Jeff H1

looks like none of the above. 🙂 At least the new commander allows you to quickly see the capsules and assets you can't download or use without a Maxon One account. 😛 ok ok. I'm kidding. The Thicken finally happened though. It feels like they finally want people to use nodes now too. I may check it out before my sub ends.

I saw someone had posted this question on a Blender forum and there was some response.

Isn’t he using the old built in render engine? If so it’s slow as molasses and uses system RAM. I don’t know of many render farms that support it. it may be worth looking into renting a render engine like Arnold or Corona which supports CPU rendering and can work on a 3rd party render farm. Some of those even work faster than the c4d physical renderer. At least that was the case with our old junky trash cans, using Arnold. Some render farms offer free credits when you sign up.

Speaking of Sketchfab (aka FAB), I saw recently that some AI company bulk downloaded all free assets on (sketch)Fab to help train their AI model. https://objaverse.allenai.org/

the simple fact I cannot re-sort objects in the Blender object manager is a perfect example of developers thinking they know better than the user and for me shows they are not "getting there" without sorting these simple quality of life issues out first (yes I unchecked "sort alphabetically" which is a pointless feature anyways). All other apps allow you drag and resort objects in the Object Manager. Since the beginning of many of these apps in fact. It's strange I can drag/sort collections but I can't re-sort objects within any collection. It's bad enough they call it a collection. 🙂 Someone in one of their forums mentioned Groups and requested the ability to add modifiers to a whole group (like C4D). I felt like some of them never heard the word "group" before. hahaha.

the other way to look at is to adapt. Traditional matte painters, sfx and sculptors had to do this as apps like Nuke, Houdini and Zbrush were adopted by studios for film work . I think it's upon us, as artists, to adapt to this. Add apps like Firefly to your arsenal. Learn them just as well as you know your main DCC. Let it be another offering you give to your client, maybe sometimes not letting them know you are using AI. It may be a way to knock out quick jobs or even take on additional smaller work. One concern I could see in the future is our rates. For instance, if a client says "why am I paying you $$ per day when you are having AI do the work for you?" Obviously they're oversimplifying it, but that's what some clients do.

Awesome.. I'll check it out later today!!!

It sounds a bit harsh but the reality is there. maxon conceded defeat with some of its tools a long time ago like sculpting and texture painting. They let apps like Painter, Mari, Zbrush and even Blender develop their respective tools more. Particles.. they did the same thing. They let X-Particles continue to grow while they dropped TP. It's the nature of some of these companies to either buy or develop features then leave them be after a year while they move on to other features. I'd hate to see AI be at the forefront of C4D development. It's so democratized already with everyone and their mother developing free or embedded tools to create AI. For Maxon to try to lump in to C4D (probably as a stupid Maxon One *premium* feature) would be wasteful from an R&D perspective. Also AI (based on the Firefly reference in this thread) would take away from actually doing work INSIDE C4D. Why spend the time modeling, texturing and rendering assets when I can open up a command prompt and type away. However, if algorithms were refined in to C4D to help make more intelligent decisions without user intervention like they've done with Remesher, but across other aspects of C4D that would be helpful. I mentioned before maybe an upscaler in Redshift, or even for imported textures which are maybe only 2k and you want it upscaled to 4k. Having a button a texture node, or stringing in an upscaler node would be useful. Or a tweener, where you could render every second or third frame and at the end, have an AI inside C4D generate and render out the in between frames, which would be faster than rendering the whole animation in RS or Octane to begin with. The tech is already there. There are already some apps that do this.. I think free if I remember correctly. Regarding Xpresso, I thought Maxon said they were done with it? Their scene nodes are the future.. just a long distant future... 😛

at the same time other apps will be updating as well. H20 is around the corner. Blender 4 sometime this year. Maya 2024 and so on. Luckily for the artist, none of these companies can afford to rest anymore and rely on continued subs. Also, a few of these apps have Indie versions (Maya, Houdini) which are getting it into the hands of artists who can't afford the "full" version. I wonder if WetaM and WetaH are still being developed as well.

XP can do it. I used this a couple of times. https://3deoskill.com/shop/freebies-2/ (ivy maker python generator). a video on him making the script;

would be interesting if it worked with fields and effectors.

sounds like a plan then!! These days it seems like shorter videos are more easier to consume maybe broken up based on topic or a logical point in building the asset or scene.

