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Well, in my opinion, Srek is doing a really good job on the forums, communicating with people, even on the difficult topics. And I write this, despite not always being of the same mind.

Before Maxon i worked for over a decade as an IT tech, diagnosing and resolving customer problems. At Maxon i started as a tech support guy and later switched to leading QA, afterwards to UX Design. Trying to understand the problems of users and finding solutions that work for them is something i do since the 80s. Even my hobbies of making and upcycling are about solving problems for myself and other people. While i am in no way perfect in what i do you can safely assume that i do try to see issues from a users perspective, otherwise my job(s) would be impossible to do. While it can often look like i want to defend Maxon and Cinema 4D, which is not a wrong impression over all, you don't commit to a company and a product as long as i did without getting attached to it, my main aim is usually to explain why things are the way they are, so everyone involved can try to make the best of the situation. I am a very practically minded person and from my experience information is the main thing you need to solve issues, this goes both ways. Since i am not an executive i simply can't offer many of the solutions people expect to hear from me. I can try to point out workarounds and alternatives and i definitely try to include feedback i get from users in my UX Design work, but i can't change policies or modify development plans and i certainly can't announce any possible future changes that are being asked for.

Thanks Kent. It is true, i am very bad at sugarcoating. If i can't tell it as i know it, i prefer to not say anything. As for the "need" to be here, there are other things than my job that make me want to be active in the community. There is a lot of satisfaction i derive from seeing people making fantastic stuff with a tool i help creating.

Go to Cinema 4D Preferences -> Extensions -> Forger File Transfer and turn on Announce Service to Local Network. Enjoy, I will send the 404 info to the team Cheers Dave

I would like to point out that Srek doesn’t need to be here. He is not doing this as a MAXON representative. He is commenting here because he cares about C4D and the users. And I don’t consider any of his comments as being defensive. They are simply the truth. If it is too late in the timeframe to change a feature then that is how it is. If something is very difficult to implement then consider that as it is, ie it might take a very long time before you ever see that specific feature in C4D. Saying “I understand and will consider it again” means nothing and instead may give false hope and is more akin to lying than telling the truth. Keep up the good work Srek!

Thanks for that tip. worked like a charm.

This post really hit home for me. I think Maxon has a two serious problems: A communication problem and a listening problem. Most companies have a ELT (executive leadership team) position that embraces the concept of "customer listening" but so far, I am not seeing proof that listening is leading to any action. You may in fact be listening, but you could also be just ignoring us. Now, I do give high praise to Rick Barrett. He is an effective communicator and his communications do show that he is listening. He internalize the heart of the issue from a user perspective in all of his responses. Maxon would be in a worse place should he leave and we would be in a worse place should he no longer visit this forum. Srek - sorry but I am going to call you out for your own benefit - you could learn a great deal from Rick Barrett on communication that shows more listening. You tend to (on occasion) launch into defending (which is understandable), but as a Maxon employee please try to ALWAYS internalize the issue from the user perspective first before you give us your perspective. You are dealing with customers after all as a Maxon representative so understand that purely defensive arguments always come across to those customers as not being heard and not being heard always creates customer frustration which in turn leads to more attacks. Try to ask a few questions first -- seek first to really understand and you may find an easier go of it as I do recall the forum got so vicious against you at one time in the past you separated yourself from it. No one wants that to happen again. Customer goodwill is also something that Maxon needs to work on. It is a real asset and should be treated as such. That asset is the positive word of mouth that customer goodwill creates - which is a very powerful marketing tool. Maxon's goodwill bank account is showing a rather serious deficit right now (another symptom of not listening). Had that goodwill been preserved, then it could have arrested the negative trending created by R25. If you don't think there is negative trending on R25, then please ask yourselves why this thread is 55 pages long. Finally, I have to ask: What is the overall development strategy at Maxon with the new core. After 5+ years, I think I see it but then again it is not plainly evident. Now, I am not asking for your development timeline but rather a discussion about strategy. For example, we don't see any improvements to aging modules -- so you have to ask why. We don't see very useful plugins being implemented as fast as they should be. Again, why? This all points to strategy as only adhering to a strategy can these questions be answered. So think it would be more productive if we ALL knew what that strategy was as then we would all be level set and on the same page as to what to expect. For example, it could be either one or all of: Program integration with other applications as opposed to developing those capabilities internally. Don't improve Bodypaint but rather make the integration with Substance Painter tighter. The strategy therefore is: we can't make everything best-of-breed but we can make C4D work with best-of-breed applications. Grow capsules so the user can more easily create their own tools. The strategy there is: user needs are constantly evolving and to just add specific tools that meet those changing needs creates and unwieldy software base that becomes harder to manage over time. Didn't we just clean-up that code base with the new core? Focus on workflow more than new tools. Strategy: If C4D becomes more tightly integrated with other applications, than its value in the pipeline is making it easier and faster to get things done and easier for the user to extend its capabilities. So again, what is the strategy? Every business has an "elevator pitch" strategy statement. That is, a strategy/vision that can be quickly communicated in 90 seconds or less (the average time to ride an elevator). High level, not to detailed, but impactful. Therefore, I would love to hear Maxon's elevator pitch. Dave

