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You haven't heard an argument against choice because there isn't one to be made. Lack of choice only benefits the company. Toon Boom Harmony is the industry standard for 2D animation. It is to 2D animation what Maya is to 3D animation. They have offered perpetual and subscription options for years. Every year, I buy their Silver Support plan, which is the equivalent to what the MSA was. I pay more for that option than I would have if I had bought a subscription, but it isn't a ridiculous amount. The company makes a little extra money off of me, and I get a perpetual license with the same upgrades as the subscription users. Companies can still subscribe if they need to increase or decrease seats. Everyone has the same access to the same program. There are no walls blocking training or plugins, and the difference in price is reasonable. There is no argument to support not offering both options except greed and user control.

Does $20 even pay for the electricity it took to render the video? You should get an amount you feel good about or not give it to them at all.

Maybe we can finde the right path again. This discussion is not about subscription vs. perpetual but about what benefits the users have from being denied the choice between subscription and perpetual. And I really would like to hear arguments against choice and then I would like to compare quantity and weight of these arguments against the arguments for choice. I have heard quite some convincing arguments why the customers should have choice, but I really have not yet heard a lot of arguments that prove, that the user is better of with being denied the choice between subscription and perpetual.

Over the years I've sent MAXON hundreds of requests for small and big new features, additions and enhancements. Some where considered seriously, some were dully noted, some were too ahead of their time, some were stupid. Here I will be posting some of my old suggestions that haven't been implemented or conceived by anyone yet. I think developing a plugin is something like being an artist, sometimes you have the energy and the talent but you just don't have the inspiration. This is the reason why I make this post. To help spark some of you to create something that will help you and others. Just don't forget to call dibs on a project to avoid unwanted competition... If you like an idea and considering implementing it for free just mention it to raise a hype 🥳 Not all are ideas for plugins, some can be templates, XPresso rigs, Material Node setups or Scene Node setups, the final form is up you. A warning though... I don't guarantee any of these have never been scheduled for future development from MAXON, or they won't reconsider implementing them if they see them here... But I assure you I wont be posting suggestions I sent them last year...

Hey all, I finally messed around in Blender a bit. But my 17 year C4D muscle memory gets in the way. I activated a C4D shortcut preset but especially the object transform tools are tricky. In that preset they still were at different keys (I am used to E R and T as well as W for toggle between world and object space). I tried to remap those manually but I still has a strange behavior imho. Pressing the hotkey does not simply switch to the respective tool but rather transforms my object right away in interaction with mouse movement. Is there a way to replicate C4D-behavior? Or does someone happen to have a shortcut preset that actually replicates C4D? Do you guys have other suggestions for C4D users that wanna try Blender? TYVM!

I've really struggled to find pricing of similar training video. It's just really all over the place 😞 I'd say it's a smaller niche training video for single entity academies. Yeah, just to get a lawyer to draft my license agreement was $500, and I don't think I've even made enough on licensing to cover that cost lol. Thanks Mike, this is really helpful. I'll certainly do more research in finding out if these business are commercial or non-profit the next time one approaches me. I think this is where it gets tricky, is because some are commercial and some are non-profit. But great idea on the copyright statement. Maybe I'll insert a notice at the beginning with my contact info for the non-profit folks. This is has been really helpful guys. Just trying my best to balance what to charge these academies while also providing value to them, but also not undervaluing myself.

Well if they are commercial - they would be making money from your work : ) Your work looks good > Customers impressed > More sales > More profit for them : ) Now if they are a non-profit, and if you want to support them - fair enough. But to be honest if that is the case I would request a large and obvious credit and contact info to be presented, with a clear copyright statement made, and let them use it for zero dollars. Let them know you're giving them an expensive gift. On the other hand, licencing it for $20 or whatever is pretty much the same as you standing in front of them and saying: 'I don't think it's worth much'. Don't undervalue yourself.

Same answer as always I expect - 'industry standard'. Unless its the €300 indy licence.😀 For what its worth I have tried a few things in Maya so that I could align with other suppliers. I was dreading it, but actually it was easier than I expected. (I've only really scratched the surface though. There's never enough time on the job to learn more than the bare minimum.)

