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Today I was fooling around in the new release and the possibilites are certainly mind-boggling. Here's a particle stream that drives a volume builder which is displaced at rendertime for super-fine detail. Nothing special, but it was super-fun to make... and it plays in the viewport in the 20-30 fps range, which is very fine 🙂

It is true that you can't drive the creation of particles with map, shader or noise yet. But there are two workarounds. You can either drive a polygon selection with map/shaders/noise and use that to restrict the emission, or you can emit evenly and instantly kill particles based on a map/shader/noise. Here is an example. The shader field drives a vertex color tag which is then used to set the particle colors on emission. Particles are emitted into a first group where there color is checked. If the it is below a certain value the particle is killed right away, if not it is moved to a permanent group where it will happily continue it's particle life. In case you wondering where the animation is coming from, that's set in the Shader Field with the remapping graph to cycle through different grey values of the texture. This is not the most efficient way as the buffers need to be cleaned up more frequently than needed, but you can achieve the intended effect. kill_by_map.c4d

FFS, read what I said. I said that I didn't see the need for Maxon to focus on developing one themselves, and it's not high on the list of stuff Maxon needs to tidy up in C4D, as there are so many areas of C4D that have been left in the cupboard for years. We all know what they are. So I don't think Maxon needs to develop their own real-time renderer like Unreal has. There's a perfectly good real-time renderer available to everyone which I gather is getting a lot of traction and use in the film industry. It's called Unreal Engine and Maxon have a whole page up mentioning how they're continuing to improve C4D's integration with it. https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d/features/unreal-integration I think I'd rather Maxon keep developing C4D, and also keep improving their integration with Unreal Engine, rather than spending their development resources trying to create a separate real-time renderer that competes with Unreal Engine. If I get really keen on real time rendering I'll probably (a) make sure I have a rig that can handle Unreal Engine, and then (b) spend time learning Unreal Engine, plus whatever integration methods work best with C4D (after I resub) rather than waiting around hoping that Maxon will develop their own real-time renderer designed to compete with whatever the Unreal Engine development budget has come up with. Unreal Engine is great and it will keep getting greater in 2025, 2026 and 2027. Meanwhile C4D's character rigging could use improvement, C4D can't do fluids yet, and C4D's Bodypaint is older than some of the women I see in Melbourne pushing around kids in baby strollers. So I think Maxon should probably sort a few of those issues out first before they try to develop a brand new real-time renderer designed to compete with Unreal Engine's place in the film production market.

the problem with real time rendering is that it will never match what unreal engine does. not because c4d isnt capable of doing such thing, it’s just that DCCs arent built the way game engines are built. the reason why unreal engine is so fast is because of the amount of viewport optimizatios it does to get rendering at that speed. these optimizations wouldnt work for a DCC, where accurate data is needed. for example, unreal, just like almost every other game engine of old, does insane amounts of LOD optimizations, eliminating alot of geometry data for performance gains. mesh shading is another use of this… combine with a bunch of other optimizations in the viewport and other areas, unreal can get those speeds. but these types of optimizations dont work well for any DCC because loss of data is not a good thing for a program where data is needed to operate on for modeling/animation/simulations. game engines are always built to look ‘good enough’. DCCs are built to look accurate. therefore, c4d cant truly compete with the real time market. its not its purpose and a market thats not really needed imo… techincally, if maxon wanted, they could make c4d into unreal more than any other DCC. it has directx12. and directx12 supports mesh shading… c4d also has multi instancing, which unreal uses a similar tech to make high geo environments… the tech is there, but the purpose is not…

dear members, we now have 7 videos on Youtube channel! Hop over and subscribe even if you are not into nodes, it will help the channel grow which will help us make more quality content, thank you!

I only watched Chris‘ video about particles so far... my first impression is really good! It's elegantly designed: a limited set of building blocks, but with endless possibilities. I love the shared use of forces, fields, vertex maps, it's so powerful and versatile. And I applaud the simple, visual setup in the object manager. Very well done! 🙂

If we added everything from the start you would have to wait months more. We delivered what we think is a great release that is very usable. Additional features will come.

