3D-Pangel

I have always wondered why Luxology's ImageSynth shader was 1) cancelled by Luxology and 2) never duplicated by someone else. It did more than just make the texture seamless but actually took elements of the original image, figured out the boundaries of each of those selected elements, and then randomly generated them across the image such that they were seamless. You could also work with more than 1 original image to create a seamless new image that has elements of both images (eg. image 1 is grass and image 2 is ground dirt and the resultant image is ground with patches of grass). Now to be fair, that program was very buggy and prone to crashing which may explain why it was discontinued. But that was back in 2009. I would have to assume that more stable (and more powerful) algorithms have been developed in the last 12 years which would enable this capability to be reborn as a shader. Other than that, how about a simple tile shader that takes a square image and randomly rotates it 90 degrees as it replicates that image across a surface? I think this has been done but requires a bit more to it than simply clicking a check box in the material tag. Ideally, I would want it to be that simple. Maybe even two options that could work together or independently: random 90-degree rotation and mirror image. Dave

That is good to hear as it matched my expectations. I am expected that most other GPU enabled fluid simulation programs (Nexus, Embergen) have the same needs. When looking for a new PC to replace my 7-year-old workstation, I conceptually wanted a fast OS hard drive to move cached data to/from the GPU whether calculating the sim or rendering it. But all that data also needs a place to reside both on the GPU and the PC during these calculations, so this is where VRAM and PC RAM are important. In all these transactions, the CPU is nothing more than a traffic cop setting the speed across the PCIe bus. Here speed is more important than core count which works from a price perspective. The more cores you have, the lower the clock speed but the higher the CPU price. And of course, you want a full 16 lane highway across the motherboard (PCIe lanes) between the OS drive, GPU and PC ram. So, while GPU RAM is of primary importance (that is get as much as you can afford and you will have no regrets), there has to a limit to PC Ram because I would imagine at some point you could get more PC RAM than your GPU needs in the management of data to and from the GPU. That is how I am viewing PC RAM here - a staging place for large cached VDB files to reside as they are managed between the GPU and permanent storage on the OS drive. Is that the correct way to look at it? If so, I would imagine then that you would want your CPU RAM to be greater than GPU RAM by the amount you think will be enough to handle all open programs and files. But how much more? For example, if you get a 24Gb GPU, is 32Gb of PC RAM sufficient - 8Gb extra for programs and files? Of should you go to 64 Gb (32 Gb extra for programs and files)? The largest C4D file I ever worked with was 3Gb in size and C4D takes at most 1Gb of memory, so would 8Gb be enough? Hopefully, these considerations are the right way to look at hardware needs for the next stage in 3D computing where everything (and I do mean everything) is now becoming GPU enabled. For me, it is a whole new way to think about PC hardware. Dave

If I may, I think it perfectly okay to disagree with the points someone has made. That is what freedom of expression is all about. But when do decide to disagree, can we focus only on the topic at hand and not make a guess at the motives of the person who said it? Honestly, you can't presume to know what motives are behind a person's post. Only the poster can know that. Maybe I am tired of and a little bit alarmed by the growing political discord in America, but some of the posts being made on subscriptions vs. perpetual licensing have also been growing more disturbing over the years. It is one thing to disagree with a person's position based on the quality of the argument that is presented (the hope being that if the person's argument is sound, fact filled and of high quality --- we actually, listen and grow from it) but let's do so without inferring motives that we in no way can really know and then attack that person for those same imaginary motives. In short, focus on the points and facts being made and not the motives - and by association - the character of the person who is making them. "Big minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, small minds talk about people" - Eleanor Roosevelt I firmly believe that to do 3D, you must be "big minded." Therefore, everyone here has my respect, and I would hope you all feel the same way about the Core4D forum members the way I do. If so, let's focus on spreading some of that respect around the next time an argument is presented that you disagree with. Enough said...go render something. Dave