I honestly hope that BoganTW is being paid by Maxon. If not, he should. I've never seem such devotion to defend defenseless acts from a Big Corporation ignoring and/or harming their loyal users.... Honestly,, as I said before, this dichotomy of "subs lovers" vs "subs haters" that BoganTW talks about is artificial, it does not happen in real life. Most people do not have a binary thinking about that. I would guess most people have a more nuanced view about the issue. For example, I like some of my subscriptions because they are affordable ((i.e. Octane, Adobe, Maya, etc...) and I didn't subscribe to others because the value is not there (i.e. Cinema 4D). I would definitely subscribe C4D if we had a Indie version, half the price of Maya Indie. In both cases, the subs I like and the subs I don't, I hate the fact that I won't have access to my files if I stop the subscription.. And I would support legislative action to stop this anti-consumer behavior. But this opinion if very far from the "subscription hater" strawman that BoganTW likes to attack.

So none of the people currently running and working on C4D have a passion for what they're working on? Leaving Dave out of it for a minute, I hadn't noticed all the other Maxon names that come to mind being indifferent to the subject of Cinema 4D. If bugger all has changed then what is the problem? That noted, Rick posts here, Srek posts here, Hrvoje posts here, Fritz posts here, and Dave posts here. Possibly Dave posts the least of those, so I guess you've got him there, and maybe you'd be happier if he posted less. You mention all those other forums and say they 'had' nice communities, presumably before Maxon - which doesn't run any of them - did something mysterious that soured the good old days. I'm not sure if CGTalk going down the toilet is Maxon's fault, unless Infograph there is a rogue Maxon employee. Noting in passing that since the policies are what they are, there's clearly nothing Dave could say to make folks like yourself feel better about them, so 'tone deaf' presumably just means he isn't imbibing the glass half empty that you've got hold of. Well it's a good thing you subbed then, given that there was no benefit, as it clearly would have been a disaster if you hadn't. Maxon apparently makes the sub and advertises it for people who want to sub, see the benefit of it, and like what it brings, so I suppose seeing zero benefit or use yet doing it anyway might create some odd feelings after you've done it. I'm not sure if this is a common thing with subscribers though, most of whom presumably sub because they want to, rather than subbing because they don't, like you're apparently doing. You note that you had 'several years' notice that subs were where things were going, and you'll be a better judge than me as to whether this was long enough notice or not. Not subbing would have also been a choice, given that there was no benefit in subbing and you already had the perpetual versions. But fair enough, probably I'm missing the specific reasons you found yourself in. Possibly some months or years from now the other DCC competitors will develop their software to the extent that suddenly you find them viable and you can jump ship. I'm assuming this isn't the case yet. This next bit takes the biscuit though. What a wank. Any benefits out there perhaps for a few folk by making the software cheaper and easier to access? Yeah, fuck those people, it's clearly a retrograde step and they should have kept that initial purchase price sky high. Since you're subbing you're already getting the second and third of those, particularly the third. But righto, clearly someone running a studio with multiple C4D licenses who hates subs and presumably chugs along doing C4D testing for Maxon at the same time is going to be irked when his whole studio of perpetual C4D licenses is shoved into subscription against his will. Since Maxon aren't selling perpetuals any more I'm not sure how frequently this combination of events will ever reoccur again in the future though. Maxon's focus is clearly on helping and supporting and pleasing the people who like subs, and I think this general helpfulness seems to offset the apparent cold shoulder they're giving to people who hate subs, the dramatic depiction and mafia-style callousness of which I feel you exaggerate just a tad. On page 4 of this thread 3D-Pangel guesstimated Maxon earning 400% more than usual through the pandemic and the subscription period. Did they chuck the price up by 400% or did a bunch of people find subs more attractive than trying to squirrel away thousands to buy into that first year of C4D ownership? Moot point I guess but as usual these threads show the people that were unhappy before are happier now, and the people who were not overly unhappy earlier are now sour tempered and in a black and unforgiving mood. Shrug. If I had reasons to prefer C4D perpetuals I'd maybe share the gloom, but since I really don't and since Maxon aren't going back I'm assuming you'll eventually find some direction or solution that leaves you happier than the sour, mean-spirited whinge posted above.

