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Probably about time we locked it, and moved on with our lives isn't it... CBR

Simple practice scene. Working on a cooking show set, so buying some new assets.

Blender is now available in Space ⭐ !

Oh man, all I see now are a bunch of threads about 3D and how to use and solve various problems in Cinema, Blender, Houdini and whatnot. Whatever will we do?

Cg Talk died because the new management did not keep any promise they made, did not support moderators in any way and embraced spam. I was one of the last mods to give up on the cesspool it became. Moderating a forum is always a balance act and you simply can’t make it right for everyone, not nearly. Opposing opinions are important, but trolling is quickly going out of hand if you let it. What might look like a heated discussion is often perceived quite different by those less emotionally involved, leading to the number of members decreasing and the forum becoming less relevant. If you want professional users to read and participate you need to maintain a certain minimum of professional behavior. It all depends on the goals of the owners and moderators, do they want a soap box, a sales instrument, a political platform, do they have any other agenda …. with CG Talk there was a hard turn. Leonard Theo founded it as place to learn and grow in your field, evolving into a platform for artists and a sales instrument for Ballistic Publishing. People like Steven Stahlberg and Leigh van der Byl spent endless hours helping people becoming better artists, especially Leigh was paid back in hate. No idea if it was misogyny, envy or just generic trolling, it definitely wasn’t for her actual conduct, since she was as impartial as a person can be, certainly better than i ever was. She didn’t suffer idiots though. The new owners promised to bring in pros to build up courses and make CG Society into a major learning hub, the only thing that happened was basically nothing at all. They restyled the forums to become Autodesk centric, even though the Cinema 4D community provided by far the largest amount of traffic and participation. They tried to restart challenges, with no success at all, it was a bit of a dumpster fire. Leo n the other hand moved on to found Artstation, everyone knows how 5hat went.

I did not lock it for no reason at all, nor in response to any one post. It started off toxic, and remained largely that way, despite some reasonable points being made amongst the maelstrom. Whilst not exactly an enjoyable read, personally I found it interesting. But then it became apparent that it was something of a crap-magnet for anyone who just wanted to generally bad-mouth Maxon, reasoned or not, there was a sort of undercurrent of recrudescent anger, it was all getting very tired, circular and repetitive, and I didn't think much new or constructive was going on, so it seemed to me to have reached its natural conclusion. If I was censoring stuff I would have deleted it shortly after it started or would be hiding it now. We DID allow the conversation to continue for at least a month - almost 2 ! Only when it was rattling on and on did I feel the need to lock it in the hope we could all move on and talk about literally anything else ! I am aware some people will appreciate that and others won't but we can't please all the people all the time hey ? CBR

I like the HB bundle but no offense, these new C4D tools are way beyond the bundle tools And just because finally a circle or better close hole function is offered dosnt mean thats "stolen" Its a logical conclusion of what is missing

I've had HB_Modelling Bundle for a while and I think that's why R26 doesn't blow my socks off. Those tools needed to be in C4D one way or the other though, so at least they're there for everyone now I guess. Not so great for Holger, but there's still lots of great scripts in there.

Oh. Then which older version of Cinema 4D does their plugin support? Alternatively, if the answer is none, is there any workaround to bring stuff from Bridge in C4D maybe by exporting from Bridge to Blender, then bringing it in C4D ? I tried obj and fbx exporting from Blender to C4D but the textures don't come. Edit. A new bridge update came on my system. All sorted now.

There have been many thread with posts gently (or not gently at all) bashing Maxon, and Cerbera summed up the vibe, folks accusing Maxon of being a zero value company and never really holding off on the bashing, which goes on and on. Yet I think the Blender thread is the first one that has been locked? I don't recall any others being locked at all, maybe I missed them. The info is still there, the participants are still members, and generally I imagine they can get away with similar posts in other threads without facing too much hassle, so the thread lock might be a gentle warning (and TBH I'd almost become used to their anti-Maxon whining, to the extent I was surprised to see the thread locked). So this hardly feels like a sweeping act of censorship, maybe just a gentle push back. For my part I took steps a couple of months ago to avoid the deeper negative rants, so if I see the usual culprits have written a post even vaguely hinting at their usual sour grapes, I just skip past their name and words and go onto the next post without reading what they've said. I'd heard a bit about it before but it is still sad to know that Leigh was treated badly at CGTalk by idiots, she was a smart and likeable presence there. Last year I Googled her blog or Instagram and saw she was doing a lot of photography at heavy metal concerts and looked very happy in those pics. She is clearly accomplished professionally so I hope she is enjoying life right now.

Also, if you need help in C4D with this you need to complete your profile so we know which tools are available to your version, and your hardware specs so we know what is likely to stress your machine. CBR

I don't understand this. If one of my posts was part of the reasoning, then please pm me and let me know what the problem is. I dont think that that thread was toxic. Just one angry post in it.

