Jeff H1

Maxon will follow companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Foundry who have chosen not to yield to customer's frustrations on subscriptions, pricing, or the rise of other alternative software like Blender, Houdini, Fusion and so on. I added Foundry because they've overpriced Nuke, Mari, Katana and Hiero, driving the price up each year. NukeX is now $10,268. I bought it when it was around $6.5k about 5 years ago and recently stopped maintenance because the costs were going up by about $200 extra per year. There has been no earth-shattering development in Nuke over the past 5 years to warrant a $3,768 increase over that period of time. There's no reason why Maya sub should cost as much as it does, or even C4D for that matter, but it's what the market will bear. Blender isn't taking over the industry despite what the pundits stated about 5 years ago, and each year and each release since then *yawn*. If it DOES continue to eat up subscriptions for other software, it'll take at least another 3-4 years for numbers to potentially go negative and then maybe companies like Maxon and Autodesk will revisit. However, Blender isn't the only one developing. So are Maxon and Autodesk. They'll continue to do just enough to keep their base and maybe a bit more. The world said they were leaving Adobe when it announced CC and here we are years later and it hasn't happened. CC was launched in 2012 with about 500K subscribers. Prodesigntools did an analysis and determined there were 22mil subscribers in 2020 and around 26mil by the end of last year. So much for the "angsty taking your ball and going home" like most said they would do with Adobe. They've grown exponentially despite the few people that said they don't use CC anymore. Apparently lots of others are. Do these companies care? Of course not. World crisis? They don't care. They've already counted their subscribers for the next 1 1/2 to 2 years. They probably stopped forecasting perpetual license purchases about a year ago, which is why the phased it out now. Those sales were more sporadic and not worth it to them. Here's a fun article by WIBU Systems (used to have a Vray dongle made by them): https://www.wibu.com/magazine/keynote-articles/article/detail/the-many-opportunities-and-few-risks-of-software-subscriptions0.html

The jet ski wake seems tiny and tame for what it is. The sim almost looks like it should be coming from a toy in a tub as there isn't enough detailed displacement in the wake. I don't think dynamic paint in blender is as strong as doing it in FLIP. Here's an old example in Houdini: You can check out some jet ski footage here. It looks like it was filmed on Lake Travis.

I've yet to see anything motion graphics related by the Blender community that stacks up against things from Already Been Chewed, Yeti, Tendril, Elastic and the like which are predominately C4D and Houdini. We won't even talk about FX. Even the 3D Motion Show stuff is more exciting to watch than people on Youtube trying to show the prowess of Blender in motion graphics. Don't get me started on the really bad Udemy stuff. I feel like I'm watching old Lightwave stuff when they are posting what they can do with Blender 3.x (the newest). It's painful watching most Blender youtubers as I feel they learned 3D about 5 years ago in Blender 2.79 or so, and it's all they know. Entagma is at least entertaining, I think because they put time in over the past 15+ years across various software to get where they are at now. Their experience is amazing and fun to watch. I know a lot of how rich and complex many of these commercials and title sequences from studios like Elastic has to do with skilled professionals who have used the same software for the past decade, and the team employed, but it gives me no warm vibes and or wanting to switch to Blender for motion graphics when it appears to be in its infancy at best. Regardless of the subscription war raging on, there's something to be said for software that works perfectly in the space its dominating. I guess this is why many of these studios use C4D and Houdini. Sometimes it's about using the right tool for the job. Edit: I will say I've seen some bright blender flickers from some of the Pwnisher contest submissions (and I'm not referring to the bad EEVEE flickers either. 🙂 )

eek.. they're still developing Mantra and FF for Blender? 😕

I'll just sit back and watch the great sims from Houdini artists. Sims-wise, Houdini is the GOAT. Even Michael Bay is impressed.

Unfortunately, Blender is probably your best bet. You may be able to push C4D assets/animations through Blender w/FBX but I had limited luck without buying an addon (Better FBX import/export) when we tried it at my last job. We were trying to get our articulated sat models into STK (which uses gltf). Blender can export those. Now that I think about it, I don't think we ever saw the finished product. There are some limited tutorials on Youtube regarding Blender and GLTF.

