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Showing content with the highest reputation since 05/03/2016 in Posts

  1. Hi folks :) Here are some important news from us. From this point onward, all trainings from C4DCafe, both existing and future ones are free. Yes, you read that right! Given that we are now fully committed to make Cafe even greater place and universal Cinema user hub, we felt that this is necessary step. Free access to knowledge will have positive effect on the community and whole C4D eco system. All training content is being uploaded to our youtube channel as this post is made. Here is a list of trainings that will be available: 1. Introduction to R18 and modelling (currently on youtube already) 2. Introduction to R19 Fracturing 3. Xpresso volume 1 and volume 2 4. Introduction to R20 MoGraph fields 5. Introduction to R20 Nodes We would like to thank all our former customers and hopefully they won't resent this move, because, after all, this benefits them too for future content we make :) We expect to finish with upload in a week since shear amount of videos will take long time. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_MRjD4IdPtvYLo2dLC-POw Additionally, we also started providing very valuable scene file repositories like this: https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/91711-c4d-cafe-lost-and-new-filesfree-to-use/ https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/104415-node-based-materials-repository/ https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/104962-hrvojes-free-file-pit/ Last but certainly not the least, is our new community based project https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/105210-c4d-cafe-steam-punk-project/ We hope that with these moves Cafe will grow to be even better, help you even more to promote your work and skills, assist you in finding gigs or full time positions, or simply be a happy place for you to hang out. As a part of the staff here I try to help as much as possible and I can see incredible effort from many members to share their time and energy to help out others, which is truly fantastic :) Cafe has grown so much that we have members from all kinds. From students, hobby users, 2d artists, VFX guys, hardcore coders, to talent scouts, managers, CEO's of large companies and various other industry professionals. Have fun and for being a member!
    21 points
  2. @RBarrett @DMcGavran I don't know about why others on this forum haven't switched to another app already, but I've been needing to stick with Cinema 4D because I started a personal project with it a while ago. I have to keep my C4D license alive until I finish. I'm a character modeler, rigger, and animator. Those haven't been priority disciplines for Maxon when compared to Motion Graphics (though R23 did give a lot of love to character animation). To keep myself from feeling too trapped, I've also gotten a Maya Indie license and installed the latest version of Blender. I have used these three apps extensively. Here are my observations: Cinema 4D vs. Maya vs. Blender User Experience Cinema 4D C4D still benefits from the UX decisions made long ago: the Object Manager/Tags model is still the best of the three. As others on this thread have stated, no one was complaining about the UI...the tabbed documents are cool, but do you really want to force people to relearn your UI right now? Doesn't that just beg people to learn a new (potentially FREE) application just as easily? I didn't understand this move. People aren't switching to Blender because of its UI. Maya Using Maya, its efforts in Parallel Rig evaluation show that Maya's primary function is for character rigging & animation. Being the industry standard for so long, most of the commercial rigs and rigging/animation courses are for Maya. The Arnold GPU implementation doesn't work any better in the Viewport than Octane/Redshift in C4D's. If Cinema 4D's multi-threaded scene nodes can remove the need for Constraints/Deformers that use Priorities, Character Rigging in C4D would take a huge leap forward when compared to Maya. Blender When I do start to work in Blender, it's never comfortable. Blender's 'Industry Compatible' hotkeys don't get covered in most tutorials, so I'm left pecking at my keyboard trying to get things to work. I feel like I'd have to learn the native key commands to learn the software. Also, its Viewport doesn't seem to be any faster than Cinema 4D in any area yet. Being able to use the same materials with Eevee and Cycles is genius though and with Cycles X, this makes its Viewport my favorite. Animation I, surprisingly, find Cinema's F-Curve / Graph Editor with its latest improvements the best of the three. Maya's rig playback speed still beats Cinema 4D and Blender, however. Character Rigging As for Character Rigging, I haven't worked much in Blender, but Cinema 4D's Character Object is miles better than Maya's Quick Rig (though the rigs are still way faster in Maya). mGear is good, but not currently caught up to the Python 3 release of Maya 2022. Weight painting sucks in both Maya and Cinema 4D, so I can't pick a favorite. I really like the Maya plugin ngSkinTools' User Experience and wish Cinema 4D could make their weights work like this. xRefs Cinema 4D's xRefs are incredibly buggy (I have probably reported 50+ bugs for it) and have been the bane of my character animation life. Maya and Blender's are amazingly stable. Without good character/prop referencing, Cinema 4D isn't a viable character animation tool for teams or long-format animation. I was told by customer support that a new referencing system is coming, but I'm not sure I'll still be around by then. Sculpting Blender's sculpting looks like a strength from all of the additions Pablo Dobarro made to it. Cinema's sculpting workflow is pretty good, though it's missing things like a Cloth brush (I am aware of the workaround, but it's not as predictable and requires a Deformer). Cloth seems like a primary need for sculpting to me. Also, Normal/Displacement Maps get baked into standard C4D materials. It would be time-saving to integrate this with Substance Painter or GPU/PBR materials. Texture Painting C4D's Bodypaint would benefit from working with materials other than standard C4D materials. Just as with sculpting, if texture painting worked better with Redshift or a PBR workflow, I think it would fit the needs of modern 3D much better. Materials Cinema has material schizophrenia: Node-based materials, PBR Materials, Standard Materials, and Redshift Materials. And none of them really look great in the Viewport compared to Eevee. UVs Cinema's gotten much better in this regard since S22. The UV Unwrap, Rectangularize, etc. were great improvements and I really like UV editing in Cinema 4D as compared to Maya and Blender. Innovations With Blender, things like Grease Pencil and Eevee make me really want to switch to Blender because they seem like artist-first innovations (over Motion Design & technical 3D animation). Before GPU rendering, Sketch & Toon was an incredible innovation! Fun features like this made Cinema 4D special! Now it's long in the tooth (like Bodypaint) and tied to the Standard materials/renderer. @RBarrett, you mentioned procedural workflow innovations, which benefit Motion Designers, but what about innovations like Sketch & Toon, Bodypaint, Projection Man, etc., that made Cinema 4D cutting edge for non-photorealistic 3D artists? Those tools haven't been touched in over a decade! User Relations Blender's Developers are easily accessible by forums and chats. I've raised the issue on this forum many times that Maxon seems uninterested in its users' feature requests based on their lack of investment in collecting them. Users don't feel valued. Maxon: COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR USERS! We've been holding on to this app for a long time with little reason to continue. Obviously leadership need to make the call when there are tough decisions and they know the budgetary implications, but C4D's roadmap currently feels very broken. It's only revealed at these release dates and sets the users up for a letdown. The employees/users lacked enthusiasm/beautiful artwork from new features in their 3D Motion Show presentations. Social Media / 3D Motion Show Blender Today on YouTube feels like an organic program with real human beings talking openly about the future of Blender and current improvements. Blender's constantly being improved and the momentum is huge. The 3D Motion Show and Maxon's Social Media presence seems like Maxon keeps rolling out artists that bought in back when C4D was the hot app (2010s). It's also surprisingly unprofessional: the mics sound like crap (even from the Chief Marketing Officer!), the banter either seems unprepared or super-canned, and no one has any genuine enthusiasm. It's like Maxon in LA gave up. Also, having presentations from all of the Maxon products makes the 3D Motion Show unwatchable. You really need individual shows for each product. I used to be able to watch C4D Live with glee. People's time is too valuable - who is going to willingly be force-fed all of your marketing for all of your products on YouTube where competition is so high? As soon as a Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks hour-long tutorial starts, I bet your drop-off rate is huge! Buying other Apps Buying Redshift made sense to me because it was a much better product than the ProRender feature. If well-integrated, Redshift would improve C4D. Buying Red Giant and Forger are starting to make me feel like Maxon is diversifying its offering for stockholders. It feels like it's letting C4D be one of many Maxon apps in case Cinema 4D fails. I understand that Maxon is a business, but why not put that money into product research, more developers, etc. & making Cinema 4D better? Regardless of intention, it feels like Cinema 4D is being left to die on the vine. Price In my opinion (and seemingly others as well) C4D is too expensive for what differentiates it from Maya and Blender. Last year I did the math and C4D was the most expensive for an Indie artist. Cinema 4D: $719.04/yr modo: $629/yr Houdini: $269.99/yr Maya: $265/yr 3DS Max: $265/yr Blender: Free Summary For me, Cinema 4D still shines with the Object Manager, Character Object, F-Curve Editor, & UV Editing, and those are huge parts of my 3D workflow. However, the lack of enthusiasm about the product, poor communication, and the dryness of updates feel like a kick in the stomach for the future. Currently, as soon as I finish my project started with C4D, I'm planning to switch to using Maya with an Indie License & Blender. That would be some time next year. I do hope scene-nodes, pricing plans, and key feature updates change my mind in that time because I loved using C4D. Currently, it's trending downwards.
