Babumbol

1 month earlier I gave away a R21 license for free. The other C4D user had to pay a license fee of 150 €. And it took 2 support tickets to get Maxon going. Just so you know. And consider your choice of C4D wisely. R20 and older don't need online licensing. They just work with your serial number. R21 and above check their licenses online. You'll never know when support for old versions expires. Buuut, using such an old C4D version maybe a problem with future OS updates/Hardware changes. The oldtimers won't run smoothly forever. Regarding Octane: Very different to what you know, lots of stuff to learn. But crazy fast. Works like a charm on our machines. PS: If Maxon ain't willing regarding your R18 installation files, there surely are some folks around who still got an Installer + the latest update in their archive.

And the teams licenses wont be available for Cinema 4D only in 2024. At least that's what a nice lady from Maxon told me last year, when I asked for teams licenses. But, when looking their site now, there ain't a Cinema 4D only option for Single users either 🤑

Thanks. Will have to do some NDA cleanup on the scene over the weekend, but happy to share. I hope, as a novice to scene nodes, in this case the fault sat in front of the pc.

Hi there, so recently I tried Scene Nodes to "voxelize" some Urban Scenarios. In the past, I did stuff like that with the typical mograph tools, but they are very slow. Or let's say: there is some magic border where C4D slows to a crawl, or more often, just crashes. Even when just filling a scene with simple cubes. Scene Nodes is (or was?) the latest hottest babe in town. So I guessed it's way faster. In fact, it's not. Kept crashing my PC the same way as the mograph tools. So what's up with those Scene Nodes? Possibilities are currently negligible, performance obviously the same. Why use them? Or, the better question: What did I miss? Are there ways to optimize the performance and possibilities?

@hrvoje So the crash reports are some kind of metric how stable a release is? Good to know. Once in a time I just stoppend sending crash reports or mailing the support as it felt totally useless. Starting today, I will send them again. Don't want to spoil the statistics 😉

Oh, they once had a "Quit and release license" option in Cinema 4D. But it didn't work with 2024 anymore. At least I couldn't akquire a license without the App. And with the App, it's the horror you mentioned. I feel you. I, too, have to switch licenses regularily. Really, a pool of licenses, activate when starting up C4D, deactivate when closing. Checking out for weeks, if on a business trip. Wouldn't be that difficult to integrate. But I guess they don't want it to be easy. You shall suffer, till you buy an additional seat 😉

Sorry for being skeptical with those business numbers. But revenue isn't profit. The acquisitions of zbrush, redshift and the merger with red giant had to rise the revenue. If not, their would be some profound error in the system. In fact, I found the the rise in revenue is surprisingly slow. I would have suspected way bigger steps, considering ZBrushs spread in the industry and Red Giants Trapcode, which was - till stardust and plexus - a must-have for anyone doing serious stuff in after effects.

Unfortunately most artists are artists without any business sense at all. Even the onces who start a company often price too low, and give the pressure down the chain.

I didn't know Trapcode and Cinema are locked on the same PC. So if you bought Maxon One, and wanted to use AE on one PC, while doing 3D Stuff on another PC it wouldn't work? This is like... total crap. Maybe get seperate licenses if possible? @Hobbyist You could. But imagine you would like to render in AE and work in C4D. No Team Render would save you.

You sure about that? I think this only applies to old Fair SaaS subscriptions. When looking into the license infos, an old corona license of mine is still on the old price and with 3 rendernodes. But the latest subscription from september is with only 1 rendernode and a price increase from 289,99 to 418,00 €. All of them where floating license with the chaos server anyway. So basically it boils down to a price increase of ~145 %. So, yes, a lot of things get more expensive, and corona even more.

Hefty price increase coming with this release.

If they got Jascha on board of the development, it would be great. I love TurbulenceFD and Jascha has been cooking up something new ( https://www.jawset.com/pages/reactions-beta/ ) for some time. Besides that, buying a license of TurbulenceFD is a no-brainer, anyway. Regarding that other stuff you wrote: Imho C4Ds R26 was a great release and showed a lot of development. Worth checking out.

The speed of the Affinity Apps is awesome. We used Affinity Designer for some UI design work this year. Worked like a charm. Even freelancers were totally on it (entry bar of 50 € is a no-brainer). Although the Affinity Apps (Designer, Publisher, Photo) miss some tools, they are great for minor day-to-day work. You can get minor stuff done, while Adobe Photoshop is still loading.