Regarding Consistency in animation: Here's a test animation using Redshift's new Volume Displacement to add fine detail to a procedural cloud made with C4D's Volume Builder. I'm quite pleased with the outcome! I uploaded the project file here, so you can play around with different noises, etc: 1309818867_ProzeduraleVolume-Builder-WolkemitRS-Volume-Displacement_LY01.mp4

Ok, for anyone else using Octane, I discovered it works only if you select Render Instances in the Cloner settings as follows:

Not sure what currency that is but we haven't raised prices.

Actually they meant to add real sculpting features from Mudbox into Maya but the project was too complex with the DAG. there is even old videos floating around about a tech proof of concept. It was never even put in beta before they dropped it.. subsequently dropping Mudbox development too a couple years after that.

Yeah. No offence but Tbh a real-time renderer is the last thing I'm personally thinking of when I consider the fat list of stuff Maxon need to fix, tidy up, add or redo with C4D to sort out the years of inattention certain areas of the program have suffered from. But they're clearly on the way finally.

I didn't even began to try breaking the next NDA and you've already spilled the beans ! (kidding) Liquid sims for September's release everyone !!! hahhaahahaahahaha ok, enough... Personally I'm good without the liquid sims because with particles and volume displacement I can now fake visualizations like these:

*cough* liquid sim ?? That's one big area we are still 'missing'... CBR

This is an awesome release and I'll be re-subbing after the September release comes out.

The OM is arguably one of Cinema's greatest strengths, and its userbase are rather attached to it, not to mention, used to it, so I think it makes sense to introduce such a powerful new system via an innately familiar interface, and using its workflows and structures. I like having all the particle stuff there in the OM where I can always see it and (mostly) what it is doing without having extra windows floating about. That's not to say I couldn't also see it working in a nodal context, but I have to say I kinda like it where it is... CBR

It's a wonderful release, adding a boatload of functionality to simulation and a solid first step to bringing our particles up to date, and fully integrated with other simulation components - as Chris was at pains to point out the possibilities now are mind-boggling ! I think a lot of people will be very happy with this release, except possibly the guys who make X-Particles; it will be interesting to see where they pivot next. Of course all the attention is rightly focused mainly on the particles, but I was pleased that there have been good updates in other areas, a few of my own suggestions have been added to modelling functionality, and RS got a lot of love and improvements, not least being the toon shader stuff. The new Connectors functionality and workflows are so much easier to work with than the old system, so that is very welcome too. So all in all, I am loving this release... CBR

SOM too:

This new Surface Attract is good for Ivy things too SurfaceAttract.avi

I recommend keeping the 2070 and using it just as your display adapter (to drive your monitors). Then only use the 4090 for rendering. You'll enjoy a lot less crashes this way, and will be able to jump around to other programs with more confidence while rendering.

Courtesy of Silverwing VFX, I think this might help with Octane / mograph colours... CBR

NAB has started

Thank you. I stand corrected. I had no idea D5render was available for C4D. I'll check it out when I have the time. My point was that it's weird that Maxon and Autodesk let Unreal take the lead on this, not that they can take it's place. Anyway, let's agree to disagree here.

It feels like there is still a long list of stuff C4D really needs to add and sort out but with this release I feel now that the development train is strong on track to get there. Particles must have taken a long time to develop, design, test and everything. Now that it's here they can furthe develop it and also turn their eye to the other areas that require improvement.

I don't think this will work for C4D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_point_method

Dave's trolling powers have also levelled up. https://x.com/dmcgavra/status/1778434672134914467?s=61

You can create a Vertex Color Tag from a texture using scene nodes. The Vertex Color Tag can then be used to control particles in whatever way you want. Image 2 Vertex Colors_0003.c4d It's quicker if you can do without UVs though Position 2 Vertex Colors 01.c4d