I started watching "Houdini is not scary" tutorials and was pleasantly surprised that it really wasn't that scary. It was certainly different, but I felt that with enough small attempts, I could get there. I also made sure to try and internalize how the steps in setting up a modeling operation would support a completely procedural and non-destructive workflow. I tried to get the internal logic of Houdini from those lessons, and I think I was getting there. Things made sense when viewed from that larger perspective. The light was starting to shine through the darkness. And then they added a texture, and everything went dark again. Honestly, I saw what was required to add a texture to a portion of the model and it was too many steps and totally unclear. A whole separate node tree needed to be established (I think this was lesson 4 in the training series). So I re-watched it again trying to understand again the internal logic that made this process meaningful in the long run. Nope....did not happen. I would need to get through that knothole to continue with Houdini. If something as basic as added a texture derailed my understanding, you can understand how enthusiasm went with it. If there are better training videos for this subject alone (Houdini and textures) please let me know. Dave

I would love to start hearing some well-educated recommendations on minimum hardware to get serviceable performance creating fluid simulations with each application. Or are those demands hardware agnostic --- that is, if you are going to do fluids you will never have enough no matter how much you put in your workstation regardless of the application you use? Regardless of bigger is always better, there will always be a bottleneck in your hardware selection. From the size of GPU VRAM, the number of PCIe lanes in the motherboard to the GPU, the speed of either the M.2 drive or NCIe drive for writing and then unloading the cache to the render engine (also on the GPU) and the clock speed of the CPU. For example, I would hate to spend big money on a GPU only to find out that the drive handling the cache is too slow to keep up. When you think of both rendering on the GPU and sending Gb's worth of VDB data to the GPU, I wonder if the 3090Ti will be enough at 24Gb. Most people say it is more than enough for rendering but what about handling huge caches for volume rendering? Are we in RTX-A6000 land now? I have no idea. So does CPU RAM now become an issue? Is there a ratio you need to maintain between CPU RAM and GPU VRAM to ensure that there are bottlenecks on the motherboard? Is it 1:1? Is it 2:1 (make sure the CPU ram is twice as much as the GPU VRAM). Again, I have no idea. I guess I want to get the hardware right because 1) I am looking to replace my 7-year-old workstation and 2) if I have to wait days to generate a pretty good fluids simulation, I will be going back to hard surface modeling and Redshift rendering. Dave

As a follow up to my argument above, remember that everything rests on just how well you can get your finished scenes out of future versions C4D into whatever perpetual license you are still have on your machine. Past experience has shown that a C4D export re-imported back into C4D always works better than an export from another DCC application. To re-prove that to myself, I worked with the Death Star Laser cannon (available in the downloads section) because I actually had to extensively remodel it because the FBX exported version that I purchased was horribly corrupted and needed complete remodeling. So that complete remodel was done in R23 and I wanted to see how well it would export and re-import into R19. R23 can export USD files, but R19 cannot import USD. So I went with FBX. The modelling, scene hierarchy, textures and tags imported into R19 perfectly! The reflectance was a little off, but all the textures were there across all channels. The Expresso controls were completely lost but those are replaced with far less work than if the model came in with corrupted geometry --- which it did not. Now in the future, I would be importing scenes from future C4D versions that had USD export into R23. As such, I would imagine that exporting as USD and importing USD would probably do much better with textures. Very encouraging. Dave

Okay....all those arguments over subscription costs being unreasonable and force people to lose the ability to invest in themselves or access to their art are coming from a place which implies that C4D (or their tool of choice) ONLY exists on their PC as subscription and that there are no perpetual licenses from previous versions in your possession. If that was true, then you would not be making that argument because all you would have EVER used are subscriptions - so why then are you complaining about the loss of perpetuals? But you are making that complaint because you have (or are) going through the decision process of either holding fast to your current perpetual C4D license while moving to another DCC application or staying current with C4D subscriptions. So, you have C4D. You have your artistic tool. You can still support your artistic or financial goals with C4D. You just don't have the latest version. The mental knot hole I had to work myself through was to stop chasing the shiny new ball of the current release. I started to think critically about what I will and won't use in a new release and should there be something I need for a period, then I will rent it only for that period. I can rent C4D for 7 individual months out of the year and still save money over leasing it for the year (7 x $94 = $658 < $720). 7 out of 12 months is a pretty long time. Paying $94 at a time creates a lot less financial strain on my pocketbook than paying $720 all at once. Rent it, complete the work, export it as USD and move on. That makes C4D a commodity. Remember the old MSA? Remember how Studio owners used to complain about how their upgrade costs (which they were locked into otherwise they would fall out of the program) were higher than Prime or Broadcast licenses for a release that had NO benefit to the feature set that came with a Studio license. How is that better than what I am proposing above? Now you have options. Time is on your side. You don't have to sign up for a 2023 subscription if you are not going to use its new features right away to achieve whatever goals (artistic or financial) are in front of you. Wait a few months until you really do need it and save yourself some money by only renting it for that period that you do need it. Remember, you can do that for up to 7 out of the 12 months and still be ahead. Maybe broader adoption of sticking with your last perpetual license and ONLY using the latest release for the months you need it will move the needle more on getting Maxon to adopt a much cheaper YEARLY indie license? Just a thought. It is clear by Nemetschek's financials that those few who have walked away completely did NOT change a thing. Time to think differently. Dave

