middle click. Now I have to tackle freaking rectangle selection every time which makes me mad often!

Also, I can't make children keys not appearing on the parent, so I see a total mess on it's track, not the keys belonging to parent object solely.

Soloing track animation does not respect the fact I might need other objects to keep moving. Also, it I'm in solo track mode and add than some more tracks, they are muted - confusing.

Folding and unfolding isn't synchronized between selected objects.

When I press play and go back (Shift+F) playback isn't stopped! It might be useful sometimes, but there's no option to turn it off when it disturbes.

No colour-coding for keys.

"Keep visual angle" is buggy and isn't on by default (when disabling it is a rare need), curves control isn't very friendly overall.

And so on and so on.. It's all trifles, but they make my work much worse. And I have much more to say, but I'm in doubt is anybody listening.

 

Please feel free to add all your suggestions and ideas to your own thread here...

 

https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/forum/284-plugins-requests/

 

Us plugin developers can then look over everything and see if there is some way to help out with a separate plugin. This is something I regularly do for people. Would be great to see all your ideas in one place.

 

For what you wrote above it might motivate someone (even myself) to create a specialised version of the timeline that suits your needs.

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We do listen and we even like to listen. Beside issues of timing and development priorities there are a couple of reasons why seemingly straight forward things sometimes take ages.

The biggest issue is that there are as many opinions on how stuff should work out there as there are users. Some have slightly diverging ideas, others just plain want the opposite. Derriving at a solution that will serve most without alienating many is hard work and costs a lot of time.

Another big issue i that many ideas simply go against the technology behind it. We can't implement them without braking other stuff. Our continued work on the new core has helped adressing a host of issues already, but it can't solve everything.

A very time consuming issue is that many of the small issues have pretty big consequences and just making sure we are not making things worse costs a huge amount of time.

So please keep ideas coming, be it via the hopefully soon available again webform, trade shows, support mails or even on the forums. But please understand that we can't react indivudally to every input we get, it would add quite a bit to our workload and delay things further.

 

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@Intenditore

"Despite there is such page, I'm feeling like nobody is reading and nobody is interested in any thoughts from users anymore. "

Same sentiment. I really feel like nobody is reading the submitted suggestions. 
Even a suggestion for "a better suggestion system" takes time to implement despite the fact that it is independent of the software. 

One of the feature I like to be implemented is to track the suggestions I submitted. I feel like I have been submitting redundant feature request. 

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Well guys, if you have lack of trust toward us, then simply ask some of the beta testers like @Cerbera, @Rectro or @everfresh. There not much I can say obviosuly to change your mind. If you ask me, we really dont need suggestion system simply becasue we have a lot of beta testers that really participate and again, everything you guys mentiond here, we know about, but there are other priorities that must be tackled before anything else. And Maxon doesnt have unlimited resources! That also doesnt mean we are not looking at those at the moment or for the future.

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12 minutes ago, bentraje said:

@Intenditore
One of the feature I like to be implemented is to track the suggestions I submitted. I feel like I have been submitting redundant feature request. 

While i understand the sentiment it would mean that each and every feature request would need to be assigned to a development item, which is a huge load of work especially since most of the time the descriptions and requested function do not fully match the development goal.

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10 hours ago, Cerbera said:

just because you don't get feedback and thank-yous doesn't mean nobody is listening

But that's hard to understand. It's not a random example I mentioned - Adobe. They didn't listen at all and they still don't. Remember (if you're into the topic) a decade-old request to add folders into timeline. It could be as easy as showing a nested composition content in the containing composition timeline. And you know what? Nothing. They never ever listened to users and a few hundreds requests they made. So don't get me wrong, but...

10 hours ago, Cerbera said:

I see evidence on a daily basis that MAXON constantly listens to their userbase and beta team.

I wish I could take a part

 

10 hours ago, Cerbera said:

You wouldn't know until years later...

Yep, this pretty much means "forget it".

Also, I do appreciate the returning of trusty offline help, but do you remember how much fight it took? I know as I was one of the most active in the thread and started that "oh no, don't turn Adobe" topic.

Get me right, I do respect developers team and I objectively value C4D as one of the most solid and "human for human" pieces of software, but we are afraid not without a cause.

5 hours ago, srek said:

Another big issue i that many ideas simply go against the technology behind it. We can't implement them without braking other stuff

I totally get it. So I don't even try to propose the things could be so hard to implement, mainly I focus on UI logic. There are some thought on conceptual basis of animation, for example, but I understand how hard it could be to add or change.

