DasFrodo

Problem with this model is that people would just get a single month and then ditch out, keeping their expensive render engine forever. A solution to this is what Allegorithmic (Substance Suite) did... until they got bought by Adobe. They had a "rent to own" model, meaning if you kept paying the monthly subscription for a year without break you would get a perpetual at the end of it with the current version at the time. It was an awesome model but sadly it ended as well, of course.

Yeah, I'm still surprised companies think anybody buys this marketing garbage talk. Question is: do some people actually buy it, or do companies THINK people buy it but instead users just HAVE to eat this stuff up because they need their software? I'd argue that most people go along with it because they have to. If your livelyhood depends on a specific software you simply cannot afford spending time on something different to get as proficient at it. I understand it, completely. Well, it obviously works. We can thank Adobe for getting this subscription garbage to mainstream. If only companies AT LEAST did subs rent to own but nooo. Rather blackmail your users "either you pay or you get nothing, good day sir".

@3D-PangelWe had the same idea at pretty much the same time 😄 merged the topics. Yeah. I'm done with the shenanigans. Currently learning Blender. I have a R21 perpetual still but this will just get older and older... and for my hobby needs Blender has everything I need. At least as far as I can tell for now. If you mean Maya then yeah, go ahead. If you're thinking about 3DS Max, no. Just no. Makes you think how long it's going to take until the C4D Perpetual vanishes as well. Although I don't think anybody seriously considers this with 3x the price of a yearly subscription. "But guys, we still have perpetuals, just like you wanted!" Yeah, right.

Well, just got a Mail. Redshift will be Subscription only after the 30th of August. Time to get a maintenance refresh and see what happens in the future. Knowing how it's been priced so far together with C4D I have no hope for the future, honestly. RIP

I don't think that's an issue 🤣

I use cgtrader and turbosquid. But I've had a better experience with cgtrader. Other than that there's also PolyHaven (formerly HDRIHaven, TextureHaven and 3DModelHaven). They are not necessarily "stock" in the classic sense but they have TONS of great and 100% free to use stuff. I've used their HDRIs numerous times.

Hehe, someone started playing with more complex shaders?

There basically two possibilities because I 100% guarantee you that everybody is thinking about AI stuff at the moment that either: a) It works but needs more time in the oven b) Doesn't work with current NN tech for whatever reason

Is this any different for any software except Blender and maybe Houdini? Honest question, because I don't know.

Well, Redshift works... but not every node is integrated. I never needed one that is not in the Node Editor though.

Exactly the reason why it's the one module I've spent the most time with ;D

Yeah, except in Houdini you can't do anything without nodes. C4D is, at it's core, at least for now, the same software we have been using for years. You CAN use the scene nodes if you want but Maxon has mentioned time and time again that you don't need to use it if you don't want to. If they manage to get this balance between scene nodes and classic UI right it will be really powerful because nodes in Houdini can be very, very tedious if you just want to do something you know you'd need like 5 clicks in C4D for.

Indie License. I know it's not going to happen, but that's literally the only thing I want.

Yeah, I understand that. Still, not supporting the ONE version that will be probably the most used (especially in production) until the next LTS comes out is kind of dumb. As @Cairyn said, if I was thinking about buying Renderman that would be a big big no no.

I bet they just haven't gotten around to it yet. Makes no sense at all to support the version right before the LTS version.

Thank you for posting this Dave. I Jumped in and bought the course for the reduced price as well. I am done with Chapter 1-3 at this point and I've started Chapter 4. Up until this point everything has been explained very well and in necessary detail. I've started a text file with shortcuts as well because the existing cheat sheets for Blender seem to be mostly trash.

Nice! I know exactly which HDRI you used there 😄

Sounds like you quite literally immersed yourself in Houdini. Interesting!

I can somewhat relate to that. Over the years I've noticed that just watching a tutorial does absolutely nothing for me. I HAVE to do it myself, and if I stumble along the way that's even better, because then I have to find a solution myself and learn something in the process. This is also the reason why I can't do long video tutorials; my mind just wanders and the second I see something cool I just want to do it myself. I've always been a "learning by doing" kind of guy which unfortunately for some things (including 3D) is the slowest and hardest way to learn something. I'm also prone to getting used to workflows in the "wrong" kind of way, meaning not using best practices.

Lol if that wasn't the case I would have given up on Houdini pretty fast. I've looked at older scenes so much when I did some kind of setup and recreated it in another because I couldn't 100% remember how I did it.

Yeah, unfortunately the Blender community is (in some ways) pretty elitist. They often remind me of the stereotypical Linux user, lol. Telling you how great Linux is and basically calling you dumb for still using Windows because Linux is just sooo much better and free and yaddayadda. Good on you mate lol, but I don't feel like spending weeks learning an operating system that should just run my programs.

Good stuff! I can see your progress with every rendering 😉 The aberration, don't forget the aberration!

I disagree. A UI and UX can be judged after a couple of hours already. At least to a certain extent. After a couple of hours I can already tell if an interface is unintuitive as hell or not, if it's ugly or beautiful and if parts of it make sense or don't. I can use zBrush for 10 hours and still tell the UI is an absolute dumpsterfire. People that have used the software for thousands of hours are often blind to problems with the UI, myself included. "It's not that bad" or "If you learn it you'll be okay with it" is stuff I've often heard about Blender or zBrush. Problem is "it's not that bad" is "it's horrible"s little brother.

This is looking better and better 👌

Yeah, that is something that always frustrated me with Blender. You spend tons of time finding out which hotkey does the exact thing you need because there is no visual representation of that hotkey in any menu. You either know it's there or you're screwed. That there are millions of different releases and thus millions of different tutorials on different versions that potentially teach you something that is long, long gone or easier to do doesn't help at all. It's just a frustrating experience overall compared to more "traditional" softwares where you have access to EVERYTHING via the menus.