The interesting thing about subscriptions which I "think" most people are missing is that it turns licensed software into a commodity. Staying current with software when the licensing switches from perpetual to subscription frees up the user from "having" to purchase that perpetual upgrade. The upside to renting over owning is that you can rent it for a month only when you need it. And that is the new way to think of subscriptions - as commodities and not assets: Paying for software at a reduced price only when you need it rather than buying it at a higher price and making it an asset is what turns software into a commodity. There are many trends in the industry that support software becoming a commodity rather than an asset to the user. The biggest one is the growth of Universal Scene Description (USD) which is now supported in C4D. USD allows you to export your WIPs and IP and bring them wherever you want for as long as you want. You are no longer locked into one application. You can drop the technology religion and become software agnostic when you have the ability to move your content and IP freely between apps that you don't own but only rent ONLY when you need it. I know many people are scratching their head wondering why SaaS continues to grow. Well, when you think about software as a commodity rather than an asset and the freedom that gives you, then you might be able to see the benefit. When you do, you come to understand why SaaS is growing. I looked at my own perpetual addiction to C4D. I mean we were all fat dumb and happy paying $720 a year for the MSA's but when you think about it, you were ONLY using that perpetual license for one year. As soon as the next upgrade came out, you plunked down another $720 and never touched the old version again. I was locked into the "never rent always own" mentality and followed along when perpetuals jumped to $950 a year for fear that should I succumb to the subscription model, that I may lose access to all my files. True, but should I decide to stop a subscription, I can always export my work prior to ending the subscription. USD now means that export/import into another app is that much easier. If I missed the conversion of a WIP out of C4D, then I renew that subscription for a month, convert it and then move on. You really are not permanently losing your work to the subscription program. Renting C4D for a month is a hell of a lot cheaper than continuing to pay $950 a year for software I am really only going to use until the next update came out in 12 months. Also, incorporation of RS CPU was huge. So why do I keep saying that? Easy. I am no longer locked into an RS subscription. But what about GPU rendering? Well, if you are a rendering a long format animation or incredibly complex scenes, then RS GPU would be nice. But as for me, I will light, texture and optimize the rendering of my scene with RS CPU and then should I need to forgo those long rendering times, purchase a 1-month RS subscription, kick it over the RS GPU and be done with it. As long as I don't need RS GPU for more than 6 months out of a year, I am saving money. I have now turned RS GPU into a commodity rather than an asset because I am paying much less for it only when I need it rather than a lot more for owning it. To help everyone get out of the "owning" is better mentality, then please understand that owning something is ONLY a benefit when the asset you own increases in value over time. Software does not grow in value over time. It never will. Dave

