hvanderwegen

Also checking this one out in the upcoming week. How is it that I missed these? Thanks again!

This is really cool! Thanks for mentioning this, because I have been on the lookout for a 3d/animation/design versioning tool for a while now, and although there are one or two out there those are quite expensive and not aimed at individual designers/artists. For development I use Git / GitLab, but that just doesn't work well for visual/art projects. Downloaded, and checking it out this upcoming week.

As far as basic competitive feature sets go, I hope R25 will finally have a decent market competitive built-in renderer. They started work on implementing ProRender, got rid of that, and now users are left hanging without a decent modern fast GPU render solution replacement. It is rather surprising that C4D is the only DCC that requires its users to invest in a third-party/external render solution to gain access to a modern up-to-date (fast) renderer. (well, there *is* Centileo, which is free.) Maxon should really just integrate Redshift in this upcoming version (based on history, management may decide to do exactly this, but increase the base package rental fee 😜 )

The only other company which comes to mind is Newtek (LightWave). And that is certainly NOT an example to follow. In a sense, Maxon actually behaves more poorly than even Newtek, because Newtek at least interacted with their customer base off-and-on. This still irks me to this day: BodyPaint was 'da bomb' when it first was released. It was ahead of its time. IF it had been updated regularly, and adopted a PBR workflow, nodes, a proper realtime PBR viewport.... Can you imagine? Substance Painter and perhaps Designer would have been the second choice. Perhaps. BodyPaint was a prime reason for me to use C4D at the time. I still find it absolutely unbelievable how Maxon dropped the ball here. They could have carved out and owned this market segment. But seeing Physical render, dynamics, hair, and sculpt mode receive(d) the same "build it once, let it linger" approach of development, I am not surprised. Still, I can't help but wonder sometimes how different things could have turned out if C4D management had had just a tiny ounce of imagination and vision regarding BodyPaint. What could have been. Oh, the lost opportunities. 😔

The important thing is that there are good alternatives to Adobe's products nowadays! 🙂

Yes, there seem to be builds / special versions for RTX capable (20XX/30XX) Nividia cards. Since I am still stuck with an older GTX1080, that version runs very slow for me as well. PhotoLine is an image editor, similar to Photoshop, that's been around since Atari ST times! Not that many people are aware it exists, because the developers don't advertise or market it actively in any way. I prefer PhotoLine over Photoshop and Affinity Photo as my main image editing hub. It is capable of some unique tricks. For example: layers can be cloned/instanced, and reused anywhere (even as masks). the layer opacity operates from -200 up to +200 ! Imagine Affinity Photo or Photoshop allowing a negative opacity - basically reversing mixing modes or doubling up on layer effects. This also works with the non-destructive adjustment layers for quite interesting possibilities. An infinite depth of adjustment layers and masks is possible. Adjustment layers can be applied to masks, which can have masks with other adjustment layers and layer instances. Each layer may have its own bit depth (1/8/16/32 bits per channel), its own colour profile, and its own resolution. All independent and non-destructive. The background layer decides the final render intent (in image mode), so even switching to a different image mode does not affect the content of layers. Switch to greyscale, switch back to 32bit colour: all layers retained their original data. adjustment layers can be applied to other adjustment layers infinite number of mask layers with sub-mask layers, etcetera. bitmap gradients for masks are non-destructive(!) all layer transformations are non-destructive, and unlike Affinity Photo and Photoshop the user may edit the pixel content at any time. full vector layer support. Pretty good vector editing tools: blending objects, warping vector objects, vector/bitmap combined fills, and so on. Also conversion of bitmap to vector. The latest beta introduces proper mesh gradients. scripting support proper "smart objects". Even the option to non-destructively assign Photoshop compatible filters to these, just like Photoshop. Also the option to link external files: update the external file, and the master file updates too. built-in non-destructive procedural patterns and noises. And unlike Affinity Photo, all done with a visual interface. File support for various file formats which are missing in Photoshop and Affinity: webp (animated as well), animated PNG (latest beta), JPG 2000/XR. Import of autocad files, and many other more obscure file formats. completely non-destructive layer-based workflow. Much more so than Affinity Photo: RAW development is non-destructive, for example, and does not require a "special" workspace. It is just part of the regular layers. HDR workflow support. LAB workflow support. EXR import. Normalizing of z-index and HDR layers. support for external applications: send your layer or file to an external app for editing, save, and PhotoLine picks up on these changes automatically. Works great with many applications. Even InkScape with SVG as an intermediate format. Send a layer to Krita, work on it, save, switch back to PhotoLine, and the layer is updated. Which allows for quick round-trip editing with most other apps. Or send layers/results to external apps for finishing and export. This last option is my favourite. It saves so much time in my workflow. The developers are incredibly responsive. Many of my suggestions and requests were implemented - often by the next beta version. Often small improvements were added within a week. I have a license of Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher. I use Publisher, but Photo and Designer have proved to be... awkward and frustrating to work with. Too many paper cuts, missing basic features, and overall stunted workflow in my opinion. I do use Affinity Photo for HDR and stacking, though. But that is it. Just too many little frustrating things that proved to be workflow stoppers for me personally. That said, PhotoLine requires manual work to change the rather inconvenient default settings. It is more of an image editor for advanced users, and tutorials are almost non-existent! Here is my setup:

