RBarrett

Just like many of the effectors now have a Field Color option, and you can control the color with fields, the Target Effector now has a Field Direction option. So rather than specify the direction based on an object or the camera, you can define it via fields. This means that clones can point towards or away from a spline (or along the direction of the spline). Or the direction can be randomized or defined via tiles or other shaders. Or you can define the direction in a myriad of other ways. Orestis has some nice examples of this which he's planning to show at Siggraph, so make sure to tune in via C4DLive August 14-16.

I might not be the best to answer, because I'm still getting up to speed myself with a lot of the intricacies of nodal shading. But I'll take a stab anyway. 1. There's a Trace Ray node with inputs for origin, direction, max distance and options to ignore the same or other objects. So I think the answer is yes. 2. Not sure what you mean by this, but I've talked earlier about the asset system, which allows complex node networks to be packaged as materials which can be edited within the material editor. The Uber Material is the ultimate example, but there's also included assets for car paint, rocks, marble, wood, etc. 3. Yes, by mixing the inverse ambient occlusion with the phong normal. 4. Of a sort, using the trace ray node with a modified phong normal providing the origin and direction. Full disclosure - I'm providing the last two answers on the basis of example files I've been given, rather than an actual understanding (at this point) of how it works. I hope to provide some tutorials based on these samples once I've fully wrapped my head around them.

As I said earlier, there were technical reasons for supporting Physical first. This was the best way to get the node editor in your hands as part of R20, so you could start using it and providing us feedback.

Well, first - it's not my decision. If it were up to me I'd trim the portfolio to just 1 or 2 editions. I can say that pricing varies regionally and in some places BodyPaint 3D is a tad more expensive than Prime.

Yes, sorry. The promotion is just during the month of August. Though if you purchased in May it was likely during the flash sale promotion at a 30% discount. And you've gotten to use R19 for the past 3 months.

I'm not sure what he means exactly. My best guess is that he's referring to the current promotion where any upgrade includes the MSA as well. That works really well for upgraders, because you get the RX to R19 price (rather than the higher RX to R20 price) and you get R20 free. So for instance if you're currently on R18 you'd pay $995 to R19 now and R20 when it ships. After Sept 1st you'd be looking at the two version upgrade price from R18 to R20 (similar to the current pricing from R17 to R19). US pricing, but worldwide policy. Hope that makes sense.

The full product [edition] comparison is now online. The "simplified version" was a bit too simple so let me clarify especially that Volumes and ProRender are in all editions except Prime. Also there were some further questions about ProRender. Nodal materials are only supported through baking (like many of C4D's shaders). In practice, baking eliminates almost all of the benefit from nodal materials so for all intents and purposes nodes and ProRender aren't currently compatible. It's not a marketing decision, but a development hurdle that needs a bit more time. And someone said their CA/studio friends wouldn't use C4D because we include ProRender? That seems like a strange decision, given that it's an additional option which didn't remove our existing render solutions, and given that C4D enjoys some of the best integration with Octane, Redshift and other third-party engines.

Yeah, it's a very similar concept to Master Properties and also the Substance integration in C4D, though the UI options are much more extensive.

I'll keep that feedback in mind as we work on Node-Based Material tutorials for Cineversity. Have you watched my node quickstart video yet? I think there's a bit of that, in that I explained I was trying to get the lollipop stripes, and so I needed a way to feed a gradient with complementary colors. I probably could explain the thought process more fully, especially as the video goes deeper into the grid and context aspects. Also, if there's specific effects you'd like to see us work towards, I'd love to hear those ideas.

Don't worry so much about the Uber Material itself. The beauty is in what it represents. The most powerful aspect of the node system is the opportunity to package node groups as reusable assets, and these assets can be used directly in the node editor or a very flexible UI system allows them to be accessed directly in the Material Editor window without ever looking at a node. It's much like User Data in the Object System, but much more flexible. The Uber Material is the ultimate example of this. It wasn't created by our developers, but by our design team, using the same tools available to any C4D user. In fact, there's a number of these purpose-built node materials packaged with R20, which make it easy to create car paint, rocks, marble, wood, etc. It's much like the classic 3D shaders (Banji, Banzi, Danel, etc) except created completely in nodes by a non-developer. The Uber Material, with it's tabs, conditionally-visible parameters, drop-downs and more, show how incredibly flexible this UI system is. In fact, any Nodal Material can expose just certain parameters in UI mode just by propogating those parameters and choosing "Set Start Node". So you can create complex reusable nodal setups, and easily tweak parameters without opening the nodal interface each time.

