BoganTW

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.

Also worth checking out, this guy has done numerous C4D training videos for Skillshare. He's recommenced a new series on Youtube covering material options with the new Redshift standard material workflow in S26 - just this week, metals, glass, thin film and now wax. Useful and helpful.

I've never looked at Discord but might (not enthusiastically) check it out, I think a few Maxon people pop up there. Srek pops up on the C4D Reddit page, and though I don't go there often the discussions after each release were fairly decent. If Maxon had their own forum, I'd ask them why their Redshift info page (below) looks to be incomplete. All the entries for Redshift details here have a LEARN MORE option, and when you click on it, it just makes the picture bigger without giving any additional info or giving you anything more to learn. Maybe NAB stopped them from making additional videos for the topics there? https://www.maxon.net/en/redshift/features?categories=631817

Useful overview. This guy has probably the best C4D modeling channel on Youtube right now.

In passing, I want to apologise to Might as at least one genuine comment has conveyed something which wasn't intended. I have had a long work week and have been genuinely a bit tired here and there. When I wrote earlier that his post made my brain hurt, it was true but this was not his fault. Any long post on any subject would have likely done the same. Might's post looked interesting but beyond my mental energy that day. This is the reason I could not get more than a few sentences in. My brain said 'not tonight, you need a rest and maybe a good dinner or medicine or something'. And yet I do have the energy to skulk around and post other things here and there, go figure. I enjoy posts investigating or celebrating C4D stuff, and also development discussion like Might offered, but my brain wasn't up to absorbing the info that night. In future I'll phrase things differently so that it can't be misconstrued. By all accounts he offered an interesting post (and the few sentences I read looked interesting before I stopped) but the failure to finish was my fault, not his. Sorry again.

Hey, I didn't say there was anything wrong with what he wrote, just that I couldn't read it. Might (cool user name) please don't worry about my response and please continue to post, even if I don't read it I'll surely find it interesting to look at as I jump forward to the post right after it.

Make up your mind. You keep saying they’re not doing things people are asking for, then finish by telling us they just did. You also tell us no-one has asked for any of the features they’ve done recently. Pretty much every feature they’ve brought out - character stuff, animation changes, whatever - has been applauded by someone, even if it’s just random dudes on Twitter surprised how much they like seeing Magic Bullet in there. So I don’t know how some people equals no one. But if you’re not a programmer you can clarify then why you see their comments about core development slowing things is an ‘excuse’, rather than an obvious statement of the truth. It’s either true or it isn’t. I do agree they need to speed up general performance though as you’re not the only one who has mentioned being frustrated with that side of things.

I thought the new core did let them just add a bunch of needed features. If someone thinks all the other remaining long-awaited features would have worked on the old core rather than the new one, they should write up a technical report explaining how and send it to Maxon.

Sorry it's early in the morning here and those long paragraphs made my brain freeze up, I couldn't even get a few sentences in. But basically if you agree with everyone that agrees with me then I agree with you.

I also see the mention of plug-in alternatives and kind of go, "Yeah, so...?" There are plug-ins for all sorts of bits and pieces that C4D doesn't have, including the already mentioned fluids, particles, and other stuff. Big shrug. I'd prefer them all native, and suspect that eventually (it'll probably be a while with the fluids) we'll get them. ICM does make a fair point about the plug-ins offering alternatives and that will suit some, all good, but it doesn't suit me. I honestly prefer the neatness of having the one app, the one manual., the one variety of reliable sources for tutorials, you get it, you've got it, you own it. And yeah I do phrase the subscription C4D as being something I 'own'. The food I buy which goes into the fridge is usually digested and down the drain a few weeks later but it's mine and nobody else's. C4D is cheaper than my grocery bill and I spend more time in front of it than I do sitting at the table eating. That noted I'll probably also get Houdini later this year as the Apple Silicon version is in Beta. That will give me two programs to chip away at. This might provide some comical observations as I compare which one is easier to use than the other. Slightly off topic but it will be funny to see what R27 holds in September as Rick or someone mentioned that (a) it's obviously a shorter development cycle, and (b) staff in Germany get a long Summer holiday (some guy on Reddit posted a rant on the C4D page, 'no one gets holidays as long as those guys do'). I'm jealous and would like to move there.

Both you guys make good points, it is a first iteration, there's room to improve, Maxon have been slow in the past to do exactly that. All those things listed were pre-McGavran and pre the new node code, so let's see if things change a bit with the new leadership and the new foundation.

That sounds fair enough. But I don't find Maxon to be particularly unfriendly. They make the software, they occasionally patch it to fix bugs, they do lots of online training for free, they chip in on forums here and there, they chug away at improving the software (hopefully this will now speed up, huh?), and they're a fairly cheerful bunch. Maybe some people in countries where the exchange rate or currency is low think the pricing is too high. The pricing is alright for me, could be worse. But generally I just want to pay them do all the stuff I outlined in that first paragraph. I'm happy I didn't jump into a subscription as the releases from then till now weren't exactly stacked, but we'll see what happens now that they've made some progress.

The really weird screen glitch I wrote about in another thread is still a thing. I wanted to show my son the new cloth and rope simulations, made a blanket and let it drop through the air onto a plane. He could barely see it as the screen was filled with glitchy flashing horizontal stripes that flickered and completely destroyed the image more often than not. I'm actually looking at them now. But jumping out, then back into perspective view seems to remove it temporarily. Hopefully the presenters at the 3D Motion Show this week aren't using M1 Macs. I'm enjoying everything else about C4D at the moment, but not this glitch.

Yeah, I do concede Blender has a lot of extra bits and pieces that C4D does not. The cool-looking Grease Pencil side of the app has been continually updated and is very flashy, EJ from Eyedesyn posted some amazing anime style stuff on Twitter which Blender can apparently do with the touch of a button, and I was thinking, jeez I hope Maxon re-visists Sketch and Toon sometime in the next half decade. But I rarely hear many people saying, wow, the experience of using Blender is much smoother and easier than using C4D. It's always a list of the features, bragging about how it's free, and a thread dump of all the new companies that have come on board to sponsor it, so the future is getting brighter and brighter, why would anyone want to use anything else, etc etc. The features, the funding and the cost mean jack all to me if the experience of using it is a stilted and poorly thought out pain in the arse, so I'll happily sit with C4D for the next few years and see what's coming up. No offence to the nice folk running Blender, Ton is a cool guy and I enjoyed watching what Pablo was up to at Blender Today, but I just didn't enjoy the software that much.

I don't have Maxon One and currently don't need it, so I'm very happy they chucked Z-Remesher into C4D. I can now try out all sorts of odd modelling things with the Volume mesher and boil them down to models with nice topology. This will be a very cool workflow. Anyone who has ZBrush and is using it shouldn't be bothered that some extra Zbrush bits are landing in C4D. They have Zbrush and know how to use it, so what do they care? TBH I could care less where they got the idea from. S26 gives me ten new modelling tools. For some reason I've also seen Blender and Modo users on a few forums whining that Maxon has done this.

Please rewrite this into English so I can read it. I thought giving Redshift additional CPU rendering capabilities was improving it further. Did it make it worse? It's commercially obtuse to develop for a laptop that is selling millions of units? I thought that would make them more money from those users, not less.

If the cheapest of the cheapest gravitate towards Blender then I'm not sure that Maxon is losing anything by ignoring them.

No one is prohibiting Redshift subscribers from using the GPU, as using the GPU to render is presumably the entire reason you subscribed in the first place. You're not losing anything but if you ever stop subscribing to Redshift your Redshift skills will still carry over into the world of Redshift CPU rendering, if you ever want to go that route.