3D-Pangel

OMG! The pore stretch and wrinkles are incredible. This is all Blender? Amazing! But how easy is it to achieve these types of results? I also get equally amazed at the majesty of Houdini large scale fluid simulations until I actually try to learn how to use Houdini. I would imagine it is the same with anything that comes this close to creating believable humans. The rigging alone must be very involved and take huge amounts of time to master. Then on top of all that are the shading trees to get the pore stretch just right. Now with that all said, at least Blender can get you there. There is no path that I have seen within C4D that will bring you to that same result. And you then have to ask why? The last improvement to character tools were R23...which is oddly right before Maxon purchased Pixologic. And then nothing. Remember what 3D-Kiwi would always tell us: Maxon will not touch any area of a program ahead of its roadmap for a complete rewrite. With this in mind, you have to look at Maxon acquisition of Z-Brush and ask what happens next. Why purchase the world's most pre-eminent character sculpting tool, Z-Brush, and then not provide an equally best-of-breed capability to animate those characters? I think the upgrades to the symmetry tool are the first step in a long road to upscale C4D's character rigging tools to this same level. But once again, outside of Motion Graphics, Maxon is playing catch-up and at a much slower rate than the rest of the industry is moving forward. That may be the price for stability and well-thought-out integration. Fortunately, my passions lie in hard surface modelling and there we have seen enough improvements to keep me happy. Dave

Well, then that puts a new spin on it then as the thread title and first post gave the impression that the decision was made (or I completely misinterpreted it). This puts a new spin on what I posted earlier. What we can infer now is that ending perpetuals is the direction they want to go but are adopting a "wait and see" attitude before they make it official. So why the hesitation? Maybe perpetual license holders are a more significant part of their revenue than I originally surmised and current subscription license holders are not enough for them to securely meet their revenue commitments to Nemetschek. If subscriptions do NOT increase from this decision as expected (indicating the desired migration of perpetual license holders to subscriptions is not happening) then they are leaving themselves enough wiggle room to back away from that decision and re-instate perpetual upgrades. This also exposes the logic behind both how and when they made this announcement. Their plan may have been to make R2023 so attractive that everyone will want it no matter how it is offered. So let's offer it only as subscription in the hope that people will move to it without complaint and then we can finally put an end to perpetual licenses. But we don't want to strongly commit to that in case we mis-read our users and therefore let's imply it during our R2023 launch without directly stating it. I also am now thinking that this was not a recent decision but part of a larger plan. The decision to end perpetuals could have been tied long ago to the push for "Redshift Everywhere" as Redshift CPU is a big plus to R26 and R2023. So Redshift gets introduced into R26, but you have to wait to the perpetual release cycle to announce that there will be no such upgrade. So maybe there is still an opportunity for Maxon to change course and that decision is dependent on what perpetual license holders do next. Dave

But with all that said, I do need to call out Maxon on when and how that decision to stop perpetual licenses with R25 was communicated. Let's start with when it was communicated. Doing it now was actually more damaging than originally perceived for the simple reason that everyone who has purchased a brand new R25 perpetual license over THE LAST YEAR for $3495 now realizes that they wasted their money. There is no perpetual upgrade path for them. If Maxon knew that perpetuals were coming to an end with R25, then that announcement should have been made PRIOR to R25 being released while still allowing R23 license holders the option to upgrade to R25 perpetual. They should NOT be making that decision AFTER R2023 was released. That is just wrong because it takes an important decision away from those who have kept current with their perpetual licenses. If they instead said R2023 is your last chance to get a perpetual license, you now have a choice: Do I upgrade knowing it is the last one or do I jump into subscriptions now knowing that is the only option going forward? Here you have a choice. But making it retroactive to R25 removes that choice and leaves everyone who did upgrade or purchased a full perpetual R25 license feeling a little duped. Adding insult to injury, let's discuss how it was communicated...or rather hinted at during the launch video. Paul Babb's communication on it at the September 7th launch meeting was not clear. It even made light of the growing speculation on using R2023 and the discontinuation of the "S" and "R" release cycle. Here is what he said and take note of how he tried to even make is sound like an after-thought to better hide its hidden significance: That was it. The words were pretty innocuous and did not initially sound alarming. Now in hindsight, we know exactly what that meant. Unfortunately, we did not hear it directly from them but rather had to dig for it. What do we take away from this? Well, we need to call it what it is: they were beating around the bush because they knew there would be backlash. They also left their customer service team to be the bearer of bad news and take the heat from the customer base rather than owning their decision, putting their face on it during the launch meeting, and being straight forward and up-front about it. How they rolled this out also provides some insight into what they think of their perpetual users. As to exactly what that insight is, I will leave up to you. So, while they get points for how they are managing the growth of C4D, they deserve a few demerits on how the decision to cancel perpetual licenses was communicated. Again, just trying to fairly call a few balls and strikes. I challenge Maxon leadership to own their decisions better in the future. They missed an opportunity to show integrity and leadership with this decision and I hope they will learn from it going forward. Dave