Are they keeping the receipts to show to their accountant at the end of each financial year to claim it back for tax / business reasons, or just a hobbyist chucking money away because they like mucking around in 3D. Bit of a difference and one of them probably 'needs' to do those things more than the other. I'm in Australia though so maybe people elsewhere can't claim software expenses on tax like we can.

Okay....all those arguments over subscription costs being unreasonable and force people to lose the ability to invest in themselves or access to their art are coming from a place which implies that C4D (or their tool of choice) ONLY exists on their PC as subscription and that there are no perpetual licenses from previous versions in your possession. If that was true, then you would not be making that argument because all you would have EVER used are subscriptions - so why then are you complaining about the loss of perpetuals? But you are making that complaint because you have (or are) going through the decision process of either holding fast to your current perpetual C4D license while moving to another DCC application or staying current with C4D subscriptions. So, you have C4D. You have your artistic tool. You can still support your artistic or financial goals with C4D. You just don't have the latest version. The mental knot hole I had to work myself through was to stop chasing the shiny new ball of the current release. I started to think critically about what I will and won't use in a new release and should there be something I need for a period, then I will rent it only for that period. I can rent C4D for 7 individual months out of the year and still save money over leasing it for the year (7 x $94 = $658 < $720). 7 out of 12 months is a pretty long time. Paying $94 at a time creates a lot less financial strain on my pocketbook than paying $720 all at once. Rent it, complete the work, export it as USD and move on. That makes C4D a commodity. Remember the old MSA? Remember how Studio owners used to complain about how their upgrade costs (which they were locked into otherwise they would fall out of the program) were higher than Prime or Broadcast licenses for a release that had NO benefit to the feature set that came with a Studio license. How is that better than what I am proposing above? Now you have options. Time is on your side. You don't have to sign up for a 2023 subscription if you are not going to use its new features right away to achieve whatever goals (artistic or financial) are in front of you. Wait a few months until you really do need it and save yourself some money by only renting it for that period that you do need it. Remember, you can do that for up to 7 out of the 12 months and still be ahead. Maybe broader adoption of sticking with your last perpetual license and ONLY using the latest release for the months you need it will move the needle more on getting Maxon to adopt a much cheaper YEARLY indie license? Just a thought. It is clear by Nemetschek's financials that those few who have walked away completely did NOT change a thing. Time to think differently. Dave

I'm enjoying my sub. Come next year when I re-sub I'm going to skip / pause for one or two months to look at DaVinci Resolve and Affinity Designer for a bit, get a bit more fluid with those, then re-sub to C4D. Totally flexible and I'll be restarting with their April 2023 release under my belt (+ maybe its first bug fix). Generally I feel it's up to me when I re-sub, rather than thinking, oh jeez I better hurry up and upgrade to C4D R31 or else it'll be even pricier when R32 rolls around.

Maxon will follow companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Foundry who have chosen not to yield to customer's frustrations on subscriptions, pricing, or the rise of other alternative software like Blender, Houdini, Fusion and so on. I added Foundry because they've overpriced Nuke, Mari, Katana and Hiero, driving the price up each year. NukeX is now $10,268. I bought it when it was around $6.5k about 5 years ago and recently stopped maintenance because the costs were going up by about $200 extra per year. There has been no earth-shattering development in Nuke over the past 5 years to warrant a $3,768 increase over that period of time. There's no reason why Maya sub should cost as much as it does, or even C4D for that matter, but it's what the market will bear. Blender isn't taking over the industry despite what the pundits stated about 5 years ago, and each year and each release since then *yawn*. If it DOES continue to eat up subscriptions for other software, it'll take at least another 3-4 years for numbers to potentially go negative and then maybe companies like Maxon and Autodesk will revisit. However, Blender isn't the only one developing. So are Maxon and Autodesk. They'll continue to do just enough to keep their base and maybe a bit more. The world said they were leaving Adobe when it announced CC and here we are years later and it hasn't happened. CC was launched in 2012 with about 500K subscribers. Prodesigntools did an analysis and determined there were 22mil subscribers in 2020 and around 26mil by the end of last year. So much for the "angsty taking your ball and going home" like most said they would do with Adobe. They've grown exponentially despite the few people that said they don't use CC anymore. Apparently lots of others are. Do these companies care? Of course not. World crisis? They don't care. They've already counted their subscribers for the next 1 1/2 to 2 years. They probably stopped forecasting perpetual license purchases about a year ago, which is why the phased it out now. Those sales were more sporadic and not worth it to them. Here's a fun article by WIBU Systems (used to have a Vray dongle made by them): https://www.wibu.com/magazine/keynote-articles/article/detail/the-many-opportunities-and-few-risks-of-software-subscriptions0.html

