BoganTW

Great list Cerebra.

Cool interview and really great work.

https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d Thanks to its new core, Cinema 4D is numerous times faster than previous versions and offers unparalleled power for your most demanding scenes. We have optimized all areas of the software, making it even more responsive, while keeping the intuitive workflows that you have come to love over the years. You will especially notice incredible speed gains when playing back your complex motion graphics and simulation scenes in the editor. This is the tail end of a process that started nearly a decade ago. From 2016 - Maxon working on new core architecture for Cinema 4D https://www.cgchannel.com/2016/02/maxon-working-on-new-core-architecture-for-cinema-4d/ 'Gradual' and 'several more releases' means we finally only saw the end of the process a few months ago. I am the least qualified person on the planet to talk about it, but I gather new features from R16 / R17 onwards used tech from the new core, not the old one, but the sticking point was object handling. Maxon incrementally sorted everything out across several releases, and the long awaited big upgrade with the core handling everything important finally arrived a few months ago. There were dozens of threads here for years with people saying, 'There's a new core, why aren't things running faster?', but slow and steady wins the race, or at least means they make it to the finish line. Please don't ask them to do another core after this one.

Yeah it was derailing things a bit, sorry. The new C4D core is nice to see but holy heck did they take their sweet time getting there. The decade+ wait wasn't much fun but ideally we will finally see snazzy new features as the devs tick off the NEW CORE box on their A4 sheet of 'nice features to have' with a biro and move to whatever is next on the list. I don't think Lightwave has a new core. Every time I checked the Lightwave site and forum - and for whatever reason I would surf over and check it maybe annually the past several years - they were always going, thank Christ this new team has made an announcement, I thought the software was dead - and then several months later I'd check and someone would go, well, looks like those guys have quit, at least my old copy still works, etc etc. So I'm assuming no one was doing any core rewriting while the dev teams and owners were running in and out of doors like the GIF of Grandpa Simpson entering a room, seeing Bart and Mulhouse, and then turning and leaving.

Yes there is.

Nice to see LW is coming along. I will be restarting my C4D sub later in 2024. Funnily enough, my sub stopped in March earlier this year and I thought I'd let a handful of months pass for some good new features to accrue before I jumped back in. More fool me, April to December this year weren't exactly loaded with what I had thought or hoped would be coming. I'm guessing finally putting the core rewrite front and centre took a lot of dedicated work. R16 - the one they announced in a blog post had a 'new core' for everyone to be happy about, was something like 9 years ago, so there you go. Not slamming Maxon and happy to give it another go but now that the core has arrived I'm hoping 2024 sees more of interest than 2023 did. I hope Lighrwave continues to pick up users and keeps adding decent features. Probably not for me but glad it's still around.

Yeah, by the look of it they’ve added a paragraph of text about C4D 2024, then every link and video under it is for the older S26. Shrug,

Probably not an urgent issue as most people will be watching YouTube clips to learn about C4D 2024, but Maxon should take Scene Manager off their website if they’re dumped it. https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d/features/scene-manager

Every company likes money. i definitely agree though, two weeks is a lot of time academically to lose. Anything the student or lecturer planned for that two weeks goes out the window, and they have to spend the rest of their time catching up, if they can. I don’t blame anyone affected for being unhappy. Hopefully Dave can get it sorted quick.

Was looking at the updates today, very useful and informative.

‘The words “undergoing maintenance” and “temporarily unavailable” and “we”re working on restoring functionality” all suggest it”s not planned as a permanent thing. Sorry to hear your students are affected though, that sucks. Can they use the demo for a week or so until Maxon sorts out whatever the problem is? (Not sure if they could but it might get them another week or so). The page you posted says “reach out to support for urgent questions” and this does seem fairly urgent so you might want to write them.

