RBarrett

From what I hear "limited" will be at least a year. But downtime around the holidays is a great time to check out tutorials and level up. Cheers, Rick

The new Cineversity is designed to both host original dedicated content and aggregate content from elsewhere in the community, including the 3D Design and Motion show and webinars from our training team. I'm not sure if there's a notification mechanism, but I'll let the Cineversity team know there's interest. I'm the product manager for C4D and the Maxon One portfolio. While I do keep a close eye on conversations and trends across all the various communities, I'll admit I don't interact in threads here or elsewhere as much as I'd like. There's a ton of slacks, discords and forums (and at least for now, twitter) where folks are passionately discussing our products. Which is awesome! And plenty of folks have found the idea form, not that there was ever any effort to hide it. That's also awesome! There's so much excitement about the future of C4D, and I focus on collecting those thoughts rather than trying to respond to all of them. If you really want to ensure the right eyes see your ideas, the suggestion form is the best place to submit. If you think you found a bug, use the technical support option in the same form so our support team can confirm your bug and make sure it's logged. Both your idea and support requests help us to prioritize our efforts to make Maxon software even better.

I did a double-take. 🙂

Project Asset Inspector has search and filter. Click the magnifying glass in the upper right or choose Filter / Filter Bar.

For the record, I want search for materials too. Unfortunately the material manager is really old code and I'm told we have to rewrite the whole thing to add it. Something we'll need to do anyway, but harder to fit on the roadmap...

Font filtering was added in 26. When the font popup is visible, just start typing and it'll filter to matching font names.

Yes Hybrid (XPU) is possible

We've got an updated version in development. I'll check on the status.

Analytics never exist in a void. We're always interpreting them in conjunction with what we hear and see from customers. But as Bjorn said they do give us a picture of how people are actually using the software, and we are indeed looking at them so if you enable them it helps us take into account how YOU use the software (though completely anonymously and in aggregate).

We can look into that. Our analytics didn't show this feature was being used a whole lot, and honestly it seemed slow and troublesome - particularly with network drives. But we've heard the feedback on this. This should work exactly like that - it does here. Shift changes x10 and Alt x0.1 Some icons were omitted with the goal of making the menus clearer - to offer some 'placemarking'. We realize that's caused problems when some of these commands are used in palettes and we're working out a solution. Sometimes this isn't ideal - if you shut down and lose internet access (or hop on a plane). We do make it really easy to deactivate (remotely) via my.maxon.net Definitely something we'll be continuing to work on. Some of the Render Settings UI work for S24 was the first step. With R25 we added the conversion to RS lights, tweaked the light UI and embedded RS light types in menus. These efforts will continue. BTW if you don't know the preview for RS Node Materials is a little better than the Xpresso-based materials.

I'm sure you can understand why marketing isn't going to emblazon that on the website, nor should they because the performance issues don't affect all users. When advanced users bring it up - here or elsewhere or in technical support we're happy to talk it out and explain that we're working on it. There was a blog at one point where we talked about the new core efforts, but I think it unfortunately dropped off with the last website redesign. I get the desire to have these things in a more central, website location, but that's also a bit counter to the whole idea of an ongoing conversation with the community about this stuff.

That's not being ignored. We've worked repeatedly to improve the timeline performance - there was a dramatic increase with R21. We worked to improve skin solver performance in R23. We improved the load times for large scenes in S24 SP1. Beyond that, much of the performance is related to C4D's object system and priorities - which is fundamentally why we've been working on the new Scene Nodes core for years. It's not an easy task, and it's not done yet. But timeline/viewport performance is very much a focus of our efforts.

Absolutely. I'm here and I'm listening. Actually a lot of the little things that have come up here have made it into recent releases - some may not be 'big ticket' items but folks here absolutely had influence on the focus on UV tools in S22 and the animation improvements in R23. Sometimes issues are well known, but they're simply too complex to fix without tearing the whole engine apart and it's safer for now to live with them until we have a new engine to drop in. Other times we simply don't have the resources to tackle them or can't identify that they're affecting enough users to shift resources that direction. Pointing out areas you'd like to see improved and bugs you'd like to see addressed is always welcomed. As I mentioned I may miss these outside of release times simply because I'm busy but you're welcome to mention or DM me with specific feedback. I really just ask that you'd give the team the benefit of the doubt. Cinema 4D is our livelihood and our passion, and we're working like crazy to give you more powerful tools and workflows for creativity. The feedback you feel is being ignored is almost always heard and well recognized - it's just simply a matter of time and resources to get it addressed.

