Babumbol

Now to something completely different: Can anybody tell how R25 relates in terms of stability? Background info: I seldomly use R23 because it's crashing relatively often (several times a day on complex projects), compared to R21 (sometimes) or R18 (never ever).

Third: Some people just don't know their way around the software. So analytics give a maybe unbiased look. But I guess, one very hard to decipher.

Maybe sometimes (I don't hop that often on a plane, but more often to another workstation). But for most of the time it would be better to just release the license. And as MarcoVN said: Make it an option! Please, +1000 ... And I agree, it's easy to reallocate licenses. But I have to re-enter my account details very often (it seems whenever every license is blocked). It's one click vs. re-entering and clicking about. Next time you hop on a plane and accidentially loose your license, please, give me a call, when in risk of butching a job because of this. Day and night. As I'm pretty sure this will never happen 😉 Btw, don't give too much an analytics. I always switch them of. No, wait. I will turn them on now, immediately. I never thought someone is using analytics seriously.

I'm curious: From reading those posts, some users are solely using Cinema4D. This seems a bit odd to me, as I always used different tools for different needs. And in my opinion learning new tools is essential for being (or going to be) a good 3D artist. And I don't really understand this "lock-in"-argument, either. C4D didn't change sooo much in the newest versions. Most of the scenes can still be opened in older versions. In fact, I regularly work with the R18 (it's very stable and near un-crashable). You can easily learn another 3D app, keep your old C4D perpetual running and convert stuff as you like. When you're a hobbyist or freelancer this is even more true. PS: I don't like subscriptions either. One can argue whatever he want's, but software got pricier and less innovative since the introduction of subscriptions. But as several users pointed out: subscriptions are here to stay, no matter what the users say.

They didn't say "leave the industry and you will make money" 😉

Just a by-note. Today I had a meeting concerning communication and marketing related to an upcoming software release and everyone was: Man, you gotta present the UI! You put so much work in it, and everyone around here loves it. My response was simple: Sorry guys, just saw a new, very well thought out interface* gettin shred to pieces, just because people wanted other features, not UI/UX stuff. 😄 *) Although I have to say while the workflow-side of the new interface is great, I could argue about the undistinctive icon design. But I guess the interface designer said something like I did, too: Interface design isn't "do it, leave it". It's an ongoing process, heavily depend on the users input.

I'm sorry, maybe my posting was bit off. I'm actually unhappy with C4D updates and the subscription model. It just reminds me of the Adobe move nearly a decade back. And we all ranted about that year after year. What did Adobe do? Ignore all this and just ramp up the marketing budget. It's not exactly tiring to read about it, it's tiring to contribute to it. In my opinion, the only way to make yourself heard, is by means of money. Voicing an unpleasant opinion and paying the money is fine for the company. In the books the paying customers are the happy ones. As a UI/UX Consultant for a software company, and a small-percentage-shareholder of the same, I attended all critical business meetings. The topic about perpetual vs. subscription, too. It was commonly agreed, that the subscription model brings more money and binds customers way better, while not having any need for ground-breaking updates. The only question left was "How could the company sell this as an advantage to the customer". Maybe you're point is true, too. They shouldn't forget what it's all about. But you still could switch to blender and voice your discomfort about Maxons Moves.

More or less good arguments on both sides, regarding how Maxon introduced the subscription. But it comes down to business realities, as srek earlier said. Business realities are easy to explain: It's all about the money. No fancy "best for the users". No fancy "best for the developers". Everybody is looking for themselves. Those perpetual/subscription discussions are tiring. If you don't like it - move on. There are plenty of alternatives and Cinema isn't by any means an "unreplaceable app". On the other side let Maxon play their game their way. If in the not-so-far-future sales slowly recede, they for sure will take actions. If everything works out well money-wise, than no lamentation or arguments whatsoever would change their mind.

I guess he meant it from a financial point of view. He can't upgrade from his R21 in a financially feasable way. Maxon made sure, that no sane user would hold on to perpetual licenses. If you want to stay with C4D, a subscription is the only sane way to do so. Some users just don't like to be forced like that. I can understand that.

