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Probably the same, or very similar. But for someone like myself, who never would have bought that plugin or Zbrush, it is great to now have it directly in C4D.

Sounds like you just described Maxon. - They are pouring lots of $$$ into R&D, but it is exactly that... R&D, so you won't see anything externally for years because that is just how it is. You go through lots of iterations and research before you would show anything externally. - External updates to customers. They are getting them twice a year now as actual releases, and also releasing service packs throughout the year to fix issues. - Not exactly "open" betas, but they have a lot of beta testers who give loads of feedback. If you opened up to thousands of users that would just create too much noise and not be helpful. - They are constantly hiring developers, if you know any then send them here: https://www.maxon.net/en/about-maxon/careers - Germany had the most amount of holidays in any country I have ever worked in. Not sure what "Harry's" post is, but I never had any issues with taking time off when I worked there.

I bought one of these https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM981600/Samsung-980-1TB-NVMe-PCIe-30-M2-SSD-Read-up-to-350 Need this as well to install it: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/ADPSTT3310261/StarTech-x4-PCI-Express-to-M2-PCIe-SSD-Adapter I didn't know if it would work on my machine or not so only got the 1TB one. But now that I know it works I should have gotten the 2TB version. You can get faster R/W speed versions, but they weren't compatible with my motherboard ( I can use Gen 3, but not Gen 4). https://www.samsung.com/nz/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/980-pro-pcle-4-0-nvme-m-2-ssd-1tb-mz-v8p1t0bw/ I am also running old HW. My machine is now 6 years old now. I set it up when the 1080's first released. It is still a good machine though and I can use UE5 just fine, except I can't try out any of the RTX features. Will keep going on this machine until it dies.

I just installed UE5 yesterday, but have previously messed around with it while it was in beta. Will see if I can get motivated to play around more. My previous experience with UE4 was to write the GLTF importer and Asset Browser for SketchFab (now owned by Epic). So my focus will be playing around with C++. But I have just seen that they now support Python which is worth a look. I should probably also learn something about Blue Prints. My only advice for UE5 is to get a fast SSD. I just bought a new M2 and installed it over the weekend. Has made a world of difference when dealing with UE5 scenes. Looking forward to seeing who else is here looking at UE5.

That is nonsense. Have you never changed companies before? Or had a personal project you wanted to spend some time on for a bit? Making software is hard. Making a software business is even harder. If you really think that way then please make sure to buy any plugins you see, even if you don't need it. Since the number of plugin developers out there is shrinking on a daily basis. Otherwise all these independent developers will soon be gone. Leaving only the big names that you see today. That product never would have happened if he stayed with Maxon. Again, you don't get to choose what to work on at a company, any company. And as you said before, why give away all your own intellectual property, FOR FREE, to any company if you can go out on your own and make it. Then sell it on to another company for a profit and still get to work on your dream project? These notes are coming from someone who has worked for multiple companies (including Maxon) and for the past 13 years has focused mainly on Cinema 4D plugin development. C4D is fun, the community is fun. It doesn't have anything to do with what Maxon as a company is doing.

Trying to figure out what you are insinuating here. Over 6 and a half years at Maxon and almost 4 years at Laubwerk. And making his own C4D plugins. I see no hate anywhere. I just see a passion for creating plugins for C4D and getting paid to do so. People change jobs for various reasons.

You can run Vulkan on the mac. There is an implementation of vulkan called MoltenVK which is a Vulkan API that is built on top of Metal. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see this new fluids running on the mac. And am interested to see the performance on the new M1 chips.

I have made my 4D Paint Bundle free. https://www.plugins4d.com/4DPaint The newest version is available for R20-R25. But the is also a link to an older R17-R19 version on the page as well. Have fun! Kent

My answer was in response to your statement about being able to render it without needing the plugin. Such as when using a 3rd Party renderer, sending to a render farm or using it in another application. I was not saying you need to delete the Signal tag or throw away your original file at all.

With Signal you just bake to keyframes when your done. Your file will then work without the plugin.

I would like to point out that Srek doesn’t need to be here. He is not doing this as a MAXON representative. He is commenting here because he cares about C4D and the users. And I don’t consider any of his comments as being defensive. They are simply the truth. If it is too late in the timeframe to change a feature then that is how it is. If something is very difficult to implement then consider that as it is, ie it might take a very long time before you ever see that specific feature in C4D. Saying “I understand and will consider it again” means nothing and instead may give false hope and is more akin to lying than telling the truth. Keep up the good work Srek!

No, I joined the Greyscalegorilla team and am very busy working over there. I like to watch the MAXON Careers page to see what areas they are focusing on.

Just thought I would post a link to the MAXON careers page. https://www.maxon.net/en/about-maxon/careers

This is actually not entirely true. You can use Deformers on Sculpt objects. On the tag you have to freeze it and click allow deformations to see the effect of deformers under the object. And if your object is rigged you can even play back the animation on the sculpted object. Then when you want to sculpt again you unfreeze and keep on sculpting. Not being able to use other tools is unfortunately a required limitation. Such as I mentioned in my original post about this, as you move away to allow high polygon workflows you need to give up some freedoms. In the case of the other modelling tools, most of them were designed for low poly modelling operations. And in that case their algorithms may not be able to deal with handling millions of polygons. Undo/Redo also comes into play. Since the sculpting system is optimized to handle undo/redo of only what is touched. But many other tools store a full copy of the object itself in its entirety before doing any operation on it. Could you let me know what kind of tools you would actually want to use on an object using the Sculpt Tag based workflow? Perhaps I can add them for you.