Thanks for that @3D-Pangel. Many people see buying software as an investment, it isn't. The investment is in your ability to create value by using it. Software is way to volatile to be seen as an investment, it needs constant development and change to be of value. That is one of the reasons why the larger the business the more they want and use SaaS. It fits their needs and wants from a technical and fiscal pov. Smaller shops and especially private users often think in terms of owning things, which is just plain wrong when it comes to software since, except if you wrote the software yourself, you can only ever own a license to use. Only my personal €0.02 of course.

The interesting thing about subscriptions which I "think" most people are missing is that it turns licensed software into a commodity. Staying current with software when the licensing switches from perpetual to subscription frees up the user from "having" to purchase that perpetual upgrade. The upside to renting over owning is that you can rent it for a month only when you need it. And that is the new way to think of subscriptions - as commodities and not assets: Paying for software at a reduced price only when you need it rather than buying it at a higher price and making it an asset is what turns software into a commodity. There are many trends in the industry that support software becoming a commodity rather than an asset to the user. The biggest one is the growth of Universal Scene Description (USD) which is now supported in C4D. USD allows you to export your WIPs and IP and bring them wherever you want for as long as you want. You are no longer locked into one application. You can drop the technology religion and become software agnostic when you have the ability to move your content and IP freely between apps that you don't own but only rent ONLY when you need it. I know many people are scratching their head wondering why SaaS continues to grow. Well, when you think about software as a commodity rather than an asset and the freedom that gives you, then you might be able to see the benefit. When you do, you come to understand why SaaS is growing. I looked at my own perpetual addiction to C4D. I mean we were all fat dumb and happy paying $720 a year for the MSA's but when you think about it, you were ONLY using that perpetual license for one year. As soon as the next upgrade came out, you plunked down another $720 and never touched the old version again. I was locked into the "never rent always own" mentality and followed along when perpetuals jumped to $950 a year for fear that should I succumb to the subscription model, that I may lose access to all my files. True, but should I decide to stop a subscription, I can always export my work prior to ending the subscription. USD now means that export/import into another app is that much easier. If I missed the conversion of a WIP out of C4D, then I renew that subscription for a month, convert it and then move on. You really are not permanently losing your work to the subscription program. Renting C4D for a month is a hell of a lot cheaper than continuing to pay $950 a year for software I am really only going to use until the next update came out in 12 months. Also, incorporation of RS CPU was huge. So why do I keep saying that? Easy. I am no longer locked into an RS subscription. But what about GPU rendering? Well, if you are a rendering a long format animation or incredibly complex scenes, then RS GPU would be nice. But as for me, I will light, texture and optimize the rendering of my scene with RS CPU and then should I need to forgo those long rendering times, purchase a 1-month RS subscription, kick it over the RS GPU and be done with it. As long as I don't need RS GPU for more than 6 months out of a year, I am saving money. I have now turned RS GPU into a commodity rather than an asset because I am paying much less for it only when I need it rather than a lot more for owning it. To help everyone get out of the "owning" is better mentality, then please understand that owning something is ONLY a benefit when the asset you own increases in value over time. Software does not grow in value over time. It never will. Dave

I totally get what you're saying, but was there a stronger sense of community with Maxon back when the guys that ran it were in perpetual hiding and their Youtube channel was stuttering along? Now they're all popping up regularly and Noseman is chatting to posters during the live Training Team broadcasts and McGavran and others are jumping in here on a regular basis. Probably the sense of community is different, but given what I've just noticed I'm not sure how the sense of community has completely evaporated. And if many people are subbing then it suggests many people aren't fussed that subs are a thing and consequently aren't irked that Maxon has brought in subs. The lacklustre update seems to have only very recently changed, but changed it finally has, so I think for some - not all - they may be happy where Maxon is going.

