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Yep, and they have every right to continue to do so if they feel Maxon continues to release weak updates ! All the opinions from all the people are valid (the ones doing hate for hate's sake tend to be transparently obvious, so exclude themselves !) and should be heard by the community and by Maxon ! Leaving any software is a big wrench if you use it every day, or have done for some time, so I think it's understandable that long term users drop a rant or 2, and a bit unfair to label them cowardly for not jumping ship earlier... I imagine most of these people love Cinema like I do, and really don't want to go, but voice their opinions inthe hope they may be heard if they say it enough, and who can blame them for that ?! CBR

Capsules are actually pretty amazing. It allows anyone to essentially create a "plugin". Without doing any coding at all. So now any casual developer needs to think if it makes sense to write actual code to create a deformer or modifier, or just do it with nodes and never have any c4d upgrade compatibility problems ever again. I expect to see lots of neat new features coming from the community in future. Even possibly from myself. https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d/features/capsules

Sorry, that's just bullshit. People have different reasons to stay, be it not having to learn something else, not being able to financally afford to cripple their workflow for months or just straight up attachement to the software. Pretty much the only thing people complain about is not getting cool new stuff, that doesn't mean older versions are insufficiant for their workflows. It just means people are pissed that they're pushed into a subscription and not getting anything in return.

I installed R25 on my work machine and I honestly love the interface changes, even though Maxon has not only taken a lesson out of Blender's book, but also from other programs, it seems.. 😉 I don't find the new UI particularly hard to get used to. Watch Chris Schmidt's interface part on the new R25 features and you'll get accustomed to it in no time. There's also a knowledge base article at Maxon's website detailing the changes. The additional viewport real estate is great and the changed locations of the toolbars make absolute sense. I know nobody asked for it, as Cinema has always had a great UI, but the changes are very well thought out and make a great UI even better. If you have access to R25, give it a try. Now for the rest, I am also underwhelmed, albeit not as much as others here. I love procedural and node workflows, so getting even an interim solution for incorporating scene nodes into the Object manager is exciting for me. That said, I agree that it's debatable to tout this as a full feature, as nobody knows how the system will change and / or evolve until the core and the scene nodes are finished. For spline import, I do not care much. The tracker tag seems a nice addition for animators with some very smart and easy to use parameters, but I don't animate. Overall, I wouldn't say I am disappointed nor particularly impressed by this release. It's really lightweight and there is not enough incentive in the feature list for me to upgrade my personal perpetual R23 license, also considering the perpetual upgrading cost. But I enjoy having access to the new interface and capsules on my work machine and appreciate the changes that are there, because they are done well. And Cinema is still the general purpose DCC app I can learn the easiest and that I enjoy working with the most. Also, I understand the community's frustration and that the patience of waiting for the new core to see all of the outdated areas addressed has been wearing thin by now. Where I disagree is that Maxon does not know where to go with the roadmap. I am sure they have a long-term plan, or else they would not invest so much into the scene nodes approach. Whether this is going after Houdini, enabling completely new features that are done more intuitively than anywhere once they finally land in C4D or it's something completely different, I don't know. It's pure speculation. But I find it a bit naive to think that development was "random". A company of Maxon's size, not even talking about Nemetschek here, certainly has an intent with everything they develop. Whether or not this intent will align with the customer's wishes remains to be seen, but I am sure there is some intent in planning.

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

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

Toolfarm.com prices - which are generally very good: For UK: R23 to R25 Perpetual upgrade: £799+VAT ( £958.80 inclusive of UK VAT) Earlier versions to R25 Perpetual upgrade: £1,699+VAT ( £2,038.90 inclusive of UK VAT) = 62% of the cost of a new licence. I've no doubt that Dave McG will pop in sometime in 2022 to tell us that perpetuals are no longer popular.

I think that the impact of capsules is hugely underrated. I really think that it is a gamechanger. It doesn't have the speed of scene nodes yet, but It still is as much of a thing as xpresso was (which by the way also needed years to be recognized as groundbreaking). I would love to update my R21, but for the price stated above (nearly two thirds of a full version) .... hello? R21 is the last but one perpetual Version!

No way it is justified to pay all that amount for only this abysmal update...

I really liked the R25, I see future there. The concept of "looking at tools in a new way" is a very good start. Many thanks to developers 💙 Be faster, higher, stronger!