This latest Particle addition is a welcomed update. Pretty sure Maxon have probably been working on this for a while , I applaud them for their persistent and hard work. The particle capabilities are very thorough. Though after watching Chris Schmidt's 4hr preview, I noticed a few important aspects were 'missing' so to speak. Maybe I missed them or maybe the functionality is there but not as obvious as it is in X-particles for example. One aspect was the ability to emit from a texture, this is something I'd imagine is easy to implement and also something I use a lot. Very surprised this functionality isn't there from the start. Secondly was the ability for particles to follow a 'flow path'. I'm amazed this wasn't included and I do hope that this functionality will be available in a recent update. While I will use the new particle system wherever I can, I don't think I'll give up on X-particles just yet unfortunately.

it is completely possible to build ur own particle system using scene nodes. however, this current particle system is built to work with the unified simulation system that cinema4d has built. this allows the particles to interact with cloth, pyro, rigid and soft bodies. these use a system known as position based dynamics, which if it were a node, would have everything connected to it. bifrost in maya has a node that does pbd. right now the philosophy of cinema4d is to provide the intuitive tools in the object manager, and allow for more custom systems built by technical artists in scene nodes. c4d users are used to object manager so it is still valuable for alot of these things to be implemented in object manager. but if the user requires more advanced setup, scene nodes is available and works really well with the overall c4d architecture.

sorry, i respectfully disagree. there is simply no way objects in manager can have better overview of all connections and dependencies which are within objects. There is a reason why nodes are used in premium particle apps. don't get me wrong, i love the new stuff just seeing missed opportunity here. i also would want to have fields as nodes too. at the moment it looks like there are two apps within one fighting each other and divide between them is widening.

just finished watching the 4 hour vid by chris. just amazing! congratulations devs and thank you for this amazing release! keep it up maxon!

I wonder how many of the new particle features were inspired from my suggestions to Maxon... But watching so many long-expected mechanics to finally get implemented can only make my eyes water...

While that's certainly true for the old stuff, they continually improved new tech over the last releases. Like Fields, Nodes, Universal Simulation, Pyro...

PSU: Youve specced an SFX sized one, thats smaller than a normal ATX size and will been needlessly more expensive, go for a cheaper atx size. ram: it will work, but may I offer an alternative. Ryzen systems love ram speed, it can give 10, 20, 30% more performance. The problem with your 4x32gb 128gb kit is that ryzen cant run 4 slots of double sided ram at full speed, so even if youre buying a 5600mhz kit, the motherboard will run it at 3200mhz. The ideal sweet spot for modern ryzen systems is 6000mhz, thats the fastest 1:1 sync speed you can do with the cpu. What I would suggest is sacrificing a bit of ram capacity and instead go with 2x 48gb sticks for 96gb total. Dont bother with the 2070 gpu, it will be a waste of time, sell it and cash in its value. SLI is dead, ignore it, no consumer gpus are made with the connectors anymore. Multiple gpus can be used, just plug them in, no SLI is needed. However, keep in mind the space and power requirements. Most 4090 cards are 3-4 slots. Does your case choice provide the 8+ slots of vertical space needed? We run dual 4090 cards as render nodes in older corsair 680x cases because theyre one of the few cases with the vertical space needed. 1 large ssd is fine, I would just pair it with a cheap 10+TB hdd for storing archived projects and running system backups in the background. For the case, personally I would go with a simple front to back airflow case. Sheets of glass are not friendly to system temps, nor are 90 degree corners. Im a fan of the corsair 4000d airflow. cheap, looks decent, very nice performance (disclaimer, i work for them) Noctua D15 is a great cooler and will cope with the 7950x perfectly fine. Little point overclocking the cpu as its already running up against power limits by default. AIOS are fine if you want to pick them, but go 280mm or 360mm, Ignore 240mm and lower.