So why not use ZBrush? What are the polygon limits, for one single object, in other apps these days? Maya, Blender etc? I don't actually know. But if I wanted to do high detail sculpting I would just purchase Zbrush in an instant. Dynamic tessellation, with adaptive topology, would be a new toolset completely. You wouldn't have the multi-resolution subdivision workflow. These workflows came about from Sculptris I believe. Would be great to have something like that in C4D. Thought about adding it myself. A good Dynamesh auto-retopology feature is sorely needed in the Sculpting Toolset in C4D. They did add a one click button that utilizes OpenVDB in the background, but that doesn't produce a nice mesh at all.

The issue with creating a sculpting system in a program that is built around the traditional concept of polygons with points, where all that data needs to live on the graphics card, is that you soon hit limitations on the Graphics card itself. To achieve millions of polygons you need to take a fundamentally different approach to how the data is handled... which is what ZBrush did. The limitations of doing that is that you no longer have traditional vertex data, so you can no longer do all the other work that you would normally associate with a 3D animation package. Can't animate moving 3D points if the concept of that XYZ point no longer exists. So for most DCC apps they won't ever reach the "100 million" polygons scale for sculpting unless they effectively break it away from all other systems and has its own separate viewport, tools and workflows. Then to get it back into the DCC app it would need to be baked down to make it usable. The benefit of having a sculpting system in a DCC, even with the limitation of maybe 4 to 6 million polys, is that those same tools can work with everything else in that DCC app as well, even on low polygon models. The tools can be completely integrated because it can use all the exact same data as everything else. This is why the C4D Sculpting tools can work on both high resolution "Sculpt Tag" based model as well as a regular Polygon Object directly in the viewport, or on a Pose Morph. A dedicated sculpting tool like Zbrush will always exist and be the master at sculpting at incredibly high detail. Because they can focus on doing just that and not have to think about any other workflow.

I think the blender community is going to really miss Pablo Dobarro (he developed the sculpting and painting tools). And by the sounds of it, it was the community itself that drove him to quit.

Looking forward to this. I might actually start learning Houdini if it can be done in a fun way.

I was not signalling you out in particular. I have just seen this used so many times over and over and over, Might have been a joke the first time I saw it a year or so ago. But to see it keep coming up again and again? "Bullshit" is not offensive here in New Zealand. IE it is not a really offensive swear word. Same as saying rubbish or silly. But I have to say I did let my annoyance at seeing the CEO of a company who is keeping hundreds of people employed being called a name in a derogatory way. I like Adobe, and Autodesk and everyone in the 3D industry. And I also give my respect to those people that work there since they have provided me with employment for the past 21 years. We are all free to criticize, give our feedback on what is happening. But I draw a line at childish name calling, even if it is intended as a joke. Since this stuff eventually catches on and then more people start throwing it around in the forums and then we all leave and this forum becomes as dead as CGTalk. Which I do not want to see.

Agreed. I really hate this kind of childish bullshit.

Because it takes a human resource X amount of hours to do the physical work involved. And it produces zero benefit to the company involved because it is transferring the license for a version of C4D that no longer generates any revenue for that company. So you are taking a resource away from the job they are usually doing just to handle this task. I am just talking business here. What would you charge?

Hi Shrike, I would like to suggest that you also send your entire post to Maxon directly. In C4D go to "Help->Report Bug/Idea". Then change "Conference" to "Ideas" and "Category" to "Node Editor". Then paste in all your comments and click Submit Report. You could also include a link back to this post on the forum so that anyone at Maxon can directly reference back here if there is additional discussion on the topic. It might seem like it goes off into the void where you never know what has happened to it. But I can assure you that every post ends up in their database of Ideas and people do look at them all. Cheers, Kent

The reason for the charge will be because it will require someone’s time. It won’t be an automated system. And I guess you probably need to email the details, they will have to verify it is all correct and then manually go in and change the user details. Edit: just read the link you posted and that is indeed the case. Someone needs to verify it then they physically contact both parties to confirm and only then does the transfer take place. Why would a company do this for free?

Looks like the documentation for this is a bit messed up. https://help.maxon.net/c4d/en-us/#html/TOOLSCULPTBRUSHFLATTEN-MDATA_SCULPTBRUSH_SETTINGS_GROUP.html?TocPath=Sculpting%7CSculpt%20Menu%7CBrush%7CSculpt%20Brush%20Flatten%20Tool%7C_____2 But this is the section I am talking about, and it is in the Fixed Plane dropdown. Custom If this option is selected, a temporary guide plane will be displayed when you Ctrl/Cmd+click on the object to be deformed. The sculpting object points will be placed onto this surface. Note the Sculpt Brush Custom Plane Adjust hotkey (located in the Command Manager where a hotkey can be assigned to it). This command lets you adjust the scale of the guide plane (hotkey + RMB) and its distance from the surface (hotkey + LMB). If you are deforming various objects simultaneously, each object will be assigned its own guide plane. The Depth value (see below), which can also be modified if multiple guide planes are selected simultaneously, only affects the plane with the orange outline (the guide planes of other objects will have a blue outline). If only one Sculpt object is selected, each object can be assigned its own Depth value. As soon as you switch tools or change the symmetry settings, the guide planes (which also work in Symmetry mode, incl. symmetrical guide plane) will be deleted.

Mask them all, then invert your mask. Now switch to the Flatten Brush and use the "Fixed Plane" option, set to "Custom", and Ctrl+Click to define a plane to flatten to and then flatten to that. Or you could use it to flatten to a word axis, which you can change in C4D to be where you need it to be for this part of your model. Or you could use something like my plugin and put an actual plane at the location you want and project the sculpting down onto that: https://www.plugins4d.com/Product/SculptProjectionBrush