EricNS

It work as expected here (R25.115).

This Blender credit list includes all the "Contributors", not the "Programmers" . A Contributor can be someone who just created an interface icon, provided a shader, worked on the documentation, etc... The Blender programming team is actually quite small, approx. 20 people. 10 in the HQ in Amsterdam, and 10 other spread over the world. Besides these permanent coders there are also dozens of Blender "volunteers", part time developers doing it as a hobby or to get coding experience.

Zbrush is also a true free-form sculpting tool. It can generate and remove geometry, modify the topology dynamically without constraint. Cinema 4D's Sculpt cannot modify the topology of the base polygon model. It's just a limited multi-resolution brush deformer. To get back to the topic, people who think Zbrush will eventually be integrated in Cinema 4D will be disappointed. Zbrush treats data totally differently than CInema 4D. Merging them is not just about migrating tools, but re-writing their core, rethinking everything. At best we can hope for better import/export tools directly from Cinema 4D's interface.

No. The missing icons are still missing.

While doing this you limit the Sculpt tools to basic brush deforming. The benefit you mention is actually not true, because it's in a single direction: you can indeed use the Sculpt tools on every polygon objects, but you cannot use standard cinema 4D tools on "Sculpt tag" objects - like deformers, booleans, generators or modeling tools. It's absolutely not an "integrated" solution. A Cinema 4D "Sculpt tag" object is in fact not that different from a Zbrush model, it must be converted to make it usable. I personally don't care about traditional vertex data. I want to sculpt whatever I want with (almost) infinite details. I don't mind doing it in a separate window and exporting it. It such an effortless automatic process. For me what makes Cinema 4D's Sculpt obsolete is: 1. The density limitation. 4-6 millions might seem a lot, but it's insufficient to add small details on a model (like scales on a lizard or wrinkles on skin). By today's standards 5 millions polygons is no longer "high polygon". 2. The lack of dynamic tessellation (adaptive topology). This is why I stopped using Cinema 4D's Sculpt. Dynamic tessellation allows me to be truly creative, to start from any shape, to add or remove geometry, to increase details locally, etc... Without it Cinema 4D's Sculpt is just a limited low performance brush deformer. Blender, Mudbox or 3D Coat all offer dynamic tessellation.

To be fair, the new Cinema 4D Sculpt icons are based on the previous ones, that weren't modified since R14 in 2012. For R25, they were just simplified. In 2012, Blender still had a text based interface (like the old lightwave). The small icons came later... I don't know exactly, probably in 2017... I think Blender copied first Cinema 4D (or other softwares), then MAXON was inspired by Blender.

Yes. You missed the "preset system" ! It's also one of the "rich feature" from R25 !!! And the cylinder icon was also updated. It's now slightly bigger than before, 1 pixel if I'm correct. Apparently it will be easier now to click on it, and be more creative.

Why ? I think we can compare Unreal and Cinema 4D, since they can be used for the same purpose. Only the results matter. Unreal is a valid option for many industries beyond gaming. It's used for films, cartoons, architecture visualizations, etc... Working in Unreal is actually not that different than in Cinema 4D. The interface is even quite similar with a content browser, a world manager, a nodal material editor, a details tab (attributes), etc... We can no longer say that game engine are "cheating" because they use pre-calculated data (baked textures, baked illumination and simulation) . Unreal 5 can be used dynamically without any baking at all ! Nanite, its scene optimization system (an automatic LOD system using clusters), even removes the need to use baked low poly assets. You can work directly with heavy geometries, made of billion of polygons. It's not an issue. Sure, game engine use heavy optimization and are limited, but who cares ? Again only the end result matters.

Yes. I expect more than what we received these last years - little tools based on open source code (Nvidia PhysX Placement, Intel Denoiser, OpenVDB Volumes), inadequate third party solutions (Magic Bullet and Radeon ProRender), or mediocre update (the "new" viewport, that feels already dated). The last 4 releases were so insignificant I can barely notice a difference between R19 and S24. I can't even remember the last time MAXON created an innovative, game changing tool - up to the level of Substance, Unreal or Houdini. Efforts were made to build a nodal interface and it seems to work fine. But it's just an interface, a different way of working. It won't transform Cinema 4D into Houdini unless strong tools are developed in parallel (driving an archaic dynamic system with a nodal interface, for example, won't generate better results). Too many Cinema 4D's features seem permanently on hold : Thinking Particles and the Post Effects were not updated since 2003, Cloth since 2006, Bodypaint and Hair since 2007, Dynamics since 2011, Sculpt and Physical Renderer since 2014, etc... I hope this very long pause was justified, that it was a chrysalis state and we'll see a brand new, glorious, Cinema 4D soon. In any case, MAXON must move fast. The industry is changing radically. We are only 2, 3 years away from full real time ultra realistic software, capable of handling billions of polygons, dynamic simulation, GI and atmospheric effects in real time. Unreal is almost there.

Cinema 4D cannot even do a single of these sequences in non real time. Unreal is unstoppable. The water simulations are not that good, but the mud sequence (at 0'50") is quite realistic, and the smoke (at 1"35") is truly impressive. I'm also amazed by Unreal 5's real time GI, Lumen. The results are stunning: