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As a personal side project to provide more information on Scene Nodes to everyone interested i started a small page. https://nodebase.info Feel free to request topics that should be covered

Dear members We are happy to announce brand new Youtube channel with focus on C4D node system. In our research we realized that training content for nodes is very sparse and lacking in quality and depth. We already have two lessons available which will be part of ongoing series. Humble request from our side is that, even if you are not into nodes, please subscribe in order that the channel grows which will enable us to monetize it down the road. On longer timeline this can enable us to reduce the subscription period or even remove it alltogether and open up forum for many more artists. https://www.youtube.com/@CORE4D Thank you and enjoy the content! P.S. Any member willing to contribute to the channel is more than welcome - drop us a message : )

(Probably my first original 3D article) This is a list of 10+1 useful yet overlooked or unappreciated features in C4D. 10) Scene Nodes Scene Nodes made their debut with R23 as an experimental feature drawing developer resources resulting R23 and the next couple of releases deprived from any major features. Due to its unusual for C4D UI, workflow and intuitiveness standards most users tried to stay away from it in a “let others figure it out first” response. None-the-less Scene Nodes are here to stay despite many people’s beliefs it would soon flop. Now many users do not hesitate to use Capsules but still quite few will spend time making their own, propagating the belief that SceneNodes maybe are not that powerful to produce what they expect or compete with other systems like Blender’s GeoNodes or Houdini. The Truth is that behind the scenes more and more people are working with SceneNodes and soon tutorials and new Capsules will be popping more frequently as witnessed with the last couple of releases. 9) Polygon Reduction This little generator is rarely used. Due to its name and function most users will rarely even considering using it because “Who wants to compress their geometry in a pile of ugly mess anyway, especially when Remesh is around to do it better”. Actually the Polygon Reduction can come in handy in abstract modeling, weird animations and my favorite: as an indirect uniform instance distribution. Polygon Reduction has a useful Preserve 3D Boundaries option. So when the Object Surface distribution mode of a Cloner fails to satisfy and you end up hitting the Seed value for half an hour to land a distribution where you don’t have intersecting instances, try to populate your surface uniformly use the Polygon Reduction as an instance in Vertex distribution. If the scale of your instances is not an issue throw a Push Apart Effector. 8 ) Sculpting Although not as powerful as ZBrush is, if you don’t want Forger because you don’t work on a tablet or don’t want a subscription to ZBrush, then this is your best alternative. It includes all the essentials for sculpting plus many advanced tools. It’s a quite complete tool case. Probably the most invaluable feature is to turn your sculpts to a Displacement Texture using the Bake Sculpt. Blender boasts its recent 3.5 release about its VDMs (Vector Displacement Maps) after ZBrush later this year made it possible to copy sculpted details as brushes and reuse them while C4D had it all along since R15. Plus the very useful and overlooked Projection tool. Which can also project tubed meshes ! 7) Camera Calibrator Tag This is another tool most users haven’t ever used myself included. It is used for Camera Mapping and provides many useful parameters and options for a quick camera placement from a reference image. It’s basically the equivalent of Motion Tracker but for still images. 6) Tension Tag The Tension Tag is placed in the Character Tag menu so most users that aren’t concerned with Character Rigging overlook it and don’t know it can also be used for modeling. Although you can achieve the same effects using the Displacer Deformer, the Tension Tag is more preferable for animations when the amount of deformation of a polygon from its initial state alters the Weight Map of the object allowing for local effects on regions of structural stress. Try doing this Reaction Diffusion without Fields! I think it’s faster too. And we have the Tension Tag to thank for this since R17 (I think). 5) Feather Object Right in the middle of this Top 10 list lies the Feather Object. I don’t just rarely see projects that use feathers. I’ve just never seen any feathered projects ever. And I’ve never used that object myself either! I might have seen a scene or two during MAXON’s demo showreels but you never know what percentage of those scenes are C4D. It’s a quite interesting generator with many parameters carefully designed to model any type of plume. It’s also a generator that doesn’t work on geometry like the Hair object but on guides. It essentially generates guides for guides. So if you want to turn any hairy model into a feathered model just put the Hair object under the Feather oblject! (also works for splines) 4) Instance Object Who uses Instance objects, right? Cloners create instances themselves by default why should I need an Instance object ? Maybe it’s used only when you turn a Cloner to an Editable Object. The truth is that the Instance Object can make your scenes a lot lighter when you don’t use a Cloner yet you do use a lot of copies of the same objects. Most users overlook it because the first thing that comes to mind when you need a lot of something is to clone it with the Cloner. Probably the Instance Object is what makes the Cloner work in stealth mode. I'll let the Master Shapiro show you one practical use of this object. 3) Smoothing Deformer Oh the Smoothing Deformer! With a bent tube as an icon (a flat iron R25+), it doesn’t really excite. Also the name doesn’t excite either. Usually users when they want to smooth things out they’ll use the Subdivision Surface generator (SDS). But what if you don’t want to increase the number of your polygons? Yes you guessed right. But wait, what are the Relax and Stretch modes? Stretch will try to maintain the overall shape and volume of your object. So any hard edges will be preserved while polygons try to be of homogenous area. The Relax is the most interesting one. People ask all the time how to make stills with realistic cloth wrinkles and will resort to cloth simulations or even sculpting… Look no further, this is your salvation! With just a few mindless brushstrokes with the Brush tool this deformer will blow your mind. 1) Plane under SDS. 2) Plane without SDS, just play with the Brush (Mesh->Transform Tools [M~C]), 3) SDS again 4) Just apply the deformer in Relax Mode. 2) MoSpline Turtle My favorite. MoSpline is not a rare tool on users arsenal. Who doesn’t like those sexy curves, and the icon is the most elegant in the whole app (talking about the old one). But the Turtle mode is just absent from any C4D project I’ve ever seen. It’s like it doesn’t exist… I guess people see those unintelligible symbols and delete the poor tree before a virus turns C4D into Houdini. The Turtle mode is highly unappreciated. Although it does have room for improvement in its capabilities, what someone can achieve with it is quite impressive and there is no other way to do it (except maybe coding it in Python). Anyone with affection for fractals appreciates this tool. Unfortunately most people love only the colored Mandelbrot type fractals. Line fractals deserve some love too! 1) XPresso Well, what did you expect? Although a lot of users do use XPresso, still very few are well knowledgeable with it. Most users relate XPresso only with Thinking Particles and this is the main reason most users resent XPresso, because it doesn’t deliver easy, fast and intuitive particle setups. There are also many shady corners in XPresso that are rarely used in scenes so most people don’t know how they could even be used. What for should someone use Dynamics nodes or Hair nodes ? Who knows ? Anyhow, XPresso is very powerful tool if you know how to use it, and it has an overlooked cousin feature the Driver Tag that developers made just for those who don’t like XPresso. Bonus Feature Pyroclusters The most underappreciated feature ever. Today it’s totally outdated because we have Pyro. But if you don’t have RedShift or any VDB compatible renderer what will you do? Just look at those clouds! 0 voxels, 0 GPU RAM needed. There are some preset shapes you can use like box and cylinder which I have no idea what practical purpose they serve but the Hemisphere can be used to see clouds from below. The downside is that you don’t have the flexibility Pyro offers because you need a particle setup, and sometimes particles are not enough so you have to use Thinking Particles which leads us back to XPresso. Other limitations follow like that they are not compatible with VDBs because they use apperceptive 3D shading algorithms instead of voxels, so you can’t export them to an other application and that PyroCluster does not work in conjunction with the depth-of-field functionality. Other than that, if you work natively, Pyroclusters can provide some comfort when you need some fluffy clouds or smoke. This is a special case of under appreciation because people do not appreciate the ingenuity used for this one-of-a-kind feature. I should be making a YT video 🤔

Martijn Korstanje aka Kingcoma is a well known 3D artist from Netherlands and our fellow member.Currently lives in Belgium and is active in industry for 20+ years. He worked at graphics and 3D companies in the past but for last 15 years he has his own company. Apart from addictive 3D passion he enjoys nature, traveling, photography, Lego, how stuff works and loves driving his car. We are very happy to present him and his fabulous work! Describe yourself in a single word: Downtoearth : ) How did you get into C4D and 3D in general? A couple of centuries ago, some new computers arrived at the school I was attending. Instantly loved working on it (I think we used to work with Photoshop 5) and a couple of years later I bought my first Mac. Spent almost every day practicing and discovering new things, for hours and hours. I was a pretty quick learner, so once I got the hang of Illustrator and Photoshop, I came across Swift3D, and started experimenting with that (very basic 3d). Because there were lots of limitations and I really wanted to make my drawings and characters come to life, I searched for other, a bit more advanced software. 3ds max was only available on windows, so that was out of the question, and Maya had a HUGE learning curve. And then I bumped into cinema4d. Love at first sight! I can’t count the evenings / nights / days I spent learning it and trying out new things, but it’s a massive amount of time. Which area interest you the most? Modelling techniques. I’ve always been a fan of nice and clean topology, and I really enjoy figuring out the best and nicest way to model something, whether hard surfaces or organic / characters. Other then that, I love doing animations. How things move, how slow or fast things move, how a character moves when he’s just standing there. What does the left hand do when the right hand’s busy doing something? Whenever I have character animation jobs, I always find myself standing up and acting a bit first, to see what a ‘natural’ movement is and what not. Really silly, but super helpful. What other apps are you using and what for? Mainly Illustrator, Photoshop and aftereffects. Illustrator for vector paths, creating logo’s or creating packaging or visuals that need to be put on 3d models. Photoshop for textures, compositing and retouch. Aftereffects for animations, putting together all different parts (rendersequence, sounds, music, texts, logos, etc) Which learning resources you used and would recommend? In the very beginning, there weren’t that much tutorials online, so you had to figure it out yourself or look for help on different forum (such as core4d, previously c4dcafe). Most tutorials were screenshots and written text. Later, more and more video tutorials came along, which are very easy to follow and you can actually see what’s going on and what you’re missing or doing wrong. Whenever I need to learn or check something nowadays, I usually check Core4D, Cineversity, tutorials from GreyScaleGorilla, or when I can’t find it on there, general google searches. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I don’t think talent is overrated. I think when you have talent, it comes a bit more natural and some things are a bit more ‘easy’. The thing with 3d is, it’s not just one thing. It’s a boatload of things. You can be talented in modelling, but really suck at texturing. Or you’re an average rigger, but you master simulations. Your drawing skills aren’t all that, but when that Xpresso or Python script editor open up, you’re on fire. Overall, I think everyone has something they're good at (or better at), and I think in 3d-land, you always have to work hard, talented or less talented. Your character work is stellar, what made you focus on them? Thanks! As a kid, I wanted to be a comicbook-artist, always drawing creatures and characters. Later it shifted to Illustrator, and after that, I really wanted to translate my thoughts and creativity of those characters in 3d, so I could animate them, look at them from all sides (which you can’t with 2d obviously) and put the expressions and humor in them I so clearly see in my head. I also admire Pixar / Dreamworks characters and animation, the details in them, the movements, the humor. When I watch animations, I don’t just watch them, I anaylise them (sometimes frame by frame) to try and learn new things or ways to improve myself. Your best advice for newcomers, tips or tricks to pick up? Have fun, don’t take it too seriously and practice, practice, practice. Give it your own twist, don’t just copy something blindly, and don’t stop learning new ways or techniques! Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I really hope I can continue doing what I’m doing now, making fun and friendly characters to brighten someones day or to put a smile on someones face. Thoughts on AI? It’s a bit frightening, hence the answer above.. I hope I can continue doing my job til I retire. I probably keep doing 3d even when I’m retired though. But yeah, as many other artists, I’m worried about this. AI as a tool to help the artist is great, but AI taking over would be lame. Lately there are more and more examples of AI that I receive in briefings, but they’re only used to show ‘something like this’ or an overall moodboard / look&feel. Fortunately, clients can be very tricky and very unclear as to what they want exactly or it’s the oposite: super-extremely specific and detailed. It’s part of my job to assist them in the whole process of creating the perfect character or visual for them, and advise them where I can. Top 3 wishes for C4d I don’t have any wishes actually, I’m very happy with all the tools available right now and I don’t have any problems making the things I want / have to make. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? A big thanks. It’s a marvelous piece of software which I love to work with and not a week goes by where I find something new which I haven’t seen before (or found out about) after all these years. I think it’s amazing people can create software like this, have all the options you can possibly imagine, making it possible for people like me to create art and have the ability to do what I love to do most. Message for Core4D? Also a HUGE thanks. For all the talks, insights, tips, tricks, questions, answers, tutorials, models, contests. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without the people, help and knowledge found on Core4D. If people want to contact you? They can, of course! I’m just an email, phonecall or whatsapp away https://www.kingcoma.com phone +32 479 43 61 82 email: info@kingcoma.com Thank you very much for your time and all the best in future endeavours!

Hm? Actually I prefer not be drawn into (as Cairyn would say) "one of these threads". Also I'm not sure, which insights I'm supposed to share. I assume, I'm being asked as developer and not as a former Maxon employee. So I will keep it more general. From my point of view onboarding new developers is (or at least can be) a difficult task. It almost always takes quite a bit of resources (aka time of already experienced developers) for a significant time. Every developer is different. And like all humans every developer learns differently. Can bug fixing be a good learning path? Yes, I think so. If you have a tenacious and masochistic type of a developer, this can work out great. I do not mean this in any bad way. Maybe in other words, you need somebody with a lot of will to reach the goal. If you have someone with such characteristics, then the result can be awesome, because the knowledge collected on the go is immense. On the other hand there the "this baby has to run as quickly as possible" type of developers. For those a smaller or simpler starter project can offer a better learning curve, as they have better chances to reach the needed feeling of success to keep them going. Also bugs are pretty human in this regard. Every one is different (I hope, now I do not get drawn into a discussion, how theoretically many bugs are identical) and like with humans you can't really judge it by looking at its cover. So it can already take quite a lot of work from an experienced developer to judge, if a bug is suited to be worked on by a beginner (usually you want "isolated" bugs, where the fix has little potential to influence or break other stuff). And afterwards you need an experienced developer to check and verify the fix of the newbie. This can lead to a situation, where it costs more resources than would have been needed if the experienced developer worked on the bug in the first place. I think, comparing Blender and C4D in this regard is misleading and probably also a bit unfair. Open source in a way is way better suited for onboarding new developers. Of course a) the code base is open, so chances to get somebody, who already has some experience, are better. And b) there's a kind of playful flavor in the process, which you usually do not have in closed environments. I do not want to say either way is superior. It's different and the difficulties are different. I don't think, it's a good idea to transfer the paradigm of either to the other. And of course either side can also learn from the other, but chances are the result of such learning process or evolution will not be identical to the other side you started to learn from in the beginning. The constraints are too different to end up with an identical result. I could go on talking for hours about this, but as I said in the beginning, I'm not even sure, what I have been asked for. For example the topic, how many interesting ways there are to make even the best developer have merely no output at all. Although I tend to like the view from the other side a bit more, the many ways you can get productive output from bad developers (or as I would put it, there are no unproductive employees, only employees used in wrong ways). Or the topic of team mindedness of developers, something my breed is probably not really the best in (which on the other hand is most likely the reason, they got developers in the first place...). Just to be not completely off topic: I see nothing wrong in a service pack focusing on bug fixing. And I'm a bit irritated, about certain views for example about the number of bugs in "UI change" release. To me it's pretty obvious, even if there were no features to present, there is way more work going on than visible at the surface. Please, do not misunderstand this, I'm not interested in another discussion if R25 is a release worth its money. Or if the communication strategy is right or wrong. Or Maxon's business strategies. In my view Maxon tries nothing less but rebuilding a skyscraper from scratch without scratching the old facade during the process (better: with as little scratches as possible). Or trying a heart surgery on a living walking human without any support machinery. Not many companies have even dared to try this. For this alone they have my fullest respect. It's even worse for them. Their customers grew used to one of the most stable and backward compatible software products (not talking about DCCs but software in general) out there. And for such an endeavor this luxury turns into an immense burden. Whatever you do, somebody will always be pissed (even worse, most likely rightly so). And I doubt, many can imagine how different, how much more complicated and how much more time consuming this is compared to building something new from scratch. Maybe not even all developers at Maxon did foresee the complexity to its full extend (which is no critique). I mean, hell, I live in a country, where we are not even able to build an airport from scratch anymore. Something which has been done thousands of times all over the globe. Complexity is a bi... and forums can be a bad place to discuss complex topics. Most humans are not interested in understanding complexity. We usually prefer the simple, black/white answers. And, again an example from the country I live in, people can get pretty angry and even violent, if the answers to questions which frighten them are neither black or white (yep, talking pandemic here). I think, same patterns can be seen in the C4D discussions since a few years. Understandable. Inevitable. Certainly not constructive or helpful for anybody. Sorry for being carried away. Probably another reason, why I shouldn't be pulled into threads...

If I may be so bold. In my experience, a lot of universities running 3D courses seem quite myopically blind what the real world demands are of 3D artists. They look at what the most exciting things are for students, predominantly working in the movie industry and seem to blindly target that as if it will be getting their students a job at the end. The reality is that the vast majority of 3D jobs are for generalists, people who can model, clean up cad, texture, light, animate, render, post produce in AE + PS. For every person spending 2 years working on animating Groot's left nut, theres 100 more working at a less prestigious company creating every day artwork. Product renders, adverts, previz, theatre shows, projection shows, town planning, architects, packaging visualisers.... We recently went to some university recruitment days looking for new staff, and honestly the experience was quite miserable. Maybe 30 stands from employers looking for people and perhaps a couple hundred students handing out resumes and virtually everyone who we spoke to was unsuitable. More or less all of them had chosen one single specific niche, looking for a job at a studio. I need someone who can take a client's idea and run with it from start to finish. Instead all we found were 20 people that want to do nothing but rig characters, 20 texture painters, a dozen modellers and a random scattering of uv layout people, simulation engineers and TDs / scripters. Not one of those people could produce anything from start to finish.

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Hello, The UV projections occupied my mind for quite a while, I made some tools to unwrap them, to make the edition easily, add features to BP UV Edit... But the problem was still the same, the UV edition is still boring to do and quite often we prefere to use the common automatic projections when it's possible. I was wondering, could we simply make other kind of projections to fit more shapes ? So I came up with a new plugin, the UV Projector ! It works like a deformer object and only edit the UVW property, it have some interesting new UV projections with the advantage to not have to make the object editable ! Here is some new projections : Rhombicuboctahedral : It's like a cubic projection with the 45° edges. Cylinder with deformations : Like the classic cylinder, with deformations to adjust the shapes. Half-cylinder : Some times you want to have only one side round and the other side plane. Y shape : It's maybe still a bit wobbly to setup but it gives a nice start. The last is I think the most interesting, it's a plane shape with editing points : Simply uset he point mode to move the surfaces points and adjust them to your object, you can literraly wrap it around your object ! All the features and download here : https://code.vonc.fr/projecteur-uv The free version is limited to 1000 polygons count with all the features so you can still enjoy it. The plugin is a part of the Vonc Suite that contains others tools. If you have other projections shapes ideas don't hesitate !

More than just a service pack, we got a few very cool things added this time round... New Relax Mode in Brush and Magnet tools Cloth and Rope now work with Fields / Field Forces Front and Back Colliders for new sim system New HDRIs New RS materials New grunge maps collection Improved Node editor Geometry Curvature now available to fields. Volume builder improvements My favourite is the new relax mode of Brush and Magnet tools allowing us to smooth, and regularize topology without losing surface curvature. Here's Chris Schmidt explaining the rest of it, with his usual degree of thoroughness and detail... So, lots to enjoy there, as well as lots of bugfixes and smaller QoL changes. CBR

Useful overview. This guy has probably the best C4D modeling channel on Youtube right now.

