DasFrodo

Art Dump! Had a loooot of fun learning Redshift recently 🙂 mainly just experimentation to get a feel for the render and of course learning all the potentiall pitfalls and quirks it has... Crystal.mp4 XParticles.mp4

Well for this you have TeamRender. Look it up in the documentation, it's really easy to set up and works like a charm (in most cases). However, if you really want to cut down your rendertimes I recommend switching to a different renderengine. Depending on what you need there's loads of options that are all miles faster than the C4D render. If you want super realism there's Octane, V-Ray and Corona for example. If you want more stylized and less photorealistic looks there's Redshift which is really fast.

Wait, last time I checked if I wanted to use ExplosiaFX in the Redshift Volume I still had to export it to OVDB and then link those to the Redshift Volume. Did I miss something? If not, in my mind that is still "importing and exporting".

I don't have access to V-Ray anymore (we ditched it after it went back to Chaosgroup and became subscription only) but it just has even more access to internals than Redshift. There's just millions of rendersettings that change how it behaves, how and what it renders etc. It's overwhelming to be honest.

It does! But it doesn't come close to V-Ray, Arnold and others...

CPU render engines tend to be more flexible on many, many things. Not only when it comes to scene sampling of specific effects, but also on the materials side since it's apparently WAY harder to implement certain features on a GPU than on a CPU. When Octane came out it did not have Subsurface Scattering, for example. Having said that, many GPU renders are catching up nowadays. Redshift has a lot of settings for all kinds of optimization and scene setup. Octane on the other hand is just different, you basically only have ray depth for reflection, refraction and volumetrics and ONE global sample amount. This is why many artists that don't like the technical side of 3D work prefer Octane over other render engines. They more or less have one quality slider and that's it. Compare that to how the settings in V-Ray look and you know what's up.

I overshot my VRAM once so far in Redshift. I don't remember what I did exactly, but it was... very very slow.

I use GPU render engines purely for the fact that they are insanely fast an none of my scenes were a problem with VRAM thus far, which is of course the main drawback of GPU render engines; the limited VRAM. I used Octane for a couple of years but recently bought Redshift. I am super, super impressed by the speed of it. It practically flew through everything I've thrown at it so far, even with volumetrics, lots of tiny lights, etc. I don't think any GPU render engine has any special feature that CPU render engines don't have, or at least I haven't heard of it yet. It's more the other way around. I'd say most people use CPU engines because they are more flexible and GPU because they are faster. If you want to render very, very big scenes with tons of geometry and lots and lots of textures you can't just use a GPU render.

God I love Worms! That new skin material is rather creepy though, looks like he's made of Döner 😄

I think the reason MAXON hasn't bothered with these modules for a long time is X-Particles. At least when it comes to fluid / particle / fire / smoke simulation that is completely covered by X-Particles and I don't think they could even come close to the functionality that it provides. That said, yes, Dynamics could use some love. Especially the Soft Bodies are horribly hard to control and work with.

For some reason all these images still look fake as all hell. I don't know what it is about ProRender, but I haven't seen a single Artwork yet that doesn't have this high gloss super fake early 2000s CGI look. It's a shame. But sure, great to have an alternative as Blender User that is also free.

Man you're doing these things at a speed...

I had the exact same problem a while ago... this is the solution. You need a sample Node to read the values of the effector.

Yeah I've been dabbling in Redshift as well for two or three weeks now and I'm impressed by how fast it is. Octane does definitely look slightly more realistic but compared to Redshift it's just slow, especially once you bring volumetrics into the scene (SSS, fog, etc.). I was impressed by how fast Redshift handles GI. Had a pretty suboptimal scene setup (room with a smoll hole where the only light shines through) and it still managed to render the scene at 4k in sub 5mins on a 2070 super with GI and full PBR setup. No flickering as well, just standard settings. The only thing I don't like so far is the material editor since it's built on top of XPresso. It's just fiddly especially if you're used to Substance Designer.

What was your experience with it? Any problems, pitfalls?

What do you mean? MSA is no longer a thing, they got rid of it! All you can do now is either Subscribe or wait for the upgrade price, which is unknown at this point.