Thank you for looking at this dispassionately, logically and without emotion as I did. The more telling numbers were the overall growth in revenue for SaaS within Nemetschek -- though a very good point was made by Babumol regarding acquisitions. Nemetscheks revenue is growing but so are their profits as well. Unfortunately, I can't break those numbers down to business segments such as Media. They increased their last quarter dividends (held to 25% of their free cash flow) as well which is the only indicator that matters regarding profitability: How much is Nemetschek sharing what they are earning with all their shareholders? So if you were a Nemetschek stockholder from 2017, you would be quite happy with the direction of the company. You are getting pretty good stock growth and dividends. If they told you it was all due to ending perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions, you'd be asking "what took you so long?" You definitely would not be hoping for the ultimate demise of Maxon via a massive walkout to Blender if you made close to $88 Euro's per share of profit by buying 2017 at 24.95 and selling on 12/31/21 at $112.80. No. You would be praising Maxon for the move to SaaS. So while I have said in the past that SaaS sucks for the consumer, shareholders love it. And you know, anyone can be a shareholder as it is a publicly traded stock. That was my point. Remember, it's not personal. It's business. And business tells me SaaS is here to stay. So storming off to Blender or Houdini or modo, etc. should be personal decision based on your needs as an individual artist or a company and I do firmly understand that those decisions will be financially motivated. But do NOT do it just to show some strange solidarity against Maxon. Trust me! It will have no impact on Maxon. Dave

One of the reasons why I felt a year ago that perpetuals would come to an end is that I looked at the growth of re-occurring revenue (or SaaS: software-as-a-service) over standard licensing revenue with Nemetscheks annual revenue reports. In short: follow the money. All of this is found on the web. Here are the numbers (all numbers in millions of Euro's) and are reported at the END of year: You can directly infer Maxon's revenue because Nemetschek breaks out their numbers by market and within the "Media" market there is only one company and that is Maxon. I went back to 2017 through 2021. If you notice, prior to 2020 and the old MSA model, Maxon was pretty much a stable 6% of revenue but still growing though by only a couple of million a year. Respectable but not at the same level of growth as the rest of the company. Pretty confident that there was pressure on Maxon to change how it was doing business. Whether or not that pressure led to the leadership changes we saw in 2018 is open to debate. As for me, I side with the old adage "it's not personal, it's business" when it comes to these types of changes, especially when the numbers do speak for themselves. It wasn't until 2020 when revenue really started to break away from its predictable 6% of Nemetschek revenue pattern with a double-digit revenue increase in 2020. Remember that 2019 was when subscriptions were introduced. Now, do not get caught up by the drop in revenue growth from 2020 to 2021 from 61% to 27%. That is just math working against them. As a company makes more revenue, then to continue the same growth percentage every year becomes extremely difficult. If Maxon was to show another 61% growth from 2020 to 2021, then that would mean they would need another $18 million in 2021 (or $86 million rather than $68). Not so easy. But 2020 was a banner year for Maxon especially considering that while Covid started at the end of 2019, its impact on global revenue of every company showed up in their 2020 reports. That was not a great year for Nemetschek as there was only 7% growth in revenue, but Maxon grew a whopping 61%. Maxon's year-over-year increase in revenue from 2019 to 2020 represented half of Nemetschek's revenue increase in that same period. Pretty sure Mr. McGavran was the well-deserved darling among the Nemetschek executive leadership board that year. Now look at sources of revenue from both Software Licensing and SaaS over that same 4-year period. These are Nemetschek numbers. I don't know what Maxon's contributions are to this revenue. But as a percentage of revenue, SaaS is growing while Software Licensing is shrinking. And this is all while Nemetschek revenue is growing year over year. Essentially, global pandemics aside, Nemetschek was doing spectacularly well over that same 4-year period and were being handsomely rewarded by shareholders. Their stock price rose from 23 euro's a share in 2017 to a high of 110 euro's/share at the start of the start of 2022. Unfortunately, this has been a tough year for everyone, and the stock has declined in value quite a bit by almost 50%. But 400% growth in 4 years was quite the ride. Look, when you are looking at this level of financial success, don't expect any changes soon unless the 2022 financial report shows a significant slowdown in revenue. But even then, that will be due to global economic conditions rather than Nemetschek's (and Maxon's) licensing strategy which has been working for them quite well over the last couple of years. Always follow the money to see what happens next. Based on that, don't get your hopes up. Dave

