FLima

This "too late" really gives a negative feel doesnt it? I think I understand the whole thing about maintanance and the idea behind it. But saying "hey, too late!" to a customer, I dont know man... I think I also keep asking myself, how companies like Pixologic manage to be such good guys, for SO LONG. I've gotten now, new and shiny Zbrush 2022, paying zero for it, after paying for the full license back in 2016. Since then, I paid nothing... nada, and the software has improved so much over the past years.

To conclude this topic: I've been now using R23, I've made the switch during two projects, but I am finding R23 a bit more stable than S24. There are some unfixed bugs of course that this version will die with.. but at least, performance wise, I can work better and non stop, compared to some weird freezes and sudden closing of application I was getting at S24. These issues have been pointed out to be a nvidia driver issue, since I am using an older version of the driver, because the new one, freezes with Redshift completely, not just C4D and Redshift, but the whole computer, for a few seconds. After I am done with the projects, I will give R25 a try (I will cry about leaving Signal behind of course... 😞 hehe)) Thank you all for your inputs!

Yeah, because of crashes now, I usually create several versions of files on the same project Im working on. I even added a new naming convention, that specifies the exact hour and minute I have done something, just so I can keep a track more or less and keep safe copies everywhere. I have returned to R23 for now. I feel like it crashes a bit less compared to version 24, but I will give version 25 a try eventually (good to know that it doesnt take super long to adapt to the new interface!) I couldnt do it just now, because I am in the middle of two busy and stresful projects, but once I am finished with them, I will give it a try! And so accurate the thing about us being test dummies, so frustrating!

Yeah, I dont want to derail into mac vs pc type of thing. There is a very good reason for me to use PC nowadays, and it will take me sometime to trust apple again with making it my main 3D workstation. And I am sure Mac Os is not a dream like it used to be anymore, for sure there are new problems, etc.. . And yes, drivers are a nightmare! Nowadays, I think it became sort of a game... of gathering pieces that work together, and fine tuning specific drivers/updates that works. For instance, I really want to use the new Cycles render from Blender 3.0, I've made a quick test, and it renders so much faster than the older version! But it needs the latest nvidia driver... and the latest nvidia driver doesnt work with Cinema 4D and the latest Redshift. Bit of a nightmare.

I feel like this is a recurring theme on this forum. Someone mentions something they've had / are having problems with...then someone else comes to trivialize/degrade the issue, reinforcing that they've never had any issue with specific thing, transfering the problem to the user itself, as if it was their own fault. It would be awesome if there was a bit more empathy in here, instead of "you are doing it wrong" mentality. It is not a "notion" like you mentioned, it is several issues that a lot of people, me included, have with Windows and PC environemnt, specially coming from mac os... With the last forced update Windows 10 had for instance, my graphics cards stopped working properly, it was blinking non stop. I had to stop for a whole day to see how I could revert to the version before the update, just to see what happened. If you check on Nvidia forums, my case is not isolated either. In the end, I lost 2 days, reinstalling windows, softwares, plugins... just because of an update that happened overnight without me wanting it. But I feel is kinda pointless, me trying to prove my experience with Windows has not always been perfect, and that is not my own fault..or that I have a wrong mentality/notion about these issues. Also, this is far from the discussion I wanted to have on this topic I created, and I personaly dont care about the whole mac vs pc debate, as I mentioned on my previous post, I will use whatever it makes sense at the time, and it was a no brainer make the switch to PC when considering the setup price at that time, with the amount of power I could have, compared to a mac (still kinda is, even with the horrible prices of video cards right now).

Why is it all in caps? 😮

This is a weird one... I totally get it, I was on mac for 10 years, it is one of the reasons I moved to C4D from 3Ds max several years ago, because C4D had its mac version. But the performance felt soooo behind over the past years, the amount of power I was able to buy with great gpus with a fraction of the money that I could buy a mac pro, that still wouldnt be as fast as my pc with those gpu's... it was a no brainer... But yeah, I freaking hate PC's too... so many tiny things to take care of, and a forced update, suddenly breaks a lot of things...

The guys from 3Dcoat always put something for sale, Even though is super buggy sometimes, I havent found a better alternative for retopology and UV yet!

Im now very curious about version R20... Just a bit scared on how much stuff I would miss after. I guess there is no win-win situation with this eh? I also remember one specific update for character animators, that did something super important, when you can simply delete a vertex, or add a edge loop to a character, without breaking the whole weight map. This was such a small and unnanounced feature, but it was a BIG improvement for my workflow.

I read so quickly, thinking this was on cycles... haha... I dont get why is it taking so long for them to implement something so absurdly essential 😞 But hey, at least there is this option now, and also Octane for Blender has it too. And Renderman (but renderman very very convoluted..)

"Notgrade" will be my moto for now on hahaha!

Yeah, I remember using R20, and never had any issue, ever... it is even weird thinking about this now. Ok, that is good info! So, R25 is stable you think? I just signed up to Octane earlier this week, because I am a bit desperate mid production... But if R25 gives a nice level of stability, maybe I will need to suck it up and give it a try, even though with the new interface... 😮 hehe.. But signal..is a no no for this new version right?

And by no means... I want to pile on on all the complaints that we've seen here already on this website. I feel this is an issue that affects many softwares nowadays, the shorter support, more pushes for quick updates, breaking versions, breaking plugins, no substantial change... etc... A weird time to be a 3d artist.

I agree 100% with you. Thanks for your input on this. Yeah, I gotta confess... I got tempted to buy the whole software again, just to stay in with it forever and have perpetual access to my files without being hostage to a horrible system... but there is so little incentive... I dont know.. then again, I feel the whole industry is going this direction, there are still so many brilliant companies ( Pixologic , 3Dcoat , Blender ) that seem to have users in their mind whenever they make decision and offer updates, but the rest... just like Electronic Arts in the videogame area, is a bit like this... 😞 I will suck it up, continue with R24, hope one day Nvidia will release a decent driver that both Redshift and C4D works nicely without many crashes, and that is it.

Actually, read again what I asked in my post.

You are spot on. These updates are now sloppy... and yes, unfortunately it is not a C4D exclusive problem.. but they could at least go back to their yearly releases and longer support of a software, instead of dropping everything and abandoning a version completely, before jumping into the next one 😞 Which version of C4D do you use right now?

Hey! Damn... this is a really tricky situation!! 😞 Hope it goes back to normal soon for you over there. Yeah, some countries in South America really got in a bad shape after covid, Brazil is also one of them 😞 Best of luck to you @luchifer I think in R21 the UV was still the old style right? I gotta confess, the UV was a great update for me personally 😞 But yeah.. if it is the most stable, I will need to consider...

You live in the most perfect (and rare) scenario, where C4D is super stable and works fine with Redshift, and whatever else you have in your computer with whatever driver you have. But hey, good for you! For you,C4D, the most stable software! Except for the 90% of idiots who dont know how computers and drivers works, or people who needs more fps in their cool games. Unlucky us right?

Yes, i even forgot about games! Sometimes steam updates a game rightfully, but you dont get to play it on a older driver anymore... I know this is a more of a general issue... but my main point is basically this... we dont always get a choice. The main thing I opened this topic, was to find out what is the most stable version of C4D people are using at the moment, since I am tired of switching back and forth... and if this happens with other softwares.

Man, by the tone of your responses, it feels like you strongly believe I dont know how driver update works.. and obvious do's and donts of updates in general. Just to put it out there, I work for a very long time, very long time with computers in general, so I know these things works, ok? Also, worked with C4D for 15 years, so i am not speaking out of my imagination of current issues, which the driver thing is not even the main part of in the first place. But for very specific situations... I dont know, when your software crashes constantly and the support service for the company you pay tons of money for a crappy subscription tells you "Please, you need to upgrade your studio driver, this doesnt happen with the last studio driver, this driver you have is not supported by this version", and guess what, it stops crashing and giving you type A problem, but now gives you type B problem...or when you also use different softwares that needs a version 4.7 of driver minimium...what do you do? It is not always a choice in this perfect scenario you are trying to paint. Sometimes you need to update in order to use one thing or another, you dont have a choice.

It is not me making the choice of downgrading the driver (not upgrading), it is C4D making this choice for me hehe. For instance, Redshift doesnt work with C4D and the second last studio driver of nvidia (still testing this very last driver released last week), then I have to search everywhere, and find out that only a specific old version works with Redshift.. and I can continue production.... or I downgrade redshift, but then I lose a specific new node I added to the project that came with the last version. Etc. Before this year, I kept my nvidia studio driver intact, but then, thanks to the amazing Redshift, this has all changed... Newer versions of Redshift dont work anymore with certain older drivers, and newer studio drivers dont work with the latest version of Redshift properly. It is a "fun" cat and mouse game to have during production, let me tell ya...

I dont know why.. But I dont get all this node crazyness. I dont like to work with nodes as I feel that an artistic task for me, becomes a lot more technical than I would like. But I know I am in the minority with this opinion, and I can see a lot of people doing INSANE and cool looking stuff with it. About particles, agree with Dave, Xparticles is awesome! So much control and brilliant integration with Redshift! But not having GPU, it limits the size of your simulations, and how fast you can preview the results, a sad bottleneck to a fantastic (and in my opinion) totally worth the price. Just saw the Reactions from Jawset, looks super promising! Will download the beta whenever I have time and see how it goes 🙂

R23 at the beginning was a giant nightmare. I now constantly save the same project with different numbers because of it, since when it crashed... it basically turned the file into a 43 byte little thing, and destroyed all your work. But now R23 is actually good I think (besides the stupid timeline malfunction...) But not sure... this is maybe a tendency in all the softwares we use right now? Having less support, forcing us to go into this endless cycle of subscriptions and updates, just to get everything working together as intented, getting mediocre improvements in between? I have no idea how it is with Houdini and plugins for example. Im just trying to think of a honest option... because... even though I absolutely still love C4D and its motion graphics capabilities.. it is becoming a production nightmare.

Hello all, maybe some of you is experiencing this one way or another But I am finding the stability of each C4D version becoming worse lately. I am now using S24, because it is the latest version before the new UI, and I am in the middle of two long projects, and dont have time to re-learn a new interface, etc.. Also, I dont want to lose my plugins that works with version 24, and not willing to pay after each interaction for a whole new set of plugins, updates, etc.. specially if they are (unfortunately) tied to companies like Greyscalegorilla, who are charging an absurd amount for a useless subscription. To add insult to injury, there is this much shorter support and bug fixes on each C4D version. After 2-3 months, Maxon basically drops the support on a specific version, to push you to a new one, forcing you to pay for plugin updates, more subscriptions, rinse and repeat. My question is, how is everyone handling this? Which version of C4D is working better for you? Is this happening with other 3D softwares too? I know Blender has a LTS version, which is the perfect and considerate mindset for its users, specially productions that relies on a specific version for a long time, and needs to make sure their plugins are working nicely. But how it is with Maya and Houdini? I am kinda exhausted cycling between 23 and 24 all the time, because they all share weird and different bugs that will never be fixed, bugs that depending on a project, I can work around... (i.e 23 has a better integration with Zbrush and stability with Nvidia Studio driver, but has a timeline copy paste bug that makes it impossible to work with characters... / R24 has the timeline bug fixed, but always crashes with Zbrush GoZ, horrible performance and constant crashes with the latest nvidia drivers.. having to always downgrade drivers)

This was done by a 14 year old?? Thats it.. Im going to live in a beach, selling objects made of coconuts.