BoganTW

I was talking about Motionpunk's thread on Twitter, but fair enough. Has C4D / Octane been crashing for you much?

That's probably a fair guess. The luminaries in the thread who were all grumbling somewhat are all heavy Redshift users too.

Might be worth a longer discussion but I'll wait a few weeks till when next months release hits. Maxon are probably now trying to balance investment on new features with investment into doubling back and fixing bugs or polishing up what they've already added. I used to see and hear that they were doing a decent job of this, but long threads on Reddit and twitter with responses from some major C4D users like EJ or Chad Ashley) all basically argue the balance is a bit off at the moment and C4D is in a much more crashy state than usual. The question is whether the subscription cadence is diverting the devs from keeping the overall application tidy. No time to go back and fix that longstanding bug or make the app less crashy, we need a few new features in 8 weeks time. I'm not thrilled but also not bothered by the price difference between C4D and the other apps. It is what it is and anyone can decide if they want to pay it to sit in the room with a functional C4D license for a year or not. I want to give the new particles system a try and check out the training that Noseman and Chris Schmidt have done for it, so it will be worth a play for me. But again I'm not liking the reports from longtime C4D users that app stability has become a lot worse as of late. That's a pet hate of mine and has me holding off for a little bit, while not jumping ship altogether. I've looked at Houdini and find it interesting and have looked at Blender and find it full of minor annoyances that bug me in comparison to how C4D does stuff. But Maxon need to sort out whatever is making C4D crash more than usual. Chad Ashley agreed that it's become worse, Maxon need to make it better. And then second on the list after that is the long long list of features that C4D has needed for years and which the core rewrite was meant to open the door to. I'm happy to wait and see what this coming release and year brings but like probably many others I'm not going to wait forever.

I was going to post a big thread about MotionPunk's long Twitter thread on C4D crashiness a few days ago, but I won't. I'm hoping next month's C4D 2025 is an improvement. The new core has had a year to settle in and posts on Reddit and Twitter about how much buggier the app currently is are discouraging. I'm hoping they can smooth this out a bit before I resubscribe. Despite the expense I think C4D and Redshift are a good combo, but having C4D build a rep as one of the more crash-happy DCC's as of late is not where I thought that core rewrite was headed.

I'm optimistic with 2025 but I don't think any of Maxon's updates now or in the future will match how big and chunky the Houdini ones are. Check the Houdini forums and there are threads bemoaning how strange and clunky the Houdini UI is, when will they fix it, it's been like this for years, etc Check the Youtube page for the Maya 2025 announcement whenever it was, and there are comments like, such a weak update, did you guys start development two weeks before release? I don't want to think about the assorted unhappy topics and dramas on the Blender forums. What a world.

Maxon One doesn't strike me as the greatest deal. You get tons of stuff with it, but I won't be using most of it, and I only want to sub to C4D and Redshift. Making capsules a Maxon One exclusive could in some quarters be described as a 'dick move', but I would never bring that phrase into the conversation. EDIT - I wrote the below in responser to the final comment on the first page of this thread (the guy who seemed downbeat about development), and then after posting it I see the past half day's posts have all finally appeared on my screen. Maybe they didn't load before. So feel free to read the outstanding writing below but it probably has bugger all to do with the last five or six posts here, sorry. ........................................... I get where you're coming from generally, but in this instance Maxon just finished (mostly, sort of) doing all that core rewrite stuff. (I understand there's more happening but they only just seemed to get there last year). They evidently had to sort out that groundwork. It just took more than several years longer than anyone here probably thought or hoped it would. Now that they've made it most of the way there, cooler stuff is starting to appear in Cinema 4D, hence redoing soft and rigid dynamics, pyro, the new particles and probably something else I've forgotten. The laundry list of stuff Maxon really needs to tackle and fix is very long obviously but it now feels like they've actually started doing this, whereas a handful of years back you really just wondered. But we'll know in the coming weeks with C4D 2025 how things are looking (I guess sometime next month). A chunky release would be very encouraging, a meh release will be a bit of a downer. I don't feel like placing any bets.

Shrug. Read the thread at the After Effects forum about how users are feeling about things there. https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/after-effects-24-5-is-now-available-for-download/td-p/14691349 The price of AE isn't bad but it really could use a core rewrite like the one Maxon has just wrapped up. I doubt it will ever get one. I can kinda sorta see where the money is going with C4D, even if the core rewrite they just did seemed to cripple development for something like a decade or more. Sh*t happens. If Adobe increased the price by a bit but also demonstrated a desire and ability to modernise their code, stop AE from being so buggy, speed the performance up etc, I'd willingly pay it.

The Reddit thread on this topic is pretty funny. It's like this one but with even more swearing and mentions of Blender. Not thrilled to see prices going up here but not overly bothered either, prices of everything are going up including stuff I buy at the shop down the street. I'm guessing things are no different in Bad Homburg, Germany, and if Maxon are hiring people for positions rather than firing them they're going to need money at some point. I really don't like the idea of long awaited stuff like fluids becoming a Maxon One exclusive. They wouldn't do this, would they? Duh duh duhhhhhh.....

Useful updates, thanks.

Dave, this quote is too great for it to disappear down the internet drain with the rest of the flotsam here, please copy and paste it into some marketing pronto.

Dave announced yesterday a select few could soon be given access to the new beta of 'Touchstone', which I guess is a placeholder name. No idea what it is, but it'd be funny if the long delayed Bodypaint rewrite turns out to be a brand new app, but it's only included in Maxon One, not C4D. Because the app he's teasing will probably be something new that they add to Maxon One.

FFS, read what I said. I said that I didn't see the need for Maxon to focus on developing one themselves, and it's not high on the list of stuff Maxon needs to tidy up in C4D, as there are so many areas of C4D that have been left in the cupboard for years. We all know what they are. So I don't think Maxon needs to develop their own real-time renderer like Unreal has. There's a perfectly good real-time renderer available to everyone which I gather is getting a lot of traction and use in the film industry. It's called Unreal Engine and Maxon have a whole page up mentioning how they're continuing to improve C4D's integration with it. https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d/features/unreal-integration I think I'd rather Maxon keep developing C4D, and also keep improving their integration with Unreal Engine, rather than spending their development resources trying to create a separate real-time renderer that competes with Unreal Engine. If I get really keen on real time rendering I'll probably (a) make sure I have a rig that can handle Unreal Engine, and then (b) spend time learning Unreal Engine, plus whatever integration methods work best with C4D (after I resub) rather than waiting around hoping that Maxon will develop their own real-time renderer designed to compete with whatever the Unreal Engine development budget has come up with. Unreal Engine is great and it will keep getting greater in 2025, 2026 and 2027. Meanwhile C4D's character rigging could use improvement, C4D can't do fluids yet, and C4D's Bodypaint is older than some of the women I see in Melbourne pushing around kids in baby strollers. So I think Maxon should probably sort a few of those issues out first before they try to develop a brand new real-time renderer designed to compete with Unreal Engine's place in the film production market.

Yeah. No offence but Tbh a real-time renderer is the last thing I'm personally thinking of when I consider the fat list of stuff Maxon need to fix, tidy up, add or redo with C4D to sort out the years of inattention certain areas of the program have suffered from. But they're clearly on the way finally.

It feels like there is still a long list of stuff C4D really needs to add and sort out but with this release I feel now that the development train is strong on track to get there. Particles must have taken a long time to develop, design, test and everything. Now that it's here they can furthe develop it and also turn their eye to the other areas that require improvement.

This is an awesome release and I'll be re-subbing after the September release comes out.

Dave's trolling powers have also levelled up. https://x.com/dmcgavra/status/1778434672134914467?s=61

Useful video.

Really cool release, with lots of goof stuff! EDIT - Holy S***, this release is even chunkier than usual. Hats off to the devs, they've done a great job with this one. RocketLasso is doing a live stream with some Maxon folk (probably Rick?) later today.

Maxon have an ask the trainer special in two days time. So we'll see everything between now and then.

From the Creative Bloq twitter (X) page, where they had linked the above story just before it was taken down.

Maxon probably said, hey guys, can you wait a bit for us to announce it, before you announce that we've announced it?

You're not wrong at all, but over the past decade or so(!) there may have been an air of 'why bother beefing this bit up more, it's all on the old core and we'll only have to re-do it again in six or seven years anyway." Now that the new core is finally (?) here, that excuse can go in the bin and they can spend more time mucking around polishing stuff. At its most dramatic, this analogy may explain why Bodypaint was left sitting on a park bench, gathering dust and slowly earning its own entry in Ripley's Believe It or Not.

There's another release due in September(ish) which is just five months away, so they'll need some other new cool features to keep everyone excited. Will be nice if they can continue to beef up the particle stuff for sure.

Maybe. Casey Hupke will also be demonstrating some particle stuff in C4D at NAB.

Probably during the NAB show just announced so I guess two weeks to go.