BoganTW

Funnily enough I can see Blender users over at Blenderartists.org getting wind of this and going, haha, you have to pay for the software, and you have to pay to join their forum as well, does that look appealing guys? Oh well.

I think Igor should just have another fundraising drive TBH.

No one's forcing you to answer questions. We'd be paying to help Igor keep the site going. I thought by this point in the thread it was clear this was an issue. The alternatives are (1) no one pays and he closes the site, or (2) a few people pay and newcomers are still encouraged to come and join. A third alternative - Igor does a donation drive sometime in June, help me keep the Core going etc. If he gets more than expected he won't have to ask again in six months and newcomers surfing over won't ever need to be bothered with pages describing this as a subscription only site. There are a few different cult film and CG and other sites with good forums that specify you need to register before you can see or read any of the posts. With some of those, I've never bothered, as I was half annoyed by the expectation that I should jump through a hoop before I could even see what the site was like. A payment-required-to-post rule would likely have a similar effect. What's this site like? It looks half ok. Oh, I need to pay to ask questions? Fuck that, I'm going to Reddit, which I already have open in another browser. A donation drive would let everyone involved sweep the issue under the rug for a bit. I am just brainstorming and others will have different suggestions.

Maybe Igor can just charge the regulars (ie us) who are hanging out, and let newcomers in for free? Call it the old timer bill.

I never said Dave should create blog posts for this forum and I think it would be a bad idea if he did (though I should have clarified this in my earlier post). A Dilbert-style day-in-the-life periodic peek into the ups and downs of a CEO’s life would however be a fun addition to the Maxon site, and I feel Dave is the guy to do it. If not this year, then possibly when the core is finished in 2028 or sometime afterwards. Also, I’m not sure why you keep saying ‘I’m not one to engage’ etc. Nothing you’ve said is offensive and I think everyone is fine with you writing replies to posts. Likewise if we all get to the point where we’re paying 5 euros just to be here, I’m not sure if anyone will be bothered if posts occasionally go off topic. I still think Dave’s post was funny and if Dave is going to be attacked for making jokes today then Igor should also be attacked for making jokes, as both of them have done this. Each post (IMO) was however a good natured contribution that has improved the value of this thread. Even ICM has cracked the odd joke here and there. Re software forums, Moho is pretty good, there are regular posts from the developers and a continually helpful vibe.

I thought making a cheerful joke was being productive. Everyone needs to laugh, right? I think if Dave pulls his wallet out later and subs - and maybe he’ll see the humour inherent in him doing this - that’s all the support he needs to show. I mean, he’ll be supporting way more than people who don’t subscribe. If Igor was mortally offended by the innocuous back and forth, he didn’t mention it. And if he’s not, I’m not. Though if he was, I likely still wouldn’t be.

I dunno why gentle ribbing is meant to be a problem. Igor even cracked a joke back at McGavran rather than whining. Also a more conciliatory tone would help keep McGavran here. This is another potential 5 Euro sub, and every dollar counts, so do you really want to scowl at potential subscribers? I thought this was a fiscal emergency, yet a few here are alarmingly cavalier about keeping such users around. If I was the CEO of a software company and I found a cool forum that talked pro and con about my product, I would hang around and weigh in. This is what McGavran is doing now. I hope this continues. If we were really encouraging perhaps we could also persuade Dave to start a personal blog. This could be a bit like the work of Scott (‘Dilbert’) Adams, with daily reflections on life, and insights into the CEO’s personal hobbies. Any other forum and I likely wouldn’t sub but Igor has displayed such personal dedication (like the time he offered to show newbies around Houdini) that I am happy to contribute.

I'm not sure why anyone needs to consider something that never happened.

You have to be joking.

One concern for me. The various Maxon members who post only very very occasionally, but when they do it's something pertinent. Are all those guys going to cough up the 5 Euros just so they can post every other month? I'm not sure. But since a number of them are in the same office maybe a few can join and the others can look over their shoulder or pass on comments, I dunno. I hope Igor's recent addition of downvote and troll label tools in the message board arsenal helps reduce some of the dumber threads that simmered on a bit too long over the past few years, acting a bit like a slap on the wrist from grandma when 7 y.o Bob Rudnick (not a real name) gets carried away grabbing all the cake at his school friend's birthday party.

Looks cool but I miss the ability to use an Apple Pencil on an iPad which I think both Affinity Designer and Procreate can do, and one of those can also import obj. files (I think the latter, EJ Hass posted on Twitter about this once). But cool looking software nonetheless.

Hope you guys had a nice meet at the big employee meeting this week. The S26 release video showed Paul Babb in a nice office, was that the US one?

Good to see a hoped for focus on modelling and animation improvements, I hope they can fill those positions.

This is a really good and fascinating thread.

S26 freezes / crashes for me on start up if I’m doing anything at all while the opening intro video loads, and I need to force quit to restart. This has happened a half dozen times in the past week. Solution when I restart is to gingerly click the C4D icon and then touch nothing until the opening screens all settle down. I can live with this but it doesn’t feel like an improvement. M1 iMac, S26 with latest patch.

