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C4D R25 SP1 release


Cerbera

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18 minutes ago, MighT said:

To me it's pretty obvious, even if there were no features to present, there is way more work going on than visible at the surface. Please, do not misunderstand this, I'm not interested in another discussion if R25 is a release worth its money. Or if the communication strategy is right or wrong. Or Maxon's business strategies.
In my view Maxon tries nothing less but rebuilding a skyscraper from scratch without scratching the old facade during the process (better: with as little scratches as possible). Or trying a heart surgery on a living walking human without any support machinery. Not many companies have even dared to try this. For this alone they have my fullest respect. It's even worse for them. Their customers grew used to one of the most stable and backward compatible software products (not talking about DCCs but software in general) out there. And for such an endeavor this luxury turns into an immense burden. Whatever you do, somebody will always be pissed (even worse, most likely rightly so). And I doubt, many can imagine how different, how much more complicated and how much more time consuming this is compared to building something new from scratch. Maybe not even all developers at Maxon did foresee the complexity to its full extend (which is no critique). I mean, hell, I live in a country, where we are not even able to build an airport from scratch anymore. Something which has been done thousands of times all over the globe. Complexity is a bi... and forums can be a bad place to discuss complex topics. Most humans are not interested in understanding complexity. We usually prefer the simple, black/white answers. And, again an example from the country I live in, people can get pretty angry and even violent, if the answers to questions which frighten them are neither black or white (yep, talking pandemic here). I think, same patterns can be seen in the C4D discussions since a few years. Understandable. Inevitable. Certainly not constructive or helpful for anybody.

 

Sorry for being carried away. Probably another reason, why I shouldn't be pulled into threads...
 

Thanks you so much for your thoughts on this.

It's nice to get a detailed assessment from someone who has obviously put some thought into this, or had to 🙂
I really wish that the customer communication would be as open and clear as your statement. Blender clearly shows how far people are willing to carry a project if they feel they are being taken seriously. But equally they are adamant when they feel screwed. The discussions about Zbrush have surprised me. That so many people outside this forum have the same impression about the development of Maxon and communicate it so harshly shocked me. Even if I knew it in principle. Many of these harsh statements here and elsewhere are the expression of disappointment. And for many it is not about the speed of development (which, if properly communicated, is not a problem for a long time, see star citizen) but about the simultaneous hard, almost boldly displayed business decisions. I don't think this incredibly expensive loss in customer satisfaction would have been necessary.
However, you didn't want to be drawn into the communication discussion. Nevertheless, thank you very much for this contribution!

 

p.s. I also would prefer to live in a country that can count vaccinations 😄  

 

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1 hour ago, MighT said:

I think, comparing Blender and C4D in this regard is misleading and probably also a bit unfair. 

I think it can be misleading. Certainly not unfair. They both do 3D work... And in the near future I may be using only Blender for my work depending how this all shakes out. 

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I did not want to imply, comparing Blender and C4D would be unfair. Both are DCCs and can of course be compared. I only meant to try to compare the manpower or number of developers directly is in my opinion not possible in a fair way. Or at least be very difficult. Especially when trying to do so based on some chart about Blender or hearsay about Maxon internals. 

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3 hours ago, MighT said:

To me it's pretty obvious, even if there were no features to present, there is way more work going on than visible at the surface. Please, do not misunderstand this, I'm not interested in another discussion if R25 is a release worth its money. Or if the communication strategy is right or wrong. Or Maxon's business strategies.
In my view Maxon tries nothing less but rebuilding a skyscraper from scratch without scratching the old facade during the process (better: with as little scratches as possible). Or trying a heart surgery on a living walking human without any support machinery. Not many companies have even dared to try this. For this alone they have my fullest respect. It's even worse for them. Their customers grew used to one of the most stable and backward compatible software products (not talking about DCCs but software in general) out there. And for such an endeavor this luxury turns into an immense burden. Whatever you do, somebody will always be pissed (even worse, most likely rightly so). And I doubt, many can imagine how different, how much more complicated and how much more time consuming this is compared to building something new from scratch. Maybe not even all developers at Maxon did foresee the complexity to its full extend (which is no critique). I mean, hell, I live in a country, where we are not even able to build an airport from scratch anymore. Something which has been done thousands of times all over the globe. Complexity is a bi... and forums can be a bad place to discuss complex topics. Most humans are not interested in understanding complexity. We usually prefer the simple, black/white answers. And, again an example from the country I live in, people can get pretty angry and even violent, if the answers to questions which frighten them are neither black or white (yep, talking pandemic here). I think, same patterns can be seen in the C4D discussions since a few years. Understandable. Inevitable. Certainly not constructive or helpful for anybody.