I think until the recent UI redesign C4D did look a little oldschool, but now with the new dark interface it's mostly fine. It's just more minimalistic and minimalistic UI design is just the thing currently. Up until 2.6 I did "hate" Blender too. I used it occasionally for certain things like simple fluid simulations, but the software always irked me with it's weird rules and behaviour. I've recently played around with it again and honestly, with the new interface it's just way easier to use. I still don't like how modifiers work and how certain nondestructive workflows are just not possible but the software has become insanely good. Then we have Cylces, which is, while also slow, better in pretty much any aspect than what we get with C4D Standard / Physical. I personally don't think that it'll take 10-15 years... shorter. Blender has been up and coming for years now. When I went to University a couple of years back we got taught C4D in a course, but everybody that already used some form of 3D in their projects used Blender. That was 7 years ago. Out of 40 people in my year I was the only person to use C4D and honestly if I didn't start many years earlier with C4D I probably would have learned Blender as well. I'm in the same boat as you. I have an emotional attachement to C4D which is pretty stupid if you think about it, it's just a piece of software with a company behind it that wants your money. I'm happy that MAXON is doing well and that C4D still exists and still is the most easy to use tool for anybody that wants to make pretty pictures in 3D. But I don't like the direction they're taking at all with their pricing. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it except not give them any of our money anymore, but that is just not going to happen for most people.

Yeah that is exactly what I meant. You can just download Blender. If you don't know anything else you just assume that's how 3D-Software works. Why try anything else? We'll see how this turns out in the coming years but I bet companies will feel the pressure even more in a couple of years, especially now that many big studios and companies are starting to support Blender with support packages in the hundreds of thousands.

I think the biggest issue is that many long time customers just feel betrayed and undervalued. Some people spent thousands upon thousands of dollars over the years on their software (which is fair enough). Then subscriptions come around, just as suspected, and everybody that has been a long time customers gets a measly 20% off their subscription for two years, and they lose their R21 perpetual in the process. Doesn't matter if you've been customer for ten years or two. You have R21? You get 20% off for two years. It does not affect me personally since all I ever use are licenses that are provided by my workplace but I can see how people are disappointed by that. While I ultimately think having the choice (important) between subscriptions and perpetuals is a good thing, the way the transition was done was just not great at all. To add to that, apart from being a student you have no way to get cheap access to C4D. As much as I'd like to say yeah, subscriptions make it easier to get into the software, it is still ~700€ a year (if you take the yearly subscription upfront that is). Otherwise, if you take the real monthly subscription, you end up with 1200€. That is almost double of what they ask for if you pay "monthly". For a hobbyist that is a lot of money. I think many companies, like MAXON, severely underestimate the threat that is Blender. They might make more money in the short term, but many many up and coming 3D artists will just grow up with Blender and never switch to anything else unless they absolutely have to due to company requirements or something similiar. MAXON is gimping themselves hard by not offering a more affordable option for people to learn and bind themselves to C4D. I'm not a businessman, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around how this is supposed to be worth it.

Yes, but if you decide to stop paying subscription you don't have any access to C4D anymore, and I think that was the point made above 🙂

I had a call with your support two days ago and this is exactly what I've been told. If you take the offer to have 10% for the first year or 20% for two years off of your subscription you basically "turn in" your R21 perpetual and it will not work any longer.

As much as I'd like to, my current situation doesn't allow changing the software and honestly. I'm too happy with C4D with most of what it does to even be motivated to learn Blender. I know it's a good software, and I use it occasionally for certain stuff.

Doesn't even have to be free. Look at Substance. Their price jumps from 99€/month to 19€/month if you are below 100.000 revenue and even though that is solely a texturing tool I think that's a fair price. As long as you can make money with it I think it's only fair to want some money in return. The issue is the current pricing. Doesn't matter if you make 200.000.000€ per year with C4D or barely scrape by with freelance work, you pay the exact same price. And if you're hobbyist it's increasingly hard to justify the price and not just jump over to Blender.

I don't think Blender will replace C4D as motion graphics suite anytime soon. It's just too good at it and too easy to use, especially for artists that just want stuff done and not fight with the software. For a lot of other stuff, like modeling and sculpting, I agree. I recently tried out the new Blender sculpting features and although I don't really use sculpting for anything, I could immediately notice how much better Blender is in that regard. Then again, especially because it's free, nobody is stopping people from using Blender for things that it's better at and doing everything else in good old C4D 🙂