You can abandon it if you like, and enjoy your time in Blender, but no need to shit-post Maxon with a load of unevidenced assertion on the way out. A lot of what you say is self-evidently untrue. You are IN one part of the Cinema community right now by being on this forum, and there is Cineversity in addition to Maxon's training channels, not to mention hundreds of thousands of tutorials on Youtube, with new ones being added every day. There are current podcasts, videocasts, and Siggraph presentations from present day and going back years. Geometry nodes are far from useless, and their potential is becoming more obvious with every release. There are literally THOUSANDS of plugins and scripts for Cinema. CBR

I am doing a Black Friday deal. All my free tutorials are 100% off... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkWGnSaQR_XBMe3Yx4WHJ5Q

Only commenting on the things I used. Scene nodes look promising (haven't tested), but more importantly again show a strong vision for the future. I also comment on the general outlook, MyMaxon and the pricing on the bottom. Feedback on new UV workflow: It is definitely a huge step forwards but it seems like in beta still. There are many bugs and broken tools right now. This includes S22 but in general there is still a clunkyness that could be easily solved, mostly by fixing the broken not working selections. The new S22 auto unwrapper is mind blowing in some areas as it does advanced things I would have only done by hand on many occasions and no software can repeat, not even rizom but sadly inconsistent, still very useful. Very impressed by that one, but other areas can still be questionable. I actually have forgot to test multi UV but I assume it just works as expected. Broken / Not working Tools: Some tools straight up do not work in the UV space and make it feel like a beta still or plain buggy. Just nothing happens or they glitch out. The colleagues were also surprised. - Fill selection does not work (no way to select an entire UV island? That is very basic and required - it creates a buggy hover selection and makes the UV view appear frozen) Edit: Double click does fill the UV island - this is convenient but not consistent and I didn't get it even after trying all my possible tools. Fill should definitely work. - Outline Selection does not work (not much to see in the gif it just dosnt do anything) - Live selection scaling the selection size Freezes the UV view for the time you try to drag the size with the typical command - UV Magnet (very cool tool btw) does the same freezing - probably more tools do it (Am I being stupid or is there no way to select an UV island?) Edit: Double click does it - this is not consistent but is convenient. Why not for normal non UV selections as well? - Path selection does now work (Broken with S22, now fixed!) (the only good way to unwrap messy geometries, Rocks or similar well) That was very needed, makes certain things crazy faster. We desperately need a function to get an edge selection back from the UV cuts we made. There is no proper way to get this selection and if you want to split your Phong properly based on UV split as it is required for widespread highpoly-lowpoly baking workflows, you have to make all your cuts in one go, keep shift pressed all the time and save the selections which is extremely clunky and inconvenient. Please add a function to select by UV islands borders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also from the perspective of years back, it took me literal years to understand that UV mapping in cinema is supposed to work by making cut selections across the mesh and then pressing the Unwrap button. It is easy but nothing hints you on it. Its not an button, its not an action, its a workflow that is never implied or mentioned. It is so simple but I just understood that like 6 months ago after 10 years of Cinema usage. Maybe that me but maybe that is also part of why it has a bad reputation. The UV layout feels very cramped at first glance. The new center bar is good but the rest is overflowing. Having UV settings hidden in view settings is also something I would have never found if not seeing the video. Just add a button to the new UV palette for convenience leading to this. The packers could work better, this will still be worth to export and repack in some other tool I would say. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Plugins Many Plugins no longer working is a bummer but thats out of hands I understand This can however be a very harsh blow to an already dwindling plugin community (more towards that below) Remesher We tried the new Remesher today and I have to say that this is absolutely excellent. I tried a popular plugin mentioned in the thread before but the C4D remesher is definitely better and just works as you expect. Very clean and professional. Delta Mush Delta mush working on varied Deformers just like that was a positive surprise. Ill probably use it to add some quality to damaged objects that need deformation. Deformer Polish The new handles are great to see, please also add it to the Array modifier, it can be extremely disorienting. Dragging Handles for Spline objects would also be very needed. I need unending spline rectangles for rounded rectangle models with is just a basic primitive shape that should exist imo. Also please for a nice parametric workflow you aim for, allow us to Disable and enable Top and Bottom caps of cylinders individually, there are unending screws which have unnecessary hidden caps that need to be manually converted and optimized just to get rid of one bottom cap, otherwise it could just stay primitive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscription / MyMaxon As a company owner I am very pleased with the new MAXON service. At first I hated the idea of online login and the google login bugged out. But now I really love the way the Seats are handled, this is the absolute best I've seen. For Photoshop I had to create a dozen Adobe accounts. Autodesk Urgh. Forgot to log out? No problem. Its just a click. I can just go home, kick my work PC out, and keep working. You see all your licenses and who uses them on startup. Give the environment artist from the other team a license to just get some 30m volume builder action, kick the other guy out who is on a break and free him up a seat. Just want to show some other guy some very basics so he may learn C4D down the road, just get a free seat for 10minutes. Just log in with one single account and it all works. That's just the greatest service and the best handling of seats and licenses I've seen and that must really be highlighted. Price, Plugins & Community The 60 Euro per month are not cheap but as company thats not a big deal. In the end the efficient usage of seats is also a value proposition going into the price of the subscription. Id say with 5 seats I would gain more the value of 6.5-7 as a company. However, outside of company usage, I really have to say that 60 a month would not feel great if they came out of my pockets. But much more importantly, I strongly feel that the high barrier of entry (its not 100 for 1 month, its the commitment towards continuous payment of these 60 you have to set yourself to) is really limiting the reach of the software. C4D right now is in a bubble and mostly used in one specific field. Things which are the bread and butter of other 3D softwares, baking highpolies down for high quality 3D assets, texturing with proper unique UVs and painting based on baked maps in Substance painter or such, that is all basically nonexistant in Cinema circles which is just mind boggling as this is the core to industry standard 3d assets of any kind. There is a huge untapped crowd of the most essential 3D modellers / asset producers (Hard surface, environment art, character art). If you go to a 3D modeling community like polycount, nobody uses Cinema. Id estimate 3%. MAXON really needs to be careful with gating the community, give means for hobbyists and solo developers to be happy with the purchase and enter the ecosystem, and start reaching new grounds especially with Realtime and Games. There needs to be an affordable indie license with acceptable limits that make you really want to get the full version but not require it entirely. Remember where your users come from in the end, Teenagers like me who started using it with a crack or at school and then work on minimum cash then own a company later or do freelance. If you don't offer Teenagers, Students, 2 man indie developers, movie makers, hobbyists, freelancers on low money, or living in east europe / asia - a way into the ecosystem the future users will logically die out. Plugin development is what is driving many of these other softwares as well. Blender lives based on plugins and game engines make most of their money from plugin stores. The plugin community is dying and S23 could be the killing blow with C++ recompile and Python 3 breaking many things. Plugin devs also always need the latest versions to fix their plugins. Be the first and implement a plugin & script store on your own website. Give creators the reach, more power to make money, and you take a modest share (+- 1/7th) knowing this is overwhelmingly to your benefit either way (and you want to not make people think its worth setting up their own site to cirvumvent a harsh 30% cut or so) - and give out a piece of the revshare back as discount on C4D versions so plugin makers can cheaply get the new versions to update their plugins and also buy more new versions. Cryengine made the big mistake of not keeping up with asset stores when they could and have been entirely crippled and left behind. Gamedev lives by plugin stores just like Blender. Unity makes way more money with the Asset store than with their actual engine licenses for sure. Many plugins for varied softwares are or were system sellers at varied points. This is low hanging fruit. Start with a contest, give the best creators a bonus, incentives, promotion. Be smart about this, don't miss the window. Outlook A couple years back I would have said I bet on the wrong horse but imo MAXON does make slower advancements in the weak areas but if they do things they are usually very methodical / specific in one area and well executed and on a deeper technical level that you would unlikely see implemented by other 3D apps (which do seem to often scramble together random but cool features). In gamedev I see that a strong foundation is extremely valuable and C4D is the only software I used from the big ones (aside of Houdini, maybe modo?) that feels like its not hacked together and it will get harder and harder for these others to not stagnate. While I don't know, I have a strong feeling C4D was set up in a much more modern component way back in the beginning days compared to the competition, (the UI components hint towards it) to mostly strong contrast, and seeing things such fields implemented throughout the project is something that would just never happen without huge work effort in other patchwork environments. Fields, Volume Builder, the Modeling Core Rework, Neutron are very big elements that do show a strong vision and hint towards a extendable and healthy codebase and I am more and more happy to use C4D each iteration and it feels like the critical weaknesses are clearly diminishing, while a lot of strong advantages have opened in the last years that clearly overshadow certain issues (even if large roadblocks), at least for my usage cases. It has shifted from the constant feeling of "Ah damn, in 3DS you could have done this" towards more "Hey look what convenient or crazy stuff I can setup here" so I am very positive of the future of the tool, but I can't say the same for the community and userbase which in the end does drive everything, that depends on management not engineering.

Hi folks :) Here are some important news from us. From this point onward, all trainings from C4DCafe, both existing and future ones are free. Yes, you read that right! Given that we are now fully committed to make Cafe even greater place and universal Cinema user hub, we felt that this is necessary step. Free access to knowledge will have positive effect on the community and whole C4D eco system. All training content is being uploaded to our youtube channel as this post is made. Here is a list of trainings that will be available: 1. Introduction to R18 and modelling (currently on youtube already) 2. Introduction to R19 Fracturing 3. Xpresso volume 1 and volume 2 4. Introduction to R20 MoGraph fields 5. Introduction to R20 Nodes We would like to thank all our former customers and hopefully they won't resent this move, because, after all, this benefits them too for future content we make :) We expect to finish with upload in a week since shear amount of videos will take long time. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_MRjD4IdPtvYLo2dLC-POw Additionally, we also started providing very valuable scene file repositories like this: https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/91711-c4d-cafe-lost-and-new-filesfree-to-use/ https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/104415-node-based-materials-repository/ https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/104962-hrvojes-free-file-pit/ Last but certainly not the least, is our new community based project https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/105210-c4d-cafe-steam-punk-project/ We hope that with these moves Cafe will grow to be even better, help you even more to promote your work and skills, assist you in finding gigs or full time positions, or simply be a happy place for you to hang out. As a part of the staff here I try to help as much as possible and I can see incredible effort from many members to share their time and energy to help out others, which is truly fantastic :) Cafe has grown so much that we have members from all kinds. From students, hobby users, 2d artists, VFX guys, hardcore coders, to talent scouts, managers, CEO's of large companies and various other industry professionals. Have fun and for being a member!

Dear members In December, we are planning to remove ads permanently. We all know and understand how annoying they are but they helped us run the forums : ) Now we are in position to remove them for registered members and improve browing experience. This is made possible by contribution from a member which wants to remain anonymous and we wanted to say thank you to this person publicly

*Shakes 8 ball "Acquired by Adobe in 2025" *shakes 8 ball some more The year is 2030. Unreal engine continues to grow and becomes the defacto render engine for most 3D work due to the balance of realism and render speed. c4d is still going fine and profitable, but blender has become the number 1 app due to the fact that it has been 7 years and the c4d student licences still don't work, thus there havent really been many new users. Octane 2029.2 still crashes every 3 hours, if you ask for tech support they will still blame your psu and gpu drivers. c4d 2030 still has no particle system, 90% of all new c4d features are now provided by Insydium which now has a higher monthly cost than c4d itself. 2035. C4D is now available as a plugin for the Insydium Suite. 2037, Adobe adds a new feature to Photoshop that people actually asked for 2039, Yīngyǔ xiànzài bèi jìnzhǐ, yīnwèi wǒmen de zhōngguó bàzhǔ rènwéi tā wéibèile rénmín de yìyuàn. Xí huángdì wànsuì

A chain 🙂 12_Chain(MG+CA+XP).c4d

Here's a fun example for what you can do with Scene Nodes: You can implement even a game! I added comments to the node graph, I hope that helps if you are interested in the example. Here's the C4D file, it requires 2023.1: tetris.c4d tetris.mp4 To play the game, you have to press the usual play button in Cinema, and then either use the arrows for the Move/Rotate/Drop user data of the Keyboard Handler to control the game or install these Python scripts and assign shortcuts to them with the script manager. tetris_scripts.zip For a new round you have to reload the scene.

I'm moving my office. Look what I found. Old hardware and software. Memories that are now going away to make room for new things 😉

You don't need a ceo to have a community, you just need people with a passion for something. The original 3 founders pretty much never posted or made themselves known, and yet places like postforum, cgtalk, c4dcafe and the german c4dtreff had nice communities there; people make communities, not ceos. The guy in charge was inconsequential. Now that Dave is here what has changed? You get a post once or twice a month and all it tends to contain is some tone deaf defence of a new shitty policy. Our studio has subbed. We didn't want to, saw no benefit and actively dislike them. But the writing was on the wall for several years watching anyone on a perpetual licence get screwed in every way imaginable, so we bought subscriptions due to having no other viable choice. Enjoying your MSA price? fuck you. Enjoying the cinversity plugins and tutorials? fuck you. Enjoying having the latest version? fuck you. Want a warning about R25 being the last perpetual so you can make an informed financial decision? Fuck you.

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.