As the 7950X is unlocked for over-clocking, if you intend to do that than you might want to rethink the fan based cooler and move to liquid cooling. Even without over-clocking, the AMD spec sheet recommends liquid cooling for optimal performance. Personally, I am not a fan of over-clocking from a long-term reliability perspective. One other thing I tried to find out about is whether the 9750X supports 4 or 8 channel multi-channel memory configurations. If it is 4, then you are well configured. If is 8 (which I am beginning to doubt as only their older CPU's support that....I think), then you might want to consider 8 x 16Gb modules. Relative to wedging in an older GPU.....my understanding is that the memory configurations need to match for most programs to appropriately manage passing data to both GPU's. I could be completely wrong about this. Given that it is 5+ years old GPU, my gut is telling me that it may be more trouble than it is worth. Relative to additional drives, a separate boot drive is nice but you may want to consider either an internal or external RAID 1 SATA drive for long term - and cheap - asset storage. I hate cluttering my high-priced SSD's with assets that I am not using. Not sure if fluids are in your future, but those caches can get huge (more than 300Gb are easily possible for a 30 second animation) and you may want to keep as much free space on the SSD for holding multiple versions of cache until the job is finished. After that, delete them and moved the finished scene to the SATA drive for archiving. Another option to consider is cloud storage --- though I have never looked into the long-term cost-benefit analysis of renting cloud storage vs. my own RAID set-ups. Another consideration to throw into the mix is that upload/download speeds from the cloud can match the R/W speeds from a SATA drive provided you are on a premium service plan from your ISP. There have been debates on this in the past...which I hope not to repeat here. Given the cost of the system, have you also considered putting some money into a very good combination surge protector/UPS. Your UPS needs to provide at least 85% of the wattage coming from your power supply for however long you think you will need to complete a frame render, exit the software and power down safely. I have separate UPS for the monitors and my workstation as they each have different power consumption needs. I also have a separate one for the modem/router/IP phone. Kind of nice to be on a conference call, have the lights kick-out then tell everyone that we need to wrap this up in 20 minutes before I go completely off-line. Of course, if you have high confidence in the reliability of your power company, a UPS may not be justified....but still think about a power conditioner/surge protector. Dirty power is always an issue (run the clothes dryer, and you get a spike. Refrigerator or boiler kicks in, you get a spike, etc). It all helps with longevity. Overall, your configuration and price are very good! You are definitely getting a monster for a fair price (IMHO). Dave

By the way, I'd love to have a centralized manager for caching and baking stuff - either to improve playback performance or to just bake things down for eternity. Right now, the tools and options are scattered across the interface. I know nitrobake, but I'd love to have something native with guaranteed compatibility...

My guesses and expectations for the new particles: Good performance Properly embedded in the new universal simulation system Somewhat basic feature set at launch, but deepened in the next releases Natural behaviour (I hope for good presets/starting points) Easy, intuitive UI As for x-particles - in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense that they broadened their portfolio with Terraform, Taiao, Cycles, Meshtools, etc. Perhaps they knew or anticipated this move by Maxon. Yeah, well, it's quite obvious actually, as particles are so immensely useful. in comparison to my expectations above, i think of x-particles: Performance is mediocre at best, even with the GPU-Nexus-Acceleration It's somewhat isolated in C4D, interactivity is possible, but it often requires jumping through extra hoops It's packed with features, to the point where it's all too much. I kept learning and forgetting stuff at the same pace 😕. I guess it will take some years until C4D's new particles fully replace x-particles. But maybe it's a lot faster with a fresh new concept. We'll see soon 🙂 In my experience, it's a lot of work to make things behave natural. Just some rain with turbulence? It never feels quite right, I feel like I always have to fight that damn thing Watching Bob Walmsley's great tutorials make it look easy, but I keep getting lost in the tabs and sub-tabs of this plugin. It doesn't help that there is no translation for my native language available, which sucks at this price.

It really isn't a port of any kind, it is a new development from the ground up and any similarities to TP are simply due to it being a particle system as well.

Yeah nothing in the world will matter by 2028.

