Jops

The Pros of CPU: Over all very robust and stable. RenderFarms for CPUs are easier to find and cheaper Old Computers qualify much easier as rendernodes as you can upgrade RAM easily and for little money. You can render out many different passes with just one rendering process. (Many GPU renderer are much more limited in this area) It is easy to include or exclude Objects from lights, shadows or reflections. easier to get unrealistic artificial looks. Easy accessible as many 3D software Packages have a production ready CPU Renderer included. Files easy to give away as render engine is included in Software. (if the GPU Renderengine is included it is the same of corse) The Pros of GPU: Fast Preview and interactive working global ilumination always included. much less to think about. much easier to get realistic results. easier to learn for 3D Beginners. a lot of renderpower can be included into just one computer. computers can be upgraded with GPUs very easily.

I am not the c4d police and I can nuderstand why more and more discussion is Blender related ( as it develops faster then C4D and quite some C4D users got alienated by the new Company policy). The new c4dcafe forum feels more like one forum instead of many, so despite you posted in general discussion it pops up on top on the main page. two of the upper three topics are blender related (in my browser at least). Maybe that is the reason I feel that blender topics take over the forum. all the best. Jops

Blender is interesting, and the discussion how blender might help c4d users is too, but this is no Blender forum and therefor we dont have to open a new thread for every blender news that is around. best regards Jops

I found that video interesting. In many ways... good and bad. many plugins cost just 10 to 30€ with flip Fluids to be the most expensive for 76€

Then I am sorry for the misunderstanding, my english is limited and therefor it requires a bit of good will by the reader 🙂

No. every company has the right to decide how much money it wants to reinvest.

He has any right to come here and discuss maxons price structure. As long as he is not unfriendly or trolling. Something that can be found in this forum unfortunately.

I am not affraid about the short term profit of MAXON. they will get quite a push throug subscription. What I did not understand was the unnecessary alienation of the old userbase. I interpret Srek in such a way that this was not intended... we will see in autumn.

when I started there everyone asked for 3d Max users. I havend had that request for the last 5 Years. So I guess it taks 15 years. Maxons situation is better than the one of 3d max back then, but the direction is clear. One teacher at university, that I work with said to me, after a first time glimpse at cinema " wow, that looks so oldschool compared to the new blender" that is not my oppinion by the way, but it illustrates how wide spread blender allready is. I really hated Blender for a long time, and I still prefere MAXON by far, but as you said. If everyone is socialized with blender c4d will get problems in 10 to 15 years.

absolutely, my students all know blender before I teach them cinema. The university asked me to teach Blender, but I am not the right one for that. As I will quit this year they will most propably switch to blender afterwards. also because MAXON wants some thousand € for the university to install c4d on the pc pools (thats the deel, as the university does not know if this course will be long term or not).

I admit, for me it's a purely principled question, not one about absolute numbers. I believe in cooperation and less in a take it or leave it mentality. I have a strong understanding of fairness, but I have the feeling that many users don't think it is appropriate in this place. The reason for my emotional approach is probably also based on the fact that I've been around since version 6. Back then, many people said to me: "learn 3D Studio, nobody uses Cinema 4D". There weren't many jobs for c4d, but I grew up together with MAXON I learned in forums and taught other people. I provided some setups and scripts for free. my pictures were used by MAXON for advertising (that was a long time ago 🙂 ) Right now I am teching c4d at a university . Today the market is penetrated by cinema 4D. This is due to the forward-looking architecture of MAXON's technology and UIs, but also to users like me who have a whole cabinet full of c4d versions. Those who have been waiting for a faster Object manager for almost 10 years and have supported MAXON in good faith. Now, it feels like other users are more important to MAXON than we are, namely the users who have never paid to MAXON before, who have never shared any knowledge or created beautiful images with C4D. Among other things, I make my money with C4d.So it's not a financial question, it's an emotional one. maybe it's stupid or naive, but this software and I share a long history (almost half my life) and it just became dear to my heart. best regards Jops

Hi Dave, Of course, perpetual license owners lose a lot of money by adding a subscription alternative. simply because the resale value of the license decreases. Unfortunately, this is inevitably the case when subscription is offered as well. But this effect is intensified by the new updateprice for former MSA customers, which is announced here in the forum. This means that old, loyal MSA customers will lose even more with this conversion. If you ignore the fact that new subscrition customers not only save the money for the entry and get one update per year more, only the update price changes for you. The rest is basically the same as before. The offers for conversion of the R21 perpetual are of course a joke. best regards Jops