Just catching up with Core4D / C4D Cafe as I haven't visited in a while. Myself and Crew Reynolds started C4D cafe. We were both trueSpace users and both into animating. We could see that truespace's days were numbered so moved over to Cinema 4D. In fact it was about 10 years that we then later me on my own ran the cafe before I sold it and moved on. I'm not actually doing any 3D these days and only have Blender installed on my computer and that's just to view a couple of model files. People may recall that I was modelling Lego motorcycles in 3D. That's developed to actually modelling them for real. I currently have about 55 Lego Technic motorcycles and now design my own. I exhibit them at Lego shows here in New Zealand. Getting back to the topic. I would be fine paying a small contribution to keep this place going. I know I had to dig into my own wallet a few times to pay the bills. Running and maintaining a forum on its own server isn't cheap. Cheers Nigel / 3DKiwi

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 already expressed my great enthusiasm for the next release (based on Mat's insight here). Nonetheless, I hope for some specifics 😄 Best Redshift Integration of all DCCs It's the same roof, so C4D should have a premium RS integretion. Materials in the viewport. New node system with all functionality. Material previews rendering with IPR. OCIO-aware Picture Manager. A one-click "Render beauty + AOVs and export everything to After Effects and rebuild there automatically". Add RS Materials to the Content-Library-Assets. Make RS the standard renderer. Remove the UI deadspace in the IPR. Interactive help like in C4D. Redshift RT is still very early und very unstable, but it should become C4D's viewport, some day. Stability This is aimed at C4D, Redshift and mainly nVidia. A "wrong" nVdidia-Driver-Version can cause troubles without end. How to know the best driver for your config? Forum exchange, try and error. Luckily, there are some really stable driver+software-combinations everytime I had to jump these hoops, but the journey is *SO* painful. Bugs This was the only new feature of R25 😄 Come on now, really Maxon, up your QA-game! Also, there should be *much* longer bugfixing-support for owners of a perpetual license. Release cycle Honestly, I'd rather have only 1 big update per year. Less hassle updating stuff, finding working drivers etc. Maybe more time for QA on your side? So far, I can't see any benefit of the biannual release cycle, only that it apparantly forced you to do the fubar R25-release, needlessly so. Performance This is a broad field. I don't want to dive into details here, I want to express a broad wish. Currently, we are confined to rather small/medium scenes. 2 Characters, a landscape tile, some decoration and boom, you're already operating at the edge of C4D's performance envelope. Very quickly, work becomes about managing ressources, not making artistic decisions. And trying to hide the seams of the performance envelope all the time 😕 I wish we had some kind of streaming engine for geo. A unified simulation system. A unified cache system. A clear feedback system, that shows me what is computationally expensive and what isn't. I don't know, if the "core rewrite" adresses any of that, I just want to feel some realtime-magic in C4D. zBrush It has by far the best scultping "feel" of any app I tried. It's a mindblowingly good app, as demonstrated again and again by zBrush-artists. But, for the love of all UX/UI saints, zBrush sorely needs a complete UX/UI overhaul. That's one of Maxons strengths. zBrush-Artists defend the current UI, but Im quite sure that is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe offer an "Easy Mode" alternative, here. A very strong "GoZ"-implementation is also obligatory here. My last point is not software related, but regarding communication. Once, an attempt has been made by Maxon towards more transparency. Anyone remember the three-and-a-half blog posts? 😄 Ok, now do that again, but thoroughly. Just do it like the Redshift team. Have a nice, active forum with Premium sections for paying customers. Talk with us about problems. Listen to our wishes, in a way that we know we are heard. Share at least a broad roadmap for the next releases. This is by far the biggest problem with Maxon and C4D. You guys are almost completely opaque, and that's a severely outdated mindset for a company that relies on the thriving and the goodwill of a community of communicators. And communicators we are, visual, textual, social. Talk to us, please! 🙂

R20: Gave us node materials, fields, volumes and the CAD importer, 9/10 R21: Cheap versions removed, Subscriptions added. new extrude bevels and Windows 4k support, 3/10 R22: Lots of smaller bits and general improvements, 5/10 R23: Nodes, but nobody uses them, USD, but nobody uses it, Magic bullet but poorly implemented, 2/10 R24: Online content browser, placement tools, currently useless scene browser, 3/10 R25: So bad, they didn't even give it it's own press release, 1/10 R26: X implemented, X overhauled, X overhauled, dozens of new X tools, X also implemented, 9/10 You can see why so many perpetual owners all stopped at R20. Everything since then has been a bit of an anti climax. Useful bits, but nothing that's going to change your life. R20 was nice for its 4k support, but the job is only 80% finished, too many elements are still low res. You can add bonus points if you happen to need USD support or GLtf export, but they're not complete enough implementations imho. "We don't talk about R25, no no no..."

Yep, and they have every right to continue to do so if they feel Maxon continues to release weak updates ! All the opinions from all the people are valid (the ones doing hate for hate's sake tend to be transparently obvious, so exclude themselves !) and should be heard by the community and by Maxon ! Leaving any software is a big wrench if you use it every day, or have done for some time, so I think it's understandable that long term users drop a rant or 2, and a bit unfair to label them cowardly for not jumping ship earlier... I imagine most of these people love Cinema like I do, and really don't want to go, but voice their opinions inthe hope they may be heard if they say it enough, and who can blame them for that ?! CBR

With the growing of a software the dependencies inside grow, too. And normally not linear but square. That slows down development. With the growing of the company the regulations grow and the amount of people that have some say in the development, too. in a small company the CTO and the developer decide. In a big one there are also project owner, project manager, UI depatement, quality control, and more involved. And this also lets the development explode. I have the impression, that maxon tries to tackle at least the technical side with the new core, a system, that should be (in my understanding) much more flexible than the old one. I really would be fine with this even though the development of new features is slow right now. But I don't like the business attitude of the new maxon. they are feature wise just not in the position to force their customers. They instead should try to produce good will. They also should give it away for free to anybody who wants to learn without the need to be student and the size of the university and all this. That is the only way to stay relevant. The situation has changed in the last two years. I see huge industry companies that switch to blender and they expect their agencies to build up blender know how. Autodesk tries to fight this development with indi licenses. If this is the right way I don't know, but the way maxon is acting in a almost arrogant way definitely not the solution. Adobe can do this because of its size and the market at the time they switched to subscription, but they also are getting a problem with Affinity and Black magic. The argument that subscription is needed because of the maturenes of the product..... well that might be true for a photoshop, but as long as we can not generate weather, clouds, fog, rain, buildings, streets, and so on parametrically with some sliders there is so much room for development (look at Unreal) the possibilities for development are still endless. So that can't be a reason for a 3D App. And the Game engines are also an other challenge. My impression is, that the commercial 3D software packages like C4D, Maya, 3DS really have a small time window to adept to not get chrushed between blender and the game engines. I as a 3D Artist in C4D already feel the changes. In the 20 Years I am doing this the changes where never so obvious fast and radical. I really hope, that maxon finds a adequate solution. I have the impression, that it needs bold and creative solutions now. subscription on its own will not save them in the long run.

just finished my latest short, rendered with redshift. i hope you'll enjoy :)

Hello, I am currently interested in creating roads and intersections, and I am making a new plugin to manage that. I realized that there were a good number of possibilities for intersections, and I would like to make the most flexible plugin so that it could adapt to any situation Here is my progress and the current features, I post on a WIP because I think there will be lots of special cases that I haven't thought of and I would like to be able to manage them. First, the road are defined by splines : The plugin generate textured road polygons from the splines. It also add a line on both sides of the road : If two points of the splines are close enough, they will be magnetized : If two or more spline points are close enough, the splines are unite into one road of two lanes, the material of the line changes : If the direction of the splines are different, the material of the line changes (defined by the user) : We can add many lines in any directions : A twist in the spline affect the road path : We can disconnect and reconnect the lanes by moving the spline points : The line material will try to match as possible (still work to do here) : A preview oif the setup and wireframe in C4D : The road is a object with two UVW tags and some polygons selections to dissociate the lines : The next step will be the intersections. For the moment I develop it as a C4D plugin but I think it will also be an online tool with some exports options. I'm based on European roads for the moment, but I would like to look at signs from other countries to see the differences. Looking up for your comments and suggestions !

