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Only commenting on the things I used. Scene nodes look promising (haven't tested), but more importantly again show a strong vision for the future. I also comment on the general outlook, MyMaxon and the pricing on the bottom. Feedback on new UV workflow: It is definitely a huge step forwards but it seems like in beta still. There are many bugs and broken tools right now. This includes S22 but in general there is still a clunkyness that could be easily solved, mostly by fixing the broken not working selections. The new S22 auto unwrapper is mind blowing in some areas as it does advanced things I would have only done by hand on many occasions and no software can repeat, not even rizom but sadly inconsistent, still very useful. Very impressed by that one, but other areas can still be questionable. I actually have forgot to test multi UV but I assume it just works as expected. Broken / Not working Tools: Some tools straight up do not work in the UV space and make it feel like a beta still or plain buggy. Just nothing happens or they glitch out. The colleagues were also surprised. - Fill selection does not work (no way to select an entire UV island? That is very basic and required - it creates a buggy hover selection and makes the UV view appear frozen) Edit: Double click does fill the UV island - this is convenient but not consistent and I didn't get it even after trying all my possible tools. Fill should definitely work. - Outline Selection does not work (not much to see in the gif it just dosnt do anything) - Live selection scaling the selection size Freezes the UV view for the time you try to drag the size with the typical command - UV Magnet (very cool tool btw) does the same freezing - probably more tools do it (Am I being stupid or is there no way to select an UV island?) Edit: Double click does it - this is not consistent but is convenient. Why not for normal non UV selections as well? - Path selection does now work (Broken with S22, now fixed!) (the only good way to unwrap messy geometries, Rocks or similar well) That was very needed, makes certain things crazy faster. We desperately need a function to get an edge selection back from the UV cuts we made. There is no proper way to get this selection and if you want to split your Phong properly based on UV split as it is required for widespread highpoly-lowpoly baking workflows, you have to make all your cuts in one go, keep shift pressed all the time and save the selections which is extremely clunky and inconvenient. Please add a function to select by UV islands borders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also from the perspective of years back, it took me literal years to understand that UV mapping in cinema is supposed to work by making cut selections across the mesh and then pressing the Unwrap button. It is easy but nothing hints you on it. Its not an button, its not an action, its a workflow that is never implied or mentioned. It is so simple but I just understood that like 6 months ago after 10 years of Cinema usage. Maybe that me but maybe that is also part of why it has a bad reputation. The UV layout feels very cramped at first glance. The new center bar is good but the rest is overflowing. Having UV settings hidden in view settings is also something I would have never found if not seeing the video. Just add a button to the new UV palette for convenience leading to this. The packers could work better, this will still be worth to export and repack in some other tool I would say. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Plugins Many Plugins no longer working is a bummer but thats out of hands I understand This can however be a very harsh blow to an already dwindling plugin community (more towards that below) Remesher We tried the new Remesher today and I have to say that this is absolutely excellent. I tried a popular plugin mentioned in the thread before but the C4D remesher is definitely better and just works as you expect. Very clean and professional. Delta Mush Delta mush working on varied Deformers just like that was a positive surprise. Ill probably use it to add some quality to damaged objects that need deformation. Deformer Polish The new handles are great to see, please also add it to the Array modifier, it can be extremely disorienting. Dragging Handles for Spline objects would also be very needed. I need unending spline rectangles for rounded rectangle models with is just a basic primitive shape that should exist imo. Also please for a nice parametric workflow you aim for, allow us to Disable and enable Top and Bottom caps of cylinders individually, there are unending screws which have unnecessary hidden caps that need to be manually converted and optimized just to get rid of one bottom cap, otherwise it could just stay primitive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscription / MyMaxon As a company owner I am very pleased with the new MAXON service. At first I hated the idea of online login and the google login bugged out. But now I really love the way the Seats are handled, this is the absolute best I've seen. For Photoshop I had to create a dozen Adobe accounts. Autodesk Urgh. Forgot to log out? No problem. Its just a click. I can just go home, kick my work PC out, and keep working. You see all your licenses and who uses them on startup. Give the environment artist from the other team a license to just get some 30m volume builder action, kick the other guy out who is on a break and free