I tested AP with the XYZ Stanford Dragon - a 7.2 million faces model. The obj import is surprisingly fast, and painting is smooth on my system. With multiple layers and masks I did notice a slowdown at some point. And I miss adjustment layers and the option to assign adjustment layers to masks - I use this all the time in PhotoLine.

Triplanar projection is included (XYZ). For normal maps there seem to be two options: Normal Object and Normal. I assume the second option uses world space normals. The manual lists the baking options here: https://armorpaint.org/manual

Here ya go. https://gofile.io/d/RajFKG But really, it is super simple; create a new layer, switch to the Bake tab, select AO, and bake.

You mean like this? AP seems to support baking now. I just tested it with an AO baked map. PS performance seems really good: I loaded the 2.4 million faces test dragon, and the OBJ file loaded in a split second. Really fast loader! Painting is smooth. I think I am going to use AP in my next project for testing.

@Igor Thanks for reminding me about ArmorPaint! I sponsored the developer a year ago, or so, and utterly forget about it since then. Seems that the new versions warrants a fresh look again. Combine this with Quixel Mixer, and it's a pretty good combo, I think.

It was a stroke of genius to introduce the "LTS" (Long Term Support) version of Blender. It gives much more stability to the software, in particular for studios which seek that level of continued support.

To expand on the earlier discussion how for example studios contribute back to the community and Blender's development: Ubisoft switched to Blender for their upcoming feature-length TV animation. It is an interesting insight in their workflow. More importantly, the studio developed a real-time collaboration tool called 'Mixer' which allows artists to remotely work simultaneously in real-time on a scene! They made that available to the community. https://www.blender.org/user-stories/blender-and-the-rabbids/?utm_source=www-homepage

You are correct, Blender does not include a proper sunlight/atmosphere setup. The answer is this rather inexpensive add-on: Physical Starlight and Atmosphere https://gumroad.com/l/PSaA I use this, and I love it! Work in both Cycles and Eevee. In Eevee you get real-time results in the viewport. The latest version offers support for binary suns. The upcoming update will allow for realistic planet rendering and real-time oceans, as well as procedural clouds - everything interacts physically correct. The developer looked at Lumion, Vray, Octane, and other apps to create a realistic sunlight/atmosphere system for Blender. The result is quite impressive. This is real-time in the viewport using Eevee: Features: Most versatile outdoors lighting setup so far (probably in any software) Physical stars (included in v1.1) Visually accurate mathematical model Made for PBR and HDR workflow Fully procedural - can simulate unlimited number of sky conditions Super high dynamic range, use with tone mapping (filmic, or aces) Variable sun size and brightness Earth shadow (belt of Venus) Accurate sun radiance model based on blackbody radiance theory Unlocked viewer position - can simulate conditions at any altitude Cheaper than having a full HDD with high resolution HDRIs for every possible sky condition Rapid results - one click away to a beautiful render Consistency - sunlight, sky and fog share the same code and parameters Performance - load and render faster than HDRI textures Small memory footprint Flexibility - simulate any planetary weather conditions It`s yours - free to dissect the setup, re-arrange it for your needs. Render and export your sky to any HDRI texture format for use in games or other 3D packages. Heck, you can even render a set of spherical panoramas and sell in a HDRI pack, making more money than you spent on this addon. All future updates included! Works in Blender 2.8x - Cycles and Eevee

