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Beta tester job (or whatever is called nowadays) is to detect problems through intense usage. The user base also does it but that actually causes impact if the bug is severe. Thats why is also important, as a user, to report bugs as many as we can. However, each time i catch a bug i usually open a ticket, submit a report and attach a file when possible. But many time i get this answer: "Unfortunately this behaviour has been confirmed as bug already and I hope our developer will be able to fix this soon." This was related to a small bug inside the re effector tool. The bug appears as soon as you create keyframes, the entire animation track is deleted. I caught this error in R25 but it seems to exist at least from R23 and possibly even further. This is the kind of stuff that exists a long time and there is no solution... But there's also much more and i dont see any positive development on many cases. Some of these bugs are eternal (like the pose morph - edge slide bug) , reported but never found a solution... I really want to help providing information and reports in order to create a better app, but we also need maxon to do their part of the deal.

not always how a beta works. Beta testers don't necessarily get a "vote" when it comes to features or changes. They are solicited feedback but as something as extensive as a UI overhaul, it has already been decided by the dev team and started work on it even before it hits beta. At least this is the case with some Autodesk betas. Also, the engineers aren't making the icons or fiddling with the placement of toolbars. There are separate people for UI/UX, so it doesn't stop development of fixes or features. The joke about the "blender-like" ui has passed. It's like seeing another Drake meme these days... or an uncle joke. No body cares anymore. I agree.. the beta should be more open.

They should also hire more beta testers. This last version was filled with bugs that were caught by the user base.

In the case of Maxon, subscription and retention of services for Russia and Belarus, this is a more complicated matter. Many people here on the Core4D forum may not know that the European Union (this applies to all EU countries) and the US have imposed economic sanctions on Russia and Belarus. In addition, the use of the SWIFT system in most Russian banks, which is used for making transfers, has been suspended. The service of Visa and Master Cards in these countries was also stopped. For this reason, it is no longer possible to pay for any services by card or bank transfer in Russia and Belarus. Companies in EU countries are obliged to restrict and stop the provision of services to these countries. So, as can be seen from the above, this is the broader context of these activities.

Not just subscriptions but any online activation scheme. I called it two years ago or whenever it was that the online activation nonsense was announced, and argued at the time that users could easily and without notice lose access to their bought and paid for software for any number of reasons including the company going out of business, a war, a global disaster, a powerful computer virus, or any other number of reasons. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

Ah, yes, I forgot my personal wishlist: - Stability - Stability - Stability - Bugfixes - Performance - Stop breaking plugin compatibility - Inbuilt converter of pre-R19 files

Hi folks MAXON is hiring and has multiple job positions open. Check them here and join the family 🙂 https://www.maxon.net/en/about-maxon/careers

Given that Maxon now releases C4D versions every 6 months, I have always wondered how much more difficult it must be for Maxon to keep up this pace. Each release has a certain level of over-head to produce regardless of whether they are capturing 6 months or 12 months' worth of effort. Remember that each release needs to be both internally and externally documented. Each release needs to go through internal testing and regression. When issues are found, there is less time to recover if they are holding to that schedule. So overall, the possibility and risk of bugs increases when the time between releases is cut in half. What also is working against them is that the program is becoming more interconnected with nodes. It stands to reason that as the plumbing gets more complicated, testing takes more effort. This may explain the role of a Test Automation Specialist. When you change a node, think of all the node combinations that need to be tested to insure everything works as expected. So I have to ask: Who really benefits from a release every 6 months if software quality starts to degrade or people start to lose faith in using it? Read the forums and you will see a general rise in comments over stability since R21. I have noticed that R23 has viewport glitches that I have never seen in any release since R9. I mean we all could have waited 3 more months for R25. But you can't do that otherwise the whole 6 month cycle takes a hit. Honestly, I think we all have much more to gain if we let the software mature a bit more in-house before a release if it means a return to rock-solid stability Dave

You seem to be conflating two roles: quality assurance, and beta testing. Quality assurance are paid roles within the company to find bugs and regressions, validate functionality, and run through test suites. Beta testing is unpaid, and involves hopefully representative professional users who agree to donate time using the software in more real world settings, reporting bugs, and communicating their interests and priorities.

There is a memory issue in c4d that is really weird. As an animator and rigger i notice that each time i animate the performance decreases along. I suspect that this is due to the fact that c4d tries to create some sort of internal cache for some processes like animated textures, alembic playbacks and even some deformers. We dont see this cache and we dont control it in order to purge it, but it stays in the program until we close it. I work with heavy scenes with lots of xref stuff and i notice each time i swap scenes the memory usage keeps increasing and even if i close the scene, the memory keeps high. I was wondering if this was some kind of windows 10 problem. Does it also happens on Mac? Maybe its better in win 11 since the memory management is better...

