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You can't multi-thread xpresso. That is the problem. That is why the new system is being created with multi-threaded at the heart of the architecture. The scene nodes will allow you to overcome the object count limitation that has plagued C4D for years. Allowing for hundreds of thousands, or millions, of objects to move around your scene. Scene nodes have a purpose and will be the future of a lot of new content in C4D. Essentially you can create capsules that are the equivalent, or surpass, the speed of C++ plugins. This is because the capsules code can run on the GPU taking advantage of all your system resources. Xpresso won't go away. But it is a very different system to the Scene Nodes. Scene nodes won't talk to Xpresso because then that would tie Scene Nodes to the Xpresso update system, essentially making it single threaded and reliant on all the other messaging going through C4D. However you could use Xpresso to control a Capsules parameters if you wanted. The same way you would control a Sphere for example. Since a Capsule can also create new geometry types (as an example), and expose parameters to C4D that Xpresso could control. Different things, different use cases.

Scene nodes are more of a bottom up approach than top down. First come technical necessities and further on the higher level access. Something you can start to see in capsules, which can deliver Cinema typical ease of use functionality with the power of nodes behind them. Xpresso is just an expression system, f we were to enable it to do what scene nodes can do it would become no less complex than scene nodes, just much slower.

The current scene nodes we were told 2.5 years ago are low level nodes and akin to a nodal programing language, and not something intended to be intected with often by average users, but rather the underpinnings of things to come. There was supposed to be a user friendly 2nd tier of nodes developed that users would interact with but they never materialized.

I think Maxon would be well served to look at Blender's implementation of nodes. Maybe Blender is better at promoting what nodes can do than Maxon, but to the casual observer it just feels like there is more success with user adoption of nodes with Blender than there is with C4D users. If true, then why? Are C4D nodes too complex? Do they operate at a lower "programming" level than Blender nodes? Do Blender nodes operate no lower than a pure nodal allegory to their standard modeling/animating commands (similar to modo's "tool pipe")? If so, then they are probably easier to learn and more inviting to the average user for experimentation and further study. Remember, there is always a trade off with ease-of-use and power with any programming language and nodes are a programming language after all. You miss that sweet spot and over-pivot to choosing power (but at increased complexity) and adoption will be slower. Choosing more power over ease of use means the nodes operate at a layer closer to the programming language itself. But they have to in order to provide the flexibility that makes them powerful. So, which of the following will lead to higher adoption rates: Having 400 ways to configure 10 different nodes to do a series of the same thing in various flexible ways or 1 way to use 1 node to do something similar but with less flexibility? Not sure if that explains the point I am trying to make. I can follow RS nodal trees, but I cannot follow scene nodes and that could explain why I am struggling to explain their complexity. Hopefully all of this makes sense but even if it does not, then chuck it all aside. BUT PLEASE look at Blender nodes and then ask why the difference in the rate of adoption between Blender and C4D users? There has to be a reason and that reason could help C4D. Otherwise, nothing changes. Dave

No surprise that Perpetual is dead. No surprise that it was done in such as sh**ty, disrespectful manner to long standing customers. Apologies for the turn of phrase - but they earned it.

nitro4d wrote earlier on twitter that he has updated all his plugins 🙂

Please explain further. Geometry Spreadsheets is a new term to me. Thanks, Dave

And that's the catch. Even the more than average users (more technical users) doesn't use the scene nodes. At least based on the mographdotcom slack channel. And for good reason, again and again, the design of the scene nodes is convoluted. too verbose. i wish the devs used houdini first. reference it. and make that node flow better. again, use GEOMETRY SPREADSHEETS. that's the real deal with these using nodes in 3D.

I think we all understand that the xpresso core needed to be rebuild under the hood. What the problem is is that for 95 % of c4d users the scene nodes are too deep into programmers territory. Xpresso was very good at enabling the artist to quickly build connections between c4d objects. With scene nodes we can build the same connections but we also need to handle the objects data structure as well which no artist really cares about and does not want to be bothered with. Hence 1 xpresso node now equals 3 scene nodes. The power is tremendous of scene nodes. It is just not build with the majority of c4d users in mind. A suprising design failure they try to compensate for with the capsules system now. People who want to program in c4d have python already. Why would somebody with programming skills that a required for scene nodes use nodes at all? An iteration of xpresso with slightly deeper user level access with new core architecture would have been great.

Thanks for the explanation. But wouldn't be possible to create, lets say, a Xpresso-like higher level Node system to control the Scene nodes? Because what was shown to us until now is way more complicated than Xpresso and not something very artist friendly.

Great release, lots of cool and useful stuff 🤩 Extra thanks for implementing WatchFolders in the Asset-Brower, I really do feel heard. 👍

As far as I know the Scene Node system does actually interpret the node hierarchy and produce code that is then compiled to work directly on the architecture that you have on your machine. So it is actually a programming language. And eventually they will provide more higher level nodes to wrap around these lower level ones, which would then take it out of "tech preview" status and make it more artist friendly. I would like to see a scripting language implemented that lets me essentially write the node scene graph. One that also lets you debug the flow by stepping through it and inspecting values. I could then version control it in Github and have less worry about what line I accidentally removed from my pile of spaghetti that caused my capsule to break.

That sucks. R25 was a bit of a fizzer of a release, with some good stuff in 26 and 27, so it's a shame that 25 is the last perpetual option.