We'll be continuing efforts to improve workflows that are important to our customers, to deliver quality-of-life improvements and new procedural options to create compelling graphics and animations. It's always tricky to balance openness with expectations - the roadmap doesn't always pan out the way you expect. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes you acquire two companies and merge with a third in the span of a couple of years and plans shift a bit. Sometimes things take longer than you expect (actually they almost always take longer than you or I expect). Cinema 4D is a really broad and deep application that touches a lot of workflows. None of them are forgotten, but we have to prioritize, and in some cases there's building blocks we have to get in place before we can tackle a given workflow or feature.

Ongoing asset distribution is something we couldn't offer outside of subscription, thanks to Enron and all those revenue recognition rules. It's also something that would've been harder to justify financially within the company. We always had assets and felt they were important, but now we're in a position of wanting to give you consistent value as part of your subscription and an ever-growing asset library is one great thing we can give subscribers in addition to frequent feature upgrades. Regarding executables - I presumed Dave was referring to the installers.

- Support: that's probably the policy. I think something like that has been the policy for quite some time. I'm always more than happy to help folks with nerdy C4D questions - solving problems is my favorite thing to do! Fortunately too there's a great community of C4D artists that are incredibly generous and helpful. - Cineversity: this has always been a subscription benefit. It's just that at one time it was an MSA subscription. Maxon gives away a ton of content to everyone. Our training team offers two or more free webinars a week, on top of our monthly (or more frequent) 3D Design and Motion Show streams. Much of Cineversity's tutorials are free both on YouTube and the site itself, but a few are available only to subscribers. We're increasingly working to replace key Cineversity toolbox functionality with new, more powerful features in Cinema 4D itself. - Libraries - with the introduction of the Asset Browser we've started releasing more objects, materials and other assets on a monthly basis to subscribers. It's one of those things that makes a lot more sense for both us and customers under a subscription arrangement. - Executables - these were always hidden behind closed customer portals before R21, and US customers always had to request them from support. I think you still can, but if you run into issues send me a DM and I'll shoot you a link. R21 and forward customers can easily grab any release from the website.

This isn't the case. As the person responsible for Cinema 4D I feel the pressure every day from management and from customers to make the software better - to provide new and improved workflows to expand your artistic horizons and justify your continued subscription. The people I work with at Maxon are incredibly passionate about our products, and are regularly working before dawn, after sunset, on weekends and holidays to make the software better. The team keeps growing bigger, and a quick look at our careers page shows we're actively searching for more developers. If you know any quality C++ coders send them our way! I realize subscription isn't for everyone and some of you are disappointed, but frankly I'm getting tired of the accusation that we're all sitting back and relaxing when I and my colleagues are working harder than ever.

You're right - for a couple of years we tried to do it ourselves. It did not go well. We had multiple people on staff spending their entire time approving or disapproving student software, and response times were pretty bad. Especially because in many parts of the world everyone is starting school at the same time. At that time, we were only providing students with Cinema 4D. Now we have Maxon One, and have added all the student demand for Redshift and Red Giant software. The old system simply wasn't sustainable, so as Kent suggested we looked to an external company that specializes in this. They charge a small fee, and with the volume of student license requests we process it simply makes the most sense to ask students to cover that. Otherwise we'd need to increase subscription prices for everyone. (and btw those people we had doing verifications before have been reassigned and are much happier now that their job involves more than clicking Approve or Deny)

By organizational change I was referring to the acquisition of Redshift, Forger and Bang and the merger with Red Giant. We've brought a lot of new companies and people into the organization in the midst of a pandemic, and unfortunately because of safety and travel restrictions we've not had a chance for many of those people to meet in person and have the kind of philosophical conversations one often has over an adult beverage. There's been a ton of Teams calls, but I think 100 Teams calls can't replace an hour of seeing each other in person. And yes, some folks have chosen to move on throughout C4D's history (not just recently), though many are still active in the Maxon ecosystem. They had a great contribution to our products in the past and we wish them the best. But it's important to keep in mind that the senior devs that ushered C4D and other Maxon products to success are still very much a part of the company and day-to-day operations - some have moved to the C-level while others have been given Fellow positions. And for clarity - while I just said in this post the lack of in-person is an internal issue as well, the comment above was referring to conversations with users. Evan's absolutely right - I'm used to processing feedback both on the show floor and at the after party. In-person it's a lot easier to ask follow-up questions and narrow down what we need to do without the topic splintering into a whole bunch of other conversations - in person there's immediacy, and if the topic changes often that splinter group will move aside so two separate conversations don't have to happen on top of each other. And alcohol helps 😉 Cheers, Rick

