3DKiwi

Personally I think that's BS and just a convenient excuse. The Foundry has no problem putting out 3 versions / updates of Modo each year and I pay an annual maintenance.

Dave. I hear you and I totally agree. What gets me is we have a pretty light R21 release that people had been expecting the long overdue UV tool enhancement and faster object handling but no, a few enhancements, no doubt useful, but then at the same time users are essentially told they are going to have to pay more in the future. If anything what people are paying MAXON should be coming down. Now with Blender 2.8 nipping at their heels the last thing I would be doing is pissing off my customers by dicking around with what they pay. I think if I hadn't jumped ship 4 years I certainly would be now.

BTW Affinity designer is terrific for making decals / stickers for your 3D models regardless of what your 3D app is. Here's an example where I made the Harley Davidson logo for the tank. The Lego stickers won't scan as their metallic. I was pretty much able to replicate the Lego stickers such that you can't tell the difference.

Because it would end up being a forum just for people to complain and wouldn't be a good look. Then they would have to employ someone to moderate it / manage it. They already have a bug reporting / support system. There would be some double handling of bug reporting. That said they do have a Facebook page. One could argue that FB pages have replaced forums.

BTW I assume you guys run a database optimize regularly? This helps keep the cafe running smoothly. I also used to delete members who were inactive for more than 12 months. This greatly reduces the size of the database. Invision should be able to assist with anything not functioning as it should. I assume you guys still have maintenance contracts with them.

Funnily enough, one of the most popular cafe challenges was the Beer Can Challenge back in 2011. Here's the winners.

There's probably a few, very vocal on social media customers that MAXON don't need and will breathe a sigh of relief that they've moved on or are planning to. Ironically Affinity Software previously known as "Serif" have been getting a lot of new customers for their Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer applications. These offer excellent low cost and permanent licences for people wanting an alternative to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I use both and they pretty much do everything I need. I'm then not lining the pockets of Adobe.

Dave - my guess is the number of Prime users is percentage wise quite low compared to the number of Studio users. I'm sure MAXON fully expect to lose a few customers. They will be counting on replacing those users over time with new users. Same applies to anyone not happy with the subscription plans, again they expect to lose a few. Taking a hit on income for a year or two has probably been factored into their plans. Putting aside the move to subscriptions if I was paying for Cinema 4D upgrades or a subscription I would be saying to myself "you know what, I'm handing over $XYZ per year and the rate of improvement / value for money just isn't worth it". R21 is pretty much a .5 upgrade in my opinion. I agree about Blender. While I've done a few Blender tutorials and know the basics it's still clunky to use.

Sorry no idea about Mac's but I would assume there's 3D file viewers available for them.

If they're are running Windows 10 then that has a built in obj viewer. This works pretty much like Sketchfab. Here's what I mean. I built this car with an online Lego modeller. I then exported in obj format. Opened with the Windows 10 3D object viewer.

You might want to run a spell check on your list.. Surprised you didn't list a proper symmetry modelling mode. That's probably the number one short coming with C4D's modelling toolset. What about UV tool enhancements? Nothing much listed yet Cinema 4D has one of the worst UV toolsets out there. That said, they have stated they are working on UV tools but it's taking a life time. Just shows you how bad they are / how out of date they are. Other things not listed: Particles. Thinking Particles is way out of date. My guess is MAXON has thrown in the towel with Particles since XPartciles does such a good job. Pyrocluster needs an update. What about an update for Sketch and Toon? Then of course Cinema 4D's performance with lots of objects is still an issue isn't it? One reason for the core rewrite. XPresso isn't multi-threaded. One issue with Cinema 4D is it still has a modular structure underneath the hood. For example different things (modules) have their own selection tools, symmetry tools etc. Got to say it's refreshing to see MAXON's CEO and Product Manager posting and responding here. The Product Manager has posted before but the previous management now retired were missing in action. Nigel / 3DKiwi

Yeah time for a new graphics card. I'm still running a first generation i7 950 CPU but I've upgraded the GPU about 3 times and increased my RAM to 24 GB. This has kept me zipping along pretty well. My current graphics card is a nVidia GTZ 1050ti. A budget high performance GPU.

