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R20 is the greatest of all time and also the last version given to us by the original team that brought us C4D.

R20 here as well. Stable and no need to login after having left C4D untouched for a week or two.

Honestly, I think the problem is Maxon's decision to push out updates every 6 months. That decision of course was made to entice people into subscriptions: "look you get new toys more frequently". But really what it creates is twice as many software tracks to maintain over time. To curtail all that effort, Maxon made another decision to stop support on previous releases after 3 months as they did not have the resources to maintain all those tracks. This worked for them as it allowed the sales pitch towards subscriptions "The best way to stay current with bug fixes and new features is with a subscription". Now, all that would have some appeal provided that Maxon was still holding on to their major claim to fame in the market with each release: stability. Honestly, that is (or was) the big draw to C4D: it was robust. Users put up with the amount of time it took to get new features because with that time came the implicit promise that what was released was 100% rock solid. But look what has happened since R21. Reports of software instability (be they real, inflicted by the user, their GPU drivers, or plugins) have increased. Well, regardless of the cause, it is a fact that good software comes from good testing. Regardless of the development time, beta testers now have less time to test each new release. Plus with all the acquisitions, the testing is not just limited to C4D but to Redshift, Forger, Red Giant integration as well. Less time for testing is not a recipe to improve quality. So I submit that these complaints are a function of Maxon's new business model. Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last few months are two key elements of C4D's reputation in the marketplace come under fire: Stability and ease of use as people grapple with the new interface. Now, C4D acolytes will cling to the belief that all is well and we are all knuckle dragging luddites for complaining. But there is one glaring issue that totally supports just how C4D's controls on quality and UI are under pressure: Missing Icons in R25 What does a missing icon tell you about quality control? Missing icons definitely do not help ease of use so why have those icons not been immediately replaced after 3 months? Does anyone care at Maxon? If you were a customer who just paid over $3000 for a new TV and the remote control had numbers and icons missing, then would you feel comfortable about the quality of your purchase or would you think "Hell, if they missed that, what else is missing with the actual TV?" . There would be immediate buyer's remorse as trust in the product has been lost. It is missing the little things that damage a product's quality reputation. Maxon spent decades building up that reputation and their new business model has set up a system whereby quality can no longer be the top priority that it was in the past. If you disagree with that statement, then please produce some icons. Dave

I am on the list yaaay

I think the openness of Blender is what drives today's CGI advancements. All universities with fields that involve CG have their hands on it. They tinker with it's code and implement all kinds of theories and experimental algorithms on top of it's core. The reason it gets improved fast is because the community that develops it is bigger than any company. Students, professors and scientists contribute to it constantly.

Agreed. I mean who would have thought that back prior to Blender 2.8 that some day in the future C4D would be copying their UI. R25 was illuminating...for all the wrong reasons. At least Blender has all their icons.

I Like this thread. many interesting things get said in a relatively unagitated was. But this sentence made me laugh. I mean really what features do you mean. There are quite some examples in this thread that people would love maxon to develop or enhance. And for all that features maxon would play the catch up game so hard that absolutely no confidentiality is needed. Blender on the other hand is so open as can get and they sometimes manage to innovate without all the other "super agile" DCC companies copying them (besides the UI of corse) .

Seeing a repeating pattern of people recommending third party apps to solve for the lack of simulation features. A DCC in 2021 should have the bare minimum set of features to help bring a creative idea to complete fruition. Now, C4D can not do that without the help of the myriad of third party apps/plugins. Compare C4D to any other competitive DCC in this space: Blender, Maya and Modo - All have good simulation solvers built within the application. The dream is to have the whole 3D pipeline within one environment, and this goal is far from reality for C4D. It is not economical as well for a beginner to buy into a set of plugins/third party apps after a premium you spend on C4D. Here's a price breakdown: C4D + Redshift ($900/12 months) + xParticles ($1000/Perpetual) + Marvelous Designer( $480/ 12 months) + Substance Painter ($240/year) + Zbrush ($900/Perpetual) + Rizom UV ($170/Perpetual). Don't get me wrong, I do see the value of 3rd party apps/plugins and I have invested in these tools myself cause there is no other choice, but relying on external apps are so unintuitive to the workflow and is a pain to version control and manage updates. There are so many more areas where C4D is behind on: Native support for particles/fluids/pyro/smoke/advection. Cloth simulations Native real-time rendering engine (Even redshift is integrated as a 3rd party plugin). Intuitive UV pipeline Sculpting Texturing pipeline Procedural modeling (Scene nodes are in such a primitive state right now) C4D has been around since the 90s. That's a long evolution for any product. All these years and no mention of Maxon addressing these issues. How many years of dev time do you need to improve existing features? If they can't do it in all this time, how do we expect Maxon to innovate? I remember Maxon having a roadmap website with a community feature request section, that page has been deleted and Maxon has been very hush about what they're working on. Just for these reason I'm seeing an influx of migration to other DCCs especially Blender. Universities and Studios are now opting for Blender when a few years back C4D was the industry standard for mograph. I'm counting on Maxon to improve C4D, cause a lot of creatives are on the fence and are frustrated to take on another DCC cause of the learning curve.

Yeah, I remember using R20, and never had any issue, ever... it is even weird thinking about this now. Ok, that is good info! So, R25 is stable you think? I just signed up to Octane earlier this week, because I am a bit desperate mid production... But if R25 gives a nice level of stability, maybe I will need to suck it up and give it a try, even though with the new interface... 😮 hehe.. But signal..is a no no for this new version right?

I dont know why.. But I dont get all this node crazyness. I dont like to work with nodes as I feel that an artistic task for me, becomes a lot more technical than I would like. But I know I am in the minority with this opinion, and I can see a lot of people doing INSANE and cool looking stuff with it. About particles, agree with Dave, Xparticles is awesome! So much control and brilliant integration with Redshift! But not having GPU, it limits the size of your simulations, and how fast you can preview the results, a sad bottleneck to a fantastic (and in my opinion) totally worth the price. Just saw the Reactions from Jawset, looks super promising! Will download the beta whenever I have time and see how it goes 🙂