BoganTW

These sort of conversations are always intriguing. And after any decent release of C4D (it's been a while, but R20 was one, S26 is apparently another), I go to the Luxology forum to see what Modo users think. There's usually a few people there going, jeez I wish Modo had that feature, that's amazing, and another guy going, yes I tried C4D recently and [UI and various features} are amazing! Nigel / 3D Kiwi is maybe there but often sometimes not as I guess he's riding his bike or doing some cool Lego project. There is too much C4D training appearing as of late to keep up with, all free on YouTube, and more again on Cineversity. The Maxon Training Channel has heaps as of late, when Chris fires RocketLasso up again you get regular solid content, and the PolygonPen channel has very good, lengthy modeling tutorials. I know Blender has heaps of tutorials (including geniuses like Ian Hubert) but C4D is no slouch in that department. I have refrained from listing maybe a dozen other sporadic but solid C4D tutorial channels but they're all findable with a search. Edited to add, yeah the OP is leaving in a bit of a huff but there are plenty of other people hanging around here who enjoy chatting so I'm not really directing my comments at the guy who is going to Blender.

The Maxon Training Channel is running red hot at the moment, they have too many new weekly tutorials to keep up with, and each usually runs a couple of hours. S26 next month is apparently (according to our poster in the know) a big one. Well overdue, yes, but apparently some good stuff is imminent. You should enjoy Blender. It's a nice community, apart from the (I'll imagine) minority of users who seem to spend more time patrolling and trolling other forums about other software than they do enjoying their own. April will be a big month for C4D, they have S26, RocketLasso back in full swing, the 3D and Motion Show doing a ton of new shows, probable new training here for S26 stuff and likely a ton of Youtube content from folks checking out and discussing whatever is about to drop next month. Plenty to keep us busy for a while. I have my new iMac and I'm subbing (C4D, not Maxon One) next week.

Without pulling this thread into some of the contentious areas raised by Nio's (very smart) post above, I have one general suggestion. Maxon should encourage a campaign of artworks supporting and encouraging anti-war themes. So no one will have to raise things like, does the lack of Maxon sanctions against ten or twenty other worthy candidates mean the company support's X in their continual war against Y? (and I had a couple of paragraphs of obvious examples that I decided was better off not to be specific about). There are plenty of locales besides the Ukraine who have stories to tell about how various countries - or often just the one - have carried out bombing campaigns or coups against them. I'm sure art from some of their citizens would be meaningful and moving. One thing that governments sometimes do after sanctions don't work, is that they bomb or start a war against the country they're pissed off with. If Maxon is going to come out in support of sanctions, fine, but if things escalate and a few more countries start sending soldiers in to get killed, I hope Maxon never puts up a page saying, we support the troops, thank you for your service etc etc. That would probably be a bit much I think.

Since we’re all talking politics (something I thought was precluded on this forum) I’ll just note that it’s a good thing the invasion and bombing of Iraq didn’t sideline US customers back in the day, that would have been particularly disruptive.

Yep, that's him.

Understood and no problem. I'll see if I can get to it when it happens.

Matthew (Mash) above has done top notch 'here's the new features' videos for a few different C4D releases on day one, certainly for GSG recently and also on his own cool Youtube channel. So he presumably knows which way the wind blows. Before he left C4D land ICM was a veteran traveller of all things C4D so if he's popping his head back into the door to check how things are going, it's fair enough, and this is a thoughtful and useful thread TBH. This post needs even more acronyms.

Nice to hear. Will be pleasant to see a different tone to the discussion. That bloke at CGTalk will still be upset though. The way he carries on you'd think Maxon staff had cast him and his girlfriend as the couple who met the droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, then personally strapped on rubber noses to help reenact the moment.

The summit sounds a great idea, not sure if it will happen on or outside my Aussie work hours though (weekends are great). Fun timing as I finally get my new iMac first week of March and a new C4D sub two weeks later. TBH I'm more excited by the new opportunities to learn the app in depth via the increased training and support than I am by currently getting a certification, but it's definitely of interest.

How much is the trainer worth? Enough to invest that much money in themselves getting certified? And can they claim the expense back on tax afterwards? (That's a yes in Australia). If they made the training all up a hundred bucks I'm not sure if I'd trust the general quality of the trainers TBH.

At least with the Maxon training you’ll actually learn stuff.