What does it say when you click on "Show OpenGL Capabilities"?

I hear you Dave.

C4D Version is showing but only on my profile. Weird.

Yeah you need to see the name of the member without having to unfold their profile. BTW the launch page / landing page takes a while to download even on high speed fibre.

Looking really good. I can't figure out how to view gallery images by albums / categories. For example say I wanted to view cafe challenge images how would I do that?

Great work guys, the Cafe is looking very slick. I note however that some of my old tutorials that are in the downloads section come up with a page not found error e.g. R12 dynamics, Intro to animation, Intro to character motion, R12IK, create an abstract image, animating a camshaft, animating a piston. These need cleaning up. Possibly you may need to clean then up by deleting the database entry for them if you can't clean them up in the admin control panel. Then possibly some clean up on the server to remove files hanging around. BTW I have deleted my Vimeo account. That means all of the tutorials like my Bodypaint one that were linked to from the downloads section are gone forever. They were all starting to show their age so I had a big clean up and got rid of the lot of 'em. Nigel / 3DKiwi

It's coming Dave, you're just going to have to wait. All part of the rewritten core / object management that we've yet to see everything of and only seen bits of it. My guess is when they finally get around to rolling out the new UV toolset is when the rewritten core will be fully unleashed. I think at the same time we'll see an upgraded XPresso with more nodes and a lot faster i.e. multi-threaded. Fun times ahead with Blender on a roll. MAXON, The Foundry and others will need to lift their game over the next couple of years and give users a reason to part with their money rather than changing over to Blender.

Dumb question time. Why can't Cinema 4D have a perpetual licence with annual maintenance i.e. MSA then also a monthly / annual subscription plan for those that want to rent Cinema 4D / don't want the hefty outlay of buying a perpetual licence. Don't give me any BS that it can't be done. The Foundry offers both for Modo. Everyone is then happy.

I pay US $399 per year for my Modo maintenance contract to keep my perpetual version up to date. Alternatively as Kent listed you can pay $599 per year for a subscription.

The large image that we're being forced to download is 1.25mb in size. This could be greatly reduced in file size. The Ranch video ad is a whopping 3.1mb in size. BTW the file / download system needs a tidy up. There's old tutorials of mine still still loaded up but when I click on the image to go to the page its on I get an error message. e.g. The R12 Dynamics video that's in the highest rated downloads.

I'm happy with Modo development. Remember that Modo puts out 3 updates per year so rather than one big one once a year you get smaller incremental upgrades 3 times a year. The procedural modelling system keeps getting better and better. Stability isn't that much of an issue now. On the horizon is a new render engine that can use GPU, CPU or both. Simplified settings as well. 13.1 includes performance improvements with more to come as Modo is getting parts of its Core rewritten similar to C4D except we won't have to wait 10 years and The Foundry isn't as secretive about development as MAXON is. Plus Modo is still available with a perpetual licence. I pay $399 per year for a yearly maintenance contract. Similar to C4D's MSA. Modo users are a much happier bunch of people at the moment compared to Cinema 4D users. I haven't regretted jumping ship when I did after the rather mediocre R17 came out. But of course like all 3D software there's stuff that users want fixed or updated yesterday in Modo. UV mapping tools is not one of them. Modo has excellent UV mapping tools plus supports udims. Yup Blender 2.8 is great but it's modelling tools I still find a bit clunky to use and well behind Modo. That said it does superb procedural / live booleans and there are some outstanding modelling plugins / addons available. Nigel / 3DKiwi

Dave, my take on this is you will be able to continue using R21 forever even if you stop handing over money to MAXON. However you will probably need to connect the internet regularly for it to update its licence (or get the special arrangement with MAXON for an offline licence). If you have a current an active subscription then you get to run whatever the current version is at the time. When you stop handing over money you revert back to your last perpetual licence version. My other take on things is MAXON expects to lose a few customers. Their logic is those not taking up subscriptions will be offset by new customers. Probably what I would do is bash on using R21 and then if and when they bring out a decent new version, then start giving them money again for a subscription. That may or may not be R22. The one certain thing I would be doing is not giving them any more of my money until I was happy with what was being offered to me. Cheers Nigel / 3DKiwi