him up a seat. Just want to show some other guy some very basics so he may learn C4D down the road, just get a free seat for 10minutes. Just log in with one single account and it all works. That's just the greatest service and the best handling of seats and licenses I've seen and that must really be highlighted. Price, Plugins & Community The 60 Euro per month are not cheap but as company thats not a big deal. In the end the efficient usage of seats is also a value proposition going into the price of the subscription. Id say with 5 seats I would gain more the value of 6.5-7 as a company. However, outside of company usage, I really have to say that 60 a month would not feel great if they came out of my pockets. But much more importantly, I strongly feel that the high barrier of entry (its not 100 for 1 month, its the commitment towards continuous payment of these 60 you have to set yourself to) is really limiting the reach of the software. C4D right now is in a bubble and mostly used in one specific field. Things which are the bread and butter of other 3D softwares, baking highpolies down for high quality 3D assets, texturing with proper unique UVs and painting based on baked maps in Substance painter or such, that is all basically nonexistant in Cinema circles which is just mind boggling as this is the core to industry standard 3d assets of any kind. There is a huge untapped crowd of the most essential 3D modellers / asset producers (Hard surface, environment art, character art). If you go to a 3D modeling community like polycount, nobody uses Cinema. Id estimate 3%. MAXON really needs to be careful with gating the community, give means for hobbyists and solo developers to be happy with the purchase and enter the ecosystem, and start reaching new grounds especially with Realtime and Games. There needs to be an affordable indie license with acceptable limits that make you really want to get the full version but not require it entirely. Remember where your users come from in the end, Teenagers like me who started using it with a crack or at school and then work on minimum cash then own a company later or do freelance. If you don't offer Teenagers, Students, 2 man indie developers, movie makers, hobbyists, freelancers on low money, or living in east europe / asia - a way into the ecosystem the future users will logically die out. Plugin development is what is driving many of these other softwares as well. Blender lives based on plugins and game engines make most of their money from plugin stores. The plugin community is dying and S23 could be the killing blow with C++ recompile and Python 3 breaking many things. Plugin devs also always need the latest versions to fix their plugins. Be the first and implement a plugin & script store on your own website. Give creators the reach, more power to make money, and you take a modest share (+- 1/7th) knowing this is overwhelmingly to your benefit either way (and you want to not make people think its worth setting up their own site to cirvumvent a harsh 30% cut or so) - and give out a piece of the revshare back as discount on C4D versions so plugin makers can cheaply get the new versions to update their plugins and also buy more new versions. Cryengine made the big mistake of not keeping up with asset stores when they could and have been entirely crippled and left behind. Gamedev lives by plugin stores just like Blender. Unity makes way more money with the Asset store than with their actual engine licenses for sure. Many plugins for varied softwares are or were system sellers at varied points. This is low hanging fruit. Start with a contest, give the best creators a bonus, incentives, promotion. Be smart about this, don't miss the window. Outlook A couple years back I would have said I bet on the wrong horse but imo MAXON does make slower advancements in the weak areas but if they do things they are usually very methodical / specific in one area and well executed and on a deeper technical level that you would unlikely see implemented by other 3D apps (which do seem to often scramble together random but cool features). In gamedev I see that a strong foundation is extremely valuable and C4D is the only software I used from the big ones (aside of Houdini, maybe modo?) that feels like its not hacked together and it will get harder and harder for these others to not stagnate. While I don't know, I have a strong feeling C4D was set up in a much more modern component way back in the beginning days compared to the competition, (the UI components hint towards it) to mostly strong contrast, and seeing things such fields implemented throughout the project is something that would just never happen without huge work effort in other patchwork environments. Fields, Volume Builder, the Modeling Core Rework, Neutron are very big elements that do show a strong vision and hint towards a extendable and healthy codebase and I am more and more happy to use C4D each iteration and it feels like the critical weaknesses are clearly diminishing, while a lot of strong advantages have opened in the last years that clearly overshadow certain issues (even if large roadblocks), at least for my usage cases. It has shifted from the constant feeling of "Ah damn, in 3DS you could have done this" towards more "Hey look what convenient or crazy stuff I can setup here" so I am very positive of the future of the tool, but I can't say the same for the community and userbase which in the end does drive everything, that depends on management not engineering.