OMG! The pore stretch and wrinkles are incredible. This is all Blender? Amazing! But how easy is it to achieve these types of results? I also get equally amazed at the majesty of Houdini large scale fluid simulations until I actually try to learn how to use Houdini. I would imagine it is the same with anything that comes this close to creating believable humans. The rigging alone must be very involved and take huge amounts of time to master. Then on top of all that are the shading trees to get the pore stretch just right. Now with that all said, at least Blender can get you there. There is no path that I have seen within C4D that will bring you to that same result. And you then have to ask why? The last improvement to character tools were R23...which is oddly right before Maxon purchased Pixologic. And then nothing. Remember what 3D-Kiwi would always tell us: Maxon will not touch any area of a program ahead of its roadmap for a complete rewrite. With this in mind, you have to look at Maxon acquisition of Z-Brush and ask what happens next. Why purchase the world's most pre-eminent character sculpting tool, Z-Brush, and then not provide an equally best-of-breed capability to animate those characters? I think the upgrades to the symmetry tool are the first step in a long road to upscale C4D's character rigging tools to this same level. But once again, outside of Motion Graphics, Maxon is playing catch-up and at a much slower rate than the rest of the industry is moving forward. That may be the price for stability and well-thought-out integration. Fortunately, my passions lie in hard surface modelling and there we have seen enough improvements to keep me happy. Dave

Well, then that puts a new spin on it then as the thread title and first post gave the impression that the decision was made (or I completely misinterpreted it). This puts a new spin on what I posted earlier. What we can infer now is that ending perpetuals is the direction they want to go but are adopting a "wait and see" attitude before they make it official. So why the hesitation? Maybe perpetual license holders are a more significant part of their revenue than I originally surmised and current subscription license holders are not enough for them to securely meet their revenue commitments to Nemetschek. If subscriptions do NOT increase from this decision as expected (indicating the desired migration of perpetual license holders to subscriptions is not happening) then they are leaving themselves enough wiggle room to back away from that decision and re-instate perpetual upgrades. This also exposes the logic behind both how and when they made this announcement. Their plan may have been to make R2023 so attractive that everyone will want it no matter how it is offered. So let's offer it only as subscription in the hope that people will move to it without complaint and then we can finally put an end to perpetual licenses. But we don't want to strongly commit to that in case we mis-read our users and therefore let's imply it during our R2023 launch without directly stating it. I also am now thinking that this was not a recent decision but part of a larger plan. The decision to end perpetuals could have been tied long ago to the push for "Redshift Everywhere" as Redshift CPU is a big plus to R26 and R2023. So Redshift gets introduced into R26, but you have to wait to the perpetual release cycle to announce that there will be no such upgrade. So maybe there is still an opportunity for Maxon to change course and that decision is dependent on what perpetual license holders do next. Dave

But with all that said, I do need to call out Maxon on when and how that decision to stop perpetual licenses with R25 was communicated. Let's start with when it was communicated. Doing it now was actually more damaging than originally perceived for the simple reason that everyone who has purchased a brand new R25 perpetual license over THE LAST YEAR for $3495 now realizes that they wasted their money. There is no perpetual upgrade path for them. If Maxon knew that perpetuals were coming to an end with R25, then that announcement should have been made PRIOR to R25 being released while still allowing R23 license holders the option to upgrade to R25 perpetual. They should NOT be making that decision AFTER R2023 was released. That is just wrong because it takes an important decision away from those who have kept current with their perpetual licenses. If they instead said R2023 is your last chance to get a perpetual license, you now have a choice: Do I upgrade knowing it is the last one or do I jump into subscriptions now knowing that is the only option going forward? Here you have a choice. But making it retroactive to R25 removes that choice and leaves everyone who did upgrade or purchased a full perpetual R25 license feeling a little duped. Adding insult to injury, let's discuss how it was communicated...or rather hinted at during the launch video. Paul Babb's communication on it at the September 7th launch meeting was not clear. It even made light of the growing speculation on using R2023 and the discontinuation of the "S" and "R" release cycle. Here is what he said and take note of how he tried to even make is sound like an after-thought to better hide its hidden significance: That was it. The words were pretty innocuous and did not initially sound alarming. Now in hindsight, we know exactly what that meant. Unfortunately, we did not hear it directly from them but rather had to dig for it. What do we take away from this? Well, we need to call it what it is: they were beating around the bush because they knew there would be backlash. They also left their customer service team to be the bearer of bad news and take the heat from the customer base rather than owning their decision, putting their face on it during the launch meeting, and being straight forward and up-front about it. How they rolled this out also provides some insight into what they think of their perpetual users. As to exactly what that insight is, I will leave up to you. So, while they get points for how they are managing the growth of C4D, they deserve a few demerits on how the decision to cancel perpetual licenses was communicated. Again, just trying to fairly call a few balls and strikes. I challenge Maxon leadership to own their decisions better in the future. They missed an opportunity to show integrity and leadership with this decision and I hope they will learn from it going forward. Dave

