smibrand

On 11/27/2021 at 7:57 PM, Cerbera said:

I just went for the steam / substance thing, and am not disappointed. Despite being slightly unclear on what exactly I am missing out on without the Adobe sub, I took a punt, and all seems good ! I do appear to have everything I need to make great materials - loads of presets, brushes, and the sort of things I was hoping for, including those nice particle jobbies ! So that's me happy

 

Yep, @HappyPolygon, Steam normally does games but increasingly other things too these days ! I have been 'playing' SD for 2 hours now, and have already won some sort of random gamer style award  Now for 3 weeks of hardcore learning while I try and make it work with Cinema and Octane and try and get my workflows sorted !

 

CBR

I assume your missing the updates? How does that work with the steam version? Do you still pay a maintenace fee?

Just curious what everyone is using for navigating in Blender? Are you using standard hotkeys? Custom? Specifically do you use middle mouse button and the shift or cntrl button to move around? I've tried switching everything to the more universal alt+click method, but then find I have to change other hotkeys for selecting edges and what not. And then if you add plugins they have their own hotkeys that might interfere as well.

But personally I don't know how anyone is using the middle mouse button to rotate around. My middle mouse button requires a bit more force to push down and its just awkward to hold all the time. 

Special announcement from MAXON at NAB tomorrow morning. Leaves speculation as to if this is related to Insydium and their 50% off everything deal?

I would hope that MAXON knows what features its users want at this point. There's been countless discussions for years now on various message boards, before and after every new release. 

I don't think the industry is in any kind of decline. It's shifting and will always be shifting. Sounds like your general area isn't showing any kind of force to keep work coming in, which is always a factor for smaller communities.

If you need to relocate, you don't need to live in LA or NY to do mograph. Theres Detroit, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Denver, SF. Lots of different choices. LA is expensive, but I don't know any freelance mograph artists struggling to survive. Most are driving pretty nice cars, so there is definitely money to be made. 

Don't call yourself a multimedia generalist. Sounds desperate. Hold true to what you are. Go buy the School of Motion Freelance Manifesto book. I think you'll find the inspiration in that to keep you going. 

On 3/20/2018 at 12:48 AM, VECTOR said:

Can't see it happening to be honest, MAXON know Xparticles, pretty much have that side of things locked down, with the addition of real flow and Turbulence fd also on the market. Another thing i'd love to see, which im certain also won't happen is being able to loop select points on the ffd cage, manually selecting point, especially if you have a rather high segment count ffd, is tedious to say the least, and would be made a lot easier with that function 

I don't think XP or TFD has anything on lockdown. Maybe the solo C4D freelance market will rely on these plugins. But if C4D wants to be taken seriously in production houses (which it has the capabilities to do so), I can tell you with certainty that while there might be a couple of licenses of XP floating around for farting around on, but anytime serious effects/particles work needs to be done, the first person producers turn to are Maya artists. 

15 hours ago, nerv said:

Recently bought Houdini indie. Had a few breakthroughs and no longer feeling totally frustrated by it. 

 

All that said... 

 

this newfound understanding of Houdini has made me appreciate C4D even more. Its immediacy is simply unmatched, especially for the majority of the work I’m paid to do. I rarely ever need simulation-based or organic VFX, and whenever I do, XP4 and TFD cover all those bases - while keeping me in a familiar environment. I work so quickly in C4D that it’s actually counterproductive to distract myself with another DCC, let alone one that (although very flexible) requires more of a time investment to get anything done. 

 

I’ll keep Houdini around as a side tool, for little experiments or the rare situation where XP4 or TFD aren’t achieving what I need them to. But it’s safe to say it won’t be replacing C4D as my primary platform anytime soon.  

 

Anyways, again, my 2 cents / YMMV / etc. 

I had the exact same conclusion recently as well. In fact, learning Houdini has increased my XP game quite a bit. I do get a little frustrated by the speed of things in C4D, but hopefully R20 remedies that to some extent.  I don't have TfD, so smoke/fire in XP is still a bit slow/limited, but the potential is there.

Just to clarify - if I were to use octane or redshift as my rendering solutions - I wouldn't be able to really benefit from the OpenGL viewport correct? I would have to use native C4D materials? If so, would it be possible for the 3d party developers to get their materials to work with the openGL viewport down the road? 

well color me surprised. Was expecting the worse for this release. Was already eyeing maya and blender. But if anything this release does show, assuming R20 brings the mother load, the potential of c4ds future. LOD bar and weight painting (the one thing other than UV unwrapping that I struggle with the most) are two things that make me smile.

3 hours ago, bobc4d said:

1 hour ago, Zmotive said:

 

Would it have been less offensive if I had tweeted it and and used more exclamation points? 

 

Sorry Bob. I didn't think any of his rough and tumble supporters could be offended by a toungue-in-cheek web posting about software.

Wasn't my intention. Just having a bit of fun.

 

No more political immitations from me. Scout's honor!

 

I thought it was funny....

