ingvarai

But hasn't MAXON itself cancelled the MSA? ==== New MAXON Service Agreements are no longer available as of July 30, 2019. Renewals of MAXON Service Agreements will no longer be available after August 31, 2019. ==== https://www.MAXON.net/en/products/cinema-4d/new-in-release-21/faq/ As far as I understand, auto-renew isn't possible according to this. I will try to find the MSA agreement I have agreed upon. But there is something wrong here. -Ingvar

Hi, isn't MSA history by now? I got an invoice today, from the Norwegian representative for MAXON. MSA payment. When I protest, they claim that the MSA follows the calendar year, and that I still have to pay, as long as it is 2019. Is this correct? Does the MSA follow the calendar year? Isn't MSA over and out, totally? What if I don't pay? Will my Perpetual license for R21 be rendered invalid? What about you, some of you are former MSA subscribers, do you still pay for the MSA? -Ingvar

I saved the DVDs, the magazines I threw, too many of them, I regret now. Unbelievable, I had a pile that went twice from the floor to the ceiling. Accumulated from 1994 to 2005. I started with computers as a grown up man, with no Internet the first 3 years. So I was an avid magazine reader, couldn't wait for the next cover CD. This was all about programming, I first started with multimedia in 2008. -Ingvar

I would probably have been a C4D user already then. hadn't it been for the introduction price. Yes, very low, but not free. Daz3D Carrara, OTOH, came free on the cover DVD a little later, so I used Carrara until 2012, when I hit the limitations wall , and coughed up the money for the full C4D R13 Studio. I was, am and will probably always be a multimedia hobbyist, using C4D for non-profit projects. I make a living, programming. But pity that MAXON had no free C4D back then, might have saved me all the time using Carrara (which I paid for when upgrades to the free version came along). Nevertheless, at least MAXON had a cross-grade offer in 2012, which was the kick in the butt I needed to go for it. -Ingvar

I stumbled across a PC Plus Magazine Cover DVD, in my attic, and found a version of C4D CE6. Included were some C4D project files, which mostly loaded fine in my R19. The files are form 2000, the DVD from 2003. I had no idea that Cinema 4D could do these things 17 years ago. It is obvious that I have made a few shortcuts, jumping over some basic knowledge, when purchasing R13 in 2012 and then diving right into advanced features. I learnt a few things, inspecting these old files! I learnt so much, it is kinda embarrassing. -Ingvar

It is what moves the audience, that counts. When watching it, I tried to switch off my C4D and multi media knowledge totally. You can spend days, perfecting 4 seconds of animation. And your audience won't notice it, not lift an eyebrow. Instead they will appreciate and remember some silly detail you, yourself, didn't pay much attention to at all. -Ingvar

Great work! I love "The oval portrait", everything is consistent, colors, light, movements, the mood, the total setting, all together, great! -Ingvar

Ok guys, I am already up and running R19! And as usual, each and every year, I check if they have fixed my pet bug. Which I have reported several times. Not fixed this time, either. Ok, I'll wait until September 2018, in R20 they ought to have fixed it It is the camera shader bug, this year, every year, James Introduced in R14, and appearing in various ways in the next versions, R15, R16, R17, R18 and now R19. Works excellent in R13. You can test for yourself: camera-shader-bug.c4d

He he, hope this doesn't apply to the other Siggraph presentations! -Ingvar

Thanks, Cerbera. Are the Siggraph C4D presentations to be found elsewhere? -Ingvar

I want to watch some of the excellent presentations from Siggraph 2017. But I cannot play the Cineversity videos. Yes, they start, and play fine a few minutes, then they come to a halt. I have tried before noon, after noon, in the evening, even during night time, after midnight. I have tried to switch video, then on some occasions I actually can play the other video just fine, so the problem for some strange reason apply just to one video. It seems. But not for long. The video will eventually stop. I live in Norway, 6 hours ahead of New York time. My Internet connections is around 16 Mbs download speed. It is a pity it is like this! It has gone that far now, that Cineversity is not a viable source for C4D tutors for me, because of this phenomenon. The latest video I tried to watch, was Chris Schmidt's presentation on less commonly used features of C4D. Maybe this is the wrong forum, but I thought I could post this here, hoping that someone has a solution for me! I use Google Chrome. Have not tried Internet Explorer (Edge). -Ingvar

LOL!!! The cows scene is the winner, here. I grew up on a farm, worth mentioning. All in all, superb animation work! Admirable! -Ingvar

Very interesting, I had not heard of Terragen before. Wonder if the terrains can be exported and then imported into C4D. -Ingvar

Is started to develop plugins in C++ in May 2013. Four years now, and counting. These plugins are for character animation. They work, they function well. I made these plug-ins, because I needed them, myself. I am a programmer, C4D is my main tool in my endeavors as a multimedia enthusiast. Non-profit project. I want to market these plugins! Eventually! But the distance from having reasonable well functioning software (plugins) for in-house use, to something you can charge money for, is large. A long road to walk. Things get complicated in the software business. Complexity grows. And eats up resources. "Real soon now" was a common joke about releases of software, when I started in the computer business in 1997, 20 years ago. Until Borland, (I used their development tool Delphi) cut through, and came up with the only reliable and realistic roadmap: "It will be released, when it is ready". I find the OP's post here very appropriate. I have made myself the same thoughts. I own both x-particles, and Forester. So I am eagerly hungry for news, and waiting for upgrades, myself. -Ingvar