In the interests of trying to call balls and strikes fairly and without emotion, I do have to have to say that the changes made to C4D since R25 were good ones. Props to Maxon. Unfortunately, there was just not enough in R25 to warrant me upgrading from R23. I made a decision at that point, to get off the perpetual upgrade train and stay with R23. But I made that decision with the sound expectation that perpetuals were going to go away SOMEDAY. So why continue to spend that $950/year if you felt that at some point they would no longer be offered? Do I want perpetual licenses? Yes, of course. But here is the insight that made me really re-think that position: At some point after I stop upgrading, that "perpetual" license has its own expiration date. It will not last forever because its life is determined by your computer hardware and OS. In the future, will R25 run on Windows 16? Not sure. Can it run on the latest CPU's you buy in 2029 as their instruction sets do change over time? Or the GPU's? Today, yes. 7 years from now - who knows. To prove this to yourself pull up your oldest version of C4D, reinstall it and let me know how you enjoy the experience (assuming it still runs). And by old, I mean older than R15. Yes, it may run, but the viewport could be glitchy. Certain commands could generate errors with the C++ executables....all sorts of issues. Plus, you will hate the rendering on those old versions. That is the allure of CG. The rendering just keeps getting better. At some point, R25's AR rendering is just going to look like crap (and that point is probably already here when you look at RS and Octane). Will the latest version of Octane still run on R25 in 7 years? Maybe not. So at some point you are going to look at your perpetual license that you paid extra for and go "ugh.... why do I keep this around" -- which by default makes it lose its "perpetual" status from your perspective. If you are not using it, it is not perpetual because it has NO PERPETUAL VALUE TO YOU. And isn't the true purpose of software! To provide you value? If you are not using it, it is not perpetual because you have determined it has no value....it's just eating up hard-drive space. You may be able to limp along for maybe the next 7 to 10 years with R25, but ultimately it will either be incompatible to your hardware or the user experience and rendering capability will dissuade you from using it. Understanding that end-state, I made the decision to walk away from C4D with R23 as I was not enamored yet with subscriptions. R25 did not help that opinion but R26 and R2023 have since changed that perspective. So, I saved myself $950 by avoiding R25. I will also save myself ($950 - $720) $230 should I decide to get a one-year subscription. Still haven't made that decision yet, but time is on my side. No deadlines like the MSA. Want it? Not want it? I can make that decision now or 6 years from now without any financial impact. If the perpetual train still existed, those choices would have had a financial impact. And if I do decide to dip my toe back in the latest version of C4D with a subscription, I can get it for a year or a month - my choice. Again, just trying to set aside the emotional connection we have to software that we all loved at one time or still love today and looking at it from a more pragmatic. clear-eyed perspective. Dave

Oh...how I wish they would take a cue from Houdini and offer Cinema 4D Indie (a subscription at Houdini prices of $270 rather than $720 a year). Heck I would even opt for Maxon One if that price dropped for Indies as well to half price. Maya and Houdini have indie licenses for less than $300 a year. Blender is free. Not sure what is keeping Cinema 4D immune to this type of competition unless indies are just not that big a market for C4D. Dare to dream. Dave