    18 points
  3. As a personal side project to provide more information on Scene Nodes to everyone interested i started a small page. https://nodebase.info Feel free to request topics that should be covered
    15 points
  4. Hm? Actually I prefer not be drawn into (as Cairyn would say) "one of these threads". Also I'm not sure, which insights I'm supposed to share. I assume, I'm being asked as developer and not as a former Maxon employee. So I will keep it more general. From my point of view onboarding new developers is (or at least can be) a difficult task. It almost always takes quite a bit of resources (aka time of already experienced developers) for a significant time. Every developer is different. And like all humans every developer learns differently. Can bug fixing be a good learning path? Yes, I think so. If you have a tenacious and masochistic type of a developer, this can work out great. I do not mean this in any bad way. Maybe in other words, you need somebody with a lot of will to reach the goal. If you have someone with such characteristics, then the result can be awesome, because the knowledge collected on the go is immense. On the other hand there the "this baby has to run as quickly as possible" type of developers. For those a smaller or simpler starter project can offer a better learning curve, as they have better chances to reach the needed feeling of success to keep them going. Also bugs are pretty human in this regard. Every one is different (I hope, now I do not get drawn into a discussion, how theoretically many bugs are identical) and like with humans you can't really judge it by looking at its cover. So it can already take quite a lot of work from an experienced developer to judge, if a bug is suited to be worked on by a beginner (usually you want "isolated" bugs, where the fix has little potential to influence or break other stuff). And afterwards you need an experienced developer to check and verify the fix of the newbie. This can lead to a situation, where it costs more resources than would have been needed if the experienced developer worked on the bug in the first place. I think, comparing Blender and C4D in this regard is misleading and probably also a bit unfair. Open source in a way is way better suited for onboarding new developers. Of course a) the code base is open, so chances to get somebody, who already has some experience, are better. And b) there's a kind of playful flavor in the process, which you usually do not have in closed environments. I do not want to say either way is superior. It's different and the difficulties are different. I don't think, it's a good idea to transfer the paradigm of either to the other. And of course either side can also learn from the other, but chances are the result of such learning process or evolution will not be identical to the other side you started to learn from in the beginning. The constraints are too different to end up with an identical result. I could go on talking for hours about this, but as I said in the beginning, I'm not even sure, what I have been asked for. For example the topic, how many interesting ways there are to make even the best developer have merely no output at all. Although I tend to like the view from the other side a bit more, the many ways you can get productive output from bad developers (or as I would put it, there are no unproductive employees, only employees used in wrong ways). Or the topic of team mindedness of developers, something my breed is probably not really the best in (which on the other hand is most likely the reason, they got developers in the first place...). Just to be not completely off topic: I see nothing wrong in a service pack focusing on bug fixing. And I'm a bit irritated, about certain views for example about the number of bugs in "UI change" release. 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...
    15 points
  5. I will be uploading the plugin here shortly. Here's already the "documentation" how to use it. No fancy interface, as it just gets the job done. Here's the plugin: Ringloop v02.zip
    15 points
  6. Useful overview. This guy has probably the best C4D modeling channel on Youtube right now.
    14 points
  7. Hi folks :) As you may know, we are now offering massive amount of training content on Cafe Youtube channel. Content is free and available to anyone. Please consider subscribing to our channel, this will help us run Cafe, keep trainings free, and enable us to create more quality content for you. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_MRjD4IdPtvYLo2dLC-POw Thank you!
    14 points
  8. Hi guys & girls, I want to share my latest animation, INFINITE PATTERNS: Watch in Vimeo · Watch in YouTube And here is the “Behind the Scenes” video with lot of screencaptures from Cinema 4D and Modo INFINITE PATTERNS - BEHIND THE SCENES I hope you enjoy it. Full screen and audio up, please 😉 And if you want to take a look to the CONCEPTS BEHIND INFINITE PATTERNS, it’s also available on my website I want to take this opportunity to show my gratitude to many of the regular users of these forums that have helped me solve issues & problems that have appeared here and there: Voytech, Cerbera, Jed, Bezo, Deck, 3DKiwi, Esmall, Hermenator, Hrvoje, Kalugin, C4DS… and many others. BIG THANKS, GUYS! 🙂
    14 points
  9. whats up guys, so gonna be putting up some free models over the next few weeks, some older ones and some more recent ones, most of these are characters i've either never used or have recently updated, going to take me awhile to clean up and sort through them, but i'll post up some new ones when i can. Hammy cute little cartoon hamster! hammy.c4d Donut Derick fun little character i made a while ago after watching sausage party :D derick donut.c4d Rory the Robin one of my oldest but still one of my favourite toon characters :D rory final 2.c4d Big Ugly Baby its a big ugly baby.. baby final.c4d Brain dead Banana This is what happens when you eat a bananas head! be warned! also comes with my plastic toy shaders ! Brain dead banana final.c4d Fat Brian Another really old model, i put quite a lot of time and detail into this one at the time, and he still holds up 3 years later fat Brian final.c4d watch display.psd
    14 points
  10. just finished my latest short, rendered with redshift. i hope you'll enjoy :)
    14 points
  11. (Probably my first original 3D article) This is a list of 10+1 useful yet overlooked or unappreciated features in C4D. 10) Scene Nodes Scene Nodes made their debut with R23 as an experimental feature drawing developer resources resulting R23 and the next couple of releases deprived from any major features. Due to its unusual for C4D UI, workflow and intuitiveness standards most users tried to stay away from it in a “let others figure it out first” response. None-the-less Scene Nodes are here to stay despite many people’s beliefs it would soon flop. Now many users do not hesitate to use Capsules but still quite few will spend time making their own, propagating the belief that SceneNodes maybe are not that powerful to produce what they expect or compete with other systems like Blender’s GeoNodes or Houdini. The Truth is that behind the scenes more and more people are working with SceneNodes and soon tutorials and new Capsules will be popping more frequently as witnessed with the last couple of releases. 9) Polygon Reduction This little generator is rarely used. Due to its name and function most users will rarely even considering using it because “Who wants to compress their geometry in a pile of ugly mess anyway, especially when Remesh is around to do it better”. Actually the Polygon Reduction can come in handy in abstract modeling, weird animations and my favorite: as an indirect uniform instance distribution. Polygon Reduction has a useful Preserve 3D Boundaries option. So when the Object Surface distribution mode of a Cloner fails to satisfy and you end up hitting the Seed value for half an hour to land a distribution where you don’t have intersecting instances, try to populate your surface uniformly use the Polygon Reduction as an instance in Vertex distribution. If the scale of your instances is not an issue throw a Push Apart Effector. 8 ) Sculpting Although not as powerful as ZBrush is, if you don’t want Forger because you don’t work on a tablet or don’t want a subscription to ZBrush, then this is your best alternative. It includes all the essentials for sculpting plus many advanced tools. It’s a quite complete tool case. Probably the most invaluable feature is to turn your sculpts to a Displacement Texture using the Bake Sculpt. Blender boasts its recent 3.5 release about its VDMs (Vector Displacement Maps) after ZBrush later this year made it possible to copy sculpted details as brushes and reuse them while C4D had it all along since R15. Plus the very useful and overlooked Projection tool. Which can also project tubed meshes ! 7) Camera Calibrator Tag This is another tool most users haven’t ever used myself included. It is used for Camera Mapping and provides many useful parameters and options for a quick camera placement from a reference image. It’s basically the equivalent of Motion Tracker but for still images. 6) Tension Tag The Tension Tag is placed in the Character Tag menu so most users that aren’t concerned with Character Rigging overlook it and don’t know it can also be used for modeling. Although you can achieve the same effects using the Displacer Deformer, the Tension Tag is more preferable for animations when the amount of deformation of a polygon from its initial state alters the Weight Map of the object allowing for local effects on regions of structural stress. Try doing this Reaction Diffusion without Fields! I think it’s faster too. And we have the Tension Tag to thank for this since R17 (I think). 5) Feather Object Right in the middle of this Top 10 list lies the Feather Object. I don’t just rarely see projects that use feathers. I’ve just never seen any feathered projects ever. And I’ve never used that object myself either! I might have seen a scene or two during MAXON’s demo showreels but you never know what percentage of those scenes are C4D. It’s a quite interesting generator with many parameters carefully designed to model any type of plume. It’s also a generator that doesn’t work on geometry like the Hair object but on guides. It essentially generates guides for guides. So if you want to turn any hairy model into a feathered model just put the Hair object under the Feather oblject! (also works for splines) 4) Instance Object Who uses Instance objects, right? Cloners create instances themselves by default why should I need an Instance object ? Maybe it’s used only when you turn a Cloner to an Editable Object. The truth is that the Instance Object can make your scenes a lot lighter when you don’t use a Cloner yet you do use a lot of copies of the same objects. Most users overlook it because the first thing that comes to mind when you need a lot of something is to clone it with the Cloner. Probably the Instance Object is what makes the Cloner work in stealth mode. I'll let the Master Shapiro show you one practical use of this object. 