 

Sorry for being carried away. Probably another reason, why I shouldn't be pulled into threads...
 

Excellent points.

 

If you want examples of how bad core rewrite can go, just look a Lightwave.  But with that said, customers do have a right to certain expectations on quality given what they are paying.  I think that is where most of the angst comes from because when you do peel the surface on what Maxon has actually accomplished (a complete core rewrite while not tanking the company) then there is a lot to admire.   

 

But what happened was that before anyone could really see the benefits of the new core (now fully showing itself with capsules). they flipped to subscriptions.  That was kind of a thumb in the eye to all the Studio owners who stood by and supported Maxon by paying a higher MSA premium price for upgrades that were mostly non-Studio impacting.  Everyone seems to forget that, but I feel that is the source of angst when you strip everything away and get to the heart of the matter.  

 

But let's not go there again please!  

 

So you are not the first ex-Maxon employee to be referenced or show up on the forum.  I do get the sense of an increase in turn-over since R20 and you have to wonder how fast new people can pick up an unfamiliar code base to the same level of proficiency held by the original developer(s).  Per Anders was a huge loss (how did they allow that to happen?) and I would imagine his shoes have yet to be filled.

 

So does increased turn-over also lead to more bugs particularly as you trying to fit a new core into an old skin?  Is that happening as well?

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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23 hours ago, Cairyn said:

 

Wow, insulting 80% of an audience of people you probably don't know, must be one of those threads.

In any case, I was not going to offend anyone, the more I write on the site dedicated to C4D. To be offended, they will have to purposefully come to this site, find my comment and be offended, but who knows   😂
This is just some statistics on people commenting on releases of any other DCC calling to switch to blender.
I got into the habit of visiting the profiles of such commentators in the hope of seeing their achievement, and more often than not there is simply nothing there.
On Twitter, I see about 15-20 people constantly experimenting with the bleder (including their developers and addon developers) and a crazy number of likes.
Who are all these people hiding behind likes, where is their portfolio, where do they work?
We tried to put together an alternative team entirely on Linux and available free software and we could not find people using Blender and decently versed in the basics of computer graphics.

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On 12/16/2021 at 7:17 PM, Papa Lenny said:

he volume modeler is quite incredible but I remember not quite getting it when it first came out. Now I realize what a beast it is.

 

I had half the picture with this tool until recently. I don't use Redshift and didn't know how useful it could really be with it.
 

 

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Yep - I use fog volumes quite a lot with Redshift. You can do some really powerful manipulation with fields.

Here are a couple of examples from jobs I've done - the cloud is just a quick and dirty test:

 

 

Afterburner_volume_builder_001_render_test_210531_T110053_main_RI_.jpg

 

 

custom_C4D_fog_volume.jpg

 

 

c4d_quick_cloud.jpg

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On the gun: the volumetric shape was first modelled from photo reference. The hot areas were illuminated with visible lights(s) inside.

For the afterburners: the volume had varying density and noise to show the 'mach discs' - those brighter areas in the efflux. That varying density and noise was all controlled with fields. IIRC I used an emissive material for the illumination.

 

The cloud was just a quick test. Redshift is pretty good and v fast with volumes, but needs some improvement on the technical aspects of light scattering in volumes to make things such as clouds more realistic. They are currently working on it, but It's a major job I believe.

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On 12/17/2021 at 9:32 PM, HappyPolygon said:

 

I had half the picture with this tool until recently. I don't use Redshift and didn't know how useful it could really be with it.
 

 

Very cool share, thank you!

I watched this a while back and found it informative.  I've also seen some people doing mechanical modeling in the volume builder! Neat stuff. But Adobe's new 3d program in beta looks like it does something similar to this, but REALLY fast.  I've also seen people use volume builder for mograph effects. It's just really versatile.


 

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