The Asset Manager looked nice at first - but the fact it renames everything to conform to some internal structure means, it's essentially locking my stuff in. I couldn't get my stuff out the Asset manager in any reasonable way. And I learned the hard way never to trust my files any third party manager. Now that you removed the content manager (which I used a lot and left my stuff intact), I just can't follow you guys beyond S24. So for me R25 is just a complete no-show. Please, reconsider Asset Managers invasive lock-in 😞

Wow. That decision forces me to stay on S24. Maxon, please don't lock-in my files! 😕

Watch what happens when Autodesk tokens takes off...then Maxon will implement it. Trust me, Maxon may even go one better:

I think the biggest problem is the lack of "listening" from McGavran and senior leadership. Pretty confident that the developers know what needs to be done but it is management that makes the call and while they say they are hearing us, it is obvious that they are not listening. How do you look at R25's features and go "yeah --- this is what the users want! Let's make these four features a half-point release!" I am pretty sure warning flags were raised within Maxon about this release - but no one "listened". Not sure what happened last year to get us to this point. Plus, people no longer want to hear that Maxon is still implementing the core. That excuse is wearing thin. Was it scene nodes that sucked up all the resources over the last year? If so, is that the right strategy to put all your eggs in that basket? If that is Maxon's strategy, then they need to assess where they are with scene nodes after more than a year. What is the adoption rate by the users? Even if it is a "tech demo" (a nice term to launch a big effort without setting any expectations for deliverables), who is making scene node tutorials other than Maxon? I only found 11 on YouTube and 5 of those were from Maxon. The other 6 came from EJ, Chris Schmidt and LFO. That's it: 3 people after a whole year. Where are the user posts on all the great things with scene nodes? Are their any great examples of scene nodes on the Maxon web-site? I mean after a year or more, I would have expected more. Scene nodes may not be the big feature draw that Maxon hopes for as parametric modeling is hard no matter how clean the interface is made. Those who want to master it will go to Houdini rather than wait for C4D as Houdini's indie version is cheaper and it vastly more powerful. Yeah...I have no idea where McGavran is driving C4D because it is apparent he is not listening to his customers. Honestly, as an Adobe guy he is probably more at home with Red Giant than he is with Redshift or C4D. You always play to your strengths and people in leadership will always focus first on what they know before they tackle what they don't know. That is human nature. Well, I am getting the sinking feeling that 3D is not one McGavran's strengths. Dave

What an odd update. I didn't really know what to expect. This, I did not expect. Not much to be said about it. I agree that Maxon seems to heading into a "Houdini for designers and Motion Designers" direction, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Being a user interface designer myself, I understand the effort and time that was spent on the new refreshed GUI. Still feels very thin, though, and the newer features seem to be stuck in perpetual beta limbo for now. Will good come from it? Only time will tell. On a positive note: the looks of Blender and C4D no long visually clash when running them side-by-side on my multi-screen setup 😉 "Curiouser and curiouser", Alice exclaimed.

'The Content Browser has been deprecated and removed. A new menu option in the Asset Browser allows users to choose a lib4d and convert to assets.' I don't like the way the new asset browser copies and renames all files so they can only be accessed within the C4D application. I think a lot of users use the legacy content browser as part of their workflow. Why remove the option? Not only does R25 add no new features but it actually removes functionality?

The new UI is fine. Everyone complains about when a UI or branding etc changes. I don't think it needed changing personally but people will get used to it. Its the odd prioritisation of it over other things that is the issue.

Delta Mush was already a free plugin for R21 anyway (and it is fantastic) https://www.valkaari.com/?product=delta-mush

Same here. R21 perpetual currently meets my needs and I've not seen anything since then that offers me enough value to upgrade.

Well I choose not to upgrade and save a lot of $$$. Not a complaint but an observation.

Thank you Cerbera 🙂

This has been available in C4D for quite some time. They just changed the default functionality. Can be changed by right-clicking a field and choosing a User Interface option. I'll just reiterate what some other folks have said... the UI was the last thing that needed attention in this update. They've got time to update the general UI, but leave the xpresso UI untouched... I reached out about upgrading my perpetual R21 license to R25 perpetual. How can I justify paying $2100 for that? I've compiled a list of features I'd be getting: Slight UV improvements Organized viewport filters (geo only mode) Character pose library Magic Bullet Looks Content/Asset Browser updates Object placement tool UI update I know I've left out some other tools like gltf exporting, delta mush, timeline filtering, deformer indicators, scene nodes (not production ready), python 3, tween tool, etc. But honestly, none of these are absolute game-changers that can justify paying $2100 for. I guess gone are the days of big releases like R20 when we got fields, CAD import, volume builder, node-based materials, updated gradient, etc. Just packed full of useful workflow integrations.