This thread is a toxic wasteland attracting all sorts of conspiracy theorists. And I just hate the fact that after 2 months Desta still manages to ooze toxicity attracting more people like him to continue his work. Maxon stole nothing. Maxon knows nothing about what other developers do with their plugins and they do very well not to investigate every single idea they want to implement just in case someone else already has released it as a plug-in! As long as the SDK is free, there is no official MAXON central plug-in hub website/market, and no restriction from any party to release any kind of functionality paid or free, MAXON can do whatever the 🤬 they want. Reading all kind conspiracy theories and bullshit about the new features really hit my nerve this time ! I SUGGESTED THEM TO IMPLEMENT THE F***NG FIT TO CIRCLE ! I didn't even know HB bundle had such tool ! This is my original suggestion : This was under suggestions for new nodes. This is just one suggestion of 94 just for the last release ! More than half of the new features where part of those 94. And I have sent them more that 550 suggestions, 457 of them concerning R22+. You have no idea how many of my suggestions have been implemented (some really close to the original suggestions) and how successful they were. And I'm not mentioning this because I want to brag about the Take System or anything else but because I want to point out how far from the truth your little mind is ! And still I'm constantly reading bull💩 about how Maxon does not take into account user feedback ! (And keep in mind that I'm no beta tester or Maxon employee, just a regular user) All these assumptions that Maxon doesn't treat employees with basic humanity, comments about how Maxon manages projects, how CEOs act and such .... MY GOD ! Please stop ridiculing yourselves ! I'm pretty sure Srek, Fritz or even Hrvoje are reading these and they are either laughing their asses out or just shake their heads out of despair. I really don't get why Igor doesn't just shut this thread down. There is no productive dialogue for the last 11 pages.

Thank you. Poliigon for the win on the tiles.

I agree....but that does not mean there wasn't reconciliation by Maxon after Holger made his concerns known. I understand that Rick Barrett did publicly apologize to Holger for not contacting him during the R26 development period and made a commitment in the future to be more cognizant of where C4D development overlaps with 3rd party developers. Holger accepted the apology and (for all intents and purposes) seems to have forgiven the over-sight and is putting the whole issue behind him. This is to be expected as I do believe that both Rick and Holger are true professionals and very decent people. So can we chalk this up to just things getting dropped in the fog of rushing to get a major release out and not indicative of a heartless corporation? Trust me.....there are many areas where we can call balls and strikes against Maxon, but I just don't think this is one of them. As a matter of historical perspective: Did everyone forget about the massive plugin development community in the early days of 3D Studio (the 1990's). Whole catalogs of 3DS plugins used to be mailed to me during that time. 3D Studio grew in popularity in the 90's by absorbing plugins into its future releases. In fact, for the major plugins, it was part of the release announcement. Now, along the way and given that the plugin community was so huge at that time, I do recall complaints from lesser known developers that their whole business just got wiped out within a series of releases. Point being: I am pretty sure that DCC developers are ALWAYS looking within their plugin eco-systems for innovative ideas that seem to be catching on with their user base. If I was a Product Manager for a DCC application, I would definitely be doing this as it is a cheap source of market research. Now, Maxon is NOT 3D Studio. Maxon follows a very disciplined feature release timeline so they may not be as aware of the new shiny ball that is a hot plugin if its features are not aligned with their current position on that timeline. Plus, when Maxon does implement a new feature originally found via a plugin, it will be more deeply integrated than what may be possible with the SDK and therefore more powerful. Nevertheless, this does NOT excuse Maxon from reaching out to their 3rd party developers when their development paths do intersect and doing the right thing to invite them into the process. I have confidence that going forward Rick Barrett will honor his pledge to involve 3rd party developers with the development of a future release should that release impact their plugins. Afterall, it can be a win-win for everyone because maybe that collaboration prompts new ideas from the 3rd party developer for the SDK that only inspires further innovation from that 3rd party developer. One plugin may be absorbed but a new more innovative plugin could be created as an outcome -- and the process repeats itself. Just a thought....and a hope. Dave

Yes there was arguing, especially the creator thinking its a rip off You sound more like the biased here, I just did an objective statement on the state of these tools I also use HB and these new ones are simple not the same and go way beyond, as such there is really no copy here to be found Im also in a similar situation for our game. People want back a class, the "Gunner" per example, like 4 people made a Gunner mod which can be downloaded, some better some worse. Its something they have been missing, similar to the "selection to circle" Now will or should I contact all these people which made a mod for the gunner class? I think no, it has always been on our plan to do it, just because someone does it before does not mean its stolen or a copy. If I go and copy the the design of some of these, then yes sure. I can understand that from a limited view of not seeing all the details and just seeing "oh gunner class" that this might seem backstabby in a way even though it is not, but then on the other hand you can't just not do things just because someone did it before.