That's a fair criticism, though I hope you'll allow me to clarify a bit. During the R18 cycle there was a blog post which communicated that OpenGL painting would be made available in the R18 cycle, and that UV editing are the next BP-related area of emphasis. The OpenGL painting was delivered as an open beta at the very tail end of the R18 cycle and included as a feature in R19. UV improvements are still next among BP-related features - it just isn't part of R20. If you take a look at my CAD import video, you can see there's tons of options available. You can combine objects based on assembly components, display color or mesh structure. Also instances of assembly components import as instances, which is huge. Also display colors and materials can be imported, and tessellation adjusted based on the object's relative size in the project. It's really robust. I'd say it's my favorite feature, but there's fields, VDB, Multi-Instances as well - and I'd risk sounding like Thanassis at Siggraph.

Since R19 SP2, ProRender has been compatible with Metal on macOS. ProRender was largely chosen in order to provide a cross-platform GPU solution, and we're working closely with both AMD and Apple to ensure it remains one.

Yes CAD import is totally cross-platform. Meshing is very good, with options to adjust the tessellation for the entire project or adjust the tessellation in 3 stages based on the relative size of each object.

VDB is in Broadcast, Visualize and Studio Modeling tool updates and nodes are in all editions.

I always appreciate your well-reasoned posts Dave. I already replied with regard to BodyPaint earlier in the thread. Other areas that may seem fallow are similarly just that - spots where the land is being prepared to spring forth new life. A new modeling core was introduced in R19 and pushed further in R20. The overall core modernization effort continues, and areas are being addressed based on logical sequencing and available resources. I can't get into more detail than that at the moment, but I expect more clarity on market strategy will come once our new CEO has had a chance to settle in.

In Release 19 there was a large effort to convert the BP painting process to OpenGL. Even though BodyPaint and UV tools don't appear in the R20 features list, work continues.

While I understand the comments about traditional modeling tools, let me just say the new Volume Modeling workflow is fantastic. I've been able to achieve things easily that would've been quite hard or impossible to do with poly modeling.

The MAXON website gets overwhelmed by the traffic on release day. As of now, Cineversity is still humming and has full videos on the top features. There's also some great stuff on YouTube already, as well as AixSponza.

For those that prefer to watch, rather than read, visit cineversity.com or the Cineversity Youtube Channel.

It looks like R18 Studio to R19 Studio is usually 700 gbp and discounted to 490. The MSA adds 520 gbp to make sure you get R20. There's no guarantee at this point on pricing once R20 comes out (particularly with exchange rates). At current pricing a two-version upgrade (undiscounted R17 to R19) is 1120. I work for MAXON US, and my work with Cineversity is part of that. Glad you like the tutorials!

I'm with the US office and don't have direct knowledge of the systems in the UK, but it looks to me like you're bumping up against issues we also have in explaining the many, many skus available for C4D and fitting them into a webshop system. The Studio R19 Upgrade from R19 allows you to upgrade an existing R19 Prime, Broadcast or Visualize to R19 Studio. The 2165 price crossed out is the regular price of the Prime R19 to Studio R19 "plusgrade" (the most expensive plusgrade). The 927.50 price is the discounted price of the least expensive plusgrade, from Visualize to Studio. The R18 upgrade product is the same - it's showing prices to upgrade to Studio R19 from Prime, Broadcast, Visualize or Studio R18. The crossed out amount is the regular price of Prime R18 to Studio R19 and the sale price shown is the discounted price of Studio R18 to Studio R19. 2800 GBP looks to be about right for the regular price of R19 (it varies regionally due to exchange rate fluctuations). The cheaper "from" price here comes from the discounted pricing that's available when purchasing 5 or more licenses. Hope that helps.

Voronoi Fracture is part of Broadcast, although the dynamic connectors aspect isn't included. I think the big things you may be missing from Studio would be the full dynamics suite, hair simulation and Sketch & Toon. In Broadcast, only MoGraph objects can be dynamic and only rigid body dynamics are available. There's also no support for the moving mesh collision type, which can make it hard to achieved dynamics with concave surfaces. The Hair toolset includes Spline Dynamics, in addition to hair styling, dynamics and rendering - and Hair rendering is often used to render splines and particle trails. The demo offers the option to switch between the various editions - that might help you explore the limitations of broadcast and make the best choice. There are opportunities to upgrade from Broadcast to Studio, though with the flash sale next week you'll be getting the best price and value jumping straight into Studio.

The price for all MSA editions (including the cost to distributors like MAXON US) is increasing worldwide. In the US, we were able to limit the change to just the Studio edition. I'm sure news for other regions will come from distributors soon - it was announced in Germany last week. Everyone's MSA expires at different times, and there's no guarantee of release dates until announced by MAXON. But historically you'd need an active MSA in September to receive the upgrade, and if your renewal date is in August you already received R19 as part of your current contract.

I think you'd just set the brightness in the luminance channel greater than 100%. I'm not a rendering expert though.

The settings in the Illuminate tab allow you to tune or bias the GI - they allow you to crank up the Illumination unnaturally or bias the the GI samples towards a portal. ProRender is a physically-based unbiased render, so it doesn't have any use for these settings. It natively renders GI, but you can't tweak it in the same way as our classic hybrid GI implementation.