Jops

Obviously MAXON has a different strategy then Autodesk. And from a company side of view it is quite smart. As most of the customers are professionals, cinema for them is much cheaper then the competition. But here we start the "who is a professional discussion" someone who is earning 40k, 80k, 120k? The big problem with the indie version is the information that is not to be found. So it is 100.000 US dollars per Year. For the last fiscal year? for the last year at the point of purchase? what is the exchange rate? What does projects for more than 100k mean? the money the artists earns (projects that go over years)? or the project of the agency? or the project of the customer? How will this change in future when you are committet to the software? A lot of people complain, that MAXON is hiding information or that they do not communicate properly. But to be fair autodesk is not better. (which of course does not excuse MAXON in any way) MAXON clearly tries to establish a one fits all solution after many years of very graduated offers. I appreciate this approach. But the fact that perpetual costs considerably more than subscription and offers even less services is contrary to this approach. I am not shure if there is a solution for the situation of the hobbyists. But considering the environment, the indie licenses and especially blender, I would be concerned that people that start 3d now get lead to the competition. Therefor MAXON should do something about this. Maybe MAXON should give away the light version that ships with adobe for free to everyone. They already have to maintain this version anyway. That would be a real competition to blender and the indi license and as it is limited the professionals wouldn't like to work with it. People could use the version for years and if they are convinced that they can afford it can switch to the subscription or perpetual version.

as far as i know the MSA text is very clear. If your MSA was still valid when R23 was released MAXON owes you this version. You have kept to the contract and paid the MSA so MAXON has to keep to the contract as well. That is a natural thing to do.

i have had this discussion several times. even with David. if a university cannot guarantee to offer a course for several years, the installation in a PC pool costs a few thousand euros. That's the reason why the students had to bring their personal laptops to install free student versions. but since this semester was my last anyway, they will probably continue with blender from now on. I have absolutely nothing against David McGavran. But I think the statement is close to the truth. I didn't say anything nasty, just why I think there will be no indi license. I personally think it is much more important that old MSA customers (that already payed MAXON a lot of money over the years) who want to stay perpetual are not treated worse than subscription customers. best regards Jops

regarding indi licenses there is another aspect that makes them unlikely. David McGavran got CEO just 2 Years ago. So what is the goal for an ambitious new CEO? revenue! You can't blame him for that, but customer satisfaction and a vibrant community are probably not that prominently featured in the target paper (although they wouldn't mind it). And, of course, the growth should be greater than that of his predecessors. In addition to short-term goals, such targets are often defined over 3 or 5 years. MAXON had quite good figures even before David McGavran. so you can assume that his goals are ambitious. Decisions that question these goals are unlikely to be made. If today some users switch to the competition and some universities prefer to teach blender because of fees, these goals are not necessarily in danger (the resulting problems will be seen later). But the indie license puts these goals in danger. So it is unlikely, that we will see a indie license in the next 2 to 3 Years. best regards Jops

I hope this saves as much money as it costs. best regards Jops

I most propably will not update. Its not that I dont like some of the features, its just, that 1000€ for a yearly update doesn't feel right. I didn't cancle my msa, MAXON did. So I will use my new freedom. If redshift was included I would update thoug.

you can use diferent values instead of: New range min = -0.5 New range max = +0.5 try New range min = -0.4 New range max = +0.6 and so on. till your tree sits right. alternative would be to edit the displacement map in a way that it is neutral grey at the place your tree is. then it yould not displace this part of the geometry.

if you are not using sub poly displacement. you could also use the displacer deformer on the object insted the displacement chanel in the material. best regards Jops

If I was into Archvis I would look up Twinmotion. That is based on unreal just with a different interface. I don't know much about it, but what I saw was quite impressive.

A fair treatement of perpetual licensce holders (and former MSA customers) compared to subscription customers.

If I knew that I wouldn't write to a forum but to the support 🙂 I mainly wanted to know If othres have simular experiences. That doesn't seem to be the case judging from the lack of feedback to this post. best regards Jops

Thank You Cerbera, even thoug I would call it restoration rather than improvement, it shows, that my rant was unnecessary. Thanks for enlighten me. I agree with you that for most people it might be better If the enviroment is blendet out in ortogonal views, but at least we can make it work now. Hopefully they will change that in R22 ( that would save hundred of thousands of klicks around the world 🙂 best regards Jops

Hi there, The background objhekt was a very reliable tool. You threw it into the scene, put some material on it and you had a background. I don't know exactly when it started, but at some point version 18 or so it was suddenly sometimes not visible in the viewport anymore. The reason was that now you had to use a pixel texture in the assigned material to make it visible in the viewport. Gradients and noises, with which you could create backgrounds very efficiently, were suddenly no longer accepted. Only during rendering the corresponding material was visible. And now since version S22 the background object (if it has a pixel image assigned) is suddenly visible in all editor views including the up, right and front views. But that doesn't make sense, because the background is most of the times intended for a special perspective. for that now working with a visible background object (which has a pixel image assigned to it) is no longer possible. You always have to make it invisible to be able to work. and the switch it back on. It used to be the easiest tool you could imagine but It was fantastic and now it just causes trouble. Why? Or am I the only one who is bothered by it? Jops

Hi there, I am right now working on a customer computer (Dual Xeon, 1080TI). I have R21 and S22 installed. No Plugins and everything patched. I have quite some stability issues (freezes) with S22 while R21 runs ok. Do you have the simular findings? Or is this just a special computer related hickup? Thanks Jops

No problem at all, thats for trying to help!

