briankoko

As I mentioned in my post I am tempted to purchase Maya indie for $280 a year or Blender. I would also donate to the Blender development and Blender Cloud a few hundred dollars a year if I go that route. The indie prices offered by Sidefx and Autodesk are in my budget as a hobbyist/freelancer making under $100k per year. I purchased c4d studio R17 when it came out and have kept my MSA going every year up until R21. At the time my MSA was $640 a year which I agreed to pay. Plus I had access to Cineversity. Unfortunately the price of the MSA increased a few years later but I kept paying. So I have spent quite allot of money on cinema over the years plus plugins like x-particles and training. I have no issue paying for software if it makes sense. But my plan now is to either try to upgrade from R21 to R23 for I believer $999. Or wait until R24 is released and upgrade for who knows how much since price has not been announced, nor do we know if there will be a perpetual R24 release. Or stay with R21 and get a subscription every year or so util my license of R21 gets so outdated that I never open it and either stick with a subscription forever or bail. Or dedicate my time to learning a program with an indie license I can afford or blender. What I would really like to see is a Maxon indie license.

I would love to see some particle and fluid love since Red giant is now part of Maxon. This would make it so we don't have to rely on other expensive plugins for such. Also including Redshift as a default renderer would be very welcome since Maya comes with Arnold and Blender has Cycles. I would also welcome an Indie license and that they keep the perpetual license and make a yearly upgrade or Matainance option available for a reasonable price. c4d is just too expensive for hobbyists or smaller freelancers. I am tempted to dedicate my time to either learning Maya indie for a paltry $280 a year or blender. $719 a year for a c4d subscription or $983 every year for c4d and redshift is insane compared to other options. As much as I love c4d. I just can't fathom paying that to rent software. I will need to switch or keep my R21 and subscribe every year or so to use some of the newer tools like the UV tools I want.

Wow! you a right! Thank you!

Why is it that Houdini, 3ds Max and Maya all have very affordable and powerful indie versions and C4d does not? When I purchased c4D studio (R17) it came with two years of MSA free. So I paid $3500 and didn’t have to pay a cent for two years. And then the MSA was $650 which as a good deal amount of money but I owned the program, it was mine. Now you can still have a perpetual license but the price isn’t even featured on the ‘Buy’ page. And for upgrades you need to contact MAXON. I feel that it’s just a matter of time before perpetual is done away with completely. Now you need to rent the program, stop paying for the price to rent and you can’t use the program anymore. Now instead of a $650 a year MSA you need to pay $719 a year to rent it. And if you want a modern render engine like every other program comes with (redshift) you need to pay $983.00 a year or pay $719 and rent either Octane, Arnold or something else for $400 - $800 more a year. The last 4 out of 5 smaller vfx and animation studios I have worked with in Los Angeles have artists using Blender for one task of another. Nobody was using C4d, some had in the past but switched. These are generally smaller indie studios and not tied to huge pipelines so they have the freedom to choose what makes sense to them financially, ethically and personally. The majority of the younger artists coming in where raised on blender and Youtube. Or learned Maya in school. Why should they use c4d except if they want to get a job that requires it? Usually at a high end motion graphics studio? While I love c4d, as a freelance artist and hobbyist who wants to continue to play and experiment with a tool for the rest of my life it is absurd to me when I think I will be paying to rent something forever. With Blender the tool is completely mine, though there are a ton of things that make no sense to me in the program such as no logical way of copying a modifier from one object to another without remembering a weird shortcut. Bizarre unintuitive spline tools and the lack of a decent picture viewer. There are tutorials on how to make anything I can dream of whether it is a weekend spent making a spaceship, castle,dinosaur, dragon or modeling characters. There are hundreds of free tutorials for that. Or a subscription to CG Cookie or something. For c4d there isn’t a single tutorial for either of the mentioned things even after decades of the program being around. Maybe a simple gummy bear or dancing hotdog. If I want to make a hundred cubes undulate, well there are a million tutorials for that. Removing Cineversity for anyone not on the subscription was another slap in the face. Do I switch to Blender and Houdini indie and donate a couple hundred bucks a year to blender cloud with millions of great tutorials, assets, movies and tools and helping the program grow? Keep my perpetual R21 and buy a decent render engine and UV tool and be left behind in a few years? Or pay $719 - $1000 a year for a c4d subscription for the rest of my life. Offering an indie license or keeping perpetual with decent yearly upgrade prices would be a decent thing for MAXON to do as well as attract new users.

😆

Great job by Bomper studio and everyone involved. Nice to see amazing character work using C4d. https://www.MAXON.net/en/article/tyler-childers-animated-video-country-squire?utm_campaign=TylerChildersCountrySquire&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1610392901

Hello and welcome!

Thanks hvanderwegen for all the suggestions, I really appreciate it.

Blender is very tempting but there are just a couple of things that I really can't jive with in blender. First are the text tools, certainly not as nice as c4d. Second are the curve creation tools, I just can't understand the way to draw and alter curves in blender. And some simple UI things like not being able to hit the 'delete' key to delete objects in the viewport and the outliner. In blender you need to hit 'x' in the viewport and in the outline you have to right click on an object and choose delete. Perhaps you can change the keymap somewhere for deleting objects. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how to use the array modifier properly like in this video, I think I'm just spoiled by how intuitive c4d is.

This is great news for c4d and vfx https://www.afterworks.com/FumeFXC4D.asp

I dream of this becoming a reality every day myself :)

Hi guys, Just wanted to share a cool video by Zacharias Reinhardt a talented CG artist who made a video featuring some of his work from the previous 14 years, some entertaining back story and more. He also used allot of Cinema 4d in his earlier years which is interesting to see. Might be a fun watch.

