Jops

I can assure you that I only did this survey because I was curious how other users see it. All mentioned problems could be solved without questioning subscription as a system, so I did not see the connection.

what exactly is the problem with the poll?

How do you like the online activation since R21?

Hi LECHUCK, I think that what you are experiencing is something a lot of design workers experience. Most of the things you mention are universal for graphic designers as well as for 3d Artists. I would say that long hours for example are more dependent of the company you are working for then the stuff you do. It is absolutely not uncommon in the 3d World. But as you often have longer projects then working 2D you might have the possibility to arrange your work in a smarter way and therefor you might be able to influence it a bit. But the more efficient you are the more work will be put on your stack... so well it stays the same 🙂. I am in a quite similar situation as you are, just on the 3d side. Doing this for 20 years I have the impression to have reached a border, that doesn't let me develop any further. of corse not artistically (there always is plenty of room in 3D) but concerning the projects and income. Over the years this border somehow didn't move with the inflation of lving costs. therefor it relatively gets less over the time. But you will still get paid quite a bit better then a regular graphics artist even thoug you will not get rich. One thing, that I used to love about 3D but after such a long time starts to annoy me once in a while is, that it is 1. a huge area and you have to learn several jobs to master it ( sculpting, camerawork, lighting, directing, and so on) and 2. it developes so rapidly that you always have to learn new things. So you will not get bored that easily but on the other hand it will stay demanding for the rest of your career. And that also is true for a lot of everyday work there are not so many things where you can just switch of your brain. All of this of corse is just my experience living as a freelancer in germany. I wish you the best luck with your decission. best regards Jops

I think that cinema 4d has the best interface of any program that I know... maybe moi can compete (even though it is much smaller) There are so many small things, that make such a huge difference. for example the possibility to change parameters of multiple similar objects at once just by activating them all. The possibility to use x+ or x* to edit even multiple values that are different. that alone makes working with adobe products feel like stone age. Change the size of multible comps in AE you need a script... you need a script for every second thing in AE. If you have the impression that a workflow feature is missing in AE you can assume that you at least need a script or a plugin. in C4D you have good chances, that you just have to google it. also the concepts behind the UI are great. I love nodes. they would also be so good in other programs. Most of the good concepts are super old, they where already there when I started with R6. They allow complicated things with beeing verry easy to understand. mograph is also such a concept. In younger days I unfortunately I can also name some features that imho are still ok, but less magical. all the reflectance stuff. or the material node editor. Even though it is able to deliver extremly complex results, it also feels that way. I like nodes a lot (doing xpresso for ages) and also node based materials, but I dont use c4d's often because I struggle to accomplish the simplest tasks. But most other areas of cinema are so easy accessible and understandable. Just easy to start with but powerfull if you learn them properly. Even though I am now very happy with resolve (fits my workflow much better then AE) I would love to see software for compositing, editing and image manipulation with the same paradigms as C4D. best regards Jops

Igor, the Guy who found out about the POSCAP issue already analyzed the new driver version. https://www.igorslab.de/en/wonder-how-invidia-the-crashes-of-the-force-rtx-3080-andrtx-3090-will-be-removed-and-still-will-be-removed-even-from-the-power-supplies-analysis/ if you understand german ( I dont think the subtitles are to good) here is the video which is much more detailed: best regards Jops

Thanks for confirmation 🙂

So you got a offer for a perpetual (!) update from R21 to R23 for 600 - 650 € +Vat? That would be very interesting and never heard of (at least that I am aware).

Obviously MAXON has a different strategy then Autodesk. And from a company side of view it is quite smart. As most of the customers are professionals, cinema for them is much cheaper then the competition. But here we start the "who is a professional discussion" someone who is earning 40k, 80k, 120k? The big problem with the indie version is the information that is not to be found. So it is 100.000 US dollars per Year. For the last fiscal year? for the last year at the point of purchase? what is the exchange rate? What does projects for more than 100k mean? the money the artists earns (projects that go over years)? or the project of the agency? or the project of the customer? How will this change in future when you are committet to the software? A lot of people complain, that MAXON is hiding information or that they do not communicate properly. But to be fair autodesk is not better. (which of course does not excuse MAXON in any way) MAXON clearly tries to establish a one fits all solution after many years of very graduated offers. I appreciate this approach. But the fact that perpetual costs considerably more than subscription and offers even less services is contrary to this approach. I am not shure if there is a solution for the situation of the hobbyists. But considering the environment, the indie licenses and especially blender, I would be concerned that people that start 3d now get lead to the competition. Therefor MAXON should do something about this. Maybe MAXON should give away the light version that ships with adobe for free to everyone. They already have to maintain this version anyway. That would be a real competition to blender and the indi license and as it is limited the professionals wouldn't like to work with it. People could use the version for years and if they are convinced that they can afford it can switch to the subscription or perpetual version.

as far as i know the MSA text is very clear. If your MSA was still valid when R23 was released MAXON owes you this version. You have kept to the contract and paid the MSA so MAXON has to keep to the contract as well. That is a natural thing to do.

i have had this discussion several times. even with David. if a university cannot guarantee to offer a course for several years, the installation in a PC pool costs a few thousand euros. That's the reason why the students had to bring their personal laptops to install free student versions. but since this semester was my last anyway, they will probably continue with blender from now on. I have absolutely nothing against David McGavran. But I think the statement is close to the truth. I didn't say anything nasty, just why I think there will be no indi license. I personally think it is much more important that old MSA customers (that already payed MAXON a lot of money over the years) who want to stay perpetual are not treated worse than subscription customers. best regards Jops

regarding indi licenses there is another aspect that makes them unlikely. David McGavran got CEO just 2 Years ago. So what is the goal for an ambitious new CEO? revenue! You can't blame him for that, but customer satisfaction and a vibrant community are probably not that prominently featured in the target paper (although they wouldn't mind it). And, of course, the growth should be greater than that of his predecessors. In addition to short-term goals, such targets are often defined over 3 or 5 years. MAXON had quite good figures even before David McGavran. so you can assume that his goals are ambitious. Decisions that question these goals are unlikely to be made. If today some users switch to the competition and some universities prefer to teach blender because of fees, these goals are not necessarily in danger (the resulting problems will be seen later). But the indie license puts these goals in danger. So it is unlikely, that we will see a indie license in the next 2 to 3 Years. best regards Jops