Well the new UI was primarily created by the same hard-working and talented UX designer behind the old UI. It was over a decade old, and needed to be updated not just for appearance sake but also for some technical reasons. And I imagine y’all can respect that while our UX designers have lots of great skills, they’re not C++ modeling developers.

I talk with users a lot, and it's the thing I love most about my job. I just had the opportunity to hang out with 100+ designers at Camp Mograph last weekend and it was awesome. I'm really bummed the in-person opportunities have been scarce the last two years (and will remain so for a bit longer it seems). Once they resume though, I encourage everyone to wander up and chat. I look just like the picture there on the left. I'll admit that with all the organizational change and COVID crap we've been dealing with the past couple years it's been a bit tricky for me to replace those in-person conversations. I find the forum structure a bit difficult and tend to focus on more chat-style interactions on slack and discord. But if you have feedback I encourage you to DM me here (which I think notifies me) or find me elsewhere on the interwebs. What I really love to discuss is your individual workflows. It's super helpful to talk about what problems you encounter and what would help you create new looks or more efficiently. To me that's way more profitable than talking about this-or-that feature from another app. I know those apps have those features, but what I want for C4D is to create new workflows.

Thanks Dave. Just so y'all know I'm not just the pitch man. The responsibility for this product is on me - not just the marketing but moreso the decisions in what we do. I'll tell you it's a lot harder than it looks from the outside. But I stand behind the release and the tremendous effort that went into it. I understand the thoughts about timing. There's a lot of factors that go into the decision about when we ship our products, increasingly so as we work to tie together the various technologies in the Maxon family. And regardless of your feelings on the Everyday movement, I think it's shown that there's value in consistency. I mentioned how hard the decisions are in this job, but the frequency of releases actually helps. I knew I could get Illustrator/SVG import, Track Modifier, Capsules and more into your hands now without you waiting another 6 months. By the same token I know you won't have to wait a year for the next set of goodies. In fact, thanks to Capsules and the Asset System we're able to deliver quality content much more frequently - without even needing a product release. We've put out a steady stream of assets in May, June, July and August, and we'll be continuing to do so. Hopefully we'll be able to add some Capsules in the mix as well. And to your last question - I guess both? I do normally work in Maxon's Thousand Oaks office, but I've been mostly at home in my garage since the start of the pandemic. So what you're seeing is my garage, which I guess could be called a man cave. I do have a TV, fridge and a bunch of LEDs out here though it lacks air conditioning.

Capsules opens up a lot of opportunities, and in my overview video I talk a bit about the way they came about. It's actually the result of some of the excitement we saw from users when we introduced the Scene Manager in S24. The limited set of capsule assets we delivered there - like Greeble, Dual Mesh and the 7 Segment primitive - provided folks a glimpse of the flexibility and power of Scene Nodes and the asset system. There was lots of excitement about that, but it was tempered by the things that aren't yet possible in Scene Nodes and the Scene Manager - like MoGraph, Volumes and Dynamics. We recognized that it's still going to take time to get those things rolled into the Scene Nodes core, but there was an opportunity to combine things now. There's not a lot of capsules yet, but we plan to start building more, and we hope the opportunity for others to more easily tie in capsules with classic C4D features and workflows will encourage more interest. Scene Nodes definitely still needs more time to mature, but the capsules provide little pieces of plugin-like functionality without necessarily needing to get down and dirty with Scene Nodes. Other than that I'll just say that it's been a very short time since S24 - our development cycles are not evenly balanced. I'll also say that we're well aware of many of the areas where artists want to see Maxon add not just functionality but our secret sauce for playful and procedural workflows. Those aren't being forgotten or ignored I assure you. wow my face is big up there.

There's one price to upgrade from R23 to R25 and another to upgrade from any prior version. I can definitely confirm the price point exists.