I know your comment about what is being explored applies to C4D's capabilities and that you probably have no insight to where the internal discussions are going on indie licenses. Honestly, I do hope that indie licenses are being as carefully considered as the ongoing development of Neutron. The comments made by Shrike and Dasfrodo that missing indie/young/hobby users at a lower price point will starve MAXON of future revenue cannot be ignored. While I state that Blender gives us options, I guess it is also true that hacked software gives them options too (which is really sad). Unfortunately, impassioned posts on the Cafe are not going to move the needle on indie pricing. Slow sales on R23 will move the needle. Remember that this is probably the first full release where people are no longer covered by the MSA program of the past. Revenue, be it subscription or perpetual, from this release is what sets the tone for MAXON's future. Dave

i have had this discussion several times. even with David. if a university cannot guarantee to offer a course for several years, the installation in a PC pool costs a few thousand euros. That's the reason why the students had to bring their personal laptops to install free student versions. but since this semester was my last anyway, they will probably continue with blender from now on. I have absolutely nothing against David McGavran. But I think the statement is close to the truth. I didn't say anything nasty, just why I think there will be no indi license. I personally think it is much more important that old MSA customers (that already payed MAXON a lot of money over the years) who want to stay perpetual are not treated worse than subscription customers. best regards Jops

I would be happy with the yearly price but being able to pay monthly. I'm fine signing a contract for a year, but it's much easier for a lot of people to pay monthly. And the monthly mark up is just too much. I mean I'm still on an original titan with redshift. I need to save up money for some new hardware.. but with all the software prices it's hard and paying up front for year makes it harder. I do hope to start making money one day with 3-D, but the cost of a hobbyist with two small kids and a full time job... it's tough.

Sorry to hear that C4DS. Your plugins are awesome. MAXON should really offer reduced price licenses for developers or even free versions with a watermarked render output. They are now the highest price software by far and the price for developers to keep upgrading to offer support is much too high and this really hurts. Having more developers creating plugins helps everybody.

@Shrike, thanks for the very well thought out and useful feedback. Cheers Dave

ICE from the get-go was deeply integrated with the existing geometry core in Softimage; and that integration was symbiotic with its Operator Stack (similar in concept to the modifier stacks in 3ds Max and Modo). The Operator Stack was introduced to Softimage when it was released with a brand new core as XSI back in the early 00's (XSI was the most modern DCC architecture at the time, that's one of the reasons that ICE was so thread friendly for particle and deformation effects). A screen grab is probably the easiest way for me to describe what makes ICE so different to the tech preview of Scene Nodes (you'll need to view it at full resolution to make sense of the description that follows. The explorer view over on the right side of the interface has a few Objects un-twirled to expose their Operator Stacks. The first thing you'll notice is that there are clear delineations between Modelling, Shape Modelling (generally rig related), Animation, Simulation, Post Simulation and finally Secondary Shape Modelling. ICE trees can exist in any of the Operator Stack regions but in general they are most often utilised in the modelling and simulation regions. In this specific example, the ICE tree's in the Modelling regions are used for set-up of custom attributes and the core of the shot is in the Simulation region of the pointcloud_particles_and_strands object; and this is the ICE tree you'll see in the graph region. The long node on the left hand side of the ICE tree shows one of the key differences between Fabric Engine and ICE. With ICE it's pure simplicity to bring any object into the graph and then hone into the specific attribute of interest so as to introduce the values of said attribute into another calculation context. What this means in artist friendly terms is that it's easy to take a cloth simulation object, explode the polygons to separate polygon islands and use the centres of those polygon islands as seeds for a particle strand simulation that's then converted to polygons (strands are usually rendered as curves in the GL viewport and the offline render usually uses simplistic primitives as an extrusion source). The import take out here isn't the effect itself but the easy with which multiple scene contexts can be queried and co-exist harmoniously in each others contexts. The following is a screen grab for Fabric Engine in Maya 2017 (Fabric Engine was EOL'd in 2017 - just as it was beginning to be useful! It's rumoured to now be the IP of one of the major productions shops). On paper Fabric Engine was a wonderful idea. It's elevator pitch was that it would become a DCC neutral platform that was powered by a very ICE like scene graph. The reality didn't quite live up to the ideal as the UX varied greatly depending on the DCC in question (Maya was the only DCC integration that could be considered production capable). There was even an alpha build for C4D knocking around but that never materialised outside of a very small closed alpha testing group. The biggest problem with working with Fabric Engine was that it always felt like a plugin tacked on top of it's DCC host. Artist friendly integration was sadly lacking. It's major area of strength (when compared to ICE) was that it was capable of very sophisticated procedural modelling. ICE throughout it's history never cracked procedural modelling, it was always a clumsy and frustrating workflow. It's these qualities that were at the core of my comparison between C4D Scene Nodes and Fabric Engine. Neither feel particularly integrated but both provide a great set of tools for procedural geometry asset creation. Apologies for this little digression but I wanted to provide @MikeA with enough information to clarify the differences I'd previously mentioned without writing an essay. 🙂

