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I'll try to be fair and balanced (tough I know :) ) Had a bit of time now to look through things. This is clearly the best and biggest update in years and there's a lot of things I like. However it's not the "Big one" as many of us were expecting. The antique UV toolset is part of the old core so with no updated UV toolset R20 is still heavily reliant on the old core. Hence no big improvements in handling lots of objects apart from multi instances. My guess is the core is done and has been done for a few years. Problem is they were late starting on the UV toolset rewrite. To take out the old UV toolset they have to put in the new core completely and they can't put that in until the UV toolset is more or less complete. I think if I was still using C4D I would be reasonably happy with the update although it largely depends on what you do and what version you are running. As a hobbyist who might only be using the Prime version I'm disappointed to see that I wouldn't be getting the new volume modelling, probably the thing that I would get most use out of. Looks like my Bodypaint tutorials are safe for another year with the toolset still the old one as mentioned. MAXON are really dragging the chain updating the UV tools. MoGraph users should be pretty happy and there's plenty for them to play with. So well done to MAXON and their team. Some excellent enhancements but I think you should say when the full new core with updated UV tools are coming. But I can't see anyone using another 3D app busting their gut to jump ship to R20. In fact Blender 2.8 looks like it could pick up a few disgruntled users from various 3D apps. So is Modo that I use any better with their upgrades. Nope. The Foundry aren't piling on the new stuff. It's more about incrementally refining and enhancing things over 3 releases per year rather than dropping everything in one hit. I'm into modelling so the last few versions have focussed a lot on modelling improvements so I'm generally happy. Stability with Modo isn't really an issue any more and it's generally very stable. Not as stable as C4D but a long way from the crash fest it used to be. This means I won't be buying myself a copy of R20 Prime. I can afford it but since there's no updated UV tools, no volume modelling and no Physical renderer I'll be hanging to my money. Plus I can't believe it, but to get Prorender I would need to buy the Studio edition (as per MAXON's product comparison page). Ludicrous!! Enjoy R20 everyone :) Nigel / 3DKiwi

That issue is resolved in R20

I do a lot of character stuff with Cinema also, my friends always ask 'why aren't you using Maya'? I share your enthusiasm to make Cinema 4D more attractive to character animators. I guess the decision for R20 features come from the recent competition from Houdini, I'm sure you know C4D is losing a lot of users to this app and so they've put efforts in to retaining them. Maybe MAXON don't realise that there are many character artists who are using their app...? We can only hope for improvements in a future release.

a small project to test out some new rig features and practice animation.

Thanks for the clarification as I just assumed it was just breathing hard

That is not entirely true. Joints, muscle and cluster can use fields now. For example, that means you can create weights with fields.

completely agree. tbh, i have a hard time understanding the reasons behind a lot of maxons decisions. for instance i don't understand why character animation isn't given a much higher priority. c4d could easily attract a lot of maya users who are obviously sick of autodesk as a company. in the past two years i talked to a bunch of freelancers and small studio owners who are using maya and they were highly interested in c4d. those people won't hop on the c4d wagon because it has prorender now. and yet r20 hasn't a single feature dedicated to CA. while fields are obviously awesome and powerful and i look forward to using it i would easily trade that feature instantly if MAXON overhauled the priority system for instance. i don't know what kind of work others do, but complex mograph setups maybe make 2% of my income. (yes i know it's not only good for this kind of stuff ;) ) i'd certainly appreciate a release that's purely focussed on fixing the essentials that make everyday work more efficient, without ANY eyecandy headline feature. what do we all do all day? we deal with UVs, we rig, we fix priority issues, we model, we animate, we texture. in all these areas there's things where c4d is behind the competition. how about UDIM support? how about modern UV tools? how about a system to easily store and access poses? how about properly working PSDs? the list goes on.... those are the things that would speed up my everyday work. and i believe that holds true for many others. don't get me wrong, i really like the features of r20, it's certainly cool stuff. the one thing that could really speed up my everyday work for instance is the CAD import. but I'll have to try it to see if it can hold up with the results i get from step file conversions with MOI. the one issue i do have with MOI is that it runs out of memory if the cad files are too complex. i usually ask the supplier then if they can split the files up into several parts for me, but that isn't a workflow that's sustainable over a longer time period. so i was thinking about getting a copy of rhino to split them up by myself. now if c4ds CAD import could handle very complex cad files while producing valid geometry that has no interpretation issues i could save those 600€ i was about to spend on rhino. i'll certainly wait until next month now, to see if c4ds CAD import is a workable solution for me.

