King of Snake

Interesting stuff gets posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=blender geometry nodes Red hot chilly pepper generator? Some of the building stuff goes a bit further than kit bashing: https://80.lv/articles/a-procedural-building-system-made-with-blender-s-geometry-nodes/

The most obvious advantage: the price 🙂

Blender 3 will feature a completely new asset browser, which should also manage materials: https://code.blender.org/2021/06/asset-browser-project-update/

Keep in mind that in the case of videogames, the market has also grown a lot, so you can more easily sell more copies of your game compared to 20-30 years ago. A game like the original Legend of Zelda sold about 6.5 million copies total. A game like The Witcher 3 sold 28 million copies. Loot boxes and micro transactions are also not an unavoidable consequence of increased development costs at all. There are many big games (like the Witcher 3) that don't have sh** like that. It had DLC but without it the game was certainly anything but "incomplete" and I'm sure they still made money.

I chose option one. Though I have to mention that I'm just a hobbyist and not using C4D professionally. For those who do, the cost may matter a bit less. But for me just doing 3D as a hobby, I could no longer justify the C4D pricing with Blender being free and as good as it is. I still have my R21 perpetual license of course but won't get the subscription and probably will not upgrade any further. I was using the the Mograph edition before which was good deal more affordable, but now they've done away with those options and you can only have the full, expensive package. An affordable Indie version might bring me back, though I might just stick with Blender.

Gamer here 🙂 I'm trying not to buy any more games until I've completed at least a couple off my (ever growing - damn you Steam sales and Epic store freebies!) list of games. I have hardly even started Witcher 3 (though I completed 1 and 2). I don't put huge amounts of hours into gaming but I keep in touch a lot with what's going on. I grew up with MSX, NES, SNES, N64, XBOX360 then PC mostly. But the amount of games to play is just staggering and games like this do take aaaages. I'm currently trying to focus on Ori and Blind Forest, then maybe Doom 2016. I also like to play World of Tanks from time to time (the only online multiplayer game I play). So by the time I get around to Cyberpunk there will be a nice cheap GOTY edition with all the bugs ironed out 😉

Some of the fastest progress I've seen people make is by doing everydays. Force yourself to make a little render or animation every day and post it somewhere to share with the world (a blog, Instagram, this forum). If you can keep that up for 6 months I'm sure you'll be amazed at your progress. And don't be discouraged if a lot of it looks bad. 😉 Google for "everydays" for some inspiration. Beeple is a well know designer who became quite famous doing everydays, but there are many more. Usually these will be quite abstract. If you want a 3D motion/design career it's probably good to be more of a generalist (compared to something like VFX where it's more specialised) so your will need to know a bit of everything. Would be good to also try and tackle some less abstract things like rendering a nice photo real product packshot, a logo animation, or a car. If you can produce a nice and varied portfolio, this will make it easier to attract clients, or get your foot in the door for a job or internship at a studio. C4D and Houdini is a great combination for this kind of work. I think I would focus first on C4D as Houdini does have a steep learning curve. Redshift is a very good and popular renderer. A good computer with one or more fast GPU's will make your life easier as a renderer like Redshift will run on the GPU (great for fast look development) As you are a textile and sculpture artist, I think it would be good and fun for you to also dive into making materials. Many of these abstract pieces are quite simple geometry but with interesting materials. With many motion design artists and studios, you will see they do a lot of personal, often abstract kind of work to explore. Then elements of this will wind up in commercial projects.

And C4D is now at least $720 USD a year (without redshift). It's a lot for hobbyists or those who just occasionally use it professionally.

For the animation I think it could use some work. It feels very fast and it's hard to follow what is happening. I would experiment with different tempo's and adding more rhythm, with parts where it slows down (anticipation!) before whatever interesting next move happens. Remember with animation you are acting, telling a story, even if it's just a ball rolling and hitting things. Think about the weight of things. What if the hammer was really heavy, and the shoe kicking it just has barely enough strength to get it to move. So the hammer would start moving and just barely (is it gonna make it??) manage to get over the top of it's arc, then (because) it's so heavy it falls fast and hard. That way you create more interest, more tension, more character. Same with the orange Qbert character. That feels like it's very light so it would be launched much higher up in the air by the hammer on the seesaw. This could take a lot longer than the 2 (!) frames you are now using to have it backflip over to the spring platform.

I just wish MAXON would make an Indie version of C4D that's a bit more affordable for hobbyists. The affordable cut down editions were great for that (Broadcast edition had enough features for me while being significantly cheaper than Studio), but they have been eliminated.

I got the Broadcast edition some years back for half price when they had this deal where you could upgrade the Lite version that came bundled with Adobe to a full version. Paid the MSA for that until now which was very decently priced. And now I got a good deal with my Broadcast MSA price getting me the full version of R21 (since there is only one version). So until now, I can't complain about the pricing! But I don't know yet if I will get into the subscription. 3D is just a hobby for me and R21 already does so much I should be good for years just with R21 really. The subscription would be more expensive than the Broadcast MSA I used to have and I don't know if I want to spend that money on something I don't use all that much.

Arrimus demonstrates the quad remesher workflow. Very cool stuff.

I guess it's a better deal for prime/broadcast users yes. But then at the same time, they are also being "forced" into a more expensive package in the long run that they might not want/need so perhaps this is a way to sweeten that deal.

Yeah I'm not really counting on it do as well. Although I did make a nice profit on Nemetschek shares a while back, and also bought some Adobe which are still up around 14% :)

Well, the affordable subscription price that they advertise is actually one year at the minimum (and paid annually, not monthly). And people who couldn't afford studio before are probably not that interested in renting short term. The reality is that all the most affordable (Prime, Broadcast, visualise) options of C4D are gone. Scrapped. I was very happy paying 285 a year for my MSA for Broadcast since I'm mostly a hobbyist user and only occasionally use C4D in my professional work (and then I have more than enough with Broadcast's feature set) Yes it seems like I will get a good offer for the first 2 years of subscription that might match that but after that my annual C4D cost will be more than double from what it was. This is simply the reality. I'm not "prevented from subscribing" but the option that worked for me is being taken away. I don't mind paying the Adobe subscription so much since that's what I make my income with (even though I really only use Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects and there used to be a bundle of those that I had that was cheaper than the annual CC subscription with a bunch of apps I don't use or need, so it's pretty much the same situation).