Install the WonderMesh addon, and parametric objects are yours in Blender! https://blendermarket.com/products/wonder-mesh https://github.com/WiresoulStudio/W_Mesh_28x/releases The github version is the same as the paid-for version. It's an honour system - you decide to support them. I agree, I love parametric objects. This addon fills some of that gap. Geometry nodes also supports parametric objects, by the way. There is a displacement node in the material nodes. Or use the displacement modifier to affect geometry directly. How is it difficult? Load a plugin, activate. New versions of Blender when installed give a choice of loading the previous version's presets, including plugins (ones that are compatible). The Blender Cloud also includes a handy plugin to synchronize settings across different platforms and locations. No need to keep track of several paths for plugins. And Blender may be installed as a portable version, which keeps add-ons contained to that folder only - also very handy. Wait a minute: there's been a awful lot of Outliner improvements in the past four versions. While I agree that C4D's outliner is the one to beat, Blender's outliner has been on the receiving end of much love lately. And is still being improved on every new version. For example, "tags" are now clickable and open the corresponding panel. The upcoming v3 version is about to deliver on management: a proper asset browser will be integrated, for example. The planned release date for v3 is September. The Blender Foundation is planning a UX/UI workshop to discuss pressing issues and solutions in regards to the user interface. Yes, I agree. I would love to see a more consolidated approach - some kind of properties panel. I work extensively with curves in 2d illustration software. I find Blender's somewhat non-standard approach to curve editing actually refreshing in a number of areas, and quite like editing curves in Blender. There are things that can be done in simple ways that are very awkward to achieve in most 2d illustration software. That said, there is an addon that introduces "standard" behaviour - if only I could recall the name 😉 Anyway, Blender's workflow is just different than C4D. Houdini is different. Max is different. Modo is different. LightWave is different again. I used most 3d software in my career (except Maya - I don't know why, but I just never could get along with it - and I tried!) I am currently teaching myself Houdini. My own approach to learning new software is to understand the paradigms used in that software, rather than trying to superimpose another software's paradigm on top of it. The basic concepts of 3d work remain the same in all apps. But all apps have their own take on it. When I learned Blender 2.45 (or something) for the first time I kept an open mind, and got familiar with its workflow and usage paradigm. It clicked. The current version is SOOO much more approachable and feature-rich, though - you guys are lucky. 😄

@IgorI have been investing time into Houdini as well. Their business model makes much more sense to me, and a combo of Blender / Houdini is quite nice. And Unreal 5 is going to be quite exciting as well. Real-time rendering and off-line rendering are slowly converging. I recall rendering wireframe based animations on my first Amiga 1000 in Sculpt-animate 4d, because rendering them out as raytraced would take weeks of rendering time. And now I am rendering in almost real-time in Eevee. Exciting times ahead indeed.

