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Providing they dont put the price up for r19 as it stands £1080 plus vat £1296 for me in the UK. Thats based on r16 to r18, two versions. Dan

Thankfully this is something that MAXON still allows, and hope they continue to do so in the future. This one of the very reason that I didnt get Maya, and am so glad I didnt now knowing what they have done since I got C4D. Dan

Problem is there is no gain in missing a upgrade as your pay more for it 2 versions later by the way MAXON has worked out their pricing, and this is based on todays pricing.. Pay per year for MSA £540 , £1080 for two MSA years, or miss a version and upgrade two versions later to bring you up to date its £1296 at £648 per year plus you dont get Cinevercity. Basicly its keep with MSA or like you say stop at R20, but there is a problem in that also. If MAXON are upgrading Pro render in increments then whats to say if you stop at r20 that Pro renderer is fully fuctional? You may have to keep paying for years just to get a complete Pro renderer. It does pay to keep on the MSA, but Im not liking the way the latest blog has come across in context with the impeccable timing of r19. It feels to me this is a gentle reminder not just of the benifits of a MSA which there certainly is, but to give you perceived extra value against a less than average upgrade by mentioning things that we come to expect, and have become complacent too. Im not dead set of which ever way it turns out, its too easy to read into things when expectations are so high, and one cant help but look as the worse case scenario. I dont need Pro Renderer but appreciate C4D needs it to keep up to date, and some unlike me havent invested in a external renderer, but I am a paying customer who pays at the higher rate owning a Studio licence. I dont like to have half baked additions to software in which I have to pay for chunks of enhancements to get it fully functional, this was one reason I moved away from MODO, but dont think MAXON would do what Luxology did in the earlier days selling broken features, it does however put me on edge a little. All in all C4D regardless of this release is still the better value peice of software weighing up the alternitives, its just a shame Studio users have to foot the bill for gaining so little for it. Dan

Great upgrade, cant wait to use the new features. Does that mean I get my old Trophies Back? Thats about the only thing Iv ever won on my life lol. Dan

Its also worth mentioning that in Zbrush you can send all your views of your model to Photoshop, and paint in there and when its returned it puts that paint data directly onto a texture map if one is created before Zapplink. This means it dont matter about polypaint restrictions, however Zbrush can only go as high a 8k per uv tile in Zbrush which is fine for most things. The UDIM baking process is also automatic. I hope that when BP gets its Uv tools with it, evetualy it allows UDIMs, and a better projection painting process like Zbrush. Zbrush projection painting is very powerfull because you can manipulate the image prior to projecting such as scale, rotate, saturation, Hue, flip, and Nudge, which is like liquidfy in Photoshop. Dan

Never!

What announcements? Dan

Iv been modelling in C4D this week and global symmetry would make a huge difference to me. Having to crack open MODO to add extra loops, tweak geometry after doing my uvs makes my workflow non destructive unlike C4D. Also to be easily to export a uv template and work with UDIMS. Leaving verts behind? I shouldn't have to keep optimizing the mesh. If just the symmetry was sorted I'd save so much time having to switch apps. I realy do hope MAXON listen to all them suggestions that get emailed to them. It's the simple things that can make the biggest difference like naturaly wanting to copy n paste geometry into new mesh or layer, ctrl c and v is what I'm used to and do it constantly in other apps this needs steam lining as there is no point it breaking a common practice into buttons such as desolate to remove loops. Dan

SSS wont make it in this release according to a post on this found over at CGSociety. Id like to see a skin shader and support for noise free hair, but I know the skin material wont be in this release. Id say this renderer at this stage is good for hard surface renders, for that reason like you into characters Im not too excited, more so when I use Vray which is ideal for characters as it has 3 choices for skin, and two hair materials. Dan

Hi. What you would need to do is select the edges by ring select in each tube, and use the command in mesh commands to convert edge to spline, then convert spline to hair in the simulation menu. Next store its position in hair object menu, then root to head. Make selection set on head drag into hair tag into guides field, then restore from hair tag. Do the store/restore to keep the guides position. You now have one lot of guides made from the shape of the single tube, and rooted to hair. Change the roots options for guides and hair to be polygon area, even maybe use a desity map to limit the growth. You need to do this for each tube of hair. For such as simple hair style id just do it from C4D right off by selecting a bunch of polygons where you want bangs of hair to grow from, paint a density map and group each bang of hair and style it using the move brush, combination of hair modes such as tips and guides. Dan

6min on slow laptop one single plane with texture and alpha.

New in Vray 3.5 we have a Hair shader (Vray-HairTxtInfo) that works with both Vray hair materal and the new ALhair. This lets you control many aspects of the hair including the opacity along the length. This gets you a nice soft look to the tips without making the hair thin at the tips. Also it doubles as a nice Alpha maker for transparency maps. For still renders one can wait for 40 min for a render but for animation thats not a choice so other hair solutions is needed. Hair cards are the way to go that can be made dynamic. The problem is getting a decent hair texture and alpha that matches the hair your rendered. Below is a example of using the new shader to aid in producing both the hair texture colour and alpha, and how well it looks at render time. It looks as good as the real hair render, yet a 1hr render on a laptop takes only a 26 seconds on a plan geometry card. Further tests coming soon with the actualy application of it in use. Dan

Hi Guys. I plan on making animation shorts, and havent got any experience with Video compositing, only video editing in general. I see many productions always end up going through After Effect but to be honnest I dont know much about what it does other than allow compositing layers be put together. If anyone can give me a bit of info on this in general, and what the current version is like vs CS6. Im looking at CS6 as this is the last version one can purchase without a subscription plan, but do wonder how much its evolved since and what I will miss out on as far as compatability with C4D and future versions. I am aware that there is a Cineware plugin, not sure if I can still get it for CS6. Thanks, Dan