3) Smoothing Deformer Oh the Smoothing Deformer! With a bent tube as an icon (a flat iron R25+), it doesn’t really excite. Also the name doesn’t excite either. Usually users when they want to smooth things out they’ll use the Subdivision Surface generator (SDS). But what if you don’t want to increase the number of your polygons? Yes you guessed right. But wait, what are the Relax and Stretch modes? Stretch will try to maintain the overall shape and volume of your object. So any hard edges will be preserved while polygons try to be of homogenous area. The Relax is the most interesting one. People ask all the time how to make stills with realistic cloth wrinkles and will resort to cloth simulations or even sculpting… Look no further, this is your salvation! With just a few mindless brushstrokes with the Brush tool this deformer will blow your mind. 1) Plane under SDS. 2) Plane without SDS, just play with the Brush (Mesh->Transform Tools [M~C]), 3) SDS again 4) Just apply the deformer in Relax Mode. 2) MoSpline Turtle My favorite. MoSpline is not a rare tool on users arsenal. Who doesn’t like those sexy curves, and the icon is the most elegant in the whole app (talking about the old one). But the Turtle mode is just absent from any C4D project I’ve ever seen. It’s like it doesn’t exist… I guess people see those unintelligible symbols and delete the poor tree before a virus turns C4D into Houdini. The Turtle mode is highly unappreciated. Although it does have room for improvement in its capabilities, what someone can achieve with it is quite impressive and there is no other way to do it (except maybe coding it in Python). Anyone with affection for fractals appreciates this tool. Unfortunately most people love only the colored Mandelbrot type fractals. Line fractals deserve some love too! 1) XPresso Well, what did you expect? Although a lot of users do use XPresso, still very few are well knowledgeable with it. Most users relate XPresso only with Thinking Particles and this is the main reason most users resent XPresso, because it doesn’t deliver easy, fast and intuitive particle setups. There are also many shady corners in XPresso that are rarely used in scenes so most people don’t know how they could even be used. What for should someone use Dynamics nodes or Hair nodes ? Who knows ? Anyhow, XPresso is very powerful tool if you know how to use it, and it has an overlooked cousin feature the Driver Tag that developers made just for those who don’t like XPresso. Bonus Feature Pyroclusters The most underappreciated feature ever. Today it’s totally outdated because we have Pyro. But if you don’t have RedShift or any VDB compatible renderer what will you do? Just look at those clouds! 0 voxels, 0 GPU RAM needed. There are some preset shapes you can use like box and cylinder which I have no idea what practical purpose they serve but the Hemisphere can be used to see clouds from below. The downside is that you don’t have the flexibility Pyro offers because you need a particle setup, and sometimes particles are not enough so you have to use Thinking Particles which leads us back to XPresso. Other limitations follow like that they are not compatible with VDBs because they use apperceptive 3D shading algorithms instead of voxels, so you can’t export them to an other application and that PyroCluster does not work in conjunction with the depth-of-field functionality. Other than that, if you work natively, Pyroclusters can provide some comfort when you need some fluffy clouds or smoke. This is a special case of under appreciation because people do not appreciate the ingenuity used for this one-of-a-kind feature. I should be making a YT video 🤔
    13 points
  12. Martijn Korstanje aka Kingcoma is a well known 3D artist from Netherlands and our fellow member.Currently lives in Belgium and is active in industry for 20+ years. He worked at graphics and 3D companies in the past but for last 15 years he has his own company. Apart from addictive 3D passion he enjoys nature, traveling, photography, Lego, how stuff works and loves driving his car. We are very happy to present him and his fabulous work! Describe yourself in a single word: Downtoearth : ) How did you get into C4D and 3D in general? A couple of centuries ago, some new computers arrived at the school I was attending. Instantly loved working on it (I think we used to work with Photoshop 5) and a couple of years later I bought my first Mac. Spent almost every day practicing and discovering new things, for hours and hours. I was a pretty quick learner, so once I got the hang of Illustrator and Photoshop, I came across Swift3D, and started experimenting with that (very basic 3d). Because there were lots of limitations and I really wanted to make my drawings and characters come to life, I searched for other, a bit more advanced software. 3ds max was only available on windows, so that was out of the question, and Maya had a HUGE learning curve. And then I bumped into cinema4d. Love at first sight! I can’t count the evenings / nights / days I spent learning it and trying out new things, but it’s a massive amount of time. Which area interest you the most? Modelling techniques. I’ve always been a fan of nice and clean topology, and I really enjoy figuring out the best and nicest way to model something, whether hard surfaces or organic / characters. Other then that, I love doing animations. How things move, how slow or fast things move, how a character moves when he’s just standing there. What does the left hand do when the right hand’s busy doing something? Whenever I have character animation jobs, I always find myself standing up and acting a bit first, to see what a ‘natural’ movement is and what not. Really silly, but super helpful. What other apps are you using and what for? Mainly Illustrator, Photoshop and aftereffects. Illustrator for vector paths, creating logo’s or creating packaging or visuals that need to be put on 3d models. Photoshop for textures, compositing and retouch. Aftereffects for animations, putting together all different parts (rendersequence, sounds, music, texts, logos, etc) Which learning resources you used and would recommend? In the very beginning, there weren’t that much tutorials online, so you had to figure it out yourself or look for help on different forum (such as core4d, previously c4dcafe). Most tutorials were screenshots and written text. Later, more and more video tutorials came along, which are very easy to follow and you can actually see what’s going on and what you’re missing or doing wrong. Whenever I need to learn or check something nowadays, I usually check Core4D, Cineversity, tutorials from GreyScaleGorilla, or when I can’t find it on there, general google searches. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I don’t think talent is overrated. I think when you have talent, it comes a bit more natural and some things are a bit more ‘easy’. The thing with 3d is, it’s not just one thing. It’s a boatload of things. You can be talented in modelling, but really suck at texturing. Or you’re an average rigger, but you master simulations. Your drawing skills aren’t all that, but when that Xpresso or Python script editor open up, you’re on fire. Overall, I think everyone has something they're good at (or better at), and I think in 3d-land, you always have to work hard, talented or less talented. Your character work is stellar, what made you focus on them? Thanks! As a kid, I wanted to be a comicbook-artist, always drawing creatures and characters. Later it shifted to Illustrator, and after that, I really wanted to translate my thoughts and creativity of those characters in 3d, so I could animate them, look at them from all sides (which you can’t with 2d obviously) and put the expressions and humor in them I so clearly see in my head. I also admire Pixar / Dreamworks characters and animation, the details in them, the movements, the humor. When I watch animations, I don’t just watch them, I anaylise them (sometimes frame by frame) to try and learn new things or ways to improve myself. Your best advice for newcomers, tips or tricks to pick up? Have fun, don’t take it too seriously and practice, practice, practice. Give it your own twist, don’t just copy something blindly, and don’t stop learning new ways or techniques! Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I really hope I can continue doing what I’m doing now, making fun and friendly characters to brighten someones day or to put a smile on someones face. Thoughts on AI? It’s a bit frightening, hence the answer above.. I hope I can continue doing my job til I retire. I probably keep doing 3d even when I’m retired though. But yeah, as many other artists, I’m worried about this. AI as a tool to help the artist is great, but AI taking over would be lame. Lately there are more and more examples of AI that I receive in briefings, but they’re only used to show ‘something like this’ or an overall moodboard / look&feel. Fortunately, clients can be very tricky and very unclear as to what they want exactly or it’s the oposite: super-extremely specific and detailed. It’s part of my job to assist them in the whole process of creating the perfect character or visual for them, and advise them where I can. Top 3 wishes for C4d I don’t have any wishes actually, I’m very happy with all the tools available right now and I don’t have any problems making the things I want / have to make. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? A big thanks. It’s a marvelous piece of software which I love to work with and not a week goes by where I find something new which I haven’t seen before (or found out about) after all these years. I think it’s amazing people can create software like this, have all the options you can possibly imagine, making it possible for people like me to create art and have the ability to do what I love to do most. Message for Core4D? Also a HUGE thanks. For all the talks, insights, tips, tricks, questions, answers, tutorials, models, contests. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without the people, help and knowledge found on Core4D. If people want to contact you? They can, of course! I’m just an email, phonecall or whatsapp away https://www.kingcoma.com phone +32 479 43 61 82 email: info@kingcoma.com Thank you very much for your time and all the best in future endeavours!