answered in the other thread

Remember Forger is now available for free 🙂 Cheers Dave

everyone should have a life besides the work that is true for artists and developers. And everyone has the right for this. I think that the discussion about harder work distracts from the real issue. I am convinced that a lot of work is done. But why do so many questions remain unanswered, many of which have nothing to do with development. The first question is why is so little of the work visible? That is easy to answer. It is because maxon is working on the new core and that is basically recreating the software from scratch. The rest of the questions are not that simple to answer - for example why is this transition so poorly communicated? Yes as a regular forum member you hear about it but people that are not part of such a community just see the "lack" of development. Capsules could have been presented super sexy (each capule is basically a new feature) with mind blowing examples and a view into the future also the rest of the marketing material is quite medioker. Marketing and customer communication do not need developers. Btw. I am not talking about better marketing blah blah or new logos. I am talking about communication with value. But as people do not directly pay for marketing I guess it is reduced to the bare minimum. An other question is: why is redshift not integrated into c4d. And if there are no plans to integrate it. why Is the material and reflectance mess not worked on. or - why are the development planes not communicated ( I understand the problems with that, but other companies seam to get it working quite well, they are even able to organize customer input in a way, that the customers feel valued and not ignored) And - Why is customer goodwill given away so easily by company decisions that make the impression that maxon could gain anything by punishing the old user base. Most of these points have little to do with development capacities and it is these questions that never get truly answered. The inability or unwillingness to answer these kind of questions fuel the displeasure that is visible not just on this forum and not just by a few. I basically have talked to NO college the last two years that is not aware this. And all of them look at it concerned. Customers do a s a group not magically decide to be unhappy about the product or its conditions. It is the company that it responsible for this through its decisions. And if the situation is, that the visible development can not keep up with the expectations or the competition, then a company needs to change something else. What I don't mean with this is trying to lock its customers in, wich seems to be the main measurement maxon has done.

We are hiring like crazy. As a side job and remanat from my past at Maxon i am responsible for some part of the on boarding of new hires so i see what is happening. It is a bit crazy to be honest, still we are looking for more. Thanks to the rise of 3D in general it is super difficult to find people though. The market is dry, game development sucks up a lot of talent. We are paying very competetive salaries but that doesn't help much if there are just not enough people around. Even if we were to get as many people as we want, it takes time to get them to production level. Cinema 4D is a hell of a complex product and to be able to work on major elements of it requires quite a bit of preparation and learning. At the beginning you have to put new hires on smaller stuff to introduce them to the technology behind. I still remember the ridicule we got for the Cogwhell spline. Oh what fun was beeing had that we would add that but not adress major issue this or that. It was one of many starter tasks for a new hire who later on contributed quite important parts, but only after he got to that level of knowledge about how Cinema 4D works internally! So if you know any talented devs, feel free to point them our way, preferably to me, since we get nice incentives for bringing in new people 🙂

Just for the record, Rick is one of the hardest working people i know. I get it that not nearly everything he does is immediately visible to the end user, but without him we all would have a lot less. He is working tireless for you and me since the late 90s. You don't do that for the money or the fame, you do that because you love it. Over the last 20 years i have seen so many people critizising without knowing what is actually being done. I understand the frustration if things that you see as priority are not adressed in the way you would like them to, but on the other hand few people outside of Maxon have any idea on how complex and difficult some seemingly straight forward things are. The comprehension that assets require different ressources than features is not given to everyone. Factual critique? Yes please. Ideas on Improvement? Yes please. Assumption that we ignore problems for the sake of hauling money? You can keep that one. Cheers Björn

I am mesmerized by the quality of this!!! it is absurd!!! ❤️ And I had no idea Blender Studio had this kind of humour haha! I was pleasantly surprised!

Just because I am not agreeing with you, or pointing out some affirmations that does not convey what the situation really is for us customers, it does not mean that this is not an actual conversation. I am pretty sure that the opposite is prefered, praises and no negative feedback.. but I am conveying what the general feeling from most of us users of C4D feel about all this, in a respectful manner. I am pretty sure Maxon is listening to its customers, but doing something about these feedbacks... about this backlog of complaints from the past years, regarding not only the business method, but also the funcionality of the software, the many shortcomings it still has... it is a different story. For instance, where in the previous posts and topics, not only in this forum but in any other, a large number of users were complaining about C4D's interface? This was actually one of the very best things it had, and I am sure this one is great too thanks to the hardwork of the developers, but why was this a priority, on top of so many other major issues the software currently has? And I know that there is this "we are still offering perpetuals" as a choice, but when you remove a great number of advantages of owning a perpetual software from Maxon, and put them all in subscription only...and only offers a 2 max update/bug fixes for a perpetual softwares, that is not really a choice you are offering is it?

The Maxon R25 web-page is now up. So on this page you can filter what is new by the following categories: Create, Animate, Render and Workflow. Create -- Empty. Nothing to see here. Please move on. Animate -- Another complete goose egg of nothing. Render -- Okay....I think there is a pattern here of nothing and now we have three strikes. Workflow -- Hooray! Something! Five things of something: UI, Capsules, Spline Import, Asset Browser, and Scene Manager. Now the asset browser add on seems like something that missed the R24 bus -- but when you are starving, you'll eat anything. Now the time between R24 and R25 was a bit shorter, but look at what Blender can get done in that same amount of time. So where did all the energy go? Dave