I use Cinema 4D for technical modelling for 3D printing for 10 years now. Currently i use mostly volumes but Poly by Poly is a close second. I have created complete 3D printer designs that are printable (RepRap) and implemented them, as well as many smaller projects. For me Cinema is pretty much perfect for 3D printing.

No worries. I had to laugh at your first line though! I feel your pain! We all do. But you get it...this can be an expensive hobby that has no practical applications other than feed your own soul. My brother has wood working as a hobby. A real master too! Yes...he probably spends close to what we spend on his hobby but when he is done his wife has a dining room set. Far more practical. 😉 Dave

This is, and has been from the second subscriptions were announced, my biggest gripe. I would really love to pay the monthly fee, but I simply cannot pay an entire year upfront, and the markup for the REAL monthly subscription is just insane.

regarding indi licenses there is another aspect that makes them unlikely. David McGavran got CEO just 2 Years ago. So what is the goal for an ambitious new CEO? revenue! You can't blame him for that, but customer satisfaction and a vibrant community are probably not that prominently featured in the target paper (although they wouldn't mind it). And, of course, the growth should be greater than that of his predecessors. In addition to short-term goals, such targets are often defined over 3 or 5 years. MAXON had quite good figures even before David McGavran. so you can assume that his goals are ambitious. Decisions that question these goals are unlikely to be made. If today some users switch to the competition and some universities prefer to teach blender because of fees, these goals are not necessarily in danger (the resulting problems will be seen later). But the indie license puts these goals in danger. So it is unlikely, that we will see a indie license in the next 2 to 3 Years. best regards Jops

You forget Shrikes comments. He praised the license manager for being able to shift subscription seats around within his business. Therefore, businesses may find that due to their own financial outlook due to Covid-19's impact on the entertainment industry they may re-up the annual subscription for less seats then they had in 2019. Remember, all those annual subscription seats are coming due this month as it has been about one year since they were first introduced. If the business future is a little bleak for any studio, then they are going to drop a few to meet their own financial needs. If business picks up they can quickly add them but until that point they need to worry about their cash outlay TODAY as they are all coming due. That is how I would plan it in periods of uncertainty because there is no penalty for downsizing now and adding back later. What this all means is less cash to MAXON today and an uncertain cash flow in the future. That is why I say time is on our side. Dave

Agreed. An annual $1000 upgrade price is something I am NOT signing up for. I would be perfectly happy just buying a whole new license every 4 to 5 years than shell out that much cash for an upgrade given how slow MAXON is to release new features. Also, this is a key year for MAXON. This is the first year where people under the MSA program are now facing a choice: Subscription or Perpetual. Business owners will choose subscription but I would guess that given how hard Covid-19 hit the entertainment industry, there may not be as many subscription sales in 2020 as there were in 2019. The beauty of subscription for a business owner is there are no penalties for dropping a few seats and then adding them back in when you need them. MAXON may find out that the subscription model is NOT a much of a guarantee of re-occurring revenue as they hoped. It is not recession as proof as would be the MSA program where the penalties for not renewing the MSA program were higher future license costs. Also, people like me are probably not too fond of the $1000 USD costs for a perpetual upgrade either. So this will be an interesting year for MAXON. On top of all this, they are either cash-strapped or in debt from their Redshift and Red Giant acquisitions. Even in the best years, changing your revenue model to something that is never popular with users after two big acquisitions has risk. Now throw a global pandemic on top of all that and it is NOT a pretty picture. I do believe that time is on our side and quite happy to sit on my wallet for the foreseeable future until something breaks our way be indie licenses or a more favorable perpetual license model for hobbyists. Dave

Wow, what a wall of text! I pretty much agree on everything, especially the nice explanation you made about the userbase dying out. I am sure MAXON knows this as well, so I am wondering what their plan is. As everybody else has indie licenses now (even dang Autodesk) I still don't understand why they don't offer that. All that people are going to do is crack it. If they can't afford it, they will crack it. So why not get some of these people on board with an indie license AND you bind them to your software this way. Right now Blender is pretty much just picking up everybody that doesn't want to use cracked software or has access through school.