    13 points
  13. You can abandon it if you like, and enjoy your time in Blender, but no need to shit-post Maxon with a load of unevidenced assertion on the way out. A lot of what you say is self-evidently untrue. You are IN one part of the Cinema community right now by being on this forum, and there is Cineversity in addition to Maxon's training channels, not to mention hundreds of thousands of tutorials on Youtube, with new ones being added every day. There are current podcasts, videocasts, and Siggraph presentations from present day and going back years. Geometry nodes are far from useless, and their potential is becoming more obvious with every release. There are literally THOUSANDS of plugins and scripts for Cinema. CBR
    13 points
  14. Yep, and they have every right to continue to do so if they feel Maxon continues to release weak updates ! All the opinions from all the people are valid (the ones doing hate for hate's sake tend to be transparently obvious, so exclude themselves !) and should be heard by the community and by Maxon ! Leaving any software is a big wrench if you use it every day, or have done for some time, so I think it's understandable that long term users drop a rant or 2, and a bit unfair to label them cowardly for not jumping ship earlier... I imagine most of these people love Cinema like I do, and really don't want to go, but voice their opinions inthe hope they may be heard if they say it enough, and who can blame them for that ?! CBR
    13 points
  15. Wow...and I thought I was snarky!!! Okay. Let's accept it for what it is: Mr. McGarvan is on the Cafe. He is posting. That is huge and unprecedented. Now, unless he lives in his own private world of cognitive dissonance reserved for the truly self-absorbed, then it is a fair bet that he is quite aware of the level of frustration, loss of trust, and overall growing anger against MAXON's new policies. ....but he still bravely posted on the forums. Now, if any of you think that the months of development it took to put their licensing scheme into place, the investment in servers to support it, etc is going to be chucked aside simply because the majority of us are angry and thinking about Blender more than we are about R21...well...let's be realistic. It is going to take more than 3 years of lackluster sales for it to finally sink in with Nemetshek (because this was all their idea after all) that maybe they just screwed up a pretty good thing. But by then it will be too late. You see, we all see it coming. We are more attuned to what licensing means to the users because we are all users. Corporate execs are not users. They are a bit out-of-touch. If Adobe could get away with it (after incurring an initial loss of sales in year 1, breaking even in year 2 and a return to profitability in year 3), then why can't MAXON do it? That is how they think. But the Nemetshek execs do not realize that Adobe has a suite of 20 products to offer for $53/month that is billed MONTHLY. MAXON has two products billed at almost twice that amount (if you include Redshift) billed ANNUALLY. Whatever you may think of Adobe subscription plan, you have to admit that is a lot of capability. Plus they also offer cloud storage. Regardless of the pace of development at Adobe after licensing, you at least have a number of options with their Creative Cloud that you can afford on a smaller financial bite of $53 a month rather than $720 a year. So can you really take your marketing cues from Adobe with that type of offering? I mean really? Plus, MAXON announced their licensing plan on the back of R21 which has less new features than R17. Not sure if Mr. McGarvan was aware of the anger around R17. R17 forced the much respected founder of The Cafe, Nigel Doyle, to leave C4D,...that is how angry we all were with R17. Nigel just had the personal integrity (and foresight) to actually do something about it. And now, here we are with R21 which is even less compelling in terms of new features than R17 and on top of that you add licensing. I mean WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Did the Oscar go to your head? Did you even bother to reach out to a cross section of your user base (both professional multi-seat houses AND individual users) to get some feedback? I mean, the simple fact that Prime MSA users can now get R21 Studio Perpetual license for $250 while Studio MSA users have to still pay $720 should have caused some recognition of the fact that loyal Studio users are getting the raw end of that deal. And please, don't tell me that the 20% discount on a two year subscription makes up for that because with that deal you loose your R21 perpetual license. I mean the execution of this whole licensing scheme was so poorly thought through that I have to imagine that there were some MAXON employee's who voiced concerns. If you didn't get feedback from your users...did you at least listen to your own employees??? So please, if you are going to be brave enough to take the heat on the Cafe, please step out of your own echo chamber and listen. Drag a few of those bean counting Nemetshek execs with you in the process. A few things for everyone to mull over if you really are going to listen: 1) Restore the perpetual license upgrade cost to $720. The disadvantage of perpetual licenses is that users have to wait a full year for updates and you want to the money all at once. The advantage is that we are not locked into a subscription fee to keep using the software. Seems like a fair trade. And don't lie to yourself and say "Paying $999 is what happens when we discontinued the MSA program". Tacking on another $279 is just unnecessarily punitive punishment for not going to subscriptions or just plain greedy. There is no other way for you to defend it so don't even try. That type of behavior is NOT in keeping with MAXON's past culture. 2) Charge monthly for a subscription rather than yearly. You can still have two plans: an annual commitment billed monthly at $60 and a monthly commitment billed at $89/month - but both are charged monthly. I mean what is the point of this whole licensing manager if your cannot monetize it with monthly billing? Miss a payment, the software shuts off and you have one month to get back on to the $60 plan monthly plan. If you miss that, you go to the monthly $89 plan until your original 12 month commitment plan is up for renewal. Advantage: users get interim updates and monthly billing. Again, fair trade for losing the right to use the program after the subscription payments stop. Both of these plans are far more attractive than what you are offering now. Why? Because they offer advantages to both MAXON AND the user. Right now, everything is weighted in MAXON's favor. Don't kid yourself to think that the users are not smart enough to see it....I mean why else would we be angry. But please do SOMETHING...ANYTHING that recognizes that the path you are on is not a successful one for MAXON. Again, we are here pleading with you because we do love the software but we fear for MAXON's future. Again, we all see it coming. You need to open your ears to what we are saying. Also...one more thing.....in case I still haven't gotten your attention yet and this post is just so much long winded chatter in your ears: Please point out to your bosses at Nemetshek that regardless of how precious and in love you are with your new core, that Blender 2.8 IS A SERIOUS THREAT THAT YOU CAN NOT IGNORE. They are getting some significant funding....they are capturing mind share with a loud chorus of approval for their new features that dwarfs whatever noise was made when C4D won an Oscar. Blender is production ready because Blender is used on productions (...so how many Netflix movies, series and shows are made with C4D?). Those new customers you are hoping via your "3D for the whole world" pitch are also looking at Blender. Don't kid yourself. They are looking at Blender 2.8. Blender is now more mainstream in its interface and if you are new to 3D then why would you choose a subscription program at $720 a year over a FREE program that has a pretty good interface, production proven character animation, modeling and sculpting tools, GPU rendering, a fast real time game rendering engine (Eevee) that gives tremendous view port performance, particles, compositing...the list goes on. As you deal with lackluster sales in 2019 and hope for a recovery in 2020, never forget that Blender gives us options. Please repeat that to yourself every day when you wake up: Blender gives us options! Is the hair standing up on the back of your neck yet? Still having fun? No? Well...then you better starting listening. Dave P.S. And let's not even think about the worst case scenario: Someone makes a motion graphics plugin for Blender....or Blender does its own mograph development. Blender has everything else....so why not? Honestly, C4D's future may not be as secure as you think.
    13 points
  16. Hi All, This is my first time at Siggraph in a long time! Last year I had just started at MAXON and it was too late to attend. I am extremely excited to be going back to Siggraph and with MAXON! It will be busy, but in between meetings I will be hanging at the stand. Please do come by and feel free to say hi. It is going to be a fun show! Cheers Dave
    13 points
  17. If I may be so bold. In my experience, a lot of universities running 3D courses seem quite myopically blind what the real world demands are of 3D artists. They look at what the most exciting things are for students, predominantly working in the movie industry and seem to blindly target that as if it will be getting their students a job at the end. The reality is that the vast majority of 3D jobs are for generalists, people who can model, clean up cad, texture, light, animate, render, post produce in AE + PS. For every person spending 2 years working on animating Groot's left nut, theres 100 more working at a less prestigious company creating every day artwork. Product renders, adverts, previz, theatre shows, projection shows, town planning, architects, packaging visualisers.... We recently went to some university recruitment days looking for new staff, and honestly the experience was quite miserable. Maybe 30 stands from employers looking for people and perhaps a couple hundred students handing out resumes and virtually everyone who we spoke to was unsuitable. More or less all of them had chosen one single specific niche, looking for a job at a studio. I need someone who can take a client's idea and run with it from start to finish. Instead all we found were 20 people that want to do nothing but rig characters, 20 texture painters, a dozen modellers and a random scattering of uv layout people, simulation engineers and TDs / scripters. Not one of those people could produce anything from start to finish.
    12 points
  18. Dear visitors and members By purchasing membership fee you become registered member with full forum rights with all associated services and benefits including posting, downloading, access to video trainings, plugins and removal of Google ads. Membership is 5 Eur / 3 Months and can be cancelled at any time. Do note that this helps us run the community and enables us to provide quality content, including premium video trainings. Membership purchase link https://www.core4d.com/ipb/store/product/38-membership-fee/ Regards Core Staff Note: Cancellation of membership is done through paypal account
    12 points
  19. You don't need a ceo to have a community, you just need people with a passion for something. The original 3 founders pretty much never posted or made themselves known, and yet places like postforum, cgtalk, c4dcafe and the german c4dtreff had nice communities there; people make communities, not ceos. The guy in charge was inconsequential. Now that Dave is here what has changed? You get a post once or twice a month and all it tends to contain is some tone deaf defence of a new shitty policy. Our studio has subbed. We didn't want to, saw no benefit and actively dislike them. But the writing was on the wall for several years watching anyone on a perpetual licence get screwed in every way imaginable, so we bought subscriptions due to having no other viable choice. Enjoying your MSA price? fuck you. Enjoying the cinversity plugins and tutorials? fuck you. Enjoying having the latest version? fuck you. Want a warning about R25 being the last perpetual so you can make an informed financial decision? Fuck you.
    12 points
  20. Just catching up with Core4D / C4D Cafe as I haven't visited in a while. Myself and Crew Reynolds started C4D cafe. We were both trueSpace users and both into animating. We could see that truespace's days were numbered so moved over to Cinema 4D. In fact it was about 10 years that we then later me on my own ran the cafe before I sold it and moved on. I'm not actually doing any 3D these days and only have Blender installed on my computer and that's just to view a couple of model files. People may recall that I was modelling Lego motorcycles in 3D. That's developed to actually modelling them for real. I currently have about 55 Lego Technic motorcycles and now design my own. I exhibit them at Lego shows here in New Zealand. Getting back to the topic. I would be fine paying a small contribution to keep this place going. I know I had to dig into my own wallet a few times to pay the bills. Running and maintaining a forum on its own server isn't cheap. Cheers Nigel / 3DKiwi
    12 points
  21. R20: Gave us node materials, fields, volumes and the CAD importer, 9/10 R21: Cheap versions removed, Subscriptions added. new extrude bevels and Windows 4k support, 3/10 R22: Lots of smaller bits and general improvements, 5/10 R23: Nodes, but nobody uses them, USD, but nobody uses it, Magic bullet but poorly implemented, 2/10 R24: Online content browser, placement tools, currently useless scene browser, 3/10 R25: So bad, they didn't even give it it's own press release, 1/10 R26: X implemented, X overhauled, X overhauled, dozens of new X tools, X also implemented, 9/10 You can see why so many perpetual owners all stopped at R20. Everything since then has been a bit of an anti climax. Useful bits, but nothing that's going to change your life. R20 was nice for its 4k support, but the job is only 80% finished, too many elements are still low res. You can add bonus points if you happen to need USD support or GLtf export, but they're not complete enough implementations imho. "We don't talk about R25, no no no..."
