R 25 - not for me. And I am not a customer for Maxon, we do not fit together, anymore.
I am a professional programmer. Multimedia for me mainly is a hobby. An expensive hobby. Although I make some non-profit stuff for ideal purposes, like nature preservation and environment issues. And I love making plug-ins for C4D, I write them in C++. And have kept them for myself, so far, Plug-ins for animation mostly. Seems like animation in R25 has added some of the same features I came up with myself, several years ago.
I have purchased all Studio versions of C4D, from R13 up to and including R23.
I am getting old, and will eventually retire. But creating stuff, both programming and making multimedia presentations, is so fun, that I will continue with this for many years to come.
Therefore I have purchased perpetual versions of C4D, so that I still own my software, and can play with it, also in the coming years.
I was willing to pay for the R25 perpetual too, and got a Quotation from Maxon. Nice. That was until I saw in what direction things are moving now.
* I am uncertain about to what extent I will at all get some real new features in C4D, before I die.
* Maxon radically changed the ting I love the most in C4D - the user interface. For 26 years I have been designing and programming GUIs myself. Award winning software, commercial successful software, and tons of tailored proprietary solutions for customers. So I have an idea about this, seen from the workshop, not only as a user.
That Maxon managed to wreck such a beautiful user interface, is beyond me. Yes, you can to some extent revert to the old layout, but not to all those familiar harmonic colors - they are gone. I will assert that the pre R25 super GUI was C4Ds trademark. That was the main reason I chose C4D in 2012.
Now, Maxon cannot make software only for me. I understand that.
Things are happening in the software business, things that I feel are under-communicated.
* Piracy, to what extent is this the driving force behind the subscription model?
* Generic maturity, to what extent is this the driving force behind the subscription model?
With maturity I mean a generic saturation of features in today's software. In 1999, I would not use 10 years old software. Not even 3 years old applications. Today, I use Adobe CS 6, Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects, and still have not discovered more than a fraction of all the fantastic functions in these applications.
So, I think I can make fantastic animations in the C4D versions I have, for many years to come.
Worth mentioning, I recently renewed my perpetual Redshift license, and I also have a running perpetual license for X-Particles.
Now, I will continue to write C++ utilities for C4D, and make animations and renderings. Having fun in my own cave. And I just have to accept that Maxon needs a steady stream of money, and accept that I am not the kind of customer they need for their future.
-Ingvar