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A few I thought I needed for my specific work a year ago. I decided to learn Maya instead: I needed this for broken FBX import/export https://blendermarket.com/products/better-fbx-importer--exporter For Rigging to emulate C4D comparable features: https://www.blendermarket.com/products/voxel-heat-diffuse-skinning https://www.blendermarket.com/products/blender-retargeting-tools-1 https://www.blendermarket.com/products/auto-rig-pro https://www.blendermarket.com/products/vehicles-rig-factory RTX/GPU Rendering https://ecycles.gumroad.com/l/E-Cycles Modeling (just for the awesomeness): https://www.blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultimate-bundle https://blendermarket.com/products/decalmachine Multiple UV tools, because I found uvs in Blender really lacking: https://www.blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultimate-bundle That is my personal stuff of course I collected a year ago. After that I didn't really follow Blender anymore. Some of these make Blender superior to C4D (especially the modeling and rendering) others are there to simply catch up with C4D (Rigging, UVs, Scene Management etc). Overall I found a lot missing in Blender and in general put the fanboy talk into perspective. But the fact that there is such a well developing plugin market is simply awesome.

This is a worst case scenario for banding. When I open your file in C4D, I actually do not notice any visible banding on my screen, but when I save out a PNG8 or PNG16 and open the files in PhotoLine, the banding becomes very apparent. If I export as EXR32 it looks just fine in PhotoLine. I notice RedShift's noise doesn't seem to work that well in this particular case, and areas with and without noise are introduced. That, in my experience, may cause unwanted banding when opened in image editors: There is much more to be taken into account, though: the reason why you are experiencing banding in C4d on your system and I am not is probably caused by the interplay of our screens, the graphics card, and the software/driver which may introduce visible banding - I am not too up to date with the technicalities here, but your screen may or may not exacerbate the visible banding. Not even mentioning whether your screen is calibrated, or what colour gamut your screen supports. Too many variables. But in short, it is impossible to avoid banding between very low colour tint transitions such as in this case when working in 8bit or even 16 bit - and screens cannot deal with those transitions without adding some noise to break up the visual banding. I applied some noise to the EXR32 version in PhotoLine and saved it as an 8bit png - and presto: no visible banding (ps these two images were grabbed by zooming out to 50% - the RS version looks as bad as 100%, the PL version looks better at 100%): When I compare the noise patterns between RS and PL, the more uniform noise pattern produced by PhotoLine just works better. Ergo: do not rely on C4D and RS to produce an acceptable result in this case. Save as a 32bit EXR and open in an image editor that can deal with that. Then apply a noise layer and adjust and export an 8bit PNG. This step requires a bit of trial and error until you arrive at a version that doesn't look noisy and still removes (most) of the visible banding.

@luchifer I have noticed quite a few users are interested in creating (as they call it) a retro render look from the nineties. And I have to admit that it can be relatively hard to achieve a similar look in unbiased render engines (which makes sense, of course). Last week one Blender user complained about that Cycles and Eevee are incapable of rendering that old-fashioned monochrome green CRT wire effect (which, granted, was very easy to do in the old biased renderer). After some tinkering around for a few minutes, I proved them wrong (Eevee real-time): wires0001-0180.mp4

@BabumbolVizRT acquired NewTek (the company behind LightWave) in March/April 2019. A very vaguely worded statement was then issued that (to me) indicated that LightWave would no longer be actively developed. Others disagreed. One more update was released after that in April 2020 with a final bugfix release in July 2020. In the period leading up to and following the 2020 release and the final bugfix the entire LW team left NewTek or were reassigned to other projects within VIzRT/NewTek. Management involved with LightWave moved to other opportunities as well, even though some (like Dr. Andrew Cross) kept stating that "a path" for LightWave to survive would be in the cards. Cross is also no longer with NewTek, btw, since earlier this year. In the past two years all sorts of rumours about a potential third party buyout buzzed around the remaining LW community. In leaked emails it seems NewTek wants 1 million dollar and assurances in place that LightWave will be in good hands for continued development. It seems that third party withdrew its interest at some point. (Again, these are all rumours!) Some said the company (forget the name) behind Octane supposedly offered a deal, but were rebuked by VizRT. Octane's support for LightWave stopped last year, which was a big blow since LightWave's new unbiased render engine, while of a high quality, is CPU only and cannot compete very well with GPU ones (it is rumoured again that the LW devs were working on integrating GPU support). LightWave users are (understandably) incredibly frustrated, and some have even gone to the lengths of calling out VizRT managers during public online VizRT events and on Linkdin. These were ignored and removed by VizRT. The saga continues with Kelly "Kat" Myers (from liberty3d.com) now attempting to purchase LightWave from VizRT/NewTek to ensure its survival. He says he has a plan to make it successful once more, but my opinion is that that ship sailed a long time ago. Kat's been talking to VizRT management at NAB last month to acquire the LightWave code. He is very VERY passionate about LightWave, a very experienced LW user who used/s it in production for decades (Iron Sky comes to mind), but a bit of an outspoken and divisive character in the LW community. That's pretty much what I know. NewTek/VizRT have been (as per usual) stoically silent about LightWave. Amazingly enough NewTek still sells LightWave on their website, which I find rather offensive, because it is no longer developed or even bug fixed (and the last 2020 release introduced a number of bad bugs which are still unresolved). From a nostalgic perspective I would like to see LightWave make a comeback (I've used it on and off since my Amiga times!), but the realist in me knows better: LightWave needs a LOT of financial input and development time to be brought up to modern standards. And who is going to fund that? In the meantime, LightWave's community is dwindling, although a dedicated core of experienced older users keeps creating very good interesting art and content. Many though have left at this point, or are transitioning to alternatives.