I always build my own computers. The last one is the best investment I have ever made. Motherboard is EVGA Classified SR2, running two Xeon 5680 CPUs. In the old days, a computer lasted 3-4 years, then it was passé. This machine I built at Christmas time 2010. And it is still going strong, I use it 8 - 14 hours a day. The OS is running on two SSDs. I never store any data on the OS disks, just the OS and installed applications reside there. So I have additionally two spinning WD Raptor disks (very fast). As if that weren't enough, I have both the SSDs and the spinning ones set up in RAID 0 (striping). Which make things even faster. The result was (is) a very expensive computer, but given that it is fully capable of performing at least 3 more years (10 years or more all together), the price is acceptable. One, just one of the CPUs cost twice as much as my Lenovo laptop. And I have two of those CPUs. Performance is fantastic. I am spoiled. C4D use all of the cores, many other multimedia apps will take advantage of them too. So does ffmpeg, and After Effects, worth to mention Next step here is to replace the SSDs with larger ones, and replace the spinning disks with SSD disks. And eventually upgrade the graphics cards. I will probably build me another pc this year, if economy will allow it. And it will be a dual CPU mobo too. I think ASUS has one that is interesting.

I am writing plugins myself (not published yet), and I asked a question in the forum. To my utter pleasure, Cactus Dan wrote me a personal message, with tips on how to compile plugins for both Windows and Mac (I am on Windows). Such a nice guy! I had looked forward to exchange plugin writing experiences with him further up the road. That he is gone, is very sad. Rest in peace, Cactus Dan, you will be missed, a lot. -Ingvar

Same procedure as last year, same procedure as every year, James! Got my R18, already installed! And as usual the yearly ritual. I install C4D, and check if they have fixed my pet bug. And they haven't, not this year, not the previous year, not the year before, either. Something worked fine in R14. The Mograph Camera Shader. But something went wrong in R15. It got it confirmed here from C4D staff, it is a confirmed bug. But will it ever be fixed? It worked in R14! But not in R15, not in R16, nor in R17. Why the heck not fix it? It is hard to see that a fix will influence other things. Since it worked in R14. OK, on to Voronoi and all the new stuff :))

Wow Chagall. That was the post in this thread for me. I had exactly the same thought, about modo, about Nigel, and about Nigel + modo. "GUI that looked like designers put features in a Yahtzee cup, shook them and threw them on the screen" lol - the main reason why I sold my modo. "Wow, superb layout, common functions grouped intelligently, materials and layout manager that are logical and easy to use." Same here, the reason I like C4D so much. I wonder who you are.. writing so much sense, hope to see more posts from you. -Ingvar

​No. Just watch some of the tutors out there, GreyScaleGorilla, et al. All are slow, sometimes very slow. SynthEyes is lightning fast, ridiculously fast. And has tons of features (sometimes way more than ordinary people can grasp). Since I own SynthEyes, I use it. On occasions, the C4D tracker is better, even super. If I have the time to wait. But SynthEyes, where you can track moving objects inside a scene, which you also track, is normally unbeatable. -Ingvar

This is a very good point! ​For what it is worth, I find camera Tracking in C4D from rather good to excellent, technically seen. But it is so slow, I just don't use it. I use SynthEyes. Lynda released a new tutor series on SynthEyes the other day, sorely needed, just a hint. -Ingvar

​A well written post. I have been in the software business for more than 15 years, so I know about this. When that is said, what choice do we folks here really have? I cannot write about how the situation looks from inside big media house. Because I do not sit in a big media house. I, as most of us freelancers here, write about our situation. I am concerned about how my experience is, using C4D, how my interaction with MAXON is. I come here to see what experiences other freelancers have, with MAXON, with C4D. How I best can use C4D for my purposes. Not how a media house will employ it. Naw, I have never joined the complaining choir regarding BodyPaint, and all the other features the competition has acquired, modo worth mentioning. What pisses me off, is bugs persisting in several versions, and at the same time no mentioning of this in the documentation, making the docs describe how C4D works the wrong way, making me spend hours because I think I do it wrong, when actually C4D is wrong. A more open attitude from MAXON, a little more communication, an official bug list, a little less of the super arrogant attitude, is not too much to ask for. Even from us sitting in the back seat in the bus. -Ingvar

Well, for me, a good start would be for MAXON to just fix faulty functions who worked in previous versions. The camera shader, works as documented and expected in R14. The camera shader, behaves wrong in R15, so I have to apply a fix every time I use it on projects created in R14. You'd expected an update. And a fix. But no such one. In fact, there was no C4D update from December 2013 and till R16 was released in September 9 months later!! R 16 came out. The camera shader was broken, again. But now it was broken in a different way, so that I had to apply fixes to both projects created with R14 and with R15! When R17 arrives, I wonder how the camera shader will behave then! I don't know what HSrdelic and the others think about this, but no updates in 9 months, with several confirmed bugs lurking, and the bugs persisting in the next release, now behaving in a different way in September 2014.. and still no fix as of May 2015.. The feeling I have, that C4 is like a "message in a bottle", that kids play with, the feeling is there.. Release a new C4D RX version, put it in a bottle, throw it out in the sea, let the waves take it, and start working on the new version, immediately. -Ingvar

Hi Nigel, one big surprise for me, was when I saw that you have to pay for your C4D. I took it for granted that you got a free version each year. As I take it for granted that Nick Campbell & co get a free version. It is a shame, If what I have observed here is correct. Correct me if I am wrong, please. There is something here going on that I do not know about, and that I don't want to know. Now, you want to use modo, good luck! I had version 501 and 601, sold them. modo - never again, I cannot stand messy user interfaces, despite all good functionality it might have. C4D, OTOH, is the versatile 3D application for my (mostly non-profit) use. With x-particles, and all the other new stuff.. I just wish you would continue to make your excellent C4D tutorials. All things have a start, and an end. I wish you good luck with all your new undertakings! I have learnt to appreciate this forum, a lot. It is just invaluable. Greetings from almost exactly the opposite part of the globe, Norway. -Ingvar