I don't seen 3Dpangel/Dave's posts as supporting it, simply stating facts. I don't like the direction Maxon is taking in a corporate way. I still use their software, our studio still pays for it, I still test it, but I don't like the direction or how they're treating customers. For years, the users have trusted Maxon and given them a lot of leeway. We've had years of lacklustre updates with hardly a feature worth the time or effort of installing a new version, let alone having a 'must-have' release where people have clamoured to download it ASAP. With the rug pull that is removing perpetual licences, all that good will is gone and the relationship is now reduced down to a simplistic monetary one. Is the product worth the price, or is it not? Because all the good will and sense of community is completely evaporated. If I were a hobbyist, I wouldn't pay for it, Blender is a large amount to learn as a new app, but I dare say that I would see this as a fun challenge, and at the end I know I'll get free updates forever and a good pace of product updates. C4D has been waiting for this core rewrite to fix the general speed issue for well over a decade now. Capsules were only made as a way to get some use out of the new core and nodes system because otherwise the new node based core would be 100% useless. My educated guess is that we're still 5 years away from the new node core actually replacing basic functionality. Until the new core replaces basic geometry like cubes and cylinders, and basic modelling tools like bend and twist deformers, Its a glorified set of fancy xpresso plugins which has cost an inordinate amount of dev resources. If I were a new 3D user, Im not honestly sure if I would pick C4D as my app of choice. Really for the same reasons, Blender is good, C4D is slightly better, is it worth the money? With xparticles and a thirdparty render engine, yes, C4D is great. But Blender has many of those same render engines, so a lot of c4d's userbase really comes down to mograph / xparticles users and those who are just used to how the software works. This includes myself. If I could click my fingers and transfer my c4d knowledge into blender knowledge, I probably would.

I've yet to see anything motion graphics related by the Blender community that stacks up against things from Already Been Chewed, Yeti, Tendril, Elastic and the like which are predominately C4D and Houdini. We won't even talk about FX. Even the 3D Motion Show stuff is more exciting to watch than people on Youtube trying to show the prowess of Blender in motion graphics. Don't get me started on the really bad Udemy stuff. I feel like I'm watching old Lightwave stuff when they are posting what they can do with Blender 3.x (the newest). It's painful watching most Blender youtubers as I feel they learned 3D about 5 years ago in Blender 2.79 or so, and it's all they know. Entagma is at least entertaining, I think because they put time in over the past 15+ years across various software to get where they are at now. Their experience is amazing and fun to watch. I know a lot of how rich and complex many of these commercials and title sequences from studios like Elastic has to do with skilled professionals who have used the same software for the past decade, and the team employed, but it gives me no warm vibes and or wanting to switch to Blender for motion graphics when it appears to be in its infancy at best. Regardless of the subscription war raging on, there's something to be said for software that works perfectly in the space its dominating. I guess this is why many of these studios use C4D and Houdini. Sometimes it's about using the right tool for the job. Edit: I will say I've seen some bright blender flickers from some of the Pwnisher contest submissions (and I'm not referring to the bad EEVEE flickers either. 🙂 )