Is Maya doing motion graphics now? And all this is to do what? Make motion graphics, or something else? If you're teaching those students of yours how to make animated shorts and stuff that would appeal to job openings where they're trying to do Dreamworks / Pixar / animated character stuff, Maya might be the best choice there. You could skip all the reasons you listed and just add another. Most other animation students in the state or country are probably also using it and students diving in will find things 1000% easier if they do what everyone else is doing. If the students are trying to learn motion graphics, the above list of negatives just comes across as whining. They can either get over it and learn the software and become competitive, or do something else. You've probably specified in earlier threads exactly what you're teaching these students so I apologise if I don't have immediate recall of it. But if it's a generalist course there's likely no burning need to use C4D. I still think as an intro to CG that C4D provides one of the easiest ways in though, as it's easy enough to get started and begin making things with. I haven't followed the UI of every other 3D app out there, but I would not say C4D has a bad UI, which is really the main point. It has a nice cleanly laid out UI and it's easy to grasp and use. This is unless you prefer the old pre-R25 look, which I can't fathom at all but a few people here and there apparently do. If they buy the software post-graduation they won't have to worry about how students get treated at all. They can just do what everyone else does, subscribe, use it, maybe make money from it, or don't. The $100 for Maxon One for a student is dirt cheap because of the opportunity it gives them - try out Maxon One for a year (or two or three) to see if you can get proficient at everything it does, and whether it points toward an enjoyable and practical career path for you. Folks who try it and find themselves nodding and seeing it as the way forward will find the $100 well spent as it's given them that info they couldn't have received otherwise. Meanwhile, folks who spend the $100, don't really click with it, and decide that a different app or even a different area of CG is preferable, now again have some really useful info they can run with and use. They didn't click with C4D so probably motion graphics isn't for them, so they should probably jump on the Maya train or (if you prefer) Blender. I think a lot of folks use C4D for a reason, and there are also a lot of people out there who don't use C4D for a reason. Both reasons are legitimate, but I just question how many people in either camp are there simply because they couldn't afford $100. You might feel the number is really high, but everything I've seen suggests to me that other considerations are likely taking precedent.

Teacher goes up to a bunch of students, beginning of the school year for a two or three year course. The class looks at him. "Hey kids, this year we're going to learn Cinema 4D! It's really easy and intuitive and does a lot of cool stuff. it's my personal favourite." The students all look at him. "One thing though, over the life of this two/three year course, the software does have a fee. It's hugely cheaper than buying it and you can use it as much as you want, plus you get lots of other cool software like Zbrush bundled with it. But it's a $100 a year. You pay the $100 and you can chuck all this software on your laptop, it'll be easy and fun to learn, and you should be able to make some amazing stuff." The students all look around at each other. No one says anything. The silence feels like it might go on forever. "Or.." says the teacher "..as an alternative, we can all learn some software that isn't quite suited for career work, and it's a bit less intuitive, and it's not my absolute favourite, but it's free. That one's called Blender." The class as one breaks into an enormous YAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! People jump up and cheer, papers fly around the room, the kids are dancing arm in and everyone is cheering with joy. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and sits down to learn Blender. This will be amazing and a happy ending for no doubt everyone but I do kind of wonder how all those kids are going to fare when they're out looking for a job and they tell the recruiters about all the free software they used rather than the paid ones like Photoshop.

the performance is still being boosted with every version. matrix object is now 10x faster.

A particle update would be exciting to be sure so bravo if that is the case as it does point the way to even more exciting simulation possibilities in the future...in particular liquid fluids. So, any guesses as to what his next "cheeky" Twitter post will be? Honestly, he could have a lot of fun with this if his tweets were less obvious. For example, how about pouring himself a cup of coffee? Not CG...a real cup of coffee. No message, No tag, just a cup of coffee. That would definitely leave us all guessing. Nevertheless, like reading the stars in the sky to determine the future, he has successfully cultivated a bunch of "watchers" on his X feed of people trying to figure out what is next at Maxon. Very clever indeed. Dave

yes, also very excited to see what's coming in the next release. I believe it's maxons own new particle system. This would combine very well with an updated viewport and faster C4D in general. I would assume the viewport will be able to handle massive particle counts. Or I like to at least hope. But a new particle system sets the grounds for further simulation systems coming in the future. And perhaps one day, we could even advance to a muscle simulation system. Either way, I'm one of the believers that the future of C4D is bright and in good hands.

nevermind again... sorted by moi self... xP doesn`t like RS motion blur...

Hey Gurus, Anyone know where to shut off this pop up redshift feedback display in settings? Its the most annoying thing when trying to preview in renderview. If you play your timeline it pops up close it and replay it pops up again. Thanks JR