Honestly, the actual features look pretty good. The UI, as always, looks very slick and modern, the Capsules, particularly look extremely promising as a long-term feature that will greatly extend C4D's capabilities. Both are extremely time-consuming features to implement, so I can see why, on an accelerated release schedule, you would only have a couple of these. Robust spline import is always a welcome feature, but hardly a major addition, but still, nice to have. I guess the major issue is why prioritise the freaking UI? That would have been likely last on my list of things to tweak with in C4D. It already had a very good UI, and given what an enormous task rehauling a major app's UI is, why on Earth expend resources in that direction? Anyhow, on a positive note, I am excited to see where Scene Nodes and Capsules are headed.

I remember seeing both of these at the time and especially thinking the project tab was a great idea. But then it dropped off the radar. Creating a project is only the first part. The rest is all marketing. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc… and having a custom website that highlights the products with good SEO so that Google picks it up. Also getting them into resellers hands like ToolFarm or HelloLux. I myself don’t do much marketing, but each time I do anything I see a bunch of sales. But sales and marketing are full time jobs all in of themselves. Which is why I don’t do much personal development anymore. I have too much to sell and need to get back to that instead of just making new stuff, that no one will ever use unless they know about it. So don’t give up on new ideas. But when you have something make sure to get the word out about them.

I am not sure if paying a developer in bugs is a popular currency 😄

I always just used mousewheel on these menus until I got the result I needed, so no difference for me here 😉

If they had waited then everyone on R23 perpetual would not have any way to get access to the features of S24. For an R23 perpetual user this update includes all the S24+R25 features.

I have to say the whole node graph / capsules system looks incredible - i really need to update myself on that stuff as i haven't used or looked at any of it. One of the things i always loved so much about C4D was it's ability to do things in any number of ways, fast iterations and flexibility.. It's almost hinting at a Houdini level of complexity/capability so it is nice to see this stuff being developed further..

Why? Because it locks people into C4D once they convert their assets. Other option is to have all files twice. Easy as that.

Yes, I've always liked this site but used to consider it a sort of CGTalk light but then got burned out on forums in general (because of CGTalk) for awhile, but I am really enjoying the new more comprehensive coverage of other DCCs and their relation to each other as well as to Cinema, and the overall organization and responsiveness of this site. Well done! And I have a Rookie badge now. 😄

Yes, Capsules allow nodes to work with the old object manager, but with none of the speed and improved handling ability as of yet. But nodes and capsules do give the user a great deal of flexibility and power to create that exists nowhere else in Cinema, so in that respect I think it is very valuable to have during the interim, and will allow users to learn and incorporate nodes into the their workflow even if they don't yet deliver on their full promise.

I really like these changes! Like many are mentioning, some of them are very blender like, modern blender iterations, that is. They seem much easier to understand here which was one of c4d selling points. The nodes as tags would really be something I could get my head around.

Yes, I really could not believe this. We are all media professionals. Appearances matter!! We work in an industries where appearances mean quite a lot. With the pandemic well into its second year, everyone has had ample time to acquire a decent webcam and make their backdrop somewhat presentable, even if not a perfect 10 on Room Rater. Instead it all reminded me of zooming with the grandparents who aren't quite sure how everything works or where to look, or if the thing is even on. The whole thing was just shambolic. And personally, I don't get any joy or excitement of anticipation from 15 minutes of commercials. Do they think because many of us make commercials that we also like watching them? No one in their right mind likes commercials. Just get to it already and spend the extra time showing what's new or something.

Just a wild guess: Most of the dev team is working on the new core (still) to get it done fast, cause they're scared that people will leave (for a reason). So no new features until the "new" C4D is entirely done. What we get is just stuff that they developed to have SOMETHING for the new releases. Because people have been getting their new C4D releases at the same time, every year, for a long time now.

I have to admit the new UI took me a lot longer than I thought it would to fully get used to, and I am still not as fast in it as I am in the previous versions, but it has, at last, begun to feel a little bit more like home. I know it's a big shock to begin with, but the nice things in it do shine through in the end - the VP for modelling now, for example, is an absolute joy, and has never looked clearer, cleaner, or more attractive IMO. "A typical model, yesterday". And although I never thought in a million years I would say it, as I flick between 24 and 25 now, 24 does feel a little bit 'toy-town' or 'yesteryear' in comparison. CBR