It looks like in the Random Field, you had Random selected instead of Noise. I don't know what Random actually does in this case. Again I'm not the best at describing this stuff but here it goes. Quantize: Think of it as kind of step (or maybe a linear?) function but with the values. For instance, if you tell something it can rotate from 0-360 degrees, then tell it to Quantize that 360 by 4 (on the Quantize slider), it will essentially divide the 360 by 4 which means the objects will only snap/rotate to 90 degree increments. In your scene you have Quantize set to 10 steps which gives it incrementally more options to rotate linearly. If you were to move that value down to 2, you'll see the cubes aren't having much fun. I think I did that with the uploaded file below. One or two will move from one rotational value to another, then back again eventually. Try messing with the slider as the animation plays, but first turn off the Delay to see what its doing. As you move the slider to give it more steps, you'll see more stuff happening. For things like dice or flat plates, you may want to only have it at 2 or 4 steps. It just depends on what you are trying to do. Delay: You could think of it as having the effect be a bit more lazy. Instead of going from one value to the next in a linear way, it lets it happen gradually, like it's an ease in/ease out. Try starting with Smooth for the Delay Layer Controls and dial it down to maybe 30%. 100% is too high and you won't see anything happen in the animation.. You can switch it to Spring which gives it like a secondary/follow through motion (I think). It's probably best to look at the Cineversity training and I think some from Greyscale Gorilla too for more basics on the mograph module. Things like quantize may not be things you use that often unless you need it for a particular job. coordonnées et base de données_RE_delay_quantize_color_1.c4d

yeah it can be a bit confusing and a lot of those things you may not use on a regular basis but good to know they are there.

seems to work here in 2023. I always use the Open Dialog on it.

I'm not as smart with this stuff as I should be but: Cloner is affected by the Effectors (e.g. plain, delay, random, shader, etc). The Effectors are affected by Fields (e.g. Linear, Box, Spherical, Random, etc) You can then modify those Fields with Modifiers (e.g. Clamp, Delay, Quantize, Remap, etc).

Quantize is one of the modifiers for the Fields. It is exclusive to the fields section of the Effectors.

just saw this with the Insydium Sep update:

GPU-based solvers for XP.

I use the R-Scripts pack: https://khanhtrieu.gumroad.com/l/pTjYU it comes with a Simple Renamer script: https://www.lasselauch.com/c4d-script-c4d_renamer-pack/

having dipped between Blender and C4D for modeling lately, while I don't always like the hotkey-centric workflow of Blender, I do find some of it pretty efficient. I think it comes from the modal(?) nature of how it works. For instance, in Blender if you use a Bevel (Ctrl-B), the tool becomes active as well as a series of other hotkeys that are exclusive only while the tool is active. For instance, with the tool active, you can select P then drag your mouse which changes the Profile (also known as Shape) of the bevel. In C4D the Profile is referred to the Bevel Mode but only gives you solid or chamfer. In Blender with the bevel you can surprisingly go to 0 (which is really an invert of the bevel). I know.. that part is one of the screwups of Blender devs trying to figure out the vernacular of the tool. (screenshot added since it was hard to describe) But the point is, there is a lot of functionality and speed to be had if some tools had their own internal hotkeys. It's some of those quality of life features that aren't "big bang" but could be helpful. This includes something simple like allowing the scroll wheel on a mouse to add/remove loops when using the Loop/Path Cut, or more subdivisions in a bevel. Even things like letting the Num Pad numbers become their own hotkeys. Even small internal functionality changes like if I select K~K for the knife tool and I'm in Model Mode.. have the mode switch to something like Edges automatically. I think the HB bundle does that but maybe that's something that should FINALLY be folded into C4D and give Mr. Biebrach some money for integrating his ideas completely into the C4D workflow. 🙂 I'm not speaking on his behalf I just think it would be a good idea. Autodesk did that with Nex years ago and folded in to Maya's modeling toolkit. Lastly, I could give two ****s if Blender users complain again about how Maxon copied. It's about solidifying the workflow inside of C4D. They don't have to use our software, we do!

Does Maxon actually ingest suggestions from us pleebs?