It would be nice to add a smidge of cloner/effectors/fields in the SOP section. Maybe use it to show how to make "cloner" rivets w/copytopoints and such for the barrels or something else? the mograph part of C4D is what's very nice and easy to use. As a C4D artist trying to learn Houdini, I think understanding how to replicate functionality would be nice.

some of it deals with the export end of things. I found this out years ago with Max. During export you would need to do things like deselect "Triangulate" option, collapse modifiers by making editable(?). I think ABC has the same thing. Once you export as triangulated, you can't import it as quads elsewhere. Do as HappyPolygon mentioned or run it through Remesher but think about creating guide splines from the imported FBX to help the remesher

very nice work!!!!!!!

pie menus are one of those features that Maxon couldn't be bothered with. hotkey sets and other user functionality being another. I shouldn't have to go to a panel to add more divisions to a bevel or loop cut.. let me use the dame mouse wheel. There's just a lot of things I've realized over the years that Maxon has seemingly been inflexible about as they know better than the user. Shit, I'm surprised they updated icons and moved stuff around. I bet that dev meeting was a bloodbath. 😛 Addon devs in Blender have embraced PM quite enthusiastically. One of the problems I've run into is these addon devs are running over each other with their pie menus, hotkeys and like functionality. It's nice to see so many options but sucks to troubleshoot, especially with as often as blender updates and the addons have to be updated often too.

Some trainers on youtube are showing how to use Geometry Nodes (ones that work easily) in Blender to replicate fields, cloners and other C4D procedural mograph features. Also, there are a couple addons which help to simplify even further. Motion Animate addon uses geo nodes, with its own additional motion nodes, to give you some of the C4D functionality. https://blendermarket.com/products/motion-animate---speed-up-motion-graphics j-mograph is another one too. https://blendermarket.com/products/mograph Both of those are a low cost of entry for adding mograph functionality. As for asset libraries, I'm finding a crap ton of them with addons like BlenderKit, Bagapie, Polyhaven and more. Many are free without making you feel dirty for not being upsold to "One". Once I take a break from some of the training I'm going to install BlenderFarm which is a small footprint render farm manager for Blender. https://github.com/LogicReinc/LogicReinc.BlendFarm My sub is up at the end of next month. I'm giving Blender a go for now to see what I can come up with. Edit: Then I'll tackle Houdini..... 😛

It will take a few years before the trend starts to swing the other way. The comfort factor of just using the same app will always be appealing. Studios and freelancers with legacy projects will need a way to get back into them. There's also pipelines built around certain apps that will make it hard to change. That being said, it is happening slowly but surely. That's why I say it will take a few years before we start to see a trend shifting away from legacy apps like Maya and C4D. Based on social media responses about lots of people leaving specific apps, I can see the trend beginning. Based on job postings, I can see the trend beginning. I'm not one of those people who says "Blender will soon be the industry standard", but we'll continue to see people shift away to other apps like Blender and Houdini provided both companies keep developing at their current paces, listening to customers, having great customer outreach and building tools for various sectors.

Well I already have some Blender addons (eg MeshMachine, MachineTools, BC/HOPS and so on). I think I was leaning towards that because it's easier for me to get up to speed again as I was using it for a few months last year. It may be easier for me to find a job sooner w/B and then continue to delve into Houdini on the side. I know on your YT you show how to tackle modeling in Houdini. I've also looked at stuff from Tim Van H. a while ago via his Patreon which focuses on a variety of freelance style tasks in YT. Some of the others I'm subscribed to are Adrien Lambert, cgside, houdini element, and ale barbosa. Lots to think about this weekend!!! 😛

Yeah I'll check the usual hangouts... thanks!! 🙂

What are some network rendering options with Blender? I'm thinking both on current frame as well as distributing a render job on my network? I know Deadline as we used that w/Maya and C4D at my last job and I had set up a test node for Blender. the only other thing I've used with Blender was Sheep-It to work on some Blender nebula shots for a film about 3 years ago. Thanks.

most of his plugins are a bit overpriced for what they do.

Sorry to hear about that Igor! I just re-signed with a company I resigned from last year just to do some ad hoc work for some money. While I'm not financially strapped yet, I've had to cut costs. I stopped Nuke maintenance last year but have kept up with Redshift, Octane, C4D and XP for now. My XP and C4D are up next month. It's close to $1K total. That's a good chunk of change to help me float a bit longer. The hard part is relearning Blender and getting good enough to the point to freelance with it. Houdini as well. I just subscribed to your channel. 🙂 Good luck!

maybe it's time for us to start being greedy with our money. H20 is coming out this year (indie is still under $300) and Blender is free.. Blender plugins are under $20 for the most part with C4D's developers opting for $90 and higher to sell their plugins. I know there's an update coming next month for C4D but I don't think they'll downgrade the greed factor. Lots to think about before my sub ends next month. Looks like I may start digging into alternatives tomorrow after this project is over.