I don’t expect them to see themselves as ‘just a C4D company’ anymore since they have acquired all those new apps, and the staff that work on them, and the users that use them. So their focus will be understandably broader. Since they’re now trying to entice people to use those apps, a bundle makes sense, hence Maxon One. I don’t personally see the C4D devs focusing any less on C4D though. I feel like it went through a period where the releases and features weren’t as substantial as we would have liked. Things, generally, have now improved. So this is a good step and not a bad one. Maybe we’ll get some cool new features before the end of the year. That will cheer everyone up a bit.

Really amazing website and great job. I’m bookmarking this so I can get my head around nodes more when I re-sub.

I agree with Dave’s post just before - there have been so many threads in the past where it was noted, ‘Maxon can’t look at updating such-and-such a feature until they address the underlying core performance and object handling, this or that feature really requires the internal architecture to be sorted out before they can address those other issues’ etc. I’m probably paraphrasing badly but this was noted more than once. Some threads here and on Reddit are downbeat because they think the release is ‘just a speed increase’, but I suspect they’re missing the bigger picture. Everyone can read between the lines but I suspect the Maxon devs are happier this release is behind them rather than ahead of them. And even with a couple of less feature heavy updates here and there, generally the releases from last year on have shown a lot of promising stuff finally arriving, so I expect C4D 2024 to help this process along quite a bit. There were posts years ago noting that a Bodypaint update would likely require a big internal rewrite before they could look at it. We seem to be finally arriving at that station, so who knows.

I think they did more than that to speed things up with this one.

Someone pointed out (here or elsewhere) that since Sketch and Toon doesn’t work with Redshift, it’s in an awkward spot not working with the default renderer. I hope they do an update soon, soon for Maxon meaning in the next two years or less, hopefully not longer than that.

I think last year Maxon were adding quite a few features in the weeks and a few months right after the 2023 release, including Pyro. No guarantees obviously (it’s Maxon) but it seems a pretty good chance the same thing will happen here. Maybe the speed boost comes first, possibly some cool stuff to use it with comes after.

The Effectatron guy above is very negative in his video. This update wasn’t his cup of tea I guess.

Well done Maxon, quite a nice release, and that speed issue has been long complained about. Great to see it fixed. I think talk of past releases versus the current trend should note that as we get various updates through the year as well, the September releases aren’t as chunky. They used to stockpile every change and wait till September, now we get a few good releases each year and sometimes some sudden surprises. Not a problem for me but I’d be curious what the Maxon One exclusives for C4D now come to. I’ll be resubbing sometime in 2024.

Training team session for this week is Noseman and Chris Schmidt. I expect Chris will probably drop a Rocket Lasso overview of C4D 2024 the same day, and we'll probably get a Chris / Rick Barrett conversation sometime later. I'll be in Korea but will be keen to watch whatever they're dropping.

It's also the same artist linked each time - @joe_ihdt (aka Quasar) - so TBH I'm not sure what the mystery is. We now have two videos in this thread from Quasar of that character rig running nicely in C4D - the one Dave originally posted, as a 'before and after' example - and the one you've now posted from that same artist, who is again using that same rig, the one he used to demonstrate how nicely things are apparently running in the new version of C4D. So possibly they're both 'after' videos, with both demonstrations running on C4D 2024 rather than C4D 2023, and both benefiting from whatever benefits C4D 2024 is giving it. The Instagram video was posted in June so maybe he's had the new C4D since then. Dave McGavran's C4D peek this morning is interesting. Particles? https://twitter.com/dmcgavra/status/1700138201782891003?s=20

Looks like the core is finally coming along a bit.

You're a week off I think. Various Maxon presentations at shows and the 'exciting' Maxon Training Team presentation mentioned above are all listed for next week, not this one. It could come earlier as who knows really, but all the signs I'm seeing point to next week. Maxon did just release the new Cinebench a couple of days ago. https://www.maxon.net/en/article/maxon-introduces-cinebench-2024

I'm hoping the whole C4D 2024 cycle over the next 12 months is a chunkier one than usual.