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Just a thought on prices for people to consider; I don't know what the future plans are, but currently you can upgrade from R20 to R23 for a single regular upgrade price. Back in the day many people would skip 1-2 versions of photoshop and just upgrade every 2-3 years for the same price. *IF* MAXON's current pricing sticks around then this could be a viable option for many people, just skip every other upgrade, effectively bringing the upgrade price to less than the MSA; so long as you don't mind skipping the odd version.

Thought I'd post this here as it relates to R23. I'm doing a stream tonight (8:00pm UK time), so it would be great to get your thoughts in the chat regarding R23 and other topics we'll be covering 🙂 EDIT: Cortana went off without being asked at the 21:30 mark and decided to adjust my mic levels! (sigh), so you'll have to crank the volume up. Cortana has now been shot and buried.

I was really pleased to see the the technology preview version of Scene Nodes contains a smattering of Noise function nodes. And one of the first Noise nodes I dabbled with was the Noise Selection node, very useful as the base for noise based modelling workflows as it simplifies the node tree significantly. However I do have a feature request. I know this isn't strictly the place for feature requests, but seeing as I'm here. 🙂 C4D's noise functions are peerless amongst DCC's, so it's a pity the animate parameter isn't included in all four of the noise function based nodes included in the current iteration of Scene Nodes (I believe it's only included with the Basic Noise node). The Noise Selection node in particular would benefit from an animation parameter as it provides great procedural power but with simplicity and immediacy too. And whilst I'm on the subject of noise function driven modelling, something else I cant find amongst the available nodes is some kind of smoothing/blurring operator. The example below smooths a weight map driven extrusion but the Laplacian Smooth (the algorithm used by the Blur Vertex Data node) is just as relevant to procedural textures or any kind of 0-1 image data for that matter. This is really useful when you want to remove raw jagged edges from procedural extrusions.

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.

Oh please don't call the existing one 'legacy' !! I love that OM, and very much hope it persists in largely its current form even if it does operate merely as an alternative interface for the scene OM one day ! CBR

The objects final state on a frame is transferred to the Scene Nodes, thats it. Inside of The Scene Nodes it is just a bunch of geometry and numerical data.

I probably rated it too quickly. We tested it on some ideal remesher cases and there it did perform well. Remesher comparison: Input mesh: Worst case scenario: - sharp hard surface with many thin elements and stuff pointing outwards (thrown in volume builder) 2000 Polygons: C4D (Blue) - 5 seconds +- Exoside (Red) - 3 minutes +- (thought it froze the first 3 times but it actually is just very slow - Edit: its not that slow on other models, must have an issue with the mesh geo in some way) The exoside does not break the mesh and has noticeably better flow but is an extreme amount slower and does not work automatically and is not non-destructive. Changing settings and observing results is almost impossible at minutes of waiting time. Changing settings in the C4D version had little effect in this test. Exoside also supports mirroring features. The C4D remesher supports Flow splines, which the other dosn't have. This is a good idea and improves results a lot. It starts to retain elements and flow the other could not, although the main issue, the exploding of thin surfaces retains. Calculation time with such simples increased drasically, from 5 seconds to around 1.5 minutes. Some of these flows actually look good but overall this still would need a total retopo pass. That makes you think however how a flow spline could be abused to create a base for retopo meshes though this workflow. Changing the polygon count does not retain the spline calculation that was done prior. This could probably be cached. It also appears that the remesh somehow is calculating even when turned off? changing a spline after turning it off froze my PC and I got the feeling prior as well. 10000 Polygons: Times stayed similar. Support splines are still used, I generated them by phong angle selection around 40° and deleted some Exoside (Red) Cinema 4D (Blue) Notably cinema 4D still does explode and break the meshes, however you notice that both work rather differently and have different advantages. With the splines, cinema did retain some shapes better, especially some outlines and sharper elements. Cinema also did not delete some of the spikes on the side bars. The top of the weapon is also much more straight (hard to see in this image) The exoside made things a lot softer, which works better in some areas but strange in others but does not require any work with splines. I would also wish for a "freeze remesh" function so I would not have to disable the remesh and recalculate it when I want to not have any calculating done. Right now I would have to merge down the mesh. The exoside spits out a merged mesh while the C4D one works with any input. Overall I would say that Cinema should aim to fix this exploding polygon issue and then it would be on a similar level to the exoside version with some advantages and some disadvantages. Cinema: + Can be much faster, depends on spline complexity, may also be longer on very complex splines I assume + Works automatically on anything you work on + nondestructive workflow possible + Retains hard edges better with splines + Allows the change of flow + Triangle mode + Can have better results when flow splines are used + Can retain hard edges and smaller objects better when flow splines are used - Big Issue: Explodes thin objects, making some meshes unusable without retopo - Much worse results on some hard surface meshes on low polygon count without flow splines - Flow splines require work and are hard to make non destructive - Keep 100% in quads will increase polygon count noticeably and offers no control over this Exoside Quad remesher: + Noticeably better results out of the box + Works much better on low polygon count models + Uses adaptive sizes for better usage of the budget and increases density in important areas + Remeshed the pipes noticeably better + Allows Symmetry + split by normals and materials possible (not tested) + allows painting of dynamic resolution (per example leave more resolution on the face) + Does everything 100% in Quads which makes loop selections much better - Takes much longer baseline - Creates more smoothed shapes which do not really retain the silhouette and original shape as much - Removes more smaller elements totally but without leaving a mess behind - Requires manual remeshing, no automatic updating, leaves a 'destructive workflow' final editable mesh Verdict: If Cinema can fix the exploding issue then these would be worthy rivals, but maybe this is not an issue for your type of meshes. See for yourself at best. In general both have strong advantages and disadvantages. I would really suggest you do have both + the volume mesher if you do work that requires a lot of remeshing, it is clearly much better owning both and testing on model basis. For our rocks we actually used the volume mesher adaptive in the end as it gave the best quality where it mattered for the vertice count.

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.

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

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

A good picture from Jonmoore. I would call the current implementation V0.5, it really is just a "hey look how fast and powerful stuff is about to get" release. The object manager for 95% of users with a happy friendly rainbow interface is being worked on and I suspect it will be with us for the next release but perhaps still not 100% ready for prime time usage as a LOT of other parts of C4D need to be tied in and updated to make it a full replacement. The openGL display of nodes is currently barebones, just the absolute basics so you can see what you're doing; the proper feedback and interaction widgets will come soon enough. Node colours are currently hardcoded, they'll need to go through the full prefs integration and localisation process if they are to be exposed. Editing values directly in the node has already been requested a few times, not sure if they will be taking that route though, we'll see.

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.

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. 🙂