Hi Björn, i really appreciate this statement. firstly because it contains information, but also because it explains MAXON's motivations and above all because it expresses regret for the situation we are in. All these threads are based on the fact that the users appreciate the program and that they depend on it to a certain extent. Losing control over an important part of your working day and income is scary. learning a new program is not impossible, but it's still a lot of work. i think most customers understand that MAXON has to earn money, but the 3D daily rates haven't changed much in 20 years or even dropped (at least here in Germany). No wonder some people are switching to Blender (which won't do their daily rates any good either). when the MSA costs were increased the year before last i didn't have the slightest problem with it, but an increase like the one now pending for the perpetual license (compared to MSA) is not justified. especially considering that perpetual owners have already given MAXON a lot of money, a higher price than for subscription is not understandable. The feeling that MAXON wants to drive its customers into a greater dependency (which of course already exists to a certain extent) is unfortunately obvious. Nevertheless, I think it's very good that there is the possibility to chat with MAXON employees here. I am confident that this will help to eliminate some misinformation and improve mutual understanding. best regards Florian

Hi srek, thanks for being here to clarefy things. I find it unfortunate, that MAXON is forcing its customers into a position where clarifications like this are necesarry, because firstly it is easy to loose perpetual by just updating and secondly by the existence of different update paths, which are not properly published on the website. So it seems to be possible with an R20 to start a subscription at a reduced price without losing the perpetual license, while there is no such possibility for owners of an R21 perpetual license (without losing the perpetual license). Please correct me if I am wrong. So it is not only because of the unwillingness and lack of understanding of the customers, but also because of MAXON's unnecessarily strict policy that these misunderstandings arise and that the corresponding discussions never end. best regards Jops

I am quite shure that we will see a R23 perpetual and maybe even a R25. So i am hopefull, that they will release at least two more perpetual updates. basically nothing changes for you besides the price. while before it was a MSA price it is now a "normal" perpetual price. So I guess you can upgrade just like before every year to a new perpetual version just for 25 to 50% more than you payed for you MSA (Depending of your first MSA purchase date). But unfortunately I am quite shure, that considering the much to high perpetual price, compared to subscription. we will see a lot of people who just skip the update (I might as well) resulting in MAXON removing perpetual in some years because of "the lack of interesst", while it was basically the decission on the high perpetual price by MAXON. The longer I think about that the clearer it accures to me, that when MAXON is not changing the price of perpetual this is the route things will go. Even if this should not be the intended outcome, MAXON is well aware of this posobility and is willing to sacrefice perpetual.

Did you or anybody else with this issue get a response by MAXON?

wow... that's a bit of an exaggeration i'd say 🙂 Even though MAXON is trying to scare away its old customers at the moment, it is one of the most successful 3D packages on the market. I have worked with animation nodes and at the moment, like many things in Blender, it is technically very interesting, but all in all not nearly as easy to use as Cinema. Blender is on the right track and if they keep it up it is not impossible that quite some alienated C4D users will switch to blender in the future. But at the moment I personally prefer Cinema for production than Blender. But if everything continues to develop as it has, MAXON should either speed up its development significantly or at least not scare away its customers.

Would be interesting what they tell you. And it would be interesting what their arguments are, that the MSA does not count.

That is how it is supposed to be, as you payed them upfront. Sounds much more logical then charging those that already gave you a lot of money more then those that didn't.

I don't have any MSA anymore because mine was canceled late 2019 , but If you have a contract which states that all updates or upgrades of the program are included, and you signed it, it is not up to you to decide If you want to give the update away for free. that s what contracts are for. And even if there was a doubt about that, it would be much smarter to give this one version to those few that MAXON didn't quit early enough instead of getting a discussion about MAXON being dishonest.

That must e a joke. It would cost them much more to f... around with old customers and damage their reputation, then to give them access to just this one update. I hardly can believe that this is legal anyway (It is obviously an update to Cinem 4D R21, they don't even deny that). Man ... other companies spend Millions to puff up their reputation and MAXON is just throwing it away for penuts. that is not just unfair but plainly stupid. How is anybody suposed to trust them in the future? As much I like the new way of MAXON to stick around in forums. I really think that this pretentious fuss like if MAXON was Adobe does more harm than good. If I was in this situation I would pull all strings to make it known in the whole 3d community. That just doesn't feel honest.

If you have a MSA they owe you the Update. If there are hard decissions to make because of the transition then it should not be the user to pay for them. BTW we would not discuss S here, if MAXON would have handled it a bit more sensitive.

Interesting, that the UV tools are licensed from http://www.quelsolaar.com/ministry_of_flat/ that's the first time for a long time that I get aware of MAXON licensing external software.

I think that is what they are planing. keeping perpetual for the old not MSA update price and offering a MSA cost subscription. Well that is basically a price increase of 40%. Everyone can see it. It favors new customers over old ones (as they already invested a lot and are unlikely to quit). You can see it everywhere: New inexperienced users are flooding the forums. That is not bad and I have no objections. But when they alienate there experienced customers, they will have to educate the new customers themselves and not rely on the "fantastic comunity" who has just been taken advantage of.

not just that but also 15% of MAXON stock. english: https://ir.nemetschek.com/websites/nemetschek/English/2110/news.html?newsID=1874979 german: https://ir.nemetschek.com/websites/nemetschek/German/2110/news.html?newsID=1874981