Jops

I can assure you that I only did this survey because I was curious how other users see it. All mentioned problems could be solved without questioning subscription as a system, so I did not see the connection.

what exactly is the problem with the poll?

How do you like the online activation since R21?

Hi LECHUCK, I think that what you are experiencing is something a lot of design workers experience. Most of the things you mention are universal for graphic designers as well as for 3d Artists. I would say that long hours for example are more dependent of the company you are working for then the stuff you do. It is absolutely not uncommon in the 3d World. But as you often have longer projects then working 2D you might have the possibility to arrange your work in a smarter way and therefor you might be able to influence it a bit. But the more efficient you are the more work will be put on your stack... so well it stays the same 🙂. I am in a quite similar situation as you are, just on the 3d side. Doing this for 20 years I have the impression to have reached a border, that doesn't let me develop any further. of corse not artistically (there always is plenty of room in 3D) but concerning the projects and income. Over the years this border somehow didn't move with the inflation of lving costs. therefor it relatively gets less over the time. But you will still get paid quite a bit better then a regular graphics artist even thoug you will not get rich. One thing, that I used to love about 3D but after such a long time starts to annoy me once in a while is, that it is 1. a huge area and you have to learn several jobs to master it ( sculpting, camerawork, lighting, directing, and so on) and 2. it developes so rapidly that you always have to learn new things. So you will not get bored that easily but on the other hand it will stay demanding for the rest of your career. And that also is true for a lot of everyday work there are not so many things where you can just switch of your brain. All of this of corse is just my experience living as a freelancer in germany. I wish you the best luck with your decission. best regards Jops

I think that cinema 4d has the best interface of any program that I know... maybe moi can compete (even though it is much smaller) There are so many small things, that make such a huge difference. for example the possibility to change parameters of multiple similar objects at once just by activating them all. The possibility to use x+ or x* to edit even multiple values that are different. that alone makes working with adobe products feel like stone age. Change the size of multible comps in AE you need a script... you need a script for every second thing in AE. If you have the impression that a workflow feature is missing in AE you can assume that you at least need a script or a plugin. in C4D you have good chances, that you just have to google it. also the concepts behind the UI are great. I love nodes. they would also be so good in other programs. Most of the good concepts are super old, they where already there when I started with R6. They allow complicated things with beeing verry easy to understand. mograph is also such a concept. In younger days I unfortunately I can also name some features that imho are still ok, but less magical. all the reflectance stuff. or the material node editor. Even though it is able to deliver extremly complex results, it also feels that way. I like nodes a lot (doing xpresso for ages) and also node based materials, but I dont use c4d's often because I struggle to accomplish the simplest tasks. But most other areas of cinema are so easy accessible and understandable. Just easy to start with but powerfull if you learn them properly. Even though I am now very happy with resolve (fits my workflow much better then AE) I would love to see software for compositing, editing and image manipulation with the same paradigms as C4D. best regards Jops

Igor, the Guy who found out about the POSCAP issue already analyzed the new driver version. https://www.igorslab.de/en/wonder-how-invidia-the-crashes-of-the-force-rtx-3080-andrtx-3090-will-be-removed-and-still-will-be-removed-even-from-the-power-supplies-analysis/ if you understand german ( I dont think the subtitles are to good) here is the video which is much more detailed: best regards Jops

Thanks for confirmation 🙂

So you got a offer for a perpetual (!) update from R21 to R23 for 600 - 650 € +Vat? That would be very interesting and never heard of (at least that I am aware).

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.

That would be fantastic. I am really looking forward to this, but hopefully that doesn't mean "as the material, render system" there we have the best of three worlds 😂.

people also praised the new transparency (plenty of posts since MAXON started to communicate more openly). But the core is a special thing. people are waiting for it for many years now and as many of them feel the developement of the other features slow down because of it. For years and years the new object handling was expected for the next version. So it is not just friendly to communicate more openly, but it also is a smart thing to do. Never the less people where under the impression (as maybe also MAXON) that a new object handling wouldn't need 10+ years to develop. So the disappointment is understandable.

Neuton looks very promissing, even though I would loved to see more examples. I also like MAXON to release information about it. If they hadn't, no one would ever believe that they are still working on faster object handling. As I understand MAXON is doing the real big step here. That is bold and hopefully smart. What makes me a bit sad is, that It looks like it will still need a lot of time to get the tech integrated it into a new object manager. I will have to calculate If I am going to get i into my hands before I retire :). ok. thats a bit of a joke, but it will take quite some time (MAXON folks are very cautious with their words in this regard (which is better then the other way round)). There are many things that I would like to see improved besides the object handling (how do you guys make sphereical effects, hace, smoke and dust?), the chaos of renderengines and materials need to be sorted out. And there is so many other stuff that needs attention not to mention the new features I would like. I guess we will see some more years of slow improvements. Hopefully to get all the speed and features all together, but when will this be? Therefor I understand maxons push for subscription. Even though I most probably would have kept my MSA, I am not so shure If I will upgrade perpetual for the new price. best regards Jops

So right now its a Mograph on steroids? But will at some point be the base for everything. Till that happens the speed gain only affects the "neutons" but not the objects living in the object manager. And when this happens is not jet foreseeable?! thanks, Jops

Neutron can be a huge step in several ways. It will be interesting to see how much of it finds its way to the next release. But I also have the fear, that MAXON is giving away its unique easy to use UX. As we saw starting with reflectance and then the very complex material node system. We have 3 renderengines right now with 3 different types of material setups and i am not talking about redshift. If this translates to object handling and editor views (the normal one, advanced open gl, performance and neuton) I think that the advances could well come at the cost of usability. best regards Jops

I found that video interesting. In many ways... good and bad. many plugins cost just 10 to 30€ with flip Fluids to be the most expensive for 76€

ok, so spireil over at cgtalk helped me find out: it was the missing or to old opencl.dllok... so here for all:install like described in the Navie effex zip- copy a tpp.dll to the dir where you find the cinema4d.exe (working for me is version 4.2.2013.1114 for spireil version 2018.0.0.0 works, maybe wersion it is not that crucial here)- take care that your windows/system32 folder contains a opencl.dll (version 2.0.2.0 works for spireil, 2.0.4.0 works for me (I had it laying around so I used this one.)thanks a lot to everyone!and especially to Samir!

Hi There, thanks Samir for this great gift. I wish you all the best for your life. to all the others. I just can't get it running. Not on my workstation not on my Laptop. I downloaded everything twice, tested 10 different tbb.dlls and tripple checked that I put everything where it belongs. on R17 to R19 on win 10 and 8.1 (all 64Bit) is someone else having problems to? or am I the only one? thanks for every bit of advice. Best regards Jops