@Igor The Blender Foundation's developer blog provides some valuable insights. The team actually made some organizational changes in how to approach development this year: https://code.blender.org/2021/02/module-teams-for-core-blender-development/ https://code.blender.org/ The fast development of certain features is also fed by pure need: they've always worked as an animation studio delivering open film projects. These projects motivate the implementation of new feature sets as required. https://www.blender.org/about/projects/ For example, the Blender Studio entity is now working on a feature film quality animation with an experienced former Pixar story supervisor as a director. https://cloud.blender.org/films/sprite-fright/ I've noticed that these projects are one of the prime drivers behind improved tool sets and pipelines in Blender. And during these periods of working on open film projects new developers and people with different mindsets were attracted and hired as well. But the uptake of Blender in commercial studios has also been a boost for its development. The Blender development team consists of 24 people now, I believe. But aside from those, some studios and their developers are sharing their work and code as well. This is one of the advantages of the open source model in this case. And that is aside from external developers contributing smaller things to the overall code base and the default add-ons which are shipped with Blender. Then there are a few incredibly motivated artists who also happen to be excellent coders (a relatively rare combination). Pablo Dabarro, the person behind Blender's Sculpt mode improvements is a very accomplished artist and built the tools he envisioned in Blender. The 2d animation tools were imagined and built by a small external team of 2d animators. The programmer and lead Antonio Vazquez lives in Spain. So Blender sees external developers with creative minds working all over the world to improve the tools and implement rather imaginative new features. People who work with these tools themselves in a production environment and are not part of the official Blender Foundation teams. https://www.blender.org/development/top-20-blender-developers-in-2020/ And don't forget that PUBLIC recognition for these developers can be a massive personal motivational driver. Remember Atari 8bit era: Atari management at the time refused to give their game programmers due credit - they were seen as regular anonymous labour. With the result that many left, and set up their own companies (David Crane & Pitfall! Activision, Imagine, ....) Developers are humans with the innate need to be acknowledged for their work too. In the world of Blender this is recognized. I can name several Blender developers, who all have a following, but I can name no Cinema4D ones, except of course the Losch brothers. Does anyone here know of any 'famous' autodesk developers? Probably not. The core developer behind Cycles left the Blender Foundation at some point to work for Otoy, only to return and continue work at BF. He is 'famous' in the Blender community, while at Otoy he was just a regular paid employee. I am making assumptions here, but I do feel his return to Blender is partly motivated by the sense of making a difference and being recognized as an individual for his work. Two of us humans' prime motivators. In my opinion it is also much more difficult for a closed-off development environment (such as Maxon, AutoDesk, Foundry) to remain truly creative and forward-thinking. The commercial entities behind these companies generally choke true original vision in favour of keeping the investors happy. Not always, of course, but when we look at small start-up companies in this industry - those are the ones often delivering new ways of working and novel tools. Just like C4D did up until 2008, or so. Blender, even though it has grown this much, still attracts and harbours that mindset. One merely has to have a look at some of the imaginative tools and plugins that are written for it. ( Sorry, quick detour here) I recall when Cinema4D was first introduced on the Amiga: it felt fresh, different, super easy compared to other options. It was affordable. I remember when the final Amiga version of C4D was given away on a cover disk. I made the switch to PC and continued to work with C4D. It introduced some really cool tools like Body Paint. And MoGraph! Wow, that was truly amazing. It got C4D recognized and adopted - rather even created its own unique niche in the market of motion graphics. I invested a LOT of money in Cinema4D. So many plugins, all those modules. Fun times. And now? C4D is driven to subscription (rental) only, forward-thinking tools were left to rot away and were overtaken years and years ago by new kids (Body Paint, etc.), the development is somewhat confused (ProRender was proclaimed as the new main render engine, then stalled, now no longer developed, but a real replacement Redshift is a separate purchase, so now C4D no longer has a proper modern native renderer?) When did C4D development become so reactive, rather than innovative as it used to be? And Blender's developers can take risks. We've seen two major overhauls so far. Take Newtek LightWave: management pulled the plug on Core, which would have been a modernized overhaul of LW. It was seen as a money pit and too risky. Result: LightWave is dead. Most users left long ago, and only a lingering smaller community is left. Development stalled, and all the developers left. Blender really took off after with v2.8. They just keep innovating and taking risks, because they can. Taking risks is anathema to a larger company with investor stakeholders to satisfy. No other DCC development team would have thought it was a good idea to implement 2d drawing and animation tools in their 3d app. But it has resulted in a few Japanese 2d animation studios to switch to Blender and fix 3d cell rendered images by hand directly in the 3d environment. But the same things can be said about Adobe and its products. Large companies more often than not stifle innovation, and when those same companies adopt software rental schemes it is a sign of lack of innovation driving them there to keep the money flowing rather than anything else. Sorry, I am digressing here. Water under the bridge. What I meant to say: Blender and its community has that "fresh" grass-roots feel going for them, still after all these years. It attracts developers like flies, it seems. It's open, collaborative. Innovative and imaginative. It is an environment where developers may take risks, be innovative, and be rewarded for it. Anyway, in short: - core team of ~24 people - external teams and individual developers who are extremely driven and passionate and artists themselves - recognition for individual developers - a prime motivator for humans - commercial studio teams with developers contributing to standard Blender - Blender Foundation funded open film projects which boost development and temporarily boosts staff - industry taking note, and investing swaths of money in Blender. Unreal, Electronic Arts, etcetera. Also contributing to new features here and there. - scores of small add-on developers. All of which means a pretty huge crowd of motivated developers, both paid and unpaid. Which is difficult to compete with in the semi-long run, in my opinion. https://www.blender.org/about/

Good news for raw mesh editing performance: Blender always lagged behind other DCCs in this regard (with the noted exception of LightWave Modeler). The developers are now halfway in a code sprint to improve the raw mesh editing performance in Blender. To my (pleasant) surprise I already had noticed that on my computer the latest 2.93 was more or less on par with Cinema4d. The latest Blender v3 alpha builds improved performance further, and after various tests at this point v3 alpha is around 2.5 times faster than Cinema4D v24. Compare this 'classic' test (which made the rounds in a video before comparing various apps using the Dragon scan: The first (slow) version is Blender 2.79 - which is actually faster in regards to mesh editing than v2.8 up to v2.92. There were some regressions in this department - with many users complaining. The second blue screen is Cinema4D V24.037. Compare with the final test, which is the latest alpha build of Blender v3. Blender outperforms C4D by 2.5 times. Note: It was suggested that I delete the phong tag to improve performance - which made no difference. C4D's mesh editing performance is better with small selections (about on par with B v3 alpha), but does degrade strongly the larger the selection becomes - at least in my tests. Houdini versus Blender v3 alpha (rotating head): Compared to Houdini, this particular test is about on par with Houdini, although Houdini scales much better at smaller selections and performance is 2-3 times faster. The developers are only halfway in this code sprint, and it is expected to improve performance even more. My system specs: AMD Ryzen 3900X - 1080GTX - 64GB Win 10 Pro