 

10 hours ago, kbar said:

plugin developers can then look over everything and see if there is some way to help out with a separate plugin

I pretty much completely forgot there could be a plugin to fix something since I left 3ds Max ;D
Thanks for the proposal)

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Interesting thread, all in all.

 

I do believe, however, that C4D users are exceptionally happy with the program. Why?  Because I see no evidence for the collective needs of the users, beyond everyday questions that do not require programming but can be solved with onboard tools.

 

The category "Plugins Requests" on this very forum contains three entries, the newest being more than two months already. Let me repeat, three entries, on an international forum (which, I think, is one of the largest if not the largest for Cinema 4D). The category "Python/C++" is better off, but I am under the impression it is mostly used by people who are already programming by themselves and need a specific solution, not so much by end users who have an issue/request/need/suggestion. In the category "Market & Job Offers", I just went back ten pages (until 2018) without finding a single request for a programmer.

 

Shouldn't there be a lively discussion on all those ideas which MAXON supposedly gets daily? If people have the impression that MAXON's forms are a black hole, why is nobody trying to involve the community? Sure, there are things only MAXON can solve (practically, or in an efficient way) - if a user needs to have a different behavior for a built-in function, then it might be impossible for a non-MAXON developer to provide a solution without re-inventing that tool from scratch. But very often a little code goes a long way. There are even programmers here on this forum who often will provide a little scripting solution for free (if reasonable) or for a nominal fee.

 

And larger requests could be handled too, if users could agree on some financing system that would allow an independent non-MAXON programmer to create a new feature (something like plugins, but with less overhead and administrative stuff). True, programming is expensive (solving other people's problems is a job, after all), and as someone said in an earlier post, resources are limited, so it will generate extra expenses beyond the naked C4D, but for all those professional users who make a living with C4D (not necessarily hobbyists, for whom time and productivity is not so much of an issue), shouldn't the time and effort savings justify the money? Hey, couldn't several users with similar/the same needs band together and conspire to hire a programmer to alleviate their pains?

I've yet to see that happen.

 

All of that suggests that these needs are not that great, after all (the huge discussion on offline help seems more of an exception). Or the needs are so specific and task-oriented that there is only one user for it, or one job, which makes it really unlikely that MAXON will ever spend resources on it.

 

Or, are they? It's hard to judge ideas if they stay hidden away in someone's brain. It's difficult to gauge interest without a discussion. It is pretty much impossible to estimate effort if the parameters of the desired functionality are unknown.

 

So, summa summarum: Talk, people! Don't just put suggestions to MAXON, put them here as well. Discuss them extensively. Chat with a programmer. Propose a course of action. Make these ideas known! Don't be afraid of silly thoughts and seemingly impossible features. -- Maybe they will not be picked up; maybe they will not find enough support (yes, always that nasty money business); but if they do get out in the open, who knows what may happen.

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I agree on everything you just typed Cairyn. Its simply impossible to please all, this is something I learned the hard way. Spending enormous time on this forum trying to please everyone to extent were I started to feel burned out. On top of that, we get very little to none support. Me personally don't have anything from C4D Cafe, except knowing bunch of great artist and programmers like you, which is something I cherish more than money. Everything I do I do for free and most of members probably just get pissed of when we, or I start to change things and try to change thing to better. No one has a clue that we are just guys who do this because we love what we do and I am especially bonded with the community simply because it made me go through some of worst days, nights, months of dark dark times, same goes for 3D. It was always my escape from depression, its still the case. And seeing complaints like this just hurts me because I have a privilege to work with Maxonians and seeing they being questioned often, just breaks my heart. With all the backlash, we all get affected, believe it or not, but that's the reality, just because we are all passionate about C4D.

 

I am more than open to ideas how to improve on C4D Cafe. I would like to see more developers come together with members to create more great tools and scripts for the community. In the end everyone benefits from it. But unfortunately most of the people just come, take and leave, but that's how it is. Things are often much more complex than people might think, especially in development environment. We all should be happy that more and more Maxonians taking time to participate in discussions, which was not the case before, not to this extent, not to mention having CEO on board, that's rarely a case in any business. 🙂 So I would say, we can be happy and offline help discussion is a proof that if community decide to participate in discussions, things can be done. We just need to convince right people with good arguments and that's it. Have in mind that all sides have their own perspectives and reasons why or why not do things now or later or never or tomorrow. That's why we need as many people as possible to participate, otherwise there is no reason to listen, especially if only few complain among thousands of users without any meaningful arguments!  

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