If I remember correctly, Maxon bought Red Giant in 2019. In the following years they bougth Forger and ZBrush. With this in mind, revenue had to go up. If not, they would have done something utterly wrong. Revenue is just income, not profit. But I agree on your main point: It won't go away. @Icecaveman Yeah, I could tell some other sad stories regarding subscriptions. Anyway, it's always good not to cling to one software or the other. In my career I used 3DS, Lightwave, Softimage, Modo and Cinema 4D. Maya is on evaluation for some specific jobs, Blender already used in parts.

At the start of this year Chaosgroup dropped Modo for VRay with a grace period of 1 month after the announcement. After the Subscriptions ended, the software stopped working. I don't know if this was bad news for hobbyists, but for me, as a professional, it sure was. We had to convert a hell of projects in a very short amound of time. Some clients understood the problem, others didn't. Whenever I think about subscriptions it's not the money (MSA was nearly 600€/year too - so what?). It's about reliability. Because reliability is key in a sustianable business model. They can keep their subscriptions, I don't care. But I would like to have an alternative, just in case the sh*t hits the fan.

Killing C4D in the task manager is somewhat a routine. Besides that: AE doesn't only grab whatever RAM it can get, it likes to take VRAM, too. So be aware of this.

This technique is very old. I remember it from old Lightwave days. AFAIK you just need a Renderer supporting OSL Shader (Octane, f.e.): https://lesterbanks.com/2017/10/free-windowbox-shader-map-interiors/

Finally we got some chineese inventions over here. I love reputation scores. What's in for the winner? And will there be some achievement message like "only 1% of the community achieved this low-score"? Sorry, just joking - the idea behind this is good. Let's see how it works out. Retaliation downvotes could be a problem, which could be dampened by limiting voting capabilites per/day f.e.

Yes, sometimes postings get no attention, get lost in the dark, or just nobody knows an answer. Best practice: If you get to know the solution for your problem, post it. Answer yourself, but in the forum. Give and recieve knowledge. That's what a forumm, what a community is about!

Well, 10 € aint that much and it maybe some kind of 'quality assurance', too. And besides that it's almost always the same: People don't value free stuff, they take it as given (see example above). Charge it, they wouldn't contribute/donate for free anyway (who didn't donate/contribute till now, wouldn't do it in the future anyway. I like the idea of core4d being something as a premium club. And maybe we can add some additional eye candy to attract new members.

No longer the old Villa near Frankfurt? I was there, once, for a job interview. Nice place, as I remember it, but it was very crowdy, even 15 years ago 😉

Yeah, you can work nondestructive in PS, but it's not the same. Whenever you do stuff, you have to consider this. Smart Objects, Linking, etc. are the way to go, but very cumbersome. A simple example from daily, boring ArchViz stuff: Setup your stuff in AE (or just use an old project as base), maybe even do some retouching, because some gras patches don't look fine. The client wants an update. Just exchange the existing image sequences (if you use several perspectives, fe.) with the new ones. Even the stamp tool gets updated. Just re-export. Finished. You can't do this in PS as fast as in AE. If you only re-render a portion of the image, put that in a pre-comp. Done. Want five different color gradings? Pre-comp, put it in a new comp, color grade on top. Done. If the client want's another chair: Again, just exchange the sequence. Everything gets updated in an instant. If it gets more complex, it funnier with AE expressions. Linking effects to each other, and the like. Only drawback in AE: It's not so paint-friendly. So if you do lot's of retouching, better use PS. I mostly use AE these days. Biggest drawback for AE and PS: Both are unbelieveable slow and buggy. When starting up Affinity it's like a totally different world. Way more snappier, faster, etc. 10 min ago I had to fire up AE 2021 because the newest version just refused to render a simple 3D comp. That's just annoying. AE & PS sometimes feel like abandonware.

@hvanderwegen Interesting read. Thanks for the detailed information. I basically started 3D with Lightwave and it hurts a bit, to see this old & rusty, but beloved ship going down like this. But I guess you're right. There is no point in patching it up

Lightwave is still a thing? I would have thought it's pratically dead, regarding developement. Lightwave Core was a disaster, the stuff following with Rob Powers was irritating, too. After this, I decided to leave it be. Although I still like the direct hands-on modeling approach. Way faster than C4D-Clicker-Hero. Even faster than Modo in it's default state, as one has to use all the available customisations, to get it on speed.

Houdini = Borg Cube