20 days and counting

Yes you can, thats how iv done it, however its very hit miss, and get very jumpy results.. I use a selection set from the fingers to be a collision. Dan

29 days and counting. http://www.c4dlive.com/ Dan

Your Crazy! What ever they add, Im more than happy to be paying for it because Pixologic has just gave more and more, and now have given us super cool new tools for free, again, never paid for a upgrade ever. Dan

I think MAXON are missing this one, and should show some loyalty to their old customers offering them a much better deal on a crossgrade. I know a 3D artist who actually recommended C4D to me years ago, he has stayed on v10, got the extra moduals, and still uses it to this day, he is happy for what he is doing. It sounds like you got Blender down which is cool, its always good to have other options. I started on the Amiga 500, 1200, but for 2d and for music production, still got it stored away. Dan

Anyone who has r15 is no better off than a owner of other major brands for cross grade discount which I think is very, very wrong, they have missed that one as I think as there are allot of old users who are pushed out of the upgrade scheme . If someone wishes to move out the upgrade loop in hope that they will one day return, a studio user would have to wait at least 6 years to make it worth while because to cross grade is £2,940 inc vat where as a MSA is £540 per year inc vat which also includes cinevercity. Not even 5 years of a MSA would pay for a cross grade. In reality at this time only r12 users and older would get a deal out of it, this is a area MAXON needs to look at. I have other software thats I count on for C4D weaker areas, and there is only so long I will keep paying a MSA until I see my other software being used much less. I cant see Vray being replaced by Pro renderer too soon, or Unfold3D for its Uv tools, or Zbrush for its sculpting, but I do hold hope that Bodypaint may exceed Zbrush in other ways that it lacks, Painting. C4D cloth will not replace Marvelous Designer, and Its Modeling tools wont replace MODOs, but if it comes close in some of these areas in that for some projects I can say to myself, "I can to it in C4D and get the same results in a close time frame" then my MSA is worth it. I dont expect C4D to ever be as great as my separate collectively expensive software alternitives, but it needs to come much closer to warrant over a 3k piece of software. I will be a harder customer to please as I dont use just C4D alone, this is why I need to see some serious speed increases, refined current tools, and advancements in its Modelling methods, these are things that everyone benefits from, and hope some of these things are given attention in r19. Dan

The character tools in Houdini do look awesome, and should I ever move from C4D that would be the direction for me. The main potential I see is in its Biharmonic capturing for its weighting, id like to see at least heat weighting for C4D in which Visible should in theory do the trick but is not producing anything like in MODO, and certainly not close to what Houdini has. Invisible rigs for deformation looks nice for fast deformation, again MODO has a simplified pose method which C4D could do with. The muscles in Houdini is awesome, C4D system just dont allow the muscle shaping that I need, I think in Houdini they call it Franking muscles they look like metaballs merging groups of muscles into new forms. While id like to get further immersed into more technology, the truth is I dont actually need some of it right now, but want it, and I always do well to remind myself the difference between Need, and Want, but in either case Im paying for what I consider core essential fixes, and upgrades, and feel modeling, Uv, multi threaded speed enhancements is just that. I suppose its the case that a road map would be nice to see so I can peer into the future and see they do actually plan to update their character tools with more flexible intuitive technologies. Until I actually need these additional cool features Im going to invest my time in being better at what I do, and learn things I need to know with what I have at hand. I think C4D has many features almost hidden, or unknown because they haven't show cased some things very well, and would like to see some areas shown rather than watch a 6 year old video highlighting the feature list of a release. The muscle system, NLA just is not shown much of to mention just two. Dan

There's absolutely no point waiting for MAXON to deliver and keep paying the M$A. Stop paying the M$A and wait until MAXON deliver the performance upgrades. Learn Houdini in the meantime. That's just the thing, we only get 2 versions behind and the next version we have to purchase so there is no waiting for the performance and upgrades as id be in a position where paying for the last two version and add a msa which is no cheaper for waiting in fact it's way more expensive than paying a yearly msa. If 3 versions behind your be buying a new licence as a cross grade with no additional discount being cross grading from a MAXON product. For me as a Studio user I need to stick with C4d or go a rent out Maya which is not a choice for me let alone learning it. Dan

Thanks and yes it's a basic zbrush spray and dot alpha all over. Will be tweaking face today, then start doing proper texturing. Xyz alphas may be my choice along with some hand painted colour maps. There is 3 bump slots so I will do 3 separate layers. I need to do these temp phases to keep me motivated. These may be enough for mu purpose. https://texturing.xyz/collections/human/products/alphaskinface-01 Dan

GI Dan

Thanks, appreciate your comments. Because Im working on a likeness, this set up is to give me fast visual feedback, the texture map is hand painted, the final map will have more detail in it. The SSS is using one hand painted diffuse colour map, the ALsurface is doing the rest. Very important is the skin detail, and getting the Reflection amount, and roughness right with the maps. Iv got a kind of formula that seems to work with using the right values, il post my findings. (see image below, may need to click see full size a few times) The secondary Refection has a IOR at 0 so it shows directly at the front of face, the Primary IOR is 1.7 pushing the reflection with a gloss of 0.5 to outer edge. Both Reflections use same amount map, only the Primary has its exposure at 2. Dan Thanks, glad you like it so far. The eyes are two shells. Inner shell which has the flat diffuse colour map. The material is using a blend of diffuse and SSS from the Advanced Vray Material. Outer Shell is reflection, and refraction. Just one key Area light, no Gi, and one Rim light. Dan