What does the new update do? is it compatible with s26? or does it just fix the link for s24. It's a hassle but export from bridge to s24 and then open those files with s26.

I believe especially Holger always thought those tools should be in Cinema, and had suggested as such periodically, even though he knew he would probably lose out as a result of it. I too have relied on his scripts for the last 10 years. But there are differences between the way his tools work and what we have in S26. For example, our native Fit Circle is a definite improvement on the HBMB equivalent (not only curvature aware, but also inside points auto-relax and free normal scaling / rotation. Smooth Edges is a brand new tool, and not just the same as hb_round edge - it preserves volume, and equalises point distances, which the latter does not, so I find it massively helpful to have both options. And we still need HBMB for vital functions like hb_relax, Symmetry fix, clip symmetry, PipeIt, retopo and whole load of other stuff that still isn't native yet. The new Close poly hole (grid) and bridge patch tools, and little helpers like Set Flow are the real winners though ( some early bugs aside) and this is genuinely new functionality to us, far and above what hb quadcaps can do for example... One tool I just can't get with though is Equalise edges - where we have to ring select the edges we want equalised. If you've been doing it the other way round with hb_evenDistribution all this time that doesn't compute, so it's one circumstance where I almost always continue to use what I know, and its helpful 1-click solution. In fact that's the only other thing I don't particularly like about the new modelling tools - most are a 2-stage process call - getting the tool, and then deploying it, although I accept it has to be like this if we want the advantage of lots of freely adjustable options before we hit the go button...so it's a price I am wiling to pay. So from my side of the page I love all the new modelling stuff, and had requested it often myself, but I remain pleased my HB stuff remains as well 🙂 Now if only we could get them to sort Symmetry out we'd be back on the road to modelling supremacy ! CBR

On his site he mentions HB MODELLINGBUNDLE offers more than 70 scripts.... He's been selling the plugin since 2015 (maybe earlier), does this entitle him to some sort of copyright on the functionality ?. What prohibits any DCC company from developing/embedding/implementing tools similar to tools created by someone else ? As long it's not copy-paste code and the original code is not copyrighted/patented and/or trade secret, or there was a written agreement infringement preventing a company from reproducing a tool, there is no illegal action or legal dispute over the said software. Holger Biebrach is very wise to acknowledge that he should try not to be mad. He knows that this would happen sooner or later. It's like if Apple (or Adobe I'm not sure) should copyright the fill bucket tool and prevent anyone from implementing such a tool or similar to it because they were the first to market it or the first to think about it. I don't get why people get angry or insulted when a feature previously existing only on one software now exists in two or more! I read someone's post expressing his disappointment for S26's ZMesher because it used to be available only in ZBrush ! Can someone explain to me why do software users feel so entitled to their app of preference tools ? Do they lose stocks on market ? Do they own the company of the software and see their sales drop or something ? Do they feel threatened they will wake up some day and find out they are the only ones using that software and everyone else switched to Houdini or something ? I find this behavior very childish. It's like watching football team fans argue with each other but worse. It's like watching video gamers arguing about what game is better Magic the Gathering or HearthStone on mechanics and user interface ! I don't care if I insult anyone with the following (and this is not targeted to 3D-Pangel or Lonchaney, I just comment on their posts) : If you feel like this go see a Psychologist ! To think and act like this you either hate capitalism with every fiber of your being or you are 5, both need a psychological assessment.

Did you tried fix it this way?

Are the bevel tools under-appreciated ? I certainly appreciate the Cinema ones !! That's the trouble with nice tools that do everything we want though - when they work perfectly we never mention them, yet if something about them is wrong, then we bang on about it endlessly ! 😉 CBR

did they actually integrate HIS modeling tools... or just the concepts for workarounds for the existing holes in C4D's modeling toolset which had been there for awhile? I mean, I've seen fill hole, make round and so on as other scripts for C4D too. I think Nitro had some. So C4D is not allowed to update their own core software because a developer which doesn't actively develop/update their scripts for C4D but is still selling their scripts for C4D? This means that C4D shouldn't update their particle system because of XP? Rope dynamics.. uh oh.. Merk? Seems like sour grapes from a mostly inactive developer still selling old scripts for $100 (not cheap). Value was added to C4D from Maxon. I'll take it.

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

BEHOLD! THE HOLY CHAIR!

A little material practice. Thanks for the models @Cerbera ! Rendered in Blender 3.0 (Cycles) 🙂

Anybody want some crunchy mushrooms 👀 ? Rockshroom2.mp4