Crispe

The new UI is fine. Everyone complains about when a UI or branding etc changes. I don't think it needed changing personally but people will get used to it. Its the odd prioritisation of it over other things that is the issue.

Delta Mush was already a free plugin for R21 anyway (and it is fantastic) https://www.valkaari.com/?product=delta-mush

Just had a look out of curiosity at my local reseller (Australia) to see what the perpetual upgrade situation is. To access upgrade pricing to R23, both R20 and R21 were valid - so a 2 year upgrade window. To access upgrade pricing to R25, only R23 is valid, not R21 and R23 - so only 1 year. Could be a mistake I suppose, otherwise a bit sneaky. How is it in other regions?

Really thought this might be the Bodypaint update considering they've been improving the UV situ over the past few versions. I don't mind the new layout, but the old layout was great as is. A particularly disappointing release. I'll stick to R21.

Yeh I found and do still find nodes hard to work with. Starting with Cycles nodes definitely helped, particularly with so many great resources available. I'm using Redshift at the moment and finding it much less intuitive.

Interesting, thanks.

Out of curiosity, what is weird about Blender animating?

I think they're working on a proper Material Manager at the moment, thank god. I've been trying to learn Blender and while its an incredible product I still find myself missing the C4D user experience. However Blender feels like a much more complete program and Eevee is incredibly good. Is Redshift RT going to be C4D's answer to Eevee? Do other 3D apps have an equivalent to Eevee, or is Blender way out in front in that regard?

I ended switching over to Redshift instead. That is also going the way of subscription but I purchased a perpetual license before deadline that should do me a few years and then if I do decide to go subscription with it at least its half the price of what the Cycles 4D sub cost would be. I'm still pretty dirty that you can't get Cycles 4D on its own anymore.

I'm one of the Cycles 4D only customers, so this is a bummer. I picked Cycles 4D up because it was really stable, had an affordable perpetual buy in, and loads of resources for learning from the Blender Cycles community. The only reason I found that this end of perpetual thing was happening was because I googled whether Cycles X was coming to Cycles 4D and stumbled upon this news. If they've communicated this with perpetual licence holders, I've missed it. Anyway, I definitely won't be getting fused and will jump on another engine or move fully to Blender (where Cycles is much faster anyway). Not trying to turn this into a Blender vs C4D thread, but as someone who only does a small percentage of their client work in 3D, I'm finding it harder to justify these costs when Blender does so much of what I need (I still like using C4D more though).

I still haven't had a chance to try R21 yet, but if the auto weighting algorithm for character rigging is as improved as people are suggesting, then that's worth the price of admission for me on its own. Looking forward to playing with it in September.