This was the main problem with being a Studio MSA holder in the past and paying a premium for that MSA over what Prime and Broadcast license holders pay and then finding out that the latest release has no benefits unique to the Studio version. In essence, why am I paying more for the same benefits everyone else is getting at a lower price. Well, at least under the MSA program and the perpetual license program, if you don't like where the program is going you can opt out and STILL have access to your current version. Not so with subscriptions. If you opt-out, you have nothing until MAXON releases an update you do like and then you can rejoin the subscription plan. Interesting that you think subscriptions are expensive at $720. Try perpetual upgrades at close to or over $1000 - especially if you are a hobbyist. I could do a subscription for 4 years and have nothing or just purchase a whole new license every 4th year and have something that I can keep and still save some money over the perpetual license plan and only costing $615 more than the subscription plan -- but you now get something you can KEEP! Given their pace of development, the program doesn't change as fast as Blender. Maybe waiting won't be that bad for me and in 4 years, the program will have something that everyone will like. For those of us that hate the subscription plan and shudder at the high cost of a perpetual license upgrade, starving MAXON of funds for 4 years may drive the change we all need. Remember that this is a different economy right now (everyone is hurting: customers as well as clients in the entertainment industry). MAXON has Redshift and Red Giant to pay for and probably have lost some customers with the transition to subscriptions. So time is on the hobbyists side. We just have to get out of the mentality of "I need the shiny new ball right away"! Not at that price (near or above $1000). Dave "We are in the endgame now"

I gotta say, as a subscriber of C4D, and also owner of a perpetual license of R18. Not having the upgrade informations available to all customers, and acessible online worldwide... as easy as it is to purchase a new subscription... feels like a intentional bottleneck, to filter out everyone else who isnt a subscriber. There has to be a way to integrate a new business model (subscription) without having to make perpetual users to feel like complete outcasts? Also, speaking from a subscription client perspective, I feel that we need a more transparent roadmap of the software, things that we can look forward to. This update, personally for me, it isnt major to what I needed personally, comercially speaking. I dont use the premade character skeletons to any of my projects. The viewport changes were okay, but the magic bullet looks thing feels more like a gimmick than an actual improvement on things we wish we could do. There were no updates on NPR rendering, the toon shader remains untouched, no way to preview it on viewport without using interactive render region, that it is still..very slow to this day. There are some nice quality of life changes, and Im happy for those. And I appreciate all the hard work the developers put into this, and I know it is no simple process. But yeah man... this expensive subscription.. going in blind to every update. \

Really? Your systems can check our licence validity automatically. You can sell subscriptions over the internet. Oh... sorry, just hang on a minuite... I can hear an alarm ringing... I think there is a very simple reason you won't put it on the website for online purchase. You don't want to.

the differences are quite huge. if i'd have to make a car analogy i'd say the one from back then was a skoda and the new one is a mercedes. much more comfortable to animate, better controller design, a lot more features, more flexibility. the only thing the old one was better was performance, so it was a very fast skoda 😉. with a lot more features of course the rig got more complex, but i spent a lot of time optimizing it for speed, so it's not that much slower. definitely worth the trade off IMO... used the new one in several productions now, it's much more fun to animate. the most significant change is the face rig, the one that was available on vimeo just had a very simply face rig included. i've been using the way more complex face rig for a longer while now, but i never made it available for download because it was too hard to understand how to apply it to your character for the average user. so for the r23 release i spent a lot of time optimizing that process and making it way more user friendly.. you still should watch the tutorial i recorded, no way you can make a face rig like that entirely self-explanatory. it will be available soon on cineversity.

ICE, similar to Bifrost, is working on top of the core of the main app, Neutron/scene nodes is different, it is way closer to houdini since it is not an addition to the system, but at its heart.