If we added everything from the start you would have to wait months more. We delivered what we think is a great release that is very usable. Additional features will come.

What's new in Cinema 4D 2024 New in 2024.0 Redshift is now the default renderer in Cinema 4D. Innovations in the simulation systems Another component of the simulation system: the new Rigid Bodies. Many characteristic spline rope parameters such as Strechiness, Friction, etc. can be defined by a Vertex Map at the point level. A specific graphics card can be selected for simulation calculation. Innovations in the Pyro simulation A Pyro emitter can now also use particles, points and MoGraph matrices. The emission volume of Pyro can be automatically faded out at the edges. Low-resolution Pyro caches can be subsequently subdivided more finely and distorted with noises. Any simulation image of the Pyro simulation can be defined as an initial state. The initial state of a Pyro simulation can be controlled individually for each property via volume objects. The colors of a Pyro simulation can be assigned with temporal falloff and smoothing. The fuel of a Pyro simulation can be assigned buoyancy. Pyro turbulence is smoothed by default. The calculation of Pyro velocities can be limited to areas of simulated density and temperature to save memory. Multiple Pyro caches can be managed simultaneously in one simulation and easily switched. Modeling innovations The Projection Deformer projects geometry onto any object. Selections can be repeated at will with the Pattern Selection. Subdivision Surfaces have a new mode Linear Pre-Subdivision. Brush/Magnet have a new mode Surface Smear. Point and polygon numbers can now be displayed in the viewports. Innovations with vertex normals The Normal Editing Manager can be used to edit vertex normals. The Vertex Map manager VAMP can now also transfer Vertex Colors and surface normals. The Phong tag can take polygon areas and angles into account during automatic vertex normal generation. Pose Morph can now morph vertex normal directions. New features for Nodes and Assets Note Nodes allow comments to be written directly into the Node Editor and to be customized in size and color. Scaffolds allow you to highlight sections of a Node setup with a colored background. The Break Spline Modifier Asset provides several methods for dividing splines into individual segments. The Electric Spline Modifier Asset can be used to calculate flashes and spline bundles. The Connect Node combines any number of single geometries and geometry arrays into a single geometry. The Generate Tangent Node can calculate a pair of tangents for controlling spline curves. The Create normals if missing Node automatically calculates Phong normals for a mesh geometry. The Modulo Selection Node provides new options for inverting and saving the selection. There are also new options for saving selections at these Selection Nodes: Select Facing, Select Bounding Box, Noise Selection, Non-Manifold and Random Selection. The Not Node inverts Boolean signals. The Clone onto Points Node duplicates any geometry onto the points of another geometry. The Explode Mesh Islands Node splits polygon islands and outputs them as separate mesh geometry. The Explode Spline Segments Node splits all spline segments and outputs them as separate spline geometry. The Transform Geometry Node is the further development of the Transform Element Node and has been accelerated in processing by orders of magnitude. Inputs and outputs to Assets and groups can be integrated directly into the setup as Nodes. Miscellaneous innovations The Align to Spline tag has some new options and can overshoot tangentially at the spline start/end. New VAMP calculation method can take UV islands into account. When Cinema 4D is started for the first time, the language of the operating system is now used.

What's up guys, back with another 2d to 3d translation.

Let's start with some MoGraph. Simple airplane route prototype with movable start and end location. Intermediate point is adjustable too. 01_Airplane_route(MG+constrains).c4d

I'm a member of the forum from the "3dKiwi" era. After the switch of captains there was as bit of upgrading the forum (which took a bit to be honest). I have nothing against paying for the membership, but ARE YOU SERIOUS guys? People are searching for a solution to a problem -> they find a link in google -> you have to pay to find out if this will solve your problem. NOPE. I would never do that. I'm paying my sub just because this was and still is the best C4D forum and I like helping other guys when I can. READING THE ANSWERS SHOULD BE FREE!.

Hi everyone, I'd like to announce the release of a new plugin for Cinema 4D: Asset Juggler Asset Juggler assists with the creation of series of unique combinations of arbitrary assets. Be it in game development, in order to quickly show different options and variations of a project to a customer or, as requested several times in this community, for series of unique images... We put quite a bit of effort into the design of Asset Juggler and its workflow, to provide as much flexibility as possible, while at the same time keeping the time to results as short as possible. The unlicensed version works as demo, so all functionality can be tested prior to investing money. Only limitation, series will have a maximum of five combinations. Special thanks to forum member Tural Mammadzada for helping with workflow ideas and testing. Cheers, Andreas

regarding the rather harsh comments on the simulation stuff: this is the first iteration, sure it isn't there yet with marvellous, maybe it never will, since marvellous is a specialized tool for just that task, so it's not really fair to compare. i remember a lot of you asked for a unified simulation system, now you see the first bits of it and then it's all shit because it isn't perfect yet? to me it's a promising start, still a lot to improve, but overall it's much better than what we had before and the underlying tech allows it to become as good as vellum. (in theory 😉 ) and yeah, judging something by hitting play with default settings is like opening up a new file and hitting render to judge a render engine. solid approach.

Well I really don't know where to start with that appalling list of ignorant and uninformed assertion ! Fortunately it will be obvious to most that this is the case without me adding anything at all ! But just taking the comments about the modelling tools as an example, where is 'Set Flow', 'Poke Polys', and 'Smooth Edge' (not Round Edge, which is different) in HB modelling bundle ? Does HB's Points to circle script have all the additional options we have in Fit to Circle ? No, it doesn't. Does it matter, even to the smallest degree, that some of these tools might have been inspired by the fantastic tools in HBMB that all serious modellers have been loving for years ? No it doesn't. We have at least 10 new modelling tools in Cinema, and they are, in the vast majority, massively useful. I have seen INCREDIBLE cloth simulations, some comparable to MD - it is only a matter of time before these surface and make your comments about it even more self-evidently untrue. ZRM in Cinema - BRILLIANT - we now have the best quad remesher in the world integrated in Cinema. There's no counter - argument - it's there and it works, and I would bet 99% of Cinema users are incredibly grateful it is ! And I am not going to waste my time addressing the other rubbish in that post. CBR

I have made my 4D Paint Bundle free. https://www.plugins4d.com/4DPaint The newest version is available for R20-R25. But the is also a link to an older R17-R19 version on the page as well. Have fun! Kent

I used C4D to create a fan film based off the game 'Subnautica' - Super fun project that took about 2 years to finish. Rendered with Arnold/Redshift

Off topic but I would like to say I am really enjoying the conversations happening in this thread. I just wish we could all keep chatting like this usually, instead of just once every 6 months when a new version of C4D releases.