There are only two new node, Spline Chamfer and OCIO transformation I'd love the idea of Maxon adopting an update plan like this: Main annual release - Introduce new technologies (simulation, rendering etc), format support (import, export, other iso), Generators/Modifiers/Fields/Tags, UI First semester update - Bug fixes, hardware compatibility fixes Mid-term update - expand color schemes, expand Asset Manager, expand Capsules pool, expand curve presets Second semester update - Bug fixes, new nodes, minor functionality expansion on some random old tools

You took the time to make me a diagram, thank you very much, yes, indeed, no doubt, after turning the angle to 90°, the strength works! Good night! Take care!

There is a lot of truth in here. I think that despite the growing education in computer knowledge there is something like over complexity for the mayor user base. especially as most users are artists not engineers. Imho xpresso represented this sweet spot between power and ease of use quite well. also material node systems like octane for example. quite some developments of c4d in the last years are on the powerfull but not so easy to use side.

The lack of visible progress.

You can't announce a technology preview and then have zero to show for it two and a half years later, with narry even a peep of a mention in the latest update. Maxon is quick becoming famous for simply ignoring whatever it doesn't want to talk about, as if it doesn't even exist, and at this point it looks like nodes is one of those things.

Well, that answers it then. But when you look at the computing industry in general, we all knew this day was coming. Software as a Service (SaaS) really sucks for the consumer, but everyone is moving to it. Microsoft no longer offers MS Office as a purchased perpetual license. Office 365 is now subscription only (I wonder about the "365" tag at the end....it kind of rubs in the fact that they are making you pay yearly). Honestly, how far will SaaS go? Will it extend to the operating systems? If you want your computer to boot in the morning or your cell phone to turn on, then pay the annual subscription fee. Will it extend to driver support? Well, your computer boots but the screen flickers because the latest OS is incompatible with the GPU drivers. Pay the subscription fee to get the latest GPU drivers. You may even see unscrupulous hardware vendors forcing those incompatibilities just to generate licensing revenue for their latest drivers. Forget that every piece of software you run could go to SaaS, but imagine if that extended to all the drivers and OS? And I have even yet to touch the internet and the potential for subscription sites for your favorite sites (including this one). You pass out $5 a month to maintain 10 or 20 licensing subscriptions to both keep your PC and your most common apps running along with connectivity to the internet and pretty soon you're dropping over $1000 a year. Sound crazy? Well....10 years ago SaaS was just being introduced by Adobe and now it is everywhere. Imagine what happens in the next 10 years? If people start to be over-burdened with licensing costs (and the headache of maintaining all those licensing costs) then I see a greater drive for everything going to the cloud. This completely removes the need for a personal computing device. You just have an internet appliance to access all your software from your ISP. Your ISP maintains the hardware and offers different levels of service and software in a tiered pricing model. You want basic MS Office capability? That is one tier. You want render farm access with C4D? That is its own tier. Oh...and within those tiers come monthly caps on data usage. Sorry, but your tier only supports 1 Tb of data consumption a month. Please pay $30 more for the next terabyte. Scary world, isn't it? Now, the safe haven offered by open-source programs is not guaranteed. They undermine the big tech companies' ability to milk as much as they can out of SaaS. As more of our computing infrastructure moves to SaaS, there will be an increase in open-source adoption. This is where the cabal of big tech companies push for the cloud and the internet appliance. As more people shift to the internet appliance, individual PC hardware sales will drop. It will just be cheaper for people to go with the internet appliance than pay annually for the software to run on your own hardware (helped along by these same companies raising their annual licensing costs). The law of supply and demand kicks and pretty soon owning your own hardware becomes cost prohibitive. Without a PC, you are limited in your ability to run open-source hardware because you can pretty damn well bet that your ISP is NOT going support access to open-source software. This is sort of happening now with Windows 11 "S". "S" mode in Windows 11 ONLY allows you to download software from the Microsoft App Store under the interests of insuring that you are free from malware and viruses. "For your protection" Microsoft tells you that Windows S approved software from their app store are completely virus free. Interestingly enough, Google Chrome is not an MS App store offering even though its software is at the core of MS Edge. So I guess "S" stands for "security" and not "Subscription". But who are we kidding? Dave BTW: For people who think that PC companies will fight to keep selling their hardware, here is a shocking revelation from someone who has been in the electronics hardware manufacturing business for over 30 years: These companies hate building hardware! It's hard. It has supply chain issues. There are warranty repair and reverse logistic issues. There are regulatory requirements on the materials they use. The cost of releasing a new product is very high. Lots of cost for not a great margin -- especially in the consumer market. But software is soo much easier to manage because its only cost is people. It may cost a lot for the first item, but after that it is all pure revenue. Selling software is like printing money when compared to hardware. Thus, all the big hardware vendors will be motivated in the push to cloud computing once they figure out how to sell their software into that platform as well. Ever wonder why nVidia keeps churning out all these really neat graphical applications? Who would have expected that from a hardware vendor.

My wife and I tested DALL-E 2 yesterday evening, just to see what it's all about... The result were astonishing, unbelievable. This AI is more creative than both of us! For every input we gave it managed to generate something interesting. We wrote random stuff like "a horse inside a tornado painted by Klimt", "a tree made of snakes in darkness" or "a Japanese pagoda inside a volcano" and tested a few variations. In a few seconds it created fantastic original artworks. here are a few examples :

Thats what I thought when I heard C4D 2023 and it is exactly what we predicted, when subscription came up 3 Years ago. Using R25 as a last perpetual version is just another expression of their contempt of this kind of license and customer.

Here is a fun one - pendulum 🙂. This is pure nodes setup with imported geometry Top Graph Subgraph magic part There are some convenient controls 30_Pendulum.c4d