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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/26/2018 in all areas
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Along with the long over-due update to C4D's UV capabilities and nodal materials, then Cerbera's wish list for modeling tools, Briankoko's wishes for VFX tools and Rectro's well thought-out and comprehensive list pretty much sum-up my hopes for not just R20 but probably for a few more releases after that. Many would think that R18 and R19 put a good dent in the gap between C4D and the competition, but after reading this thread you realize just how much farther they have to go! But if I could take this in a different direction here is my ultimate and obviously unrealistic set of wishes: 1) MAXON gives us everything we have mentioned in this thread prior to 2020. Revamping the core has been the bottleneck to any progress in a number of aging areas (BP in particular) and it has been the long held belief that MAXON will not invest in improving any code wrapped around the old core. So as a community, C4D users have patiently waited as the industry has moved forward. Remember that MAXON has assuaged our impatience with statements about how this great new architecture will set us up for big changes in the future. There have also been insinuations that improvements will come faster than anything we have seen in the past. These promises have kept the truly faithful camped on the MAXON doorstep. So if the new core is finally here in its entirety (having taken 3 to 4 versions to fully release), then if you don't want to break that faith, you better deliver -- especially if you are raising MSA prices. I don't care how many releases it takes - but I do care how long it takes. The expectation you have established around the new core is that catch-up the competition will happen and it will happen fast -- how you program manage new feature releases needs to strongly respect how patient we have been. That is why my expectations are not for R20, but for 2020 and I don't care if takes you 8 releases to get there...but I do care how long it takes because I fear our patience is coming to an end. 2) Either MAXON meets our expectations or Blender makes its program easier to use. Honestly, there are some really neat areas of development within the Blender community and at a fraction of the cost of C4D. The total cost of ownership (Blender and plugins) is still far less than C4D Prime but you get so much more. MAXON needs to respect Blender and realize that Blender sets the floor for what users want in terms of features. We all hate the UI and the instability, but amazing things are still being done with that program. 3) MAXON stops relying on plugin or 3rd party developers to round out their tool set. Focusing on built-in pipelines to other programs like Houdini, Allegorithmic, etc is nice, but it is not a winning strategy for staying competitive. In fact, it is almost and admission that they can't stay competitive on features. We are not going to give you nodal materials, but you can use Substance Design and import the .sbsar file. We are not going to give you fluids or OpenVDB support, so please use Houdini and import the file. Now, it is okay to not compete on features but you have to compete on something and the only thing left is to compete on price. Sorry, but in a highly technical market with a strong development pace, competing on stability and ease of use will only get you so far. People will always want what your competitors have and will take stability for granted when they jump ship to another program to get it (and its not like Maya, Modo or Houdini are bad options----they are great options). They may regret it in the end, but what does that matter to you when you have lost the sale. So my wish is that MAXON commits to changing what C4D can NOT do rather than what C4D and its plugins can do. If they don't make this commitment, then they should lower their price. In summary, my hope is that everyone at MAXON is extremely nervous about over-promising and under-delivering with R20. Since R16, they have set the expectations that the new core will bring great change and while they never said that R20 will be the "big" one, the general consensus of the community is that R20 is when the big changes will yield BIG NEW FEATURES. Right, wrong or indifferent, it is MAXON's time to deliver on those promises. Dave1 point