Here is some quasi unfolding with MoGraph 🙂 175_Poly_Folding(MG+XP).c4d

This uses the Boolean Intersection technique ive described on youtube but combined with Volume builder twice to finally create 1 click edge damage concrete the proper way. This of course also works for other materials. It took me a long time to get on the right track to get the concrete technique right to not make it look wrong. The key is to try keep sharp edges and a flat surface mostly, but options for holes and grunge are there. How to use: Just drag any mesh there, thats it. Make sure the mesh is closed, otherwise you will need to go to the volume builder and enable the "optimize and close holes" which makes it much slower however. Tips: You can tweak the top volume builder Dilate and erode settings for surface details or sharper softer outcome. You can tweak the bottom volume builder to change the edge damage. Also try increase Iterations in dilates and erodes. Total calculation time is a couple seconds only on my 12900k but the boolean is the bottleneck and can get laggy, however I do a mesher reduction and polygon reduction to optimize. I think this could be further optimized by using the boolean from the Nodes system which I strongly assume is multi threaded (Edit: there is no geo boolean in nodes yet?), but I haven't gotten to that yet. If that were the case, you could feed this much more powerful things. You can also try high quality boolean. You can also drag multiple meshes at a time. Test settings on a small mesh for performance always. The polygon reduction on top does a good job in making game ready meshes as well, also applies vertex colors for AO and edges ready for shaders to be used within engines such as unity or unreal. Recommended process is: - Drag in, wait - Create instance - Collapse instance - Drag instance into poly reduction (tweak if wanted) - Create instance of poly reduction - Collapse poly reduction - Export mesh with the vertex colors / Use in production But do as you like, the mesh is there. Edit: I should also upload this to downloads Download below. Shrikes Damage Generator.c4d

Poly is a new web-based AI-driven texture generator. It is a text-to-image AI that will produce a material based on a prompt and an available Style preset. It needs about 30 seconds to generate a texture. The result will be previewed on a 3D sphere object along with the corresponding Ambient Occlusion, Albedo, Normal, Roughness and Height maps ! You can use Poly to upload and edit your own images and make them Seamless, Upscale them or even produce Normal, Height, Roughness and AO maps using AI. The app is free to use but the subscription plan lets you choose more styles and unbounds you from the maximum 2K resolution to up to 8K.

I must say... Maxon really managed to turn around the boat. This year's updates were really amazing, and I refound my C4D-joy in learning all the well implemented new tools. I think I'm back to full fanboy mode. A big "Thank you" to all the devs making that happen! 😍

It's kind of sucky that they didn't use the most recent version to announce the end of perpetuals so people knew from then on this would be the last, rather than just all of a sudden not have perpetuals, say basically nothing about it, and have the previous year's be the last perpetual. It's a bit of a sleazy way of doing it imo.

I really hope the unreadable icons are being fixed, it really pains to work in the new style but not on all These white line icons are really hard on the eyes and honestly I resorted back to S23 even though I have a 25 subscription And Im a 20/20 eyesight guy on a 27" 1440p The old icons were always really outstanding compared to other apps, they are timeless modern and very readable. Also please, boolean needs an update. And voxel performance. Volume builder is so good, but I just need more performance or ways to optimize.

Yep, definitely. But I didn't mentioned it because of severe instability. We had a relatively big project with character animations, done in R23. The tools were great, but otherwise the project was an absolut nightmare. Constant crashes, all-day-long. And we where already animating in small parts, baking what-possible in alembic files, to get the stuff rendered. And I don't need - I don't WANT - releases every half a year (especially if they change lot's of good stuff without reason to the bad). Why should I? Give me stability upgrades all-year-long, and make a release, when it's worth it.

Why is it that Houdini, 3ds Max and Maya all have very affordable and powerful indie versions and C4d does not? When I purchased c4D studio (R17) it came with two years of MSA free. So I paid $3500 and didn’t have to pay a cent for two years. And then the MSA was $650 which as a good deal amount of money but I owned the program, it was mine. Now you can still have a perpetual license but the price isn’t even featured on the ‘Buy’ page. And for upgrades you need to contact MAXON. I feel that it’s just a matter of time before perpetual is done away with completely. Now you need to rent the program, stop paying for the price to rent and you can’t use the program anymore. Now instead of a $650 a year MSA you need to pay $719 a year to rent it. And if you want a modern render engine like every other program comes with (redshift) you need to pay $983.00 a year or pay $719 and rent either Octane, Arnold or something else for $400 - $800 more a year. The last 4 out of 5 smaller vfx and animation studios I have worked with in Los Angeles have artists using Blender for one task of another. Nobody was using C4d, some had in the past but switched. These are generally smaller indie studios and not tied to huge pipelines so they have the freedom to choose what makes sense to them financially, ethically and personally. The majority of the younger artists coming in where raised on blender and Youtube. Or learned Maya in school. Why should they use c4d except if they want to get a job that requires it? Usually at a high end motion graphics studio? While I love c4d, as a freelance artist and hobbyist who wants to continue to play and experiment with a tool for the rest of my life it is absurd to me when I think I will be paying to rent something forever. With Blender the tool is completely mine, though there are a ton of things that make no sense to me in the program such as no logical way of copying a modifier from one object to another without remembering a weird shortcut. Bizarre unintuitive spline tools and the lack of a decent picture viewer. There are tutorials on how to make anything I can dream of whether it is a weekend spent making a spaceship, castle,dinosaur, dragon or modeling characters. There are hundreds of free tutorials for that. Or a subscription to CG Cookie or something. For c4d there isn’t a single tutorial for either of the mentioned things even after decades of the program being around. Maybe a simple gummy bear or dancing hotdog. If I want to make a hundred cubes undulate, well there are a million tutorials for that. Removing Cineversity for anyone not on the subscription was another slap in the face. Do I switch to Blender and Houdini indie and donate a couple hundred bucks a year to blender cloud with millions of great tutorials, assets, movies and tools and helping the program grow? Keep my perpetual R21 and buy a decent render engine and UV tool and be left behind in a few years? Or pay $719 - $1000 a year for a c4d subscription for the rest of my life. Offering an indie license or keeping perpetual with decent yearly upgrade prices would be a decent thing for MAXON to do as well as attract new users.

i've been recently experimenting a lot with cartoon sfx setups like water, fire, smoke, explosions and so on purely with mograph, fields and volumes. no particles, no plugins. most fun i've had in a while, also i'm quite impressed what can be done with just the on-board tools. just wanted so share those here too, since people seem to like them a lot on twitter, hope you'll like them as well. https://twitter.com/everfreshdesign