I hope this saves as much money as it costs. best regards Jops

I most propably will not update. Its not that I dont like some of the features, its just, that 1000€ for a yearly update doesn't feel right. I didn't cancle my msa, MAXON did. So I will use my new freedom. If redshift was included I would update thoug.

If I was into Archvis I would look up Twinmotion. That is based on unreal just with a different interface. I don't know much about it, but what I saw was quite impressive.

A fair treatement of perpetual licensce holders (and former MSA customers) compared to subscription customers.

looking up a bit of biology is always helpfull. Human eyes are quite bad in resolution. all together from left to right over a field of view of over 120° we have 3.3 to 7 Million light cone receptors per eye (they are responsible for the day view. so basically that what we use when we look at a monitor). some of them are sensible for red other for Blue or Green. If they where evenly distributed we wouldn't need a HD monitor at all. Because evolution is smart (and had plenty of time) there is a small area right in the middle (where we look at). that has a much higher resolution of cones. this area is called Fovea centralis. it is round about 1.5 mm in diameter and contains roughly about 600.000 if these cone cells. This area translates into round a bout 5° of sharp field of view that humans have. Everything besides that gets unsharper and unsharper 🙂. therefor, If we combine the resolution of the two eyes, we get (just for the area we really see as sharp) round about 1.2 Megapixels. that is equivalent to a 720p resolution. So why can we see the difference between 720p and 1080p? because we are not sitting 13 meter away from a 55" TV (that would be the 5° VOF). We are rather sitting 4 meters away from the TV. that translates to a aprox. sharp viewing area of 35 by 20cm. To see this sharp your TV needs roughly 9 times 1,2 Mega pixels so good 10 Megapixels. that would roughly be UHD. So why dont we see a huge diffference betweeen full HD and 4K. well that is because the 1.2 Mega pixels of our eyes that we calculated have basically a Bayern pattern (as most digital cameras) that means every sensor can just see one color, the image gets interpolated to show the right colors and that reduces the resolution. The resulting resolution is not just one third as the sensors also sense the intensity, but more about 1/2 to 2/3. therefor we don't need good 10 Megapixels but just about 6 and that is right between your 2560x1440 resolution and UHD. As long as people sit 4 meters away from a 55" TV they physiologically can not see a difference between a 4k and 8k. And for the difference between full HD and 4k. well yes we can see the difference but 4k is exceeding the capabilities of the human eye in this example. so the difference we sense is not the real difference, it is just the maximum we could possibly see when we have good eyes, are awake and concentrate compared to something a bit less. In the moment we get big video walls and want to sit 2 meters away we will have to calculate again, but for now. everything over 4K is nonsense (besides very special tasks) and full HD is a very good compromise. best regards Jops

compared to 20 years ago the web got really commercialized the big companies earn huge amounts of money just by people using their sides (and giving away data). and the amount of information you can find on these sites ist amazing because the companies do not have to provide it themselves (web2.0). Adding to that there are a few tutorial rockstars out there (linus techtips and so on) and they are making serious money. Today getting a influencer is a dream like getting a rock star was in my youth. If you put all this together it makes sense, that people that never experienced the old days today have the impression, that it is absolutely ok to just consume the information instead of also contributing to it: "The platform is making serious money with content of people that make serious money or that get a kick of showing off"(even if this of course is not true for a forum like this) So why bothering. They just don't know better.

It is absolutely right, that the buzzword 4k sells TVs and cameras, but the resolution and sharpness of a 4k H264 stream is hardly any better then a full HD PNG sequence. But that is nothing people are concerned about as long they have 4 or 8k standing on their TV and they can be better, or at least not worse off then their neighbors. That said my customers are not end customers but companies and they pay just for what they need. My impression is that for them full HD is still a good compromise between quality and cost. And in the end customers are watching this stuff on their 4k TVs and can't see the difference. Don't get me wrong. 4k 60fps is crazy cool, but most of the time it is just not worth 8 times the rendertime over 1080p 30fps.

I am not shure about the situation others are in, but I hardly have any demands for 4k, besides projects for big LED walls and so on. I think that many customers are aware that the difference between full HD and UHD is hardly visible in everyday situations and they are not willing to spend extra money.

for me you Guys don't need to do anything, besides keeping it running (and I am thankful for that). It just sounded like you wanted it to get bigger and asked for input. And maybe you can work on the bug that doesn't let you submit your response as long the advertising is blended in at the button. (btw. I have nothing against advertising)

I think that there is a lot of content here in the forum. Maybe it would be a good idea to utilize this. If a thread with a good question gets a good answer you could feature them and make some sort of question and answer area (basically a small tutorial) Copy the thread delete the unimportant answers and voila. This features could be mirrored to twitter and facebook to get c4dcafe some publicity.

good to hear, that the numbers are positive. Maybe the culture in the web is changing over time. And I also can imagine that people find much more answers right away then years ago.

Today it looks more like a show of and fan thing to me. Therefor I miss the open equality that comes with a forum.

So maybe I should have said C4D has left its niche. And blender itself is some sort of community project so its forums are better populated. So where do I have to go then to find the rest of the scene 🙂