Firstly I would say please, please keep the perpetual licensing available. Subscription only is not something I would ever be interested in. Penalizing folks for skipping upgrades should be done away with in my opinion. Having a set upgrade price that is reasonable and accessible to hobbyists and freelancers will go along way to build brand loyalty. There are allot of unhappy artists using other programs that will likely be won over to a software that is powerful, stable, well thought out and doesn’t have any wishy washy licensing schemes that so many programs are plagued with. I understand that from a business standpoint a company might think forcing people to upgrade in order to avoid having to pay thousands of dollars to basically rebuy something that they spent a ton of money on and invested allot of time into is a good way of making money. But I wonder if it just scares people away, leave a bad taste or if there are some people who are using ancient versions of Cinema begrudgingly that are outdated compared to the competition. Not sure if this is a smart business move for MAXON or not. They may want to compare the positives and negatives of such an upgrade approach. The first software I bought was Modo 701, at the time under Luxology all upgrades cost around $450 no matter what version you were on. For instance you could go from 601 to 801 and pay $450. That to me made allot of sense but then Luxology merged the Foundry and my passion for the software has slowly waned ever since. Right now I am likely not going to extend my MSA when is expires as I can’t really afford it right now. I’m really conflicted about this, I don’t want to fall behind. I love all the new tools and the possibility of what is coming ( fingers crossed on updated particles and fluids ! ). I also think there are too many modules for Cinema, looks like there are four currently to purchase this confuses people as to what to buy. I wonder how many people bought a cheaper version only to wish they had bought Studio or something with more bells and whistles. Maybe have a Studio version with all the goodies, a lesser version and perhaps an indie or non commercial version like Side fx has with their Apprentice and Indie versions. But I know that this can be tricky and creating upgrades or migration options will need to be considered. Just a few thoughts I had, sorry for the long list.

If anybody needs some quick motivation to do a mini-project brograph.com has a nice 'randorender' page. Just hit the button, they give you a couple of key words to base your project on. http://brograph.com/randorender/

This looks like a great issue, especially for C4d users, 35 pages dedicated to the software for anyone interested. https://www.creativebloq.com/news/become-a-cinema-4d-pro-with-issue-237-of-3d-world

School of motion did a really nice interview with MAXON CEO Paul Babb, I put a link to the podcast below. https://www.schoolofmotion.com/podcast/paul-babb-interview

I would also like to see some additions to the vfx section. Fluids, smoke and the like so I won't have to spend a fortune on additional plugins. I bought x-partilces 3 a few years ago and got a free upgrade to 3.5. Back then it cost me about $350 for the plugin, now it'll cost about $393 just to upgrade to version 4. And a new license is almost $800. I just don't have the money for the upgrade nor to buy turbulence fd or realflow. For the cost of c4d and the increase in the MSA I expect some sort of native vfx tools. Even a native renderer that supports open vdb would be nice without having to buy a third party renderer. Don't get me wrong, I love MAXON but my situation is this. I work at a small studio where I convinced them to buy C4d Studio, since I am pretty new to c4d I do mainly smaller tasks, like blowing leaves, tiny butterflies things like that. To stay current and learn more about the software I bought a license of R17 a couple years back for home learning, never in my life did I think I would spend that much on software when I make no money freelancing. MAXON really needs to release a non-commercial learning edition or c4d Studio or an indie version. I don't care if the render is covered in watermarks, I just need something to learn on that won't cost my $3500 for a license and almost $1000 a year more every year, not including thousands of dollars in plugins. Houdini, max, maya have incredible fx tools. Modo and Lightwave allow you to import open VBD smoke from other programs. Blender ( which is free ) has some decent fluid and smoke capability plus Mantflow coming soon http://mantaflow.com for free and a nice looking flip fluid add one which is expected to cost under $100 https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?445158-FLIP-Fluids-Addon-(Beta)-A-liquid-fluid-simulation-tool-for-Blender. If MAXON can incorporate and improve on Naive fx that would be great. Sorry if this seems like a rant, but this is what I'd like to see most in R20.

It’s more along the line of adobe’s model. Once your subscription runs out you can no longer use your indie version. It’s good to have a free apprentice version to learn with. It’s more of a learning edition. More restricted, can’t use it for clients or to make money but perpetual. The full version of Houdini FX you can own the license you buy forever. You can get on an upgrade plan similar to MAXON’s MSA. But it costs allot more.

Wow, very cool, subscribed, thank you.

I recently stumbled on the MAXON UK blog http://blog.MAXON.co.uk/all and was like " why didn't I know about this? " There are tons of great resources here. Allot of tutorials and tons of tips, stuff I thought you can only find on Cineversity. The US blog is a bit different https://www.MAXON.net/en-us/news/MAXON-blog/. Mainly news related, which is fine, but is there a way to maybe combine the two into one area. Or maybe the US site can borrow some or the content from the UK site? I'm not sure about the logistics but I really like what I see on the UK blog site.

Very cute, would love to see it running around a kitchen.

About the open Beta, this new version looks awesome!! http://lesterbanks.com/2017/05/register-bodypaint-open-beta/

And no more perpetual licenses of Arnold either. http://www.cgchannel.com/2017/05/autodesk-to-discontinue-perpetual-licences-of-arnold/

Really nice! I look forward to seeing the water in motion. X-particles is really cool and I hear they demo'd some new features at NAB that I can't wait to see for the new release.

Very nice reel! Thanks for sharing.