    12 points
  22. I used C4D to create a fan film based off the game 'Subnautica' - Super fun project that took about 2 years to finish. Rendered with Arnold/Redshift
    12 points
  23. Just a quick point of view from me, because the topic recently came up: I’m one of those Blender converts still hanging around here being angry at Maxon and McGravran. The reason is not that I’m not happy with Blender. Blender is great since v2.80. But it’s by no means perfect. Cinema 4D does some things exceptionally well, like the object manager and interface in general. For anyone really invested in this, it’s not so easy to just leave. As several others in this thread said, learning Cinema 4D was a massive, decade long investment of money and time. I have several perpetual versions up until R21 still around and still being used for older customer projects. Why not use them? They did cost real money. I was a longtime MSA customer. I was really attached to the spirit of Maxon. It is difficult to get the rug pulled from under you by a company one relied on for almost decades. It feels abusive to have paid the MSA for years for the most expensive version and then being treated like shit unless converted to a subscription. And to be honest: It’s a little heartbreaking seeing the software I learned CGI on being neglected for many many years in the productive parts – and on the other hand resources are put in areas that are clearly there to push people even harder to subscriptions (Content Library, Online Activation etc.). The promise that finally all the neglected things will get updated is now many years old. The new core was promised years ago. Everybody has a different breakpoint where one doesn’t believe these promises anymore. Some people in this thread still believe R27 will finally be it. I wonder when they will give up… The thing is: yeah, converting to Blender was not easy and is still an ongoing thing. Some things are better, some worse. Not everything is rosy over there. But even not paying another Euro to Maxon, I’m still invested in this program. R21 will occasionally be opened in the coming years. The process of learning a different program is not done over two weekends. No matter if it is Houdini, Maya or Blender. I’m just finishing first customer projects in Blender after ~1 year of learning. I will definitely be back here when S26/R27 comes around, still hoping the cheerful, customer centric spirit in Maxon is still there deeply hidden within the company they have become; and some of their hostile moves will be reversed—or the new core will finally pay off. Maybe this day i will buy another perpetual. But until then it’s just prudent and healthy to seriously look at other solutions. R21 will not forever keep working (and it’s slow compared to more modern programs). But for some over here this just can’t be a clear cut, never looking back. It’s sad. I’m a little sad. Yes, it’s just another company, just another software in a sea of great CGI programs. But Maxon/C4D were different, long ago. The anger at McGravran is clearly grounded in all the bad changes that either directly were his cause or coincide with his taking duty where he may or may not be to blame (endless core rewrite) I tend to the later; I think the core rewrite is just taking many years longer than they anticipated. But the hostile business changes for paying longtime customers are to put at his feet.
    12 points
  24. With the growing of a software the dependencies inside grow, too. And normally not linear but square. That slows down development. With the growing of the company the regulations grow and the amount of people that have some say in the development, too. in a small company the CTO and the developer decide. In a big one there are also project owner, project manager, UI depatement, quality control, and more involved. And this also lets the development explode. I have the impression, that maxon tries to tackle at least the technical side with the new core, a system, that should be (in my understanding) much more flexible than the old one. I really would be fine with this even though the development of new features is slow right now. But I don't like the business attitude of the new maxon. they are feature wise just not in the position to force their customers. They instead should try to produce good will. They also should give it away for free to anybody who wants to learn without the need to be student and the size of the university and all this. That is the only way to stay relevant. The situation has changed in the last two years. I see huge industry companies that switch to blender and they expect their agencies to build up blender know how. Autodesk tries to fight this development with indi licenses. If this is the right way I don't know, but the way maxon is acting in a almost arrogant way definitely not the solution. Adobe can do this because of its size and the market at the time they switched to subscription, but they also are getting a problem with Affinity and Black magic. The argument that subscription is needed because of the maturenes of the product..... well that might be true for a photoshop, but as long as we can not generate weather, clouds, fog, rain, buildings, streets, and so on parametrically with some sliders there is so much room for development (look at Unreal) the possibilities for development are still endless. So that can't be a reason for a 3D App. And the Game engines are also an other challenge. My impression is, that the commercial 3D software packages like C4D, Maya, 3DS really have a small time window to adept to not get chrushed between blender and the game engines. I as a 3D Artist in C4D already feel the changes. In the 20 Years I am doing this the changes where never so obvious fast and radical. I really hope, that maxon finds a adequate solution. I have the impression, that it needs bold and creative solutions now. subscription on its own will not save them in the long run.
    12 points
  25. Hi folks :) In this topic I decided to share many of my files for you to examine. All of these were small setups, rigs, contraptions, prototypes and fun projects that I made over the years for clients or for myself. There is a lot of them but I will post them in small groups over time in order to avoid overload :P Feel free to use techniques and whatever you learn from them to your advantage. Each file will be enumerated and with hint of what is used in the scene in parenthesis. Files will vary from simple to quite advanced setups, in no particular order Have fun! 01_Airplane_route(MG+constrains).c4d 02_Atom_array_attractor(MG+XP).c4d 03_Ballon_procedural_anim(CA+Cmotion).c4d 04_Barb_wire(MG).c4d 05_Beast_in_box(CA+Cmotion).c4d 06_Box_fill(Dyn).c4d 07_Burning_match(MG+XP).c4d 08_Butterfly(CA+Cmotion).c4d 09_Cell_tissue_penetration(MG).c4d 10_Build_up(MG).c4d
    12 points
  26. Here's one of hopefully many. Thanks to @ABMotion who suggested this sort of thing might be worth doing... well now we're doing it :) This time we're looking at the oft-overlooked Spin Edge. Redirect your polyflow at will ! CBR
    12 points
  27. Here's Part 2, in which we make the base using a nice easy lathe... If this post gets more than 5 likes I will make Part 3 - the difficult scroll top ! ;) CBR
    12 points
  28. I've been debating posting this for a week or so and this topic has probably been beaten to death before but what is so hard about saying thank you when you post a question and people go out of their way to respond and help you? I'm not asking for a long love letter to express your gratitude or anything, just a quick "TY that helps", something to let me know my effort wasn't in vain. hell, I would not mind "you idea was a POS", something, anything, just reply with something to acknowledge my/our effort. ok, rant is done
    12 points
  29. Hello, The UV projections occupied my mind for quite a while, I made some tools to unwrap them, to make the edition easily, add features to BP UV Edit... But the problem was still the same, the UV edition is still boring to do and quite often we prefere to use the common automatic projections when it's possible. I was wondering, could we simply make other kind of projections to fit more shapes ? So I came up with a new plugin, the UV Projector ! It works like a deformer object and only edit the UVW property, it have some interesting new UV projections with the advantage to not have to make the object editable ! Here is some new projections : Rhombicuboctahedral : It's like a cubic projection with the 45° edges. Cylinder with deformations : Like the classic cylinder, with deformations to adjust the shapes. Half-cylinder : Some times you want to have only one side round and the other side plane. Y shape : It's maybe still a bit wobbly to setup but it gives a nice start. The last is I think the most interesting, it's a plane shape with editing points : Simply uset he point mode to move the surfaces points and adjust them to your object, you can literraly wrap it around your object ! All the features and download here : https://code.vonc.fr/projecteur-uv The free version is limited to 1000 polygons count with all the features so you can still enjoy it. The plugin is a part of the Vonc Suite that contains others tools. If you have other projections shapes ideas don't hesitate !
    11 points
  30. Here's a fun example for what you can do with Scene Nodes: You can implement even a game! I added comments to the node graph, I hope that helps if you are interested in the example. Here's the C4D file, it requires 2023.1: tetris.c4d tetris.mp4 To play the game, you have to press the usual play button in Cinema, and then either use the arrows for the Move/Rotate/Drop user data of the Keyboard Handler to control the game or install these Python scripts and assign shortcuts to them with the script manager. tetris_scripts.zip For a new round you have to reload the scene.
