No One

That's not the reason Autodesk put the sculpting tools in Maya. It was never meant to compete with Zbrush. They are there for editing Blendshapes for facial animation and Skinning Poses. Don't believe me? Just watch the videos they published when they released those tool. A hint: Both the Shape Editor (for Blendshapes) and the Pose Editor (to fix skinning problems with Pose Space Deformation) are in the Sculpting shelf with all the sculpting tools.

Thank you. I stand corrected. I had no idea D5render was available for C4D. I'll check it out when I have the time. My point was that it's weird that Maxon and Autodesk let Unreal take the lead on this, not that they can take it's place. Anyway, let's agree to disagree here.

I totally disagree with this. Blender is a general DCC and Eevee (with some addons) and Eevee Next can get pretty close to Unreal Lumen. It is totally doable. There is absolutely no reason for Autodesk and Maxon to not be working on something along these lines. And, honestly, even if we could get Unreal 4 quality instead of Unreal 5 quality, that would be an amazing progress. You might not be thinking about this or have any use for real time rendering, but the CGI industry as a whole is. Here in the US is VERY common to see job ads asking for Unreal knowledge along side Maya or C4D. And I'm not talking about game studios.

Blender Eevee can get pretty close to Unreal Lumen with correct use of Light probes. Unreal is still better and faster but Blender (even without Eevee Next) is miles ahead of Maya and Cinema4D in terms of real-time solutions (there is simply nothing for Maya and C4D since U-Render died). Chaos Vantage seems to be closer to Unreal Pathtracer, not super fast like Unreal Lumen - at least in all examples I saw. I've been playing with Blender a lot since last year and the main reason I'm doing this is because of Eevee, as I've been looking for alternatives to Unreal, because I hate the whole workflow between Maya/Unreal or Cinema4D/Unreal. Of course, vanilla Blender can be MORE cumbersome than Unreal, but I was able to customize Blender (with the help of some addons) to work kinda as a mix between Maya and Cinema 4D. Again, I'm still puzzled by Autodesk and Maxon decision about this. Why are they ignoring real-time rendering for almost a decade? The ONLY reason Unreal is being used as a render engine is for the lake of equivalent (or even close to) alternative for Maya, Cinema4D and other big DCCs. I though Redshift RT would become this alternative but it seems pretty abandoned right now and it was never really good. Anyway, going back to the thread topic: this is an outstanding update for Cinema4D. it seems to be an X-Particles killer. Kudos to Maxon on this. But I'd love to see them working on a some real-time render solution now.

To be fair, that's the only thing I've been waiting for more than 10 years in either Maya ou Cinema4D. The only reason people are using Unreal for stuff outside game design is because of the amazing real-time rendering it offers, both with Lumen and the Pathtracer. The only comparable thing (and still kinda far off) in a general 3D DCC is Eevee in Blender (and it seems Eevee next will close the gap to Unreal). It blows my mind that Autodesk and Maxon are letting Unreal take such big slice of their market share. I've been using Unreal in the last 2 years and it's amazing but the workflow is really cumbersome. i wish we had something similar real-time rendering in either Maya or Cinema4D. (U-Render was promising and I was an earlier beta tester and earlier buyer. But they never reached a level that was even close to the Element3D plugin for After Effects, much less Unreal. I was really sad when they closed. They had a lot of potential, specially with the Maya version that was never released.)

I'd love to be proved wrong here.

Maxon does not have a good track record of continuing the development of any new feature of C4D. So whatever we get in the new version will probably be what we will have for the next 10 or 20 years. See Sculpting, BodyPaint3D, Xpresso, etc...

Did you even read what I wrote? I specifically wrote that Blender IS NOT the Cinema4D competition here. Maya is. Maya is free for students, the student license is given without hassle (while Maxon treats students as criminals and takes forever), Maya has WAY more features than Cinema4D (it's not even close), Maya is a industry standard in more industries than Cinema4D, and Maya has a cheaper indie version for the students after they graduate (U$305 if you make less than $100.000 annually). The only advantage of Cinema4D is that is easier to learn and used to have a better UI (not the case anymore). This is not enough for the ridiculous price difference, mistreatment of students (every semester my students tell me horror stories of Maxon cancelling or denying their licenses. This never happens with Autodesk software) and lack of a cheap professional version post-graduation (the indie version)