Well, we all knew this day would happen. The saving grace to it all is that Maxon is delivering the goods and that causes me to place more trust in subscriptions. My initial fear with subscriptions was that you would be paying for software that was not improving. That really has not been the case. Plus, they are integrating their acquisitions into C4D. That is huge (IMHO) and again leads to trust in subscriptions. Maybe I had Adobe fears from the "Adobe guy" but he is actually turning out to be quite the Maxonian in terms of the trajectory that C4D is on. Does he deserve ALL the credit? Sorry but no, that would be unfair to rest of the product managers and developers. But to be fair, he does deserve some of it from the acquisition strategy and the team he is building (they are still hiring) to support their internal development strategy. Enough said. So for how long will they make upgrades to R25 perpetual available? Let's say for kicks and giggles that R23 to R25 perpetual upgrades are always available. Honestly in 5 years will they still be selling it for the same price? That is not a good look. My hope is at some point they have a "fire" sale on an R23 upgrade to R25 before closing it out forever. A good way to end the perpetual run. Also, they should take the R25 new license purchase option down from their website. Imagine being a complete newbie to C4D, excited by the option to get R2023 perpetual as an upgrade and spending $3495 in an on-line purchase ONLY to find out it is not upgradeable. I actually added it to my cart and there were NO warnings directing you instead to a subscription. That will create some issues (I would imagine) for the Maxon customer service team. Hopefully, they see that problem and take action. Dave

Agreed. But then again, the only program out there I know of which can do true large-scale fluids is Houdini. And by large scale, I am referring to the feathering of the water Now is that accomplished by just adding millions of particles or by something in the simulation itself and the rendering? Built in "foam" shaders are NOT what I am talking about as all they do is add white particles on top of the water. So unless a fluid simulation can match this quality from Houdini, then it really cannot do large scale fluid simulations (IMHO). Dave

PC's are ridiculously easy to build these days and you need to be capable of replacing/upgrading the components. So with every build, I use sites like Puget to learn about the latest tech and what works with some of your favorite aps (they actually had articles on how Redshift performs with certain GPU's). But then I always go for two things: price and warranty. Relative to price, I compare the cost of the components to the total price from a PC vendor and the warranty that vendor offers. Now, OEM's (original equipment manufacturers) usually offer a 1 to 2 year warranty on their stuff. You can get up to a 3 year warranty on the nVidia cards. So if you build your own, you then have to register all the components to get the warranty. If you buy a pre-built PC, you register just that PC. By itself that is not much of a benefit to push you towards buying from a PC vendor. But.... If you can get a 5 year warranty for just a few dollars more from a PC vendor over the total cost of the individual components, should you decide to build your own, then that is the choice I make. If I can get someone else to build the machine and give me the extended warranty (it has to be more than 3 years) for less than 10% over the cost of the individual components, then that it is the path I follow. Dave BTW: I do keep my machines a long time and those extended warranties have paid for themselves for each of the 3 workstations I have purchased over the last 17 years. I recently just purchased a new workstation (with a 5 year warranty) to replace my 2015 machine (it runs great....but it's GPU cannot run Redshift GPU anymore). Unfortunately, that machine won't be here until February.

Take that Embergen? (Note the question mark). The debate floor is now open. Dave

Welcome, Glad to find another David from the Northeast on Core4D!!! Your work looks great. If I may, what is your current version? There was no information posted on your profile. Also, you are a really long term C4D user - so that deserves recognition! Did you ever hear of sites old name: C4D Cafe? Welcome, Dave (from NH)

Oh I agree that this is NOT a good thing. I think my posts have plainly laid out this possible future as a nightmare scenario. But remember that this future of "everything on the cloud" is also rolling out on the backs of a whole generation of cell phone users who are freely downloading apps which offer NO guarantees of data privacy. It is one thing to be concerned over your right to past C4D files existing in the cloud, but there are whole generations of people who freely put the contact information of everyone one they know on the cloud (how else can you migrate to from your old to new iPhone) along with personal photos and text messages. Plus, these same people are using Siri freely in their homes quite unaware that Siri is listening to EVERYTHING. For older folks who still remember what true privacy was like, this is horrifying. But try and explain your point of view to someone in their 20's or 30's and they look at you like you are a superstitious, knuckle dragging moron: "Why does this bother you? It's perfectly safe and okay. Oh, BTW...can you give me permission to track your phone's location?" If everything wasn't moving quickly to a cloud central storage model, then data science would not be the fast-growing field that it is today. Honestly, I think the battle for personal privacy and ownership was lost long ago. Dave