    11 points
  31. More than just a service pack, we got a few very cool things added this time round... New Relax Mode in Brush and Magnet tools Cloth and Rope now work with Fields / Field Forces Front and Back Colliders for new sim system New HDRIs New RS materials New grunge maps collection Improved Node editor Geometry Curvature now available to fields. Volume builder improvements My favourite is the new relax mode of Brush and Magnet tools allowing us to smooth, and regularize topology without losing surface curvature. Here's Chris Schmidt explaining the rest of it, with his usual degree of thoroughness and detail... So, lots to enjoy there, as well as lots of bugfixes and smaller QoL changes. CBR
    11 points
  32. I did not lock it for no reason at all, nor in response to any one post. It started off toxic, and remained largely that way, despite some reasonable points being made amongst the maelstrom. Whilst not exactly an enjoyable read, personally I found it interesting. But then it became apparent that it was something of a crap-magnet for anyone who just wanted to generally bad-mouth Maxon, reasoned or not, there was a sort of undercurrent of recrudescent anger, it was all getting very tired, circular and repetitive, and I didn't think much new or constructive was going on, so it seemed to me to have reached its natural conclusion. If I was censoring stuff I would have deleted it shortly after it started or would be hiding it now. We DID allow the conversation to continue for at least a month - almost 2 ! Only when it was rattling on and on did I feel the need to lock it in the hope we could all move on and talk about literally anything else ! I am aware some people will appreciate that and others won't but we can't please all the people all the time hey ? CBR
    11 points
  33. Finally I was able to spend a little time with S26. Here's my unstructured collection of very early impressions. Everything compared to S24, since I slept over R25 🙂 Quicker Startup S26 is a lot quicker to start than S24. Could be plugin-related, nonetheless: cool. New theme It's okay-ish. I took only 2 hours to get used to it. I get the style they are going for, but I found the old Icons hat better legibility and better color separation. Renderview still wastes a whole bar of empty space when docked. Overall: = Z-Remesher This is so friggin' cool. The algorithm is fantastic, and it can be used in a procedural way, like Chris showed in his video. I see so many situations where this allows for faster & cleaner workflow Overall: ++ Modelling-Tools I'm no big modeller, but I swear, there's a new tool for every problem I once had and could only solve by pain 😄 I especially like: There's not a ton of cryptic options per tool, they work pretty much as expected. Very artist-friendly. Overall: ++ Task-Manager Very nice. I docked the full thing in my layout to always see what's going on. There's room for a lot more stuff though that could be displayed here. Sadly, it doesn't solve the problem where you could still lock up C4D accidentally by input mistake ( like, 1000 clones of something heavy). I hope, one day one of my cores will be reserved just to "Esc out" of a lock-situation. Overall: + (but with looots of headroom) Simulation I only played around with a basic cloth sim. The settings are much more managable and intuitive. Performance is ok, but as soon as you move to "Marvelous"-territory, resolution-wise, you basically get the same performance as Marvelous (like 1 fps for something really dense). Interaction with all the known tools like wind, etc. is very nice. I do have some major technical problems with the simulation, though: I get the dreaded 'viewport-freeze' quite often, Could be an nvidia-driver-Problem. Sidenote: In the light of the new, particle-based and GPU-assisted Unified simulation, it's no wonder Maxon doesn't buy Insydium. Of course they have a lot of catch-up to do, but the foundation of the new sim framework feels much more clean and solid. Overall: ? (More testing needed) Reshift integration RS Objects: This was so confusing at first 😄 But it's actually quite sensible: Change to RS in the render settings, and the RS stuff replaces the regular one. It took me a while to find the RS Volume object for example, but of course it's in the Volume menu now, where it belongs. Node materials: This is quite a change from the shadergraph, but I think I like the Nodes a lot more. No more fiddling connections! Node Previews! And the best of all: A proper viewport preview! The last one makes a much bigger difference than I anticipated. Very cool 🙂 Overall: ++ Redshift XPU That got me so excited. Sadly, with my test scenes, I get around the same rendertime as with GPU only. I'm not even sure it uses the CPU at all, as I can't start a CPU-only render with Optix Denoiser enabled. This was the biggest surprise in the release btw, after the announcement I thought: Ya, ok, this will take 3+ years. Overall: = (I hope they can turn it into a XPU performance-plus in the future) Redshift 3.5 I like the new Standard Material a lot! Way easier to quickly set up a good material, but with all the options still there. Lot of quality improvements in there! RT is still unusable on my machine, I wish they left that a year longer in development. Four decimals precision! (Actually a C4D-feature) This is literally a small change, but what a pain-point that was in Redshift! Yay 😄 The solid viewport representation is the biggest thing for me, personally. Everything feels much more coherent now! Overall: ++ Maxon One I don't have Maxon One (only C4D+RS), but I feel the value of the big package really improves. I loathe zBrushs UI/UX, but it's so powerful. One day, I'll just have to bite the bullet and learn that thing. Big plus included without price hike. Nice! VFX Real Lens Flares looks really good! There's a real lack for a Hi-End-Plugin like this one. Overall: + (getting tempted to upgrade 😄 ) Quirks Redshift Volume objects still have a much too big point size in the viewport The Asset Browser/Content-Library-Move still stings hard. At least performance got better. That's that. Looking forward to hear from your experiences!
    11 points
  34. Maybe we could get a little less personal and snarky here on all sides? I really like these threads discussing all the pros and cons of new releases. Especially those parts, where people point out small details I had not discovered, yet. And it's surely an integral part of such threads to also provide an opinion on future implications of the development, business decisions and strategic ways. But can we not maybe agree on, that all these topics are neither black or white and almost none of us has any detailed understanding of what lead to certain decisions inside a company? Feel free to assume. Even be sarcastic about it. But please, can we leave the aggressive notion out of this discussion? Can we please acknowledge, that everybody has a right to have an opinion and that this opinion does no harm to anybody else? It may be right or wrong in an individual point of view and this may well be discussed. But, please, in a civil way without any aggression or personal insults. At least for me ignoring these most basic rules of human social behavior eradicates the fun out of these threads completely. And I'd assume you put your opinions here, in order to have them read by others, don't you? Not only are you reducing the chances of your posts being read, but I also have yet to witness an aggressive behavior convincing the counterpart.
    11 points
  35. I already expressed my great enthusiasm for the next release (based on Mat's insight here). Nonetheless, I hope for some specifics 😄 Best Redshift Integration of all DCCs It's the same roof, so C4D should have a premium RS integretion. Materials in the viewport. New node system with all functionality. Material previews rendering with IPR. OCIO-aware Picture Manager. A one-click "Render beauty + AOVs and export everything to After Effects and rebuild there automatically". Add RS Materials to the Content-Library-Assets. Make RS the standard renderer. Remove the UI deadspace in the IPR. Interactive help like in C4D. Redshift RT is still very early und very unstable, but it should become C4D's viewport, some day. Stability This is aimed at C4D, Redshift and mainly nVidia. A "wrong" nVdidia-Driver-Version can cause troubles without end. How to know the best driver for your config? Forum exchange, try and error. Luckily, there are some really stable driver+software-combinations everytime I had to jump these hoops, but the journey is *SO* painful. Bugs This was the only new feature of R25 😄 Come on now, really Maxon, up your QA-game! Also, there should be *much* longer bugfixing-support for owners of a perpetual license. Release cycle Honestly, I'd rather have only 1 big update per year. Less hassle updating stuff, finding working drivers etc. Maybe more time for QA on your side? So far, I can't see any benefit of the biannual release cycle, only that it apparantly forced you to do the fubar R25-release, needlessly so. Performance This is a broad field. I don't want to dive into details here, I want to express a broad wish. Currently, we are confined to rather small/medium scenes. 2 Characters, a landscape tile, some decoration and boom, you're already operating at the edge of C4D's performance envelope. Very quickly, work becomes about managing ressources, not making artistic decisions. And trying to hide the seams of the performance envelope all the time 😕 I wish we had some kind of streaming engine for geo. A unified simulation system. A unified cache system. A clear feedback system, that shows me what is computationally expensive and what isn't. I don't know, if the "core rewrite" adresses any of that, I just want to feel some realtime-magic in C4D. zBrush It has by far the best scultping "feel" of any app I tried. It's a mindblowingly good app, as demonstrated again and again by zBrush-artists. But, for the love of all UX/UI saints, zBrush sorely needs a complete UX/UI overhaul. That's one of Maxons strengths. zBrush-Artists defend the current UI, but Im quite sure that is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe offer an "Easy Mode" alternative, here. A very strong "GoZ"-implementation is also obligatory here. My last point is not software related, but regarding communication. Once, an attempt has been made by Maxon towards more transparency. Anyone remember the three-and-a-half blog posts? 😄 Ok, now do that again, but thoroughly. Just do it like the Redshift team. Have a nice, active forum with Premium sections for paying customers. Talk with us about problems. Listen to our wishes, in a way that we know we are heard. Share at least a broad roadmap for the next releases. This is by far the biggest problem with Maxon and C4D. You guys are almost completely opaque, and that's a severely outdated mindset for a company that relies on the thriving and the goodwill of a community of communicators. And communicators we are, visual, textual, social. Talk to us, please! 🙂
    11 points
  36. I am doing a Black Friday deal. All my free tutorials are 100% off... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkWGnSaQR_XBMe3Yx4WHJ5Q
    11 points
  37. Only commenting on the things I used. Scene nodes look promising (haven't tested), but more importantly again show a strong vision for the future. I also comment on the general outlook, MyMaxon and the pricing on the bottom. Feedback on new UV workflow: It is definitely a huge step forwards but it seems like in beta still. There are many bugs and broken tools right now. This includes S22 but in general there is still a clunkyness that could be easily solved, mostly by fixing the broken not working selections. The new S22 auto unwrapper is mind blowing in some areas as it does advanced things I would have only done by hand on many occasions and no software can repeat, not even rizom but sadly inconsistent, still very useful. Very impressed by that one, but other areas can still be questionable. I actually have forgot to test multi UV but I assume it just works as expected. Broken / Not working Tools: Some tools straight up do not work in the UV space and make it feel like a beta still or plain buggy. Just nothing happens or they glitch out. The colleagues were also surprised. - Fill selection does not work (no way to select an entire UV island? That is very basic and required - it creates a buggy hover selection and makes the UV view appear frozen) Edit: Double click does fill the UV island - this is convenient but not consistent and I didn't get it even after trying all my possible tools. Fill should definitely work. - Outline Selection does not work (not much to see in the gif it just dosnt do anything) - Live selection scaling the selection size Freezes the UV view for the time you try to drag the size with the typical command - UV Magnet (very cool tool btw) does the same freezing - probably more tools do it (Am I being stupid or is there no way to select an UV island?) Edit: Double click does it - this is not consistent but is convenient. Why not for normal non UV selections as well? - Path selection does now work (Broken with S22, now fixed!) (the only good way to unwrap messy geometries, Rocks or similar well) That was very needed, makes certain things crazy faster. We desperately need a function to get an edge selection back from the UV cuts we made. There is no proper way to get this selection and if you want to split your Phong properly based on UV split as it is required for widespread highpoly-lowpoly baking workflows, you have to make all your cuts in one go, keep shift pressed all the time and save the selections which is extremely clunky and inconvenient. Please add a function to select by UV islands borders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also from the perspective of years back, it took me literal years to understand that UV mapping in cinema is supposed to work by making cut selections across the mesh and then pressing the Unwrap button. It is easy but nothing hints you on it. Its not an button, its not an action, its a workflow that is never implied or mentioned. It is so simple but I just understood that like 6 months ago after 10 years of Cinema usage. Maybe that me but maybe that is also part of why it has a bad reputation. The UV layout feels very cramped at first glance. The new center bar is good but the rest is overflowing. Having UV settings hidden in view settings is also something I would have never found if not seeing the video. Just add a button to the new UV palette for convenience leading to this. The packers could work better, this will still be worth to export and repack in some other tool I would say. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Plugins Many Plugins no longer working is a bummer but thats out of hands I understand This can however be a very harsh blow to an already dwindling plugin community (more towards that below) Remesher We tried the new Remesher today and I have to say that this is absolutely excellent. I tried a popular plugin mentioned in the thread before but the C4D remesher is definitely better and just works as you expect. Very clean and professional. Delta Mush Delta mush working on varied Deformers just like that was a positive surprise. Ill probably use it to add some quality to damaged objects that need deformation. Deformer Polish The new handles are great to see, please also add it to the Array modifier, it can be extremely disorienting. Dragging Handles for Spline objects would also be very needed. I need unending spline rectangles for rounded rectangle models with is just a basic primitive shape that should exist imo. Also please for a nice parametric workflow you aim for, allow us to Disable and enable Top and Bottom caps of cylinders individually, there are unending screws which have unnecessary hidden caps that need to be manually converted and optimized just to get rid of one bottom cap, otherwise it could just stay primitive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscription / MyMaxon As a company owner I am very pleased with the new MAXON service. At first I hated the idea of online login and the google login bugged out. But now I really love the way the Seats are handled, this is the absolute best I've seen. For Photoshop I had to create a dozen Adobe accounts. Autodesk Urgh. Forgot to log out? No problem. Its just a click. I can just go home, kick my work PC out, and keep working. You see all your licenses and who uses them on startup. Give the environment artist from the other team a license to just get some 30m volume builder action, kick the other guy out who is on a break and free him up a seat. Just want to show some other guy some very basics so he may learn C4D down the road, just get a free seat for 10minutes. Just log in with one single account and it all works. That's just the greatest service and the best handling of seats and licenses I've seen and that must really be highlighted. Price, Plugins & Community The 60 Euro per month are not cheap but as company thats not a big deal. In the end the efficient usage of seats is also a value proposition going into the price of the subscription. Id say with 5 seats I would gain more the value of 6.5-7 as a company. However, outside of company usage, I really have to say that 60 a month would not feel great if they came out of my pockets. But much more importantly, I strongly feel that the high barrier of entry (its not 100 for 1 month, its the commitment towards continuous payment of these 60 you have to set yourself to) is really limiting the reach of the software. C4D right now is in a bubble and mostly used in one specific field. Things which are the bread and butter of other 3D softwares, baking highpolies down for high quality 3D assets, texturing with proper unique UVs and painting based on baked maps in Substance painter or such, that is all basically nonexistant in Cinema circles which is just mind boggling as this is the core to industry standard 3d assets of any kind. There is a huge untapped crowd of the most essential 3D modellers / asset producers (Hard surface, environment art, character art). If you go to a 3D modeling community like polycount, nobody uses Cinema. Id estimate 3%. MAXON really needs to be careful with gating the community, give means for hobbyists and solo developers to be happy with the purchase and enter the ecosystem, and start reaching new grounds especially with Realtime and Games. There needs to be an affordable indie license with acceptable limits that make you really want to get the full version but not require it entirely. Remember where your users come from in the end, Teenagers like me who started using it with a crack or at school and then work on minimum cash then own a company later or do freelance. If you don't offer Teenagers, Students, 2 man indie developers, movie makers, hobbyists, freelancers on low money, or living in east europe / asia - a way into the ecosystem the future users will logically die out. Plugin development is what is driving many of these other softwares as well. Blender lives based on plugins and game engines make most of their money from plugin stores. The plugin community is dying and S23 could be the killing blow with C++ recompile and Python 3 breaking many things. Plugin devs also always need the latest versions to fix their plugins. Be the first and implement a plugin & script store on your own website. Give creators the reach, more power to make money, and you take a modest share (+- 1/7th) knowing this is overwhelmingly to your benefit either way (and you want to not make people think its worth setting up their own site to cirvumvent a harsh 30% cut or so) - and give out a piece of the revshare back as discount on C4D versions so plugin makers can cheaply get the new versions to update their plugins and also buy more new versions. Cryengine made the big mistake of not keeping up with asset stores when they could and have been entirely crippled and left behind. Gamedev lives by plugin stores just like Blender. Unity makes way more money with the Asset store than with their actual engine licenses for sure. Many plugins for varied softwares are or were system sellers at varied points. This is low hanging fruit. Start with a contest, give the best creators a bonus, incentives, promotion. Be smart about this, don't miss the window. Outlook A couple years back I would have said I bet on the wrong horse but imo MAXON does make slower advancements in the weak areas but if they do things they are usually very methodical / specific in one area and well executed and on a deeper technical level that you would unlikely see implemented by other 3D apps (which do seem to often scramble together random but cool features). In gamedev I see that a strong foundation is extremely valuable and C4D is the only software I used from the big ones (aside of Houdini, maybe modo?) that feels like its not hacked together and it will get harder and harder for these others to not stagnate. While I don't know, I have a strong feeling C4D was set up in a much more modern component way back in the beginning days compared to the competition, (the UI components hint towards it) to mostly strong contrast, and seeing things such fields implemented throughout the project is something that would just never happen without huge work effort in other patchwork environments. Fields, Volume Builder, the Modeling Core Rework, Neutron are very big elements that do show a strong vision and hint towards a extendable and healthy codebase and I am more and more happy to use C4D each iteration and it feels like the critical weaknesses are clearly diminishing, while a lot of strong advantages have opened in the last years that clearly overshadow certain issues (even if large roadblocks), at least for my usage cases. It has shifted from the constant feeling of "Ah damn, in 3DS you could have done this" towards more "Hey look what convenient or crazy stuff I can setup here" so I am very positive of the future of the tool, but I can't say the same for the community and userbase which in the end does drive everything, that depends on management not engineering.
    11 points
  38. An open letter to MAXON CEO David McGavran David, I'm afraid we need to talk. I've came to Cinema 4D on r12. My first 3d program was 3ds Max, but a few years using it I felt it's stuck on evolution and I decided to move. Since then, Cinema 4D is my trusty and beloved home, the best piece of software I've got on my computer, the thing I rely on, my leaving and career relies on. I trusted it not only because of the features and quality it's got, but because the MAXON team's vision of the future, the attention they have to their work and management relation to community formed around. I was one of them when C4D was known as "not serious" amongst many 3d artists, I'm one of them now when it's (still) rocking 3d world. In recent years since MAXON announced the shift to a new core architecture a was waiting passionately to see it. Finally we stepped through the Rubicon and an unprecedented power uncovered to our vision, promising so many new things to expect! And now... Now it starts to seem like all that glory made by devs is going to crumble under a pressure of new freaking management approach. I know where you've came from, Dave. But the things Adobe did to their policy is the reason we leave, run away from them and try to substitute their products as much as possible as it's dangerous to rely on them nowadays. And the former MAXON relation to customer and the whole community on the other side are the reasons we adored this company and growingly loved Cinema 4D. I am SHOCKED to see these precursors of some very ugly changes to MAXON policy in recent time, this weak and humble evolvement of program in the last release, exactly in the such important point of it's history, when it shifts to top league, promising such a great functionality I'm afraid we would not see already. You could call me "headlong" for saying all of this, but nope - I saw such thing already (Canon, Apple, Adobe, Autodesk) and I have a distinct feeling of what's going on and what's coming next. Get me right, it's not personal (yet), you may be awesome in person, but where you start to lead us to - ISN'T WHERE WE WANT TO GO. And THERE IS a choice, and despite it would be a harsh shift like leaving a childhood home, we will shift if you keep it going. Not tomorrow, not in a year, but we will. Remember the death of "immortal" 3ds Max, you know what I'm talking about. I feel worrying for the YEARS AND YEARS of my hard work learning and mastering Cinema 4D. I feel worried for my entire career I relied on Cinema 4D. I feel the move you're taking is DISHONEST to us, the whole community, about like XSI murder by Autodesk felt. I, personally, considered subscription option, despite it's pretty pricey (but It's your right to set pricing, ok). But seeing the movement of recent time I opted not to. No because the release is weak for a major number, no - because I don't want to support the movement in that direction. I don't want MAXON to go there. You're clearly taking the Adobe route. They told us the same - "constant updates with no need to wait untill release will let us push more cutting-edge features right on your table, increasing development pace will push the boundaries of your possiblilities and creativivivity way beyond today's standards" and so on and so on. What did this spaghetti on our ears turned into? You know by yourself - sluggish, buggy, unreliable software, from release to release bringing NOTHING we needed, nothing we were asking for DECADES (as folders in AE timeline for instance). For the price many times more adequate, growing constantly with no reason. Subscription? This isn't the key. I'm glad it exists, despite it's pricey I think, but it's on your side. It's good there is an option, this isn't a problem. The problem is the whole approach you try to take. "The whole Cinema4D experience is moving into the modern online world" as MRalph said. Let's face it, "online" is simply lidicrous here. "Online" - is a steel wire you tie us to yourself. Adobe did so, and as a result - constant stream of money made them not a software developers, but rather a typical rentier. That is what you try to do to OUR world, right? Recently I wrote an extensive list of improvements for C4D, spending my working time and thoughts to have a chance to make it better. Because I love it and wish to it to evolve. And I was sure if I mail it to MAXON, I have a chance to be heard, as our goal is the same. Now I feel like soon there would be no one to listen to us. Not even considering that, just like Adobe does. Isn't it a right time to stop and take a step backwards, Dave?
    11 points
  39. First time post on a forum but felt the need to. Happy user since R10 Studio with investment in most plug-ins for the software. (Over $20,000 NZ Dollars spent in that time.) Just a hobbyist with no income earned. (My choice). Was excited and looking forward to the "exciting / industry- changing news , and got up at 4.15 AM on a cold mid-winter morning to see that MAXON had lost its heart and soul and gone done the road of so many other corporates,only interested in money. The presentation was amateurish ..(didnt even start on time )..... and it didnt get better for those of us with a long term loyalty / commitment to C4D. Reluctantly spent $1200 renewing my MSA two weeks ago, thinking i would at least get a subscription to Cineversity. (but sadly the goalposts were shifted there as well ). The whole "big - announcement "thing has been deceitful, and has treated long term loyalty with contempt. Havent felt so deflated since Greyscale Gorilla tried to charge me again for software i had already bought and owned. Have spent two days in a daze trying to work out what it all means to me. The answer is, that any way i look at it i lose.The only winners are the lower participants on the eco-system and possibly new users ( which will only dumb down the fraternity). It has been a public -relations disaster from my point of view. Surely if you are going to take away with one hand , you give something back with the other hand to soften the blow ? It would have cost them nothing to offer Redshift at a discount to long-term loyal users. Tried hard to find something positive , as i have spent far too much time digesting all this. Have loved the journey up until a couple of days ago. Sadly MAXON has depreciated greatly in my estimation. I feel as if i have been "blind-sided" .... reluctantly, it may put me out of the game.
    11 points
  40. My beautiful wife works as a social worker at the juvenile court, and she uses the signs of safety-tool: the three houses. These three houses are a great way to talk to children about the good things in their lives, their worries and the dreams they have for the future. She made an example sketch for me, so I had a very good idea of what she wanted. I made a new sketch (below) because she really likes the old skool pencil-on-paper style. I thought it would be cool to make a 3d version of the house, so here it is!
    11 points
  41. For the past years I have been working on this solo project during my spare time. It took me way too long, because in between i lost interest, had paid jobs, scrutinized the story, scrutinized the characters, scrutinized my lifechoices etc. But eventually i was compelled to finish this short film because i had invested too much time to just drop this project. So here, I'd like to present you: SUNDAY, a story about a lonely penguin's quest for refreshment on a hot and sunny southpole sunday.
    11 points
  42. Lots of ways to go about that, but I think this is probably the fastest... 1. Top view, poly pen in Quad Strip Mode, and draw yourself a network of polygons, like so... 2. Extrude that (with caps), and delete the end caps to get your tunnel ends... 3. Smooth Subdivide that to Level 4 or 5, then use a displacer deformer (make it a child of the object), driven by Luka noise to make it look rocky... It might look like a giant pretzel from the outside, but from inside we're approaching something cave-like... Don't forget to select all polys and Reverse your Normals at this point... You can add further displacements (in a group with the SDS Object) at smaller scales, and use that additional SDS to increase polycount much higher. Here I'm at a combined Subdivision to Level 7, and I've got Luka at 600% driving the bigger detail, and Electric Noise, 50%, stretched 500% on V for finer detail.... Lastly, you can handle smaller detail still with normal or bump maps in the material... talking of which, if you are using photo-based textures you want a nice Triplanar mapping setup to texture this properly, but you can do it equally well with just layered procedural noises... Lastly I should mention some techniques for making it look 'big'. These might include... Building in small holes to the tunnel roof to let beams of sunlight in, and using a plane in an Atom Array in front of your sunlight to further break it into godrays.. Adding some Physical Sky, not for its weather, but for its atmospherics haze... Using small area lights, with small illumination falloffs Park the camera very low, and use wide angles Hope that helps... CBR
    11 points
  43. Time for another one I think. This time let's make a diamond-cut whiskey glass in just 23 easy steps :) CBR
    11 points
  44. Hello Everybody Here is my fan art version of Tyrion Lannister Game Of Thrones. Iv been working on him on and off over last two weeks mainly at night. Iv done tons of iterations, and still am tweaking stuff, but need to let it go. All feedback and questions welcome. He was totally modelled in C4D including some sculpting along with Zbrush for the very higher frequency work. Minor Photoshop Post, Rendered with Vray4C4D 3.5. Images are much larger, click one each image 3 times to view full size. Time lapse Video Sessions. Modeling: Dan
    11 points
  45. Well I really don't know where to start with that appalling list of ignorant and uninformed assertion ! Fortunately it will be obvious to most that this is the case without me adding anything at all ! But just taking the comments about the modelling tools as an example, where is 'Set Flow', 'Poke Polys', and 'Smooth Edge' (not Round Edge, which is different) in HB modelling bundle ? Does HB's Points to circle script have all the additional options we have in Fit to Circle ? No, it doesn't. Does it matter, even to the smallest degree, that some of these tools might have been inspired by the fantastic tools in HBMB that all serious modellers have been loving for years ? No it doesn't. We have at least 10 new modelling tools in Cinema, and they are, in the vast majority, massively useful. I have seen INCREDIBLE cloth simulations, some comparable to MD - it is only a matter of time before these surface and make your comments about it even more self-evidently untrue. ZRM in Cinema - BRILLIANT - we now have the best quad remesher in the world integrated in Cinema. There's no counter - argument - it's there and it works, and I would bet 99% of Cinema users are incredibly grateful it is ! And I am not going to waste my time addressing the other rubbish in that post. CBR
    10 points
  46. I do hate subscriptions. And I hate online activation / periodic checking. Even though I have R21, I don't use it because when I don't use it regularly it loses the login credentials and I have to look for my password again. And it's a pain with plugin licenses compared to the easy serial system before. Also I don't want to have my workstations online all the time. The MSA for R20 to R21 was waste of money for me. Therefore R20 is the last version of Cinema I enjoy and I'm glad it was a great release (compared to what came after, feature-wise, in my opinion). As a hobbyist I'm not interested in renting software, I want to be able to use them whenever and wherever I want at a fixed one-time cost (except for maintenance for perpetual software which I can stop at any time and still use the software). I paid for R16 - R21 Studio with MSA and purchased almost all commercially available C4D plugins (TFD, Forester, X-Particles, Drive, RealTraffic, everything from Nitro4D and GSG etc.), various render engines (Vray, Redshift and Cycles 4D) and commercial training. With this I can work for years to do almost everything 3D with Cinema, specially combined with Blender. When there was MSA, I was very enthusiastic about Cinema. Siggraph with new MAXON announcements for the upcoming versions were like Christmas and Birthday for me. MAXON as a company with the new management and policy lost all charm for me and sadly I lost interest in Cinema improvements. Online documentation, online asset library, subscription-only features (even including plugins like CV Tokens), no Cineversity for perpetual license owners, MAXON's way of obscuring the rental cost with tax and annual payments, hiding the perpetual upgrade cost, limited bugfix support, that all draws a clear picture to me, not my thing. As someone mentioned, I feel the same, MAXON joined the dark side. With the online checking and subscription, MAXON lost me as paying customer. Also, to me it's clear that perpetual licenses will disappear at some point. Well, I'm only a hobbyist, I understand there are other requirements for enterprises. I'm not mad at MAXON and as mentioned, I still enjoy using the last (and to me best) perpetual version of Cinema.
    10 points
  47. Apart from what we wish for this software we must be realistic and try to see what is MAXON's real goal and what should we be expecting. To do this we also must see what is happening in the other 3d software packages. C4d along with houdini is the main package for motion graphics and an industry standard in broadcast, advertisement, design studios, motion studios etc. MAXON will try to defend this status since it's the main profit branch so it will include more stuff dedicated to motion (scene nodes inluded) and also the reason why its buying red giant etc. Also c4d is know for it's easy approach so the stuff we'll see it's probably gonna be not very technnical. in my opinion MAXON will try to consolidate its presence in this side of the industry in order to keep blender away and to distinguish itself from houdini, since its an easier and more compreensive software. the other commercial software packages are kinda doing the same. in their own game. Autodesk 3ds max is boosting its modelling tools and also developing better material editor in an effort to maintain its status as modelling and render king. However, it relies in two major 3d party softs. Vray and recently tyflow. Without those two max is just and old software with good modellling tools but nothing special. Also autodesk is not introducing nothing new besides these features. max doesn't have a decent take system, nor a decent xref system, nor volume modelling etc. The list goes on. And you have to rely on lots of third party software. Maya is the same, they boost rigging/animation tools since its main business but besides that i dont see much. They dont upgrade their motion graphic tools , or everything else. and its crashes a lot (kinda buggy) Houdini is the main competitor for c4d in my opinion. apart from modelling, sculpting and character animation and rigging it is a stronger software but its hard to learn, and is a lot slower to produce results comparing to c4d in small advertisement projects. However i think they favour the development of vfx tools apart from anything else, since its main profit . Basicaly every company do the same as MAXON. They develop their software according to their commercial needs in order to defend their status in each industries, and if that status is gonne that software is as good as dead. We all want better tools that can do everything and in the end to pay the lowest price as possible. I think its very difficult to do that. Sometimes it's just better to learn a second soft and use it to complement (if needed). For motion graphics / advertisement etc, c4d will be a safe bet and with good tools. For everything else i think it will depend. My guess is that character animation will receive some better tools also. (and i hope) cheers
    10 points
  48. I've been a MAXON / C4D customer for 19 years - and I couldn't agree more. It seems MAXON are now quite willing to penalise those with Studio MSA - who are much more likely to be locked in to the C4D ecosystem - in order to suck in new users. That's not an equitable way to treat your customers.
    10 points
  49. Hey Cafe I've been on some pretty epic modelling adventures recently for an upcoming film project. My producer has kindly allowed me to post some WiP shots of the base model for our close up hot air balloon. This is the first round model, enough to begin simulations on the envelope, so there are still details and additional ropework to add / refine, but we are most of the way there. *Vital Stats* Objects: 940 Polys: 80,218 (100% quads) Subdivided Polys: 6.75 million Modelling Hours so far: 32 The wicker work was certainly an interesting one, as were the tie lines, and various bits of rope style business, and the burner shrouds. All in all a very rewarding thing to model ! Here's some wires and clays... CBR
    10 points
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