This is a very unwise move and it will kill Cinema 4D in the long run. No students = no future users. Cinema 4D is already dead in a lot of Universities and Colleges in the US. The absurd price and all the shenanigans with the student license made it a non-starter for most schools. Although this price hike won't change much the situation, because what happened last semester (Maxon canceling the student licenses MID SEMESTER!!!) already killed any good will schools had with the software. This is just the nail in the coffin. Keep in mind that Blender is not the competition here. Even though most of my students come to my classes (I teach around a hundred students per semester in a high ranked Animation program in the US) with Blender experience they are really interested in learning the industry standard software. And Maya student licenses are free and super easy to get. And after graduating they will have Maya Indie for U$305 bucks only. Meanwhile, Cinema4D charges a stupid high price for the student license, takes forever to get said license and has no indie version for former students. Considering this, Cinema4D is simply not an option anymore. Unfortunately, I understand why @DMcGavranis doing this. Even though this will kill Cinema4D in the long run, schools and students will keep paying for the Maxon One Student licenses not because Cinema4D but because Zbrush and, in some cases, Redshift. Zbrush is really the 3D cash-cow for Maxon now. Zbrush simply has no competition in the industry. 3D schools are hostage of Maxon in this case. And Redshift is the choice of schools without big budgets (like State schools) who need a faster renderer for students using Maya. It's cheaper to use Redshift than buying more powerful desktops or building a renderfarm for Arnold. And Octane's (the only other option) implementation in Maya sucks, while Redshift is super well integrated. Anyway, in the end I just feel really sad because Cinema4D is my favorite 3D software. It's pretty sad to see it going the way of Lightwave 3D.

You won't, you will just pay more. Quadros only make sense for some scientific and engineering work where you need to avoid any stability issue. Speed-wise they are the same as the gaming RTX (and they used to be slower) but more expensive. No reason to buy a Quadro for 3D Animation, no matter what the computer companies tell you. For 3D, it's always better to buy a gaming computer than a "Workstation" with a Quadro.

Ok, that explains it. Those are much better reasons than just being faithful to Maxon while they don't care about the forum.

With all due respect, that was a massive mistake. Please go back and take the sponsorship. There is no conflict of interest with Maxon - they don't care about the forum otherwise they would sponsor it. And the forum is not just about Cinema4D anymore. This sounds like a guy that was friendzoned who refuses to date any other woman because he wants to be faithful to the woman who rejected him.

More than we have been? We have been waiting for the new core for more than 10 years. Meanwhile other 3D software have advanced way more than C4D. C4D is still my favorite 3D software but I accepted that it will become a Lightwave in the near future. Something that was relevant but it isn't anymore.

I was talking about C4D, but I can see how it would apply to Lightwave 3D too.

There is a new core but in practice it was not worth 10 years of wait and slow new features.

They bought TFD for Lightwave and integrated in the software. They said so in their forum.

I agree. Very likely an AI article. And a very bad one...lol In what world is Arnold the best renderer for...speed???

I would qualify this by saying that Octane is much faster for realistic looking scenes - faster both in terms of rendering and setting up the realistic scene. BUT Redshift can be faster for less realistic scenes. Being a biased render, Redshift let's you fine tune more stuff and "turn off" more features to get a very fast render if you don't need a realistic look (e.g. turn off object reflections but keep environment reflection). Octane gives you less control of that.

I mainly use Octane in C4D although I have been playing more with Redshift in the last few versions. Octane is faster and easier to get a beautiful and realistic shot. If you have a background in real cinematography/photography like I do, Octane works much more like you would expect than Redshift. It's just easier and faster to get a beautiful shot in Octane. You can get the same result in Redshift but you will have to work harder to get there. Octane is also better for non-realistic stuff. Octane has a good Toon shader, for example, while Redshift does not. Finally, the Octane Node Editor in C4D is a pleasure to work with, much better than C4Ds Node editor. In some ways, Octane feels more integrated in C4D than Redshift, even though Redshift is the new standard renderer for C4D. Ironically, I have been using Redshift A LOT in Maya. It basically replaced Arnold for me and my students in Maya: the integration is REALLY good (it's as well integrated as Arnold), and it gives me the speed and flexibility I didn't have in Maya before. Meanwhile, Octane's integration in Maya is HORRIBLE, it's really disastrous, full os questionable UI decisions like controlling the rendering settings not in the rendering setting menu (like every other renderer in Maya) but in the attribute editor. But in the end of the day, both Octane and Redshift are getting behind: Unreal is simply eating their lunch. For most use cases, Unreal 5 is more than good enough and much faster than either Octane or Redshift. The only reason it didn't totally take over is because the process to use Unreal as a render engine is still cumbersome and annoying. I wish Redshift would invest more in the RT mode to reach something closer to the Unreal engine - then I would probably use Redshift more in C4D. For now, Octane is the better option in C4D and Redshift the better option in Maya.

I understand your reasoning but as a professor I think that would not fly. It needs to be the full and current version. Here in the US we are training them for the industry where they will use the full featured and current software. And again, Cinema 4D does not exist in an island without competition. The competition is Maya and Blender (also 3ds Max in certain markets outside of the US), full featured. Both Maya and 3ds Max student and indie versions are full featured. Autodesk even retired Maya LT, which was a feature-less version of Maya because Maya Indie made it redundant. Note how smart Autodesk was. As soon as Blender became actually usable in 2.8, they released the cheap indie versions of Maya and Max. They KNOW one of the reasons they are the industry standard is that most top Animation schools in the US and Canada teach Maya, so it is easier for companies to hire Maya trained people. Blender was a direct threat to that so they lowered their price for indies. I honestly think Maxon could get part of the pie of this market if it had any interest in actually being accessible to students. C4D it is indeed easier to grasp and- in my experience - even helps to understand other 3D software. I taught intro classes with both Maya and Cinema 4D (in different semesters). Every time I used Cinema4D the students were able to grasp the concepts and create beautiful shots and animation much, much faster. Unfortunately, it is a non-starter to advocate for C4D use in most schools due to the issues I talked above.