It's probably similar to Google Lens where you drop an image into it and it will find like images to show you In this case SD is using a basic rendered image as a prompt to create its own image. Some of the first images created in AI were taken from blobby art work (aka MS Paint) which the AI created scenes from. So green lumps at the bottom, blue at the top and some brown strokes in the middle would get interpreted as a green meadow with a tree in the middle and a blue sky. I think something similar was done for Blender too. Edit: It's actually the same developer...

since you were so enraged there was an update they posted on their page on 8 September. More than likely the new release and 2023 support will be out at the same time. https://insydium.ltd/news/latest-news/summer-2022-insydium-fused-release/

they mentioned on their discord Fused update for 2023 is coming. While you may not like the newer modes of communication it is what we are all supposed to use now. With regards to contacting them... ummm ok, people need to try harder and vent less.

could try something like this (expanding on Cerbera started) Add a plain effector to the cloner just with rotation. I set it to 1440 on H. Add a random field to animate them rotating. Use a quantize of 8 (1440/8 = 180 degrees). This has them trying to snap to right angles. You could also try 360 for rotation and quantize of 4. Then use a delay with either a smooth or spring, dialed down to about 20 or lower to help sell the spin/rotate effect. Without the delay you won't see any movement because the quantize is snapping the animation 180 degrees. The delay helps in this case to show it. coordonnées et base de données_RE_delay_quantize.c4d

Yeah I'd hate being stuck with just Blender too. Their developers have made some pretty dumb choices, and some good ones too, but you're completely reliant on them, or buying 1000 addons to supplement. That's a whole other can of worms they hadn't addressed, which is addons stepping on each other and where they should reside in harmony (N panel is an outdated idea). Feels very patch-work. I say that as someone who does use it for modeling and occasional sculpting but doesn't care for much else in it. Another option is Houdini of course. Unreal Engine. Plasticity, Moi3D, Shapr3D for cheaper-cost hard surface modeling.

Anyone know what happened to the IBC stream today? I forgot about since it didn't show on YT. I got an email from Maxon just now reminding me of tomorrow's line up.

I would agree with you however, if you look at Blender and how users seemingly with less than 5-7 years of experience in the industry are able to take to Geo Nodes easily and push out the training and free node setups. If nodes are done right, easy to understand and there... is... constant... training... available, people will learn. Instead of VFX n Chill, there should be a Node n Chill weekly segment. It could be dumb stuff like "this week we're going to make a tweakable couch in nodes" . The next week it could be, "we're going to create a dynamic rope bridge using nodes and our new unified dynamics suite". Another week could be the infamous "ivy growth" setup that Blenders seem to love. I mean the Maxon Training Team have run out of stuff to say about Redshift at this point... I would think? Edit: I would wager a majority of Blender installations are from hobbyists, newbies to 3D, or dabbling in Blender from another app. The fact these same users are taking to Geo Nodes and even producing their own content shows that it's not necessarily hard to learn their geo nodes after putting a little bit of effort into it. Again, they are afforded a lot of free training on Youtube, Udemy, Skillshare and more.

I would love to agree with you!!! I feel they're a bit like Autodesk with Maya. They start on a feature set then after a couple cycles let it just "green". I think it's been talked about in previous releases. Things like sculpting, bodypaint, UVs and other things really were making a statement but then just dropped off. Although I understand you can't work on everything all the time. There just isn't enough hours or people to commit to it. I actually do sympathize with the team. I do. It's just hard to make sense out of a huge feature, game-changer really for C4D artists, but just isn't really talked about in the past 2 releases. At least let someone say, "Yo people, we're still working hard on the Scene Nodes, and while you haven't seen much lately, we may be showing some tests in the near future." I'd enjoy Paul starting off any video with "Yo people!". I'm still passing on nodes in C4D, although I still slide the Solidify capsule on an mesh on occasion. I love the solidify modifier in Blender. 🙂 I'm curious to see if the continued evolution of the unified dynamics architecture includes particles, fluids and volumetrics. Maybe then they'll announce node-based particles! 😮

Again, with all do respect, I say this: Maybe Maxon needs more beta testers who use different elements of C4D differently, or use other software quite often to help the development team craft these features better. If you have 50 testers on the beta, and none of them use the poly pen or don't bother with it because it isn't robust enough, or many have used poly pen "as it" because they don't know it can be made better, that feature never gets a second look. If you are working on modeling features make sure you have people who actually use it for modeling, and so on. If no one is asking for it, nothing changes. Although, in many cases, even if most of the customers are asking for certain features, it doesn't mean the developers will do it either. So there is that side. 😞 I'm on other betas and it can be challenging engaging with the developers who seemingly have their hands tied when it comes to implementing small changes or even bug fixes. Priorities are different. Also, cheers! I'm not trying to single you out. 😉