uu.c4d

2222-2.c4d

Cinema 4D is the next Lightwave.

222.c4d

My take on an icon 😄 fun little project over the weekend

I wouldn't hold my breath. Those are the same guys who thought the reflectance channel was a good idea and easy to use...

IKEA. "This place is huge!" "Thats clever - I've never seen one of those before". "I didn't even know this corridor existed." "That's a stange place for a door!" "I'm lost. How the **** do I get back to the exit?"

By the way: May the 4th be with you!

I don't really like threads like these, because all DCCs have their pros and cons. But I would like to respond to these things: Not quite so in my opinion. A Blender file is similar to a database in structure. This has its advantages and its disadvantages, and I do like collections and scenes to organize content, and empties to create hierarchies. The Collection Manager addon is a great assistant (turn off QCD) as well. An added advantage is that any part of a Blender file may be linked or appended easily, and I love how collections work for easy referencing/linking - not only in other files, but also within other scenes. That is something just not possible in C4d. If you are coming from an app like Maya or Max, group hierarchies are indeed something that is missing in vanilla Blender. There exist a number of addons to assist with this, however (for example, Hierarchy Tools or Group Pro). Not too sure about this. I find I hardly need to merge stuff, but I suppose it also depends on how a user approaches modeling. I use HardOps and Boxcutter for hard surface models, and I keep things non-destructive for the most part - even with quite heavy projects. I do agree that it would be awesome if modifiers would work on collections. In essence I work similarly in both C4d and Blender in this regard. That said, performance in Blender is generally just better. Blender easily deals with thousands of non-instanced "real" mesh objects in a scene and lots of modifiers, while C4d slows down rather easily. Scenes that Max and Blender have no issues with (dare I say even LightWave Layout), C4d still chokes on before even coming close to equivalent complexity. I don't share that experience, although I do agree Blender's units require more attention. Hardops does make a difference, though with its AccuShape options for more accurate modeling. ? I can drag images in the 3d view or node editors. Or drag and drop blend files. Or use the file explorer to dig into blend files and drag and drop stuff in my scenes. It is true, however, that importable 3d objects like *obj and Collada files need to be opened via file import. Would be nice if Blender allowed for drag and drop here. PS I find that for example obj import in Blender generally works better than Cinema4d. Fixing textures all the time is no fun. 😉 I'd rather have that work than the small niggle of a lack of drag and drop, because the time saved is pretty huge sometimes. To me that is an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. I prefer that over tabs. And C4d lacks the concept of scenes, which I use profusely in my projects. Different way of working 🙂 That depends: if the primitive is added through Geometry nodes, its parameters remain editable. I also use the free Wonder Mesh addon, which adds a bunch of useful parametric primitives to Blender which remain editable just like C4d. That was indeed one thing I missed from C4d. And Hardops of course offers some basic parametric primitives as well. Again, it depends where you look in each app. If you'd asked me about this 15 years ago I would have whole-hardheartedly agreed with you. In its current state I really can't anymore. C4d has a tendency to introduce half-baked features and which then see hardly any follow-up development. Sculpting is a good example. Bodypaint a train wreck. Particle systems? Another good example is Redshift integration as a renderer in C4d: I have been testing it, and I do like it, but Oh Ye Gods the implementation and integration is still rather shoddy compared to Cycles in Blender. I am aware this is not quite a fair comparison and we're comparing apples and pears, but still: after this many years of development, I would have expected a bit better. I won't go in details here. Anyone who is familiar with the two apps will understand what I am saying. In my view C4d used to be this solid piece of fully featured kit. It still is dependable and solid (up to a point), and by throwing enough money at it to amend its shortcomings with plugins, a really nice DCC - yet at the same time (to continue the house metaphor) it's like a villa with many half-built rooms and missing sections. The entrance and lobby looks great though with a double golden staircase leading up to a few beautifully finished bedrooms. Move beyond that, and dig a bit deeper, and you'll find that a lot of construction work is still either to be finished or hasn't begun yet and staircases and hallways that lead to deep pits. And a number of very basic things are missing compared to other DCCs. That is not to say Blender hasn't got its own share of issues, of course. Currently I use Blender, C4d, Houdini mostly in my work and for my personal projects, with a spot of Max at my workplace. None are perfect. Each has its own quirks. ...I wonder what kind of building metaphor would describe Houdini...