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Well, I imagine it's still in tech preview because they are trying to get it right with the resources they have at hand !? And they have, let's not forget, made parts of it usable / helpful now. It is a way off perfect. And so it is still a tech preview, which they don't shout about, yet. 3 or 4 years ago the Cinema community's biggest criticism of Maxon (other than UVs maybe!) was that they didn't share with customers what was coming in the future. People constantly whinged about that, and eventually Maxon listened, and shared their tech preview of Scene nodes. Was everyone thankful, or grateful at all that they had listened to the userbase ? Not really. Instead, a lot of them just piled in on the tech preview, complaining it wasn't a finished system, comparing it with everyone else's 'more' finished systems etc etc... so really they can't win either way can they - no matter what they do, people want more, and sooner, expect it to somehow exceed what everyone else is doing, right from the get-go, and they criticise whatever they get, right out of the gate, and forever afterwards apparently ! If they show people early, it's 'not good enough', if they don't, they are 'ignoring what customers want'. We're seeing more of the same with unified dynamics - lots of people asking for it, and so Maxon respond, and start working on it, manage to unify cloth and rope in their first go at it, to massively improve on the old cloth system and include it in the first release they reasonably can. How does the world respond ? 'It isn't as good as Marvellous Designer !' a program that ONLY does cloth sim and has had 10 years + to get it right (and which, incidentally is also plagued with its own problems, bugs and I/O issues, which no1 seems to mention while they are comparing the 2!). To be honest I wonder quite where, as a dev, I'd find the impetus to get up every morning and keep working on something that might be good one day in the face of all this relentless judgement and expectation ! So I'm afraid I rather admire the people in that position who continue to do so !! It's a shame our vaulting ambition as a species is such a double-edged sword. CBR

The current modifier can act on a large number of objects with different parameters at the same time. You can try this effect with blender

Maybe don’t try to think of it as modeling, but the creation of user defined generators and deformers. The big advantage is reusability.

Not better, but some things were changed/removed in prior versions. For example I like the old fillet caps interface more. R20 would be my favorite version 😛

The comedy of this is that this board is chock full of self proclaimed current and past Maxon employees, beta testers, and interested third parties, and probably not a one of them doesn't have at least a dozen ideas of their own that they would like to see implemented first and foremost above any random thing they might read here. Whatever Maxon's problems are, lack of ideas is not one of them.

Thanks so much, Cerbera!

I ask because I am NOT ! 😄 I have just a fundamental understanding of using Nodes to make actual meshes happen in the Viewport. I don't fully understand where Maxon is "going" with this new approach... What are the advantages of modeling using a complex network of Nodes? Is it designed to speed things up? It feels weird to me not to be "hands on" in modeling meshes, and I assume that this "old-fashioned" approach won't be deprecated anytime soon. The Nodes approach seems awfully cerebral, fussy and confusing to me... but I'm sure that's simply because I haven't grasped all its capabilities (which I'm guessing are vast). I suspect the main virtue of node-based modeling is tied in with MoGraph and doing impressive motion graphics animations, yes? And at some point, all your scenes will be controlled by complex "dopesheets" of verbal and mathematical data? All very "meta", and turning 3D modeling into something more like computer Coding... which is not what I signed up for... I'm a certified idiot when it comes to coding. What am I not understanding here...? Are you excited about this brave new world of "hands off" node-based modeling? Best, ras

If someone posts something that obviously is ment to be open for interpretation, then it might get interpreted.

These are almost exclusively caused by convex quads, where the internal angles of any adjacent edges >180 degrees, producing an error-state polygon. Yes, they are eminently fixable by changing the circumstances that cause them. In the case of yours above the problem points are the ones in the middle of each polygons where it touches the circle(s). If you slide those edges slightly into the circle, that will correct things and turn them into legal kite quads. It does not mean that, and is unconnected with Normals. Yes they will. They will usually be black in render also. Sometimes, but don't try and select them, just move or slide the problem point(s) so you fix the error state and they will return to normal shading and VP appearance. Very important to know your error-states in modelling - there are many of them ! Non-manifold edges, convex quads, coincident polys, isolated vertices, edge points, complex poles, degenerated polys, 'bad' polygons, coplanar polys, the list goes on !!! CBR

Been busy, but still alive.

That works. Thank you.

I think Maxon will ramp up promotion of nodal workflows when their development is complete or nearer it. They are already promoting capsule use, and for me at least some of those HAVE been helpful. I think it is unfair to compare this tech preview with Blender's system, and even moreso with Houdini's, whose framework and raison d'etre has been largely that from the very start... CBR

Welcome to the Core ! 🙂 Please read 'how to post' in the guidelines section so we can avoid posting questions in that very section (!!) and we have all the right information in our profiles please... That's a very strange question, and we'll be needing more information. What material mapping mode is that using for example ? And it's not greyed out in your screenshot, so why can't you change it as normal by clicking and dragging in the fields or using the spinners that appear on mouseover of them ? Of course these 2 controls are linked to the 2 sliders above, so you can also use those. But if you truly mean 'how do I move them together' then you can control click their names so they both go yellow, and then ctrl-click the spinners and both should change concurrently. CBR

I actually forgot about them.

Another example. A client comes to you and wants to try 50 different geometric shapes for a new toy they are thinking about. Do you build all 50, so he can see what they look like, or do you build 1 rig, once, nodally, and then just change the input geometry to get the variations done for you ? I think @bezo has done some nodal building tests which I'm sure he'd show you if you asked nicely... CBR

must not comment...

Something funny happened to me today. Someone pays me to live in my house. I only have to manage it. When I left it today, I walked down the street and ran into one of my neighbors. He told me he was worried that he might get evicted if he couldn't figure out a way to make more money. I made a joke about his situation, laughed in his face, and kept walking. It was hilarious. All of the other neighbors were standing there to hear it. Hopefully, they can take a joke at his expense, but probably not. There was one guy there who defended me, even though he loves spending time at the neighbor's house, so I appreciate him. He gets it.