Xfinity roadmap is to provide over 2Gb/sec download rates to the home by 2025 (more than double what they can provide now). I just set up a 2.2Gb/s WAP (wireless access point) in my home to support that bandwidth in the future. It is coming otherwise you would not find those products on the market today. When you think long term (and again, all my discussion is taking where SaaS has come in the last 10 years and projecting out to the next 10 years), it will be a mistake to think that internet bandwidth will ever be the weak link. Ultimately, within that long term view, there will be tipping point. More people on internet appliances working in the web than on PC's. We've already seen those type of transitions. Look at your old analog phone. There came a tipping point where IP telephony became the major way of doing things and they just stopped making analog phones. What makes you think that won't happen to PC's in the LONG TERM? Dave

A very good post. Let me just chime in here relative to the internet. I work for Cisco (world's largest end-to-end telecommunications equipment manufacturer) in the area of manufacturing and with our product development teams. I have seen what is coming. All I can say is that Cisco and our competitors and suppliers are positioning themselves as if everything is going to go to the cloud and are now designing/building equipment that can accommodate the bandwidth issues. Even software companies are pushing for personal cloud storage for all your PC files. Windows 11 is now pushing OneDrive for personal cloud storage of all your personal files. At work, Office 365 automatically opts in to have all your work files stored to the cloud. Even virus protection software like Norton and Bitdefender are pushing personal cloud storage as a mitigation against ransom ware ("Don't risk losing all of your files to ransom ware but use our cloud storage service"). A big player in all of this is also Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, some pretty big players out there pushing cloud storage for both businesses and the individual user. Given the revenue potential of SaaS, it is not hard to imagine that with all your files on the cloud and all your software being licensed and not owned right now, that within the next 10 years the software goes to the cloud as well and all you need is an internet appliance to make the connection. I would not be surprised if Maxon is looking at a cloud based version of C4D right now. Purchasing Forger may be a first step into that world. Relative to the environmental impact, PC's going to the cloud is not going to have that much of an impact as smartphones are already driving data center usage more so than PC's. On average (based on 2021 numbers and 2022 predictions) 73 million PC's were sold compared to 1.5 billion smartphones (a 20:1 ratio). Each of those devices require an internet connection through a datacenter. So, the size of the data center and the carbon footprint generated by those datacenters is being driven by smart phones. Most people do not recognize the impact that cellphones have on the environment both in their manufacturing (and they do require rare earth metals to be mined as well) and their overall power consumption via datacenters. Also, as 1.5 billion people are not being born each year, that means that close to 1.5 billion OLD phones are being disposed of this year --- and hopefully in an environmentally friendly way. So relative to your justified concern over the environment, shutting off your cell phone before shutting off your computer or internet appliance will have a more positive impact. Dave

Please explain further. Geometry Spreadsheets is a new term to me. Thanks, Dave

I think Maxon would be well served to look at Blender's implementation of nodes. Maybe Blender is better at promoting what nodes can do than Maxon, but to the casual observer it just feels like there is more success with user adoption of nodes with Blender than there is with C4D users. If true, then why? Are C4D nodes too complex? Do they operate at a lower "programming" level than Blender nodes? Do Blender nodes operate no lower than a pure nodal allegory to their standard modeling/animating commands (similar to modo's "tool pipe")? If so, then they are probably easier to learn and more inviting to the average user for experimentation and further study. Remember, there is always a trade off with ease-of-use and power with any programming language and nodes are a programming language after all. You miss that sweet spot and over-pivot to choosing power (but at increased complexity) and adoption will be slower. Choosing more power over ease of use means the nodes operate at a layer closer to the programming language itself. But they have to in order to provide the flexibility that makes them powerful. So, which of the following will lead to higher adoption rates: Having 400 ways to configure 10 different nodes to do a series of the same thing in various flexible ways or 1 way to use 1 node to do something similar but with less flexibility? Not sure if that explains the point I am trying to make. I can follow RS nodal trees, but I cannot follow scene nodes and that could explain why I am struggling to explain their complexity. Hopefully all of this makes sense but even if it does not, then chuck it all aside. BUT PLEASE look at Blender nodes and then ask why the difference in the rate of adoption between Blender and C4D users? There has to be a reason and that reason could help C4D. Otherwise, nothing changes. Dave