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It's been very interesting following this thread for the last few weeks and reading all the different and passionate points of view, so I thought I'd throw my two cents in. Speaking frankly I'm pretty confused by the current direction of C4D. Working procedurally can definitely be a cool and efficient way to work, but Maxon's effort here seems to be mostly reactionary to get on board with what they perceive to be the new fad. IMO a procedural workflow really shines for dynamics and effects, and since C4D has no fluid system and not a much of a dynamics or particle system to speak of, I find little value in the procedural workflow. The idea of trying to compete with Houdini doesn't make much sense to me, since it will likely be many many years before C4D can even be considered a contender, and in the meantime C4D is trailing it's ACTUAL competitors in so many areas. Maya is already the artist friendly answer to effects with fantastic capabilities, while Blender is a great FREE alternative with an impressive host of features to boast. Neither software is perfect, but each one has areas where they excel and take no prisoners, such as Maya's amazing uv capabilities, or it's native renderer Arnold, or other fantastic features like Bifrost, Xgen, and Mash etc. Blender has really taken leaps and bounds to compete with Zbrush, and though Zbrush is the undefeated champion in terms of sheer polygon power, Blender has developed a rich sculpting program, and should be considered a viable alternative. Blender even beat Zbrush to the punch with their cloth brushes, although Pixologic quickly introduced this feature with highly impressive results, just like any smart developer would do to keep it's rep. Blender also has a realtime renderer, which is great for lookdev and maybe even final renders. This realization really hit home for me with a recent project; I finally gave up on C4D's neglected hair system and reintroduced myself to Xgen with the intention of using Arnold's proprietary USD system to render out of C4DtoA, when I had the sudden epiphany that Maya SHIPS with Arnold allowing me to forgo all that export hassle and render out of Arnold directly using Maya. Despite it's clunky and disorganized interface, I find myself moving to Maya more and more, which is ironic because C4D's interface is far superior to Maya's and that's one of the few 'features' Maxon chose to mess with. I could ramble on and on, but the basic point is that C4D has fast become a master at none, and really doesn't have a specialty area anymore. In my recent projects I have found myself using C4D less and less, opting to use other packages throughout the pipeline that are much more efficient and capable than C4D. I am confused by Maxon's decisions and wonder if they themselves know what their long-term goals are, but I guess time will tell. Thanks for reading 😀.

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.

We have quite a few coders at Maxon that come with an artist background and they are treasured. You need both, the hardcore experts on computing structures, efficiency and algorithms and those that include an artists view. Prime example might be one of the developers that laid the foundations of MoGraph.

The most powerful combination in software development is when a user is the developer. Only with that combination will you get the tools that are both needed and work the way you need them to work. As companies grow, that pairing of abilities can be lost. If you read the job descriptions, you find more of a focus on a candidates proficiency in the core language (C++, python, etc) and who capable of transforming technical papers into code. Rarely do you see the requirement of being a 3D artist in the job description. Some companies like Insydium, overcome that gap by hiring a "resident artist" such as Mario Tran Phuc who pushes the platform to ever greater and greater capabilities. That works! Not sure if Maxon has a "resident artist" on the payroll. The closest I have seen that happen was probably in R24 as most of its new features were tailored the needs of artists like Beeple (eg, the ability to grab stuff from a library pretty efficiently and scatter them all over your work in kitbash fashion). But I am not sure if Beeple is on the Maxon payroll (nor does he need to be). Going back to Matches post, he has hit the nose square on the head: How is Maxon competing? Is it even competing? I loved this example he provided on Blenders sculpting tools vs. Z-Brushes: So when was the last time you saw Maxon quickly compete with a competitor on a new feature? Maybe with Maya on the addition of dynamic MoGraph modifier in R22 when Maya was adding fluids to their motion graphics suite of tools. Unfortunately Maxon was only able to implement particles effects while Maya was doing fluids. So points to Maya on this round. I know we all think the new "core" will bring a vast treasure trove of riches to C4D once "fully" implemented...but that transition is now looking like a 10 year journey and that is just too long in this world. Sorry, but better bevel capability should not be the only benefit we should be seeing from this new core at this point. I know there are some viewport improvements, but it seems that you need to be using Scene Nodes to appreciate that benefit. If Scene nodes is the ONLY way we will see the full manifestation of the new core, then that is a HUGE problem because it totally changes the one thing that keep users tied to C4D: the way we interact with the program. Right, wrong or indifferent, Scene nodes changes that interaction. Capsules restore a good deal of that "ease of use", but I am not seeing the increase in viewport performance -- especially with the greeble modifier. Increase the polygon count on the source object and watch C4D slow to a crawl. That is not how I thought the new core would behave. Honestly, the fastest growing development at Maxon is the license server (IMHO). Certainly more changes there than on C4D's ability to catch-up on features to the competition. Not including Redshift as the default renderer for C4D but cancelling its perpetual licensing is a one example of what is a priority to Maxon: growing revenue via subscriptions with their existing user base rather than growing the user base with new features to the software. This priority does indicate that Maxon is not even trying to compete on features. This should not be surprise to anyone as it has been the #1 complaint from the user community. Don't even try to defend it because the weight of evidence is against you (and this thread is long enough). Dave Wasn't that Per Anders? And didn't he leave? Dave

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.

Hi Dave. Thanks for reminding me. I had a lot of fun making that tutorial. Image attached. I'm not doing a lot of 3D these days. I haven't renewed my Modo subscription this year. They've gone a bit like Maxon with mediocre releases of late. Any 3D stuff I do is designing Lego motorcycles using a free online Lego modeller Mecabricks. So I've gone from making 3D Lego models to actually making real ones. I was doing this before but now I'm a bit more serious about it. Attached is my latest creation finished yesterday. Not quite finished as the exhaust hoses are wrong. I'm waiting for some different length hoses to arrive in the post. This is based off someone else's design but I had to deconstruct it based upon some photos they put online back in 2015. 90% their work, 10% mine. Lazareth LM 847. Has a Maserati V8 engine. I've now got about 50 Lego motorcycles in my collection. Glad I'm not still waiting for the Bodypaint / UV Editing updates promised years ago in Cinema 4D. Apart from the interface changes and a couple of small enhancements to the UV tools, nothing much has changed since I jumped ship with the dismal R17 release. Cheers Nigel / 3DKiwi

Righty - must be time for some more golf clubs (for a change) ! Very enjoyable models to make... Renders by Kane Cochran / Octane ...and some wires of course... All the quads, SDS etc etc CBR