On the Maxon certification page, there’s a document that lists all the topics you’ll be tested on. It’s very comprehensive and covers all of C4D. https://www.maxon.net/en/certification/c4d-topics-list The list includes tons of links to pages that explain individual subjects in depth, so you could quite easily work through the topics. read, follow, digest and practice and repeat, and teach yourself many of the fundamentals that Maxon and various employers presumably think are useful. This can be done for free without paying a cent to Maxon, presumably because the goal is for people to learn this stuff. If people think costs are high or the test is too stressful they can still learn and benefit from learning without blowing any cash or taking the test. There are some trainers on Skillshare and elsewhere who note in their videos that they are Maxon certified trainers, and surprise, they know their stuff and their training is good value. For those unconvinced, there aren’t too many cops running around banging on doors asking folks if they’ve been certified by Maxon, so if folks who find the whole concept stressful skip it, I’m not sure if their lives will take a turn for the worse. Overall though I think the certification process is a useful thing and I don’t have many doubts that anyone who passes it will comfortably know their way around the software.

There are some people out there who are certified. I guess they found the process okay. At the Maxon Training channel they've just started a regular series that they say will tackle all the tricky bits and pieces you'd need to know to pass the certification test. They've recently done refractive materials and rigging. I guess they have enough subjects to spend the next couple of years covering the other stuff. I think the costs are fine if you know everything and don't expect to take the test five times to pass it. If you do it could get more expensive. Overall though I think the test is meant to be a test of whether you actually know the stuff they're testing you on, and if you think the test is too difficult or unfair then you should probably save your money and not take the test until you feel more confident.

Quite a thoughtful thread. Thanks for keeping things on topic Igor.

Jesus Christ, ICM... I've never used ZBrush, never had an interest in using it, never sculpted anything, never had an interest in sculpting anything, and never had a need to. Was this ambiguous from my earlier questions? I also never used InDesign, Illustrator, and probably three or four other programs in the Adobe sub I had, but Premiere and (to a lesser extent) AE received some use. I'll be skipping both for Resolve as it can cut, colour and comp all I need for my needs. Having heard that Maxon are picking ZBrush up, I'm assuming they'll be letting paying customers of Maxon One have access to it at some point. I'm getting that sub with my next iMac, so will have a look when it comes out. But I'm not in a burning hurry to have a look at it, hence me stating earlier in this thread exactly that. But if it's there as part of the sub I'll likely have a look. I have heard the UI is annoying though, and watched a training video on the app a handful of years ago where the instructor spent the first five minutes warning people that the UI was annoying. Go figure. If you're going to 'indulge' my questions, great, but maybe change your tone while you're at it. If not, don't bother. Even better - a possible future path to avoid pointless clashes in this thread, and on this forum - I'll avoid commenting on your C4D posts in future on these threads if you avoid commenting on mine. Conversations on these topics are generally fine but I strongly suspect if we were face to face in a pub or bar we'd find common ground on something within about 60 seconds and would go from there. But being grilled in bold type over something I've never claimed to use seems typical of the hostility that probably lies in the future in these conversations if we keep going back and forth. I'm beginning to question the worth of threads here on Maxon topics where 80% of the posts seem to come from ex-C4D users who have no interest in the app currently, and where people who express an interest are viewed with repeated hostility and suspicion.

I'll have a read, thanks - but 'why the heck Pixologic didn't start charging instead of doing this'? I'm assuming it's because they wanted to go to Maxon, instead of charging money and doing it themselves. Ask IceCaveMan how many companies are charging subs these days, I'm guessing he could write us both a long list. Pixologic could have done the same, yet they decided to go with Maxon. Stop the presses. Re 'we in this community dislike what Maxon became' - they're a software company that people pay money to, and some people are unhappy that it's now by subscription instead of the earlier pay-it-and-get-it software model. Am I missing something? I'm assuming charging for software can't be that bad, as you just said it would have been a good idea if Pixologic had done it. One other obvious choice is that they could have easily given all their code to the Blender guys for free, so everyone in the world could download ZBrush perennially in the future and never have to pay for it again. Yet for some reason they chose an option that suggests money will exchange hands and they might make a decent wage and profit, go figure. My comment here (and you should have seen the longer version I just edited then deleted when your comment popped up, as I value your input and didn't want to sour the thread) is coloured by the fact that I've never worked for Maxon, and am not particularly bothered by anything they've done, which makes me an ideal customer of their software going into 2022. Back to IceCaveMan - who I readily concede knows his stuff. What's your alternative to Photoshop? Did you find a good one, or did that app (or others) keep you paying money to Adobe? I'm ditching Premiere permanently for Resolve.