Another amazing project! Your texturing is so incurable and I have not seen anything like it anywhere else. The drool was so simple - and worked so well!

Nodes api will certainly be available for plugin developers. They get early access to it in beta. I don't know when but certainly when it is ready and I doubt this will take long time

yeah, you're probably spot on about the houdini thing. i hope they can see that there's a LOT of potential with c4D regarding character animation. the tools we already have aren't that bad, just a little love to that area and c4D could be a good alternative for many people.

Such a shame MAXON did this, as this could have been a good opportunity to get more character atists on board, now that isnt going to happen, but infact could push the small number of character artists they had away. We will soon see over the next month as we still dont know what improvements have been made to the existing tools. At the moment we have a list of additions, not enhancements. For me its added injury to insult that not only has R20 nothing to offer me, but its £100 more expensive than last year, bad move IMHO. Dan

Any tutorials on material nodes? Now, using a node is pretty straight forward, What I want to understand is a deeper understanding of how to break down a desired effect into a design approach with the nodal system. A lot of times, the tutorials go as follows: Connect A to B to C,D, and E and then back to D with a side connect to G and back to F and viola you have aged copper with rusty edges. Okay.....so how do you know to start with A? How did you even know that nodes B to G were required? That is the type of training I am looking for - how to build that logic and a few design approaches. Thanks, Dave

Since I am heavily involved in this I can just state that you are way wrong. Sure you can do stuff from R19 easier, but that is just a bonus. Fields are number one feature for me in R20 and once people get hold off it you will see why that is the case

Much appreciated. As for me, my commitment to C4D remains just because the program is so much fun to use, stable and works as intended. But I think MAXON is missing an opportunity with their non-mogrpah customers if they remain silent. I know as a MAXON employee you see the entire plan of getting from point A to point B with the new core, but we can only see Point A with each release and (to use a graphical analogy) you can draw a lot of lines though a single point. Therefore, if MAXON opens up a bit on the future of the program it will help us draw a line in the right direction. In short, you have to give us a reason to continue to be patient as you fully roll out the new core because in our minds, we were thinking that rolling out the new core was only a 3 year journey that started in with R17 and end with R20. Obviously that is not the case as you just said that more time is needed to make fallow ground fertile. I just think it is in everyone's best interests if MAXON starts to give us indications of what you are planting! Dave

Certainly not going to be able to please everyone, but it is disappointing, as @everfresh has made a point of, that there's no updates to the character animation side of things, and @Cerbera hopes for a properly working opensubdiv, seem to have been dashed again, still some nice new features like nodal materials which i wasn't expecting :)

i'm excited about fields and the new mograph instancing... but i'm a bit disappointed the CA department didn't get ANY love this year... not even a fix for stuff that never worked properly like PSDs and openSubDiv :/ ... also i'm still missing proper symmetry. overall still a nice release.

Here is field interface of all fields. These babies are amazing, can't wait for people to get their hands on them and show you what can be done :) Literally anything that was reserved for MoGraph before is now available for deformers, tags and anything else that has falloff + more. For example you can now easily share any data between vertex maps, MoGraph weights and selections, point/edge/polygon selections, weights. You can use real objects as fields, including tags, particles etc

so, looking through all the features on the cineversity site i'd say it's a good release, and i'm a happy camper. but i still see nothing that would make it THE big release. maybe everything will be a lot faster, but there's no mention of it, so if it was a really significant speed increase i suspect they would have mentioned it. the new mograph instancing will speed up working with complex setups significantly though, the volume mesher will open up new worlds and i look forward to playing with it. node based materials were long overdue and i'm happy we got that now, and prorender seems to be production ready (still curious about the time it will take to resolve all the noise in final renders). so to me it seems like a really nice release with some handy features from what i've seen up to now, nothing more, nothing less.

There is a lot of nodes and possibilities are endless. Check out the node pool :)