Since the pandemic, your situation might be the standard now 😉 Having the same problem, we put the library in the cloud and made virtual drives (subst...). This way, the centralized texture library workflow was kept all the way, even as everyone one was/is in the home office. But I totally agree with you. Cinemas way of handling textures cost me already lots of hours. And the new project assets inspector (which replaced the texture manager later) has some new quirks. Sometimes it doens't even show missing textures.

Oh, you're right. So as a Blender user, you would only have around 1.300 €/year to spend on Plugins 😉

Maybe you need lots of PlugIns to get Blender "feature-complete". But if you want a competitive C4D, you need at least a 3rd-party-Renderer and X-Particles: C4D + Redshift: ~ 867 €/year (ex VAT) Insydium Fused: ~ 843 €/year (ex VAT) And C4D will still have a lack of features in Modeling, Sculpting and UV (especially UV mapping!). Besides that, the C4D path seems to be subscription all the way: You could buy lot's of plugins for 1.710 €. Every year. You could even buy lot's of plugins, Houdini (Indie) and Modo for 1.710 €. Every year. You could even buy all that stuff, and still rent C4D on a monthly basis, if an old client asks for an update of an old job. In light of this, I totally agree with you. Cinema 4D should really fill it's gaps. Because nowadays it's very costly.

AEScripts is somewhat your vision, just for AE. They got some C4D Plugins, too, but not worth the mention.

It is sad to read all the bad experiences from the plugin developers. Especially, as C4D depends heavily on plugins. Without, it's pretty much useless in any production environment except motion graphics. One thing to note: Most of the plugins you developers programmed and wrote about in this thread, I never heard before. But maybe I'm just not up-to-date.

- Slightly different UI Design (colors, mainly) - This and that, nothing special - Remove license management in C4D, because they want us to use the maxon app - Lot's of love for scene nodes

Last time I checked, the parallel command didn't work. One use case for multiple Programm Instances: You're rendering via Team Renderer, because Team Server s***s even more. But you want to convert a CAD File. Nothing special, nothing CPU-heavy, but time consunimg and crash-prone (with some CAD data, I can tell). So you could convert the STEP File in your open C4D Instance. When it crashes, you got a total mess with lot's of different rendered frames, as C4D can't handle abribtrary frame definitions, nor skip existing frames. Another use case: You have to do severall single-threaded-operations in C4D, which will take a LOT of time. This happens sometimes and can be very frustrating. You could take a coffee and watch C4D-TV. Or you could open another instance, let C4D crawl on a thread, while working on something different with another C4D instance. To be true, I never do this. When one machine is occupied, I just switch to another. Early in my career I decided not to let any machine slow me down, and stick to that since then.

I like the release, too. Those updates aren't groundbraking, but will save a lot of time on different jobs.

You could try and add some debris at corners. This is where the dirt keeps piling up. I mean stuff like deformed cans, paper, whatever trash. Otherwise the clean line where the wall meets the ground (don't know how to explain that properly) always looks odd. Because there are seldom such straight lines, even in urban environments. There is always a bump. And maybe you could try some wet surfaces. Like after the rain. With puddles on the ground, reflecting the nice neon lights. That's like a free detail enhancement. Regarding cables, you can use spline dynamics. If remembering correctly, there even is a tutorial in the C4D inhelp. Just don't forget to freeze the cable in it's preferred state and kick the dynamic stuff afterward.

Hey, big thanks for all the info! Will dig into this.

Nice one! How did you animate the planetary gear? I thought gears is only for setting the rpm and syncing gears with a fixed axis? Had to animate something quite similar last week, but a little bit more komplex (hammer drill planetary gears with different gear transformations on the planets), and failed utterly 😯

Originally it's a Lightwave PlugIn especially designed for architectural modeling. I used it a lot in Lightwave. Love it's snapping features and one-click-solutions for building slated roofs, floors, stairs, etc. The provided library isnt't stylish, but you can expand it with your own stuff. Standard buildings can be modeled quite fast with this toolset. But it isn't limited to architectural stuff only.