Haha.. this seems a tad harsh. Maybe some people can afford to pay for both? Also the slave rhetoric seems mildly uncalled for, but perhaps the Christmas season has led you to celebrate early. Nothing wrong with this if you have - unless you tell us otherwise. Anyway, don't want to derail the thread with an argument. I notice though the camps seem to be dividing along the lines of - ZBrush owners who are unhappy they'll likely have to start paying more for the software they used to get every year for free. Blender owners happy they no longer have to pay every year for their software. and C4D owners present and future who don't give a shit that the alternate software is free and are happy to pay for C4D. Shrug. Again, I get that this might seem like the apocalypse in some quarters, but now that ZBrush is being folded into Maxon One (presumably) I'll likely check it out. Hopefully the Maxon guys can work some of their UI magic on it. Yeah, I gather some icons are missing in R25. I don't really care and am not that bothered. If it was up to me the Maxon guys should just fold ZBrush into C4D, the same way that Blackmagic brought Fusion and Fairlight into DaVinci Resolve, everything in the one app with different tabs at the top to shift between screens and anything you do in one automatically translates to the other. This would probably involve someone somewhere doing a fair bit of work though. If ZBrush ends up in C4D maybe Beeple can sculpt a Mount Rushmore made up of famous C4D figures like Noseman and Rick Barrett.

Won't argue with others who feel different but for me this will get chucked into my imminent Maxon One sub, so I'm fine with it. Not sure if I'll be using it in a hurry though.

Hrvoje, feel free to PM me when the shop is back up. My new day job has started and I'll be buying all the node training to watch before I dive in with a new computer and Maxon sub in early 2022.

Which is harder, making some new icons, or fixing bugs? I get that there are levels of complexity to both, and they shouldn't just hire some guy walking down the street to get a pizza to do either task. I think I read the justification that was posted somewhere for the new C4D missing icons, and I still don't understand it.

Thank you for the informative posts guys. Re "If it's not causing a problem it's not a bug", this makes sense, but I'm mainly referring to the stuff that the Blender guys are calling bugs, hence 'loads of bug fixes' etc. They already list lots of improvements and updates, tons of those, but at the end they refer to heaps of bug fixes too. Nothing wrong with bug fixes but it does make me wonder how much stuff ever needs fixing with them. C4D seems to do their occasional service packs, some bigger than others. But on this ominous note there are Twitter threads where various high profile dudes are saying C4D has seemed more buggy than before. I will find out myself in a few months or thereabouts.

This is cool, but there is something that puzzles me (not hugely) every time a release of Blender comes out. Each release of Blender I've ever seen advertised boasts about how many bugs they fixed in the latest update. Then the next release of Blender comes out, and again, they talk proudly of how many bugs they've fixed in the latest update. Does each update introduce a shitload of new bugs, or are there just too many already and they never quite get rid of them? Because however great the 3.0 version is, I'm assuming the next version of Blender will again have a big description of how buggy the earlier version was, and how those bugs have been fixed in the new version, rinse and repeat. Possibly they should just fix the bugs and then not tell anyone the bugs were there in the first place, I dunno. It'd be dishonest but it would maybe make the software seem less buggy. I don't think I even hear Blender users whining about bugs much (not that I read their forums), but Blender seems by default to note that each release has fixed an ENORMOUS number of bugs. Unless I'm missing something, this seems to suggest that an enormous number of bugs are in the program. Is Blender buggy? Do people notice bugs when they use it? I have no idea. But I have to assume it has heaps of bugs and that these bugs cause problems, so they spend time fixing the bugs that were causing problems. if the bugs weren't causing problems, why would they bother to fix them? So they fix the bugs, which is cool. So how many bugs are in the new version? The next version will give me an idea, because it will likely talk again of how many bugs they've fixed. All these new features and rapid development are very cool and enticing - I think they're adding stuff at around 1100% the speed C4D gets it, maybe faster - but how many of these new features are buggy is a different question. John Dickinson (Motionworks) has happily and vocally left C4D for Blender. He posts a lot about how much he's enjoying modelling in Blender. I am curious about Blender but there are few things more annoying in software than encountering bugs. Just thinking - are the bugs fixed a few weeks after release, so the non-buggy version would really be 3.0.01 (or similar) rather than 3.1? This would explain it. Does Blender experience a higher rate of bugs than C4D? Are things basically the same? Are they different? Do people have thoughts about these bugs? Or do they never really think about it, because they never notice the bugs, and each release's bug fix is moot because it fixes bugs that they never realised were buggy, so they never cared? Below, the Blender dev team celebrates the arrival of Blender 3.0 and prepares for the post-release bug fix.

Male, female, diverse.

There was a School of Motion video with AE tech folk (plus Ryan Summers) posted a month or something ago, just talking about the AE updating/core rewrite/tech improvements or whatever AE is doing. But I haven't brought myself to watch it, would rather just wait and see if they actually deliver rather than hearing promises of what's coming. Cue C4D joke!

The Rate My Funeral guy deserves extra love. "That's rate, by the way." Matthew/Mash above does some of the very best tutorials. Funny, concise, engaging to watch, and absolutely clear as a bell, you get the concepts really strongly.