One of the reasons why I felt a year ago that perpetuals would come to an end is that I looked at the growth of re-occurring revenue (or SaaS: software-as-a-service) over standard licensing revenue with Nemetscheks annual revenue reports. In short: follow the money. All of this is found on the web. Here are the numbers (all numbers in millions of Euro's) and are reported at the END of year: You can directly infer Maxon's revenue because Nemetschek breaks out their numbers by market and within the "Media" market there is only one company and that is Maxon. I went back to 2017 through 2021. If you notice, prior to 2020 and the old MSA model, Maxon was pretty much a stable 6% of revenue but still growing though by only a couple of million a year. Respectable but not at the same level of growth as the rest of the company. Pretty confident that there was pressure on Maxon to change how it was doing business. Whether or not that pressure led to the leadership changes we saw in 2018 is open to debate. As for me, I side with the old adage "it's not personal, it's business" when it comes to these types of changes, especially when the numbers do speak for themselves. It wasn't until 2020 when revenue really started to break away from its predictable 6% of Nemetschek revenue pattern with a double-digit revenue increase in 2020. Remember that 2019 was when subscriptions were introduced. Now, do not get caught up by the drop in revenue growth from 2020 to 2021 from 61% to 27%. That is just math working against them. As a company makes more revenue, then to continue the same growth percentage every year becomes extremely difficult. If Maxon was to show another 61% growth from 2020 to 2021, then that would mean they would need another $18 million in 2021 (or $86 million rather than $68). Not so easy. But 2020 was a banner year for Maxon especially considering that while Covid started at the end of 2019, its impact on global revenue of every company showed up in their 2020 reports. That was not a great year for Nemetschek as there was only 7% growth in revenue, but Maxon grew a whopping 61%. Maxon's year-over-year increase in revenue from 2019 to 2020 represented half of Nemetschek's revenue increase in that same period. Pretty sure Mr. McGavran was the well-deserved darling among the Nemetschek executive leadership board that year. Now look at sources of revenue from both Software Licensing and SaaS over that same 4-year period. These are Nemetschek numbers. I don't know what Maxon's contributions are to this revenue. But as a percentage of revenue, SaaS is growing while Software Licensing is shrinking. And this is all while Nemetschek revenue is growing year over year. Essentially, global pandemics aside, Nemetschek was doing spectacularly well over that same 4-year period and were being handsomely rewarded by shareholders. Their stock price rose from 23 euro's a share in 2017 to a high of 110 euro's/share at the start of the start of 2022. Unfortunately, this has been a tough year for everyone, and the stock has declined in value quite a bit by almost 50%. But 400% growth in 4 years was quite the ride. Look, when you are looking at this level of financial success, don't expect any changes soon unless the 2022 financial report shows a significant slowdown in revenue. But even then, that will be due to global economic conditions rather than Nemetschek's (and Maxon's) licensing strategy which has been working for them quite well over the last couple of years. Always follow the money to see what happens next. Based on that, don't get your hopes up. Dave

OMG! The pore stretch and wrinkles are incredible. This is all Blender? Amazing! But how easy is it to achieve these types of results? I also get equally amazed at the majesty of Houdini large scale fluid simulations until I actually try to learn how to use Houdini. I would imagine it is the same with anything that comes this close to creating believable humans. The rigging alone must be very involved and take huge amounts of time to master. Then on top of all that are the shading trees to get the pore stretch just right. Now with that all said, at least Blender can get you there. There is no path that I have seen within C4D that will bring you to that same result. And you then have to ask why? The last improvement to character tools were R23...which is oddly right before Maxon purchased Pixologic. And then nothing. Remember what 3D-Kiwi would always tell us: Maxon will not touch any area of a program ahead of its roadmap for a complete rewrite. With this in mind, you have to look at Maxon acquisition of Z-Brush and ask what happens next. Why purchase the world's most pre-eminent character sculpting tool, Z-Brush, and then not provide an equally best-of-breed capability to animate those characters? I think the upgrades to the symmetry tool are the first step in a long road to upscale C4D's character rigging tools to this same level. But once again, outside of Motion Graphics, Maxon is playing catch-up and at a much slower rate than the rest of the industry is moving forward. That may be the price for stability and well-thought-out integration. Fortunately, my passions lie in hard surface modelling and there we have seen enough improvements to keep me happy. Dave

While I get the reasons some people are angry, we really need to stop with comparing other software's 'indie' version prices to Cinema's full subscription. I work in a small-medium studio & NONE of the projects we work on qualify us for Indie versions, not Maya, not Houdini, not Nuke, whatever. Cinema's FULL subscription is 1/3 the price of Maya's full subscription. Now Maya probably is worth more than Cinema, but it's very hard to argue it's worth 3x as much, especially for our use-cases. That said, Cinema should definitely consider an Indie licence to keep the 1-man-bands & hobbyists on board. I'm not up to date on the educational stuff. but it would seem dangerous not to make life as easy as possible for institutions that want to teach Cinema. On a personal note, I had been stubbornly upgrading my perpetual all the way to R25, even after they made it terrible value for money to discourage it. This despite my work being happy to pay for a subscription for me. So Maxon have done me a favour tbh - instead of me giving them £1000 this year, my boss will give them £600.

It's hugely popular in UX/Product design. Pretty much the industry standard I think? Adobe has a shittier version of it called XD. Figma also ate Adobe's Illustrator lunch. I wish Adobe would use some of these billions of dollars to fix their slow, broken existing software. Rebuild some of their incredibly old and chugging apps - I'm looking at you Adobe Illustrator and Animate.