Yeah I think in practice if we want to ignore anyone’s posts, we can already see their names and ignore what they write. I do this frequently depending on mood, the season and which C4D release cycle we’re following. Maybe some sort of font styling that flags people’s posts on your browser with flames or garbage-dump flies could be sufficient to flag regular shitposters. You could also flag useful posters with stars or cheerful Garfield, Mr Natural and Bubblegum Crisis GIF’s if their writing was invariably helpful. Troublesome posters could have Precious Pupp, Drooper from The Banana Splits or Sutekh from Doctor Who.

I believe you, I feel there was certainly less of the (IMO) dull posts going over and over the same unhappy points. The locked thread proved the exception and I honestly think it had run its course there. But if your intention was to let the S26 thread have its day without too much negative commentary then I think you successfully did that as I don't recall reading it and going, jeez, here goes ICM again. Criticism of Maxon can be interesting as there are so many long awaited features, or points to be made pro and con the new features we are getting, but I think as MJV notes, some of the same really negative assertions have been made over and over - and beyond that, a few of them have crossed the line into bashing the devs, company, owner, ethos, the works. This gets tiresome, and those who are now subscribing to the software and making their way with it can be excused not wanting to hear it again and again. Since the earlier thread was locked I want to also note my appreciation for the work of HappyPolygon, who mentioned the hundreds of suggestions he'd sent to Maxon and the high number they had adopted. Great work and I hope they adopt more of them.

Dunno, both you guys are still here and still posting much the same stuff. Maybe start a new thread in the same vein and see who joins in? This is if you feel the 12 pages on the topic earlier only started to touch on what you think about this particular issue. Just a hunch but it might be the thread was closed because this is the 20th time you've gone over the same stuff, not the first, as there was a sense of deja vu about all the angst being expressed.

I am only using C4D but I'm even happy if some of the other users put up some cool new Blender or Houdini threads as this is a more cheerful and productive area of discussion. Igor based on your enthusiasm I will check out Houdini in more detail later this year. the Apple Silicon version is in open Beta and it's not too expensive at all, so I will grab the Indie version in a few months and start tinkering with it.

There have been many thread with posts gently (or not gently at all) bashing Maxon, and Cerbera summed up the vibe, folks accusing Maxon of being a zero value company and never really holding off on the bashing, which goes on and on. Yet I think the Blender thread is the first one that has been locked? I don't recall any others being locked at all, maybe I missed them. The info is still there, the participants are still members, and generally I imagine they can get away with similar posts in other threads without facing too much hassle, so the thread lock might be a gentle warning (and TBH I'd almost become used to their anti-Maxon whining, to the extent I was surprised to see the thread locked). So this hardly feels like a sweeping act of censorship, maybe just a gentle push back. For my part I took steps a couple of months ago to avoid the deeper negative rants, so if I see the usual culprits have written a post even vaguely hinting at their usual sour grapes, I just skip past their name and words and go onto the next post without reading what they've said. I'd heard a bit about it before but it is still sad to know that Leigh was treated badly at CGTalk by idiots, she was a smart and likeable presence there. Last year I Googled her blog or Instagram and saw she was doing a lot of photography at heavy metal concerts and looked very happy in those pics. She is clearly accomplished professionally so I hope she is enjoying life right now.

EJ posted a link on Twitter with a scene that was 30 minutes or so to render in Physical and way less than that in Redshift CPU. I’ve done no tests myself though. I got Redshift CPU is multiple times slower than the GPU version but regardless had gathered it was faster than Physical. I’m not currently looking at Physical though (unless it’s the Olivia Newton John video). I feel bad for Lightwave users as they seem to have had a rough time of things over the past several years. Interesting software but a lot of messy things behind the scenes.

So people who are using Physical (CPU based) might be reluctant to move to Redshift CPU because they really like how Physical looks? If this is the case I'm not sure what the problem is because Physical - which came out way back with R13 - is still there. I admit I am happy Redshift has a new Standard material as this saves me having to figure out how Reflectance works.

TBH I dunno if a message board from Maxon would help. On this board Srek jumps in now and then, Rick and Dave speak up if there’s something pressing. Over at Cineversity Dr. Sassi gives long helpful comments to technical questions. On a new Maxon forum those same guys would probably be posting the same things, but dickheads like Infograph would join up to write their usual kamikaze posts, Rick and the other guys would have to further divide their time between there and here, someone would have to moderate the place and anyone that wrote a whiny post here would write another whiny post there. Not to curb free expression but once is probably enough, and I think the staff have other things they need to get cracking on at the moment. Also I don’t know if newcomers feel engaged by posts longer than whatever the current Twitter word limit is. I think they prefer Instagram and Tik Tok. Although if Dave McGavran had his own dumb and cheerful Tik Tok channel showing folks making coffee or shooting Airsoft guns at Maxon HQ I’d be linking to it daily in whatever thread IceCaveMan was ranting in. Maybe he does. So I think the ship has sailed. That noted with half the Maxon Training Team sitting around twice a week answering questions on live stream, the company no longer has that unavailable vibe they had some years ago. Questions here usually get an answer, and if they don’t get answered here I’m not sure if they’d be giving additional details on a second forum that does exactly the same thing.

I'm sure Maxon will get to all the areas eventually. It looks like some might take longer than others though. The guy above who did the Redshift wax textures video has just done another nice one on textiles and fabrics. He's really cranking them out.

Thank you, I appreciate it.