Oh, multithreading...

Yep, like the horrible and unnecessary new Blender-like UI that became a joke around the web. I wonder if all beta testers went along with this or some actually voiced that this was not a good idea and a waste of time and resources when so many things need to be fixed or improved (the UI wasn't one of those).

Data Analytics are a much wider field than just application feedback/telemetry, which Cinema now has for i think it might nearly be 10 years or so. Data Analytics in regards to the application itself is pretty much straight forward and doesn't need much of an analyst.

Interesting....a lot of positions. What does "m/f/d" mean? What I found interesting: Positions for developing real time GPU rendering for both C4D and Redshift and for expanding existing modeling tools. What I didn't see: Anything related to character animation positions. What is a sign of the times: Data analytics positions. Telemetry is going on each time you open up the program. How you use there software is being recorded and sent back to Maxon. Nothing unusual there. If that bothers you, then you can turn that off: Dave

I suspect not. I have double that, and still experience the problem... CBR

Yes I notice this when Cinema / Windows has been running for a very long time. I think it's to do with memory management, and is a windows thing more than a Cinema thing... CBR

I said the same thing about R25 and yet... here I am. 😉

it's just a priority issue, don't know the in and outs of the mixamo control rig, but it's common practice to drive Ik controls with objects outside of the rig, so your professor doesn't really seem to know what he's talking about 😉 so you really just need to find the right priority setting.

I already expressed my great enthusiasm for the next release (based on Mat's insight here). Nonetheless, I hope for some specifics 😄 Best Redshift Integration of all DCCs It's the same roof, so C4D should have a premium RS integretion. Materials in the viewport. New node system with all functionality. Material previews rendering with IPR. OCIO-aware Picture Manager. A one-click "Render beauty + AOVs and export everything to After Effects and rebuild there automatically". Add RS Materials to the Content-Library-Assets. Make RS the standard renderer. Remove the UI deadspace in the IPR. Interactive help like in C4D. Redshift RT is still very early und very unstable, but it should become C4D's viewport, some day. Stability This is aimed at C4D, Redshift and mainly nVidia. A "wrong" nVdidia-Driver-Version can cause troubles without end. How to know the best driver for your config? Forum exchange, try and error. Luckily, there are some really stable driver+software-combinations everytime I had to jump these hoops, but the journey is *SO* painful. Bugs This was the only new feature of R25 😄 Come on now, really Maxon, up your QA-game! Also, there should be *much* longer bugfixing-support for owners of a perpetual license. Release cycle Honestly, I'd rather have only 1 big update per year. Less hassle updating stuff, finding working drivers etc. Maybe more time for QA on your side? So far, I can't see any benefit of the biannual release cycle, only that it apparantly forced you to do the fubar R25-release, needlessly so. Performance This is a broad field. I don't want to dive into details here, I want to express a broad wish. Currently, we are confined to rather small/medium scenes. 2 Characters, a landscape tile, some decoration and boom, you're already operating at the edge of C4D's performance envelope. Very quickly, work becomes about managing ressources, not making artistic decisions. And trying to hide the seams of the performance envelope all the time 😕 I wish we had some kind of streaming engine for geo. A unified simulation system. A unified cache system. A clear feedback system, that shows me what is computationally expensive and what isn't. I don't know, if the "core rewrite" adresses any of that, I just want to feel some realtime-magic in C4D. zBrush It has by far the best scultping "feel" of any app I tried. It's a mindblowingly good app, as demonstrated again and again by zBrush-artists. But, for the love of all UX/UI saints, zBrush sorely needs a complete UX/UI overhaul. That's one of Maxons strengths. zBrush-Artists defend the current UI, but Im quite sure that is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe offer an "Easy Mode" alternative, here. A very strong "GoZ"-implementation is also obligatory here. My last point is not software related, but regarding communication. Once, an attempt has been made by Maxon towards more transparency. Anyone remember the three-and-a-half blog posts? 😄 Ok, now do that again, but thoroughly. Just do it like the Redshift team. Have a nice, active forum with Premium sections for paying customers. Talk with us about problems. Listen to our wishes, in a way that we know we are heard. Share at least a broad roadmap for the next releases. This is by far the biggest problem with Maxon and C4D. You guys are almost completely opaque, and that's a severely outdated mindset for a company that relies on the thriving and the goodwill of a community of communicators. And communicators we are, visual, textual, social. Talk to us, please! 🙂