Thanks, but as written we already did this but it did not help.

I found a work around: if you connect a subfolder as a network drive, then the path gets shorter accordingly. But never the less I would be very interested in a propper solution.

Hi there, we have problems with C4D under windows 10. We are working in folders with long pathes and long path is also activated in the registry. while we can double click files in the explorer to open them in c4d, we can not open it or drag it in c4d. we also can not save them propperly, as the filename gets cut in length by c4d. I am quite shure that this is more a win problem then a dedicated c4d problem, but the notepad for example has no problems handing this. Did anybody encounter this problem and even more important is there something we can do to be able to work with long pathes ? (besides activating it in the registry) best regards Jops

judging from the user interface it is basically the same:

Hi there, does anybody know if there is a difference between the R21 GLTF export plugin and the native exporter in S22? Thanks a lot, Jops

looking up a bit of biology is always helpfull. Human eyes are quite bad in resolution. all together from left to right over a field of view of over 120° we have 3.3 to 7 Million light cone receptors per eye (they are responsible for the day view. so basically that what we use when we look at a monitor). some of them are sensible for red other for Blue or Green. If they where evenly distributed we wouldn't need a HD monitor at all. Because evolution is smart (and had plenty of time) there is a small area right in the middle (where we look at). that has a much higher resolution of cones. this area is called Fovea centralis. it is round about 1.5 mm in diameter and contains roughly about 600.000 if these cone cells. This area translates into round a bout 5° of sharp field of view that humans have. Everything besides that gets unsharper and unsharper 🙂. therefor, If we combine the resolution of the two eyes, we get (just for the area we really see as sharp) round about 1.2 Megapixels. that is equivalent to a 720p resolution. So why can we see the difference between 720p and 1080p? because we are not sitting 13 meter away from a 55" TV (that would be the 5° VOF). We are rather sitting 4 meters away from the TV. that translates to a aprox. sharp viewing area of 35 by 20cm. To see this sharp your TV needs roughly 9 times 1,2 Mega pixels so good 10 Megapixels. that would roughly be UHD. So why dont we see a huge diffference betweeen full HD and 4K. well that is because the 1.2 Mega pixels of our eyes that we calculated have basically a Bayern pattern (as most digital cameras) that means every sensor can just see one color, the image gets interpolated to show the right colors and that reduces the resolution. The resulting resolution is not just one third as the sensors also sense the intensity, but more about 1/2 to 2/3. therefor we don't need good 10 Megapixels but just about 6 and that is right between your 2560x1440 resolution and UHD. As long as people sit 4 meters away from a 55" TV they physiologically can not see a difference between a 4k and 8k. And for the difference between full HD and 4k. well yes we can see the difference but 4k is exceeding the capabilities of the human eye in this example. so the difference we sense is not the real difference, it is just the maximum we could possibly see when we have good eyes, are awake and concentrate compared to something a bit less. In the moment we get big video walls and want to sit 2 meters away we will have to calculate again, but for now. everything over 4K is nonsense (besides very special tasks) and full HD is a very good compromise. best regards Jops

compared to 20 years ago the web got really commercialized the big companies earn huge amounts of money just by people using their sides (and giving away data). and the amount of information you can find on these sites ist amazing because the companies do not have to provide it themselves (web2.0). Adding to that there are a few tutorial rockstars out there (linus techtips and so on) and they are making serious money. Today getting a influencer is a dream like getting a rock star was in my youth. If you put all this together it makes sense, that people that never experienced the old days today have the impression, that it is absolutely ok to just consume the information instead of also contributing to it: "The platform is making serious money with content of people that make serious money or that get a kick of showing off"(even if this of course is not true for a forum like this) So why bothering. They just don't know better.

It is absolutely right, that the buzzword 4k sells TVs and cameras, but the resolution and sharpness of a 4k H264 stream is hardly any better then a full HD PNG sequence. But that is nothing people are concerned about as long they have 4 or 8k standing on their TV and they can be better, or at least not worse off then their neighbors. That said my customers are not end customers but companies and they pay just for what they need. My impression is that for them full HD is still a good compromise between quality and cost. And in the end customers are watching this stuff on their 4k TVs and can't see the difference. Don't get me wrong. 4k 60fps is crazy cool, but most of the time it is just not worth 8 times the rendertime over 1080p 30fps.

I am not shure about the situation others are in, but I hardly have any demands for 4k, besides projects for big LED walls and so on. I think that many customers are aware that the difference between full HD and UHD is hardly visible in everyday situations and they are not willing to spend extra money.

looks like a problem with the alpha channel of your picture. try to make a black and white image out of your alpha information and use this in your alpha channel