1 hour ago, merkvilson said:

https://www.MAXON.net/en-us/news/MAXON-blog/article/the-MAXON-service-agreement/

 

Interesting that they felt the need to make a blog post about this. Perhaps they are starting to see many MSAs not being renewed this year? Or maybe getting a lot of questions about what happens if they don't renew for this release. Word has probably gotten around that you're better off waiting until R20. 

Not gonna lie though - A half finished prorender, and openGL bodypaint, or even a new sound effector are not selling points for me.

1 hour ago, merkvilson said:

https://www.cgstudiomap.org/ MAXON has many studios.  

I was referring to the one in Friedrichsdorf. I'm sure the others is nice as well.

1 hour ago, Fastbee said:

This is one of the good reasons MAXON can't sit down and wait for someone to come to them.  In particular I was saying that the UX designer they are looking for could be anywhere and be anyone.  Miyamoto was given the job to make Donkey Kong because there was no one else around to do it.  He had never done anything like that before.  The person they could be looking for could be working at the coffee shop down the street.

I just had to google where MAXON headquarters is. Judging by the images it looks like a quaint little town to settle down and live the quiet life....and chill at a rustic coffee shop. 

I want to say 2.9 is suppose to bring a complete overhaul of the UI anyways. Could be wrong

Using BforArtists though is really only for advanced users. If you are just learning you should really stick with the traditional layout so you can follow tutorials/training. 

1 hour ago, Midphase said:

Eevee looks very promising, but to me the key missing component in Blender is a true artist-oriented GUI. I heard that someone is developing a 3rd party GUI for Blender but I haven't been able to find any information about it.

https://www.bforartists.de/

I believe thats what you are thinking about. I for one have been watching Blender very closely. Really there are only two things keeping me from switching. My industry (mograph) still worships C4D, forcing me to use it as a freelancer. And rendering capabilities: C4D just has more options at the moment and Redshift is looking real good.  

I am looking into how I could possibly use them both together, but I like streamlined workflows, and the less software I can use to get the job done the faster I can go home and enjoy life. 

Evee looks great too. Excited to see that grow and learn how real time rendering fits in for me

3 hours ago, 3DKiwi said:

I update my Cinema 4D version in my profile here or more accurately used to. I'm now stuck on R16 having seen the light that MAXON was going to take years to bring me the tools that I wanted. I've given up on waiting.

If MAXON had some balls then they would do a sneak preview of the new super fast core that's coming in an upcoming version (other than R19 as it's not coming in that). That would shut a lot of people up and build some enthusiasm.

I doubt MAXON is going to change their ways to shut up the same 8 people that are bitching on this forum. I know for a fact most C4D users have no idea this divide is even happening, as most don't read C4D forums. If Greyscale Gorrilla started posting Houdini tutorials and bitching about upgrades, then maybe MAXON might start breaking a sweat. 

I initially wasn't that excited to hear about a GPU rendering solution likely to be the big feature in R19. On my home computer, I already have Octane, and will likely go for redshift when it's released. So the need for another option didn't seem appealing. Until I realized what this actually might mean for me as a freelancer, who generally has to work in studio, on someone THEIR computers. 

Often I'm put on a computer with no plugins or external renderers, forcing me to use base resources like physical renderer. With the new GPU option, I realized, this could totally change everything for me when I go in-house. The speed increase will be a life saver. So I'm definitely excited by that, but I see where most people who freelance from home might not see a huge benefit if they already have other options available to them. More than anything though I would like to see UV workflow overhauled so I can put 3d coat aside, eliminating at least one more software I need to keep up with. 

Right now the hardest things I find for c4d to do are UV related stuff and rigging/character animation related stuff. If they can improve those workflows, I'm happy to stick to 3d party renderers and substance painter. 

This is awesome! Love to see it working with more complicated models like characters. But either way, impressive!!

On 11/28/2016 at 7:49 AM, existe said:

I will have to dig into XP more then, current owner so was not aware it had that capability.  Thanks all

And in case you weren't aware, Insydium recently bought ExplosiaFX, so its very likely fire effects will get a major upgrade in the near future

http://insydium.uk/insydium-ltd-has-purchased-explosiafx-from-blackcore/

8 hours ago, grain said:

Correct me if I'm wrong mike but could people download blender and have a play with Cycles to get a feel for the renderer? 

It may require learning some blender which can be a bit of a nosebleed but until you guys release an alpha it might be a way for us to play with the tech..

Looking at the screenshots posted above I'd say yes. The nodes here look exactly how they do in Blender.

On 6/28/2016 at 2:48 PM, 3D-Pangel said:

Well Hrvoje....we were positive for a whole two pages at least!

Can any tell me the pipeline into and out of Substance Painter from C4D and how well that works for them?  I have had my eye on Substance Painter as its Indie pricing is very appealing, but not sure how well the programs integrate together.  They created a great bridge for Substance Designer but I really have not heard too much about C4D/Substance Painter integration.

Dave

http://lesterbanks.com/2016/06/c4d-substance-painter-workflow/