This is true, I should have noted that: in my former school I was able to convince them to keep the Maxon One subscription due to Zbrush, which became cheeper, even though the students and the IT guys were pretty unhappy about the whole thing of charging students for an educational license (and taking weeks to approve it). That was a very good move, thanks. Now, as you are indeed involved in the student license program, I have some suggestions to make my life (and any educator who wants the convince their department to use Cinema 4D) easier. This is strictly from the point of view of a professor in the American higher educational system: 1 - Free educational licenses. It doesn't matter if the fee is low, no other main 3D software charges for it. Maxon is simply sending the students to Blender and Maya. 2 - 1-years student license instead of the the current miserly 6-month student license. 3 - Hassle-free process to get an educational license. Every other software company will automatically give you an educational license if you have a .edu email 99% of the times. They usually only ask more info if there is some suspicious activity going on. Meanwhile, Maxon takes weeks to approve the student license according to my students (to be fair, for faculty it tends to be faster). 4 - A cheap indie version for people making less than 100k a year, so recent graduates can keep using it either as freelancer or until they get hired by a company. The lack of an indie version makes C4D a non-starter for students that just graduated, when they can get Maya and 3ds Max for $300 a year and Blender for free. They can't afford C4D, but they can afford Maya/3dsMax. Zbrush is the industry Standard and it doesn't really have any competition, so it's a easy sell for any department no matter what. But Cinema 4D, on the other hand, has to compete with Blender (free) and Maya (industry standard, free, hassle-free and with a indie version post-graduation). I would hate to see C4D becoming a new Lightwave or Softimage, because no student and school cares about it anymore.

Thanks for the reply @DMcGavran. So, I wrote a ticket about the issue last week and I still do not have an answer from Maxon. I'll send you a DM with my .edu email to see if you can help me with my educational license. But keep in mind, as I said above, the Maxon's software in our labs is working fine - the problem is the impossibility of students and faculty to get a new student license. I understand that as a CEO you probably have very little direct contact with the educational licenses of Maxon products, but you should be aware that since you became CEO, Cinema 4D became really unpractical for Universities and schools: expensive fees for computer labs; charging for educational licenses at home; no indie version for recent graduates and now this insane suspension of educational licenses in the middle of the Fall semester. Why not do this suspension in the Summer or wait for the winter break? It seems the people responsible for educational licenses at Maxon have no idea of how schools operate. Between Autodesk offering free educational (for labs and home) licenses of Maya and Blender being free, it becomes almost impossible to advocate for Cinema 4D in schools and Universities. Which is a shame, as I strongly believe that Cinema4D is the best general 3D software for beginners.

After my students told me about this issue I checked and discovered this is going on for at least two weeks. So it's not a temporary thing. Two weeks is a lot of time academically - our semesters are only 15 weeks (and some Universities have 10 or 8 weeks terms). And let me clarify that our lab copies of Maxon software are working fine (Zbrush still working, etc...), the problem is with the licenses that students used at home on their own computers. At reddit there are threads at Cinema4D and Redshift subs about the issue. As you can read there, I'm not the only professor/instructor really pissed with Maxon about this issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/Cinema4D/comments/16fqrok/maxon_bring_back_the_student_licenses/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedshiftRenderer/comments/16fuy6q/student_license/ My school did reached out to Maxon. What was the answer? They just repeated what was on the page I posted and said he cannot give us a date of when the student licenses will be available again. Yeah, I will keep my affirmation that Maxon is shooting themselves in the foot. First scrapping the cheap versions of Cinema4D (Prime and Bodypaint), then refusing to have a cheap indie version (when even the "Evil" Autodesk has indie versions for Maya and Max) then charging for student licenses, And now this? Maxon's attitude makes no sense in a world where Blender is free for everyone and Maya/Max are free for students (then cheap for indies ater graduation). What is going on @DMcGavran?

So, I though Maxon could not do worse in the educational realm than what they did some years ago when they started charging for student licenses. But I was wrong. My students just told me that they cannot get a educational license anymore from Maxon because the educational licenses are suspended. Way to go Maxon, disrupting student work in the middle of the semester! It seems a good way to make Maya and Blender even more relevant for students and Cinema4D irrelevant. It's always a battle to convince any department to use Cinema4D in a class instead of Maya (the industry stardard) or Blender (the powerful free alternative). And then shit like this happens. I love C4D but I'm done trying to teach it. It seems Maxon does not care for this at all, so why should I bother?

I agree, it is a bad decision to make Redshift the standard render engine if it is only Redshift CPU. I disagree about a Rendershift Lite - it should be the full Redshift just with restrictions about network rendering. Pretty much like Arnold in Maya The fact that Maxon bought Redshft and refuses to really put a full version of it on Cinema 4D just reinforces what I have been saying in this thread: Maxon does not see itself as the Cinema 4D company aymore. Now they are a ZBrush, Redshift and RedGiant company first. Cinema 4D now exists to temp people to their main product: Maxon One.