This is a rather painful side effect of the software rental model. Even more painful is that even the Blender foundation realized teams in the middle of a project often cannot just update to the newest version due to pipeline issues, plugin support, new bugs in the latest version(s), etcetera - which is why they introduced long-term support with Blender LTS (long term support). When even the open source competitor spends time, effort, and $$$ to back-port essential bug fixes in an older version to accommodate teams and companies, then I begin to wonder about the validity of the software rental model. The "if you rent our software you are always ensured to receive the latest fixes" is an invalid assumption to make as a company in these usage cases, and only serves to justify the company's business interests and of its shareholders. Less so of the users.

😁 Indeed. Zbrush is the one 3d app that I have never been able to get along with. But I do appreciate its functionality.

Rejoice! In the latest version of Blender it is now possible to drag a modifier to another object in the outliner to copy it! Blasphemy! 🤩

(Ex)LightWave users might not like the name 'Core' 4D all too much... 😉 Good luck, and I am looking forward to the changes. Good to see other software covered as well.

For me as a freelancer the upkeep and cost of Cinema 4d (Studio bundle) wasn't maintainable, so I switched to LightWave a decade ago, and later to Blender + 3dCoat, because LightWave just did not receive mentionable updates and wasn't being modernized - excepting the render engine, which was updated to a slow CPU only one (which produces quality renders, but with the competition doing it much faster...). At work (part timer) I have access to C4d, as well as Max and Houdini, so I still use C4d at times. I still very much like working in C4d. Heck, I started out on the Amiga, and used all versions at home till version 9. I loved working in it. But as a freelancer 3d is only a smaller part of my work, so C4d is just too expensive. Besides, Blender does everything I need, and does it (really) well - the rendering is brilliant, and I then ask myself the question why Cinema still lags behind in this area: even to the point that at additional cost a third-party render engine or investing in Redshift is necessary to remain competitive. Or why not stick with Blender and then get that Octane license, saving a lot of money again... This is really, really odd in my opinion. Even if an indie version would be made available by MAXON, I doubt it would make a dent before the aging internal /physical renderer is updated to either a GPU-enabled version, or include Redshift - but I cannot envision Redshift to be included in an indie version. I feel an indie version with limitations wouldn't be very successful. We've observed that with Maya, for example. It's funny, because just before MAXON decided to do away with the prime, broadcast, studio, etc. versions, I actually stood on the precipice of purchasing a Prime license, and use that at home, and the full version at work. But that is no longer possible... And based on MAXON's decision to consolidate all versions into one, I think the Prime version never was very popular to begin with, and again it wouldn't have been able to compete with the open source alternative in the semi-long run. I am unsure what would work? With Blender being a strong (and ever improving) free alternative, I don't know how to compete with that - an indie version must be competitive. For studios the current C4d licensing must be quite attractive, no doubt. Perhaps MAXON's best decision is just to forget about hobbyists and small-time freelancers... ?

I am unsure about ILM (I did do a quick search on Google, but nothing related to ILM no longer making use of virtual sets came up), but it seems at least other studios and series have utilized the same virtual sets: Netflix's The Midnight Sky and Jingle Jangle. Various parties are interested in establishing a standard for virtual sets. The main issue right now is hardware: as anyone knows who tried to purchase a new graphics card, that supply chain is severely bottle-necked. As for traditional CPU rendering versus GPU rendering versus GPU realtime rendering: as far as I am seeing, the boundaries are slowly becoming fuzzier and fuzzier. I observe this in render engines like Eevee and Nvidia Omniverse, for example. It is a joy to render at a few seconds a frame, in particular for animations. Traditional slow CPU-only bound render engines are becoming less and less relevant, in my opinion (for freelancers, architectural work, etc - not so much yet in film CG). Cinema's internal physical render engine is lagging behind, and I expect the C4d devs will be replacing it in the next or thereafter release with Redshift/RT. They must to stay relevant in that area after ditching ProRender..

True. The good news is that an asset manager is worked on and assumed to become part of v2.93. If you are missing the parametric objects from C4D in Blender: a free plugin adds most of these to Blender. https://github.com/WiresoulStudio/W_Mesh_28x/releases Would be nice if that were to be a default option with all objects. Luckily the devs seem to be tackling more and more paper cuts, and the outliner is steadily improving. It's taken a while, but better late than never, as the saying goes. You only need to delete the cube once, and save the default file. (File-->Defaults-->Save Startup File Gone forever! 🙂 Competition is good - it keeps the other 3d packages on their toes.