In the interests of trying to call balls and strikes fairly and without emotion, I do have to have to say that the changes made to C4D since R25 were good ones. Props to Maxon. Unfortunately, there was just not enough in R25 to warrant me upgrading from R23. I made a decision at that point, to get off the perpetual upgrade train and stay with R23. But I made that decision with the sound expectation that perpetuals were going to go away SOMEDAY. So why continue to spend that $950/year if you felt that at some point they would no longer be offered? Do I want perpetual licenses? Yes, of course. But here is the insight that made me really re-think that position: At some point after I stop upgrading, that "perpetual" license has its own expiration date. It will not last forever because its life is determined by your computer hardware and OS. In the future, will R25 run on Windows 16? Not sure. Can it run on the latest CPU's you buy in 2029 as their instruction sets do change over time? Or the GPU's? Today, yes. 7 years from now - who knows. To prove this to yourself pull up your oldest version of C4D, reinstall it and let me know how you enjoy the experience (assuming it still runs). And by old, I mean older than R15. Yes, it may run, but the viewport could be glitchy. Certain commands could generate errors with the C++ executables....all sorts of issues. Plus, you will hate the rendering on those old versions. That is the allure of CG. The rendering just keeps getting better. At some point, R25's AR rendering is just going to look like crap (and that point is probably already here when you look at RS and Octane). Will the latest version of Octane still run on R25 in 7 years? Maybe not. So at some point you are going to look at your perpetual license that you paid extra for and go "ugh.... why do I keep this around" -- which by default makes it lose its "perpetual" status from your perspective. If you are not using it, it is not perpetual because it has NO PERPETUAL VALUE TO YOU. And isn't the true purpose of software! To provide you value? If you are not using it, it is not perpetual because you have determined it has no value....it's just eating up hard-drive space. You may be able to limp along for maybe the next 7 to 10 years with R25, but ultimately it will either be incompatible to your hardware or the user experience and rendering capability will dissuade you from using it. Understanding that end-state, I made the decision to walk away from C4D with R23 as I was not enamored yet with subscriptions. R25 did not help that opinion but R26 and R2023 have since changed that perspective. So, I saved myself $950 by avoiding R25. I will also save myself ($950 - $720) $230 should I decide to get a one-year subscription. Still haven't made that decision yet, but time is on my side. No deadlines like the MSA. Want it? Not want it? I can make that decision now or 6 years from now without any financial impact. If the perpetual train still existed, those choices would have had a financial impact. And if I do decide to dip my toe back in the latest version of C4D with a subscription, I can get it for a year or a month - my choice. Again, just trying to set aside the emotional connection we have to software that we all loved at one time or still love today and looking at it from a more pragmatic. clear-eyed perspective. Dave

Oh...how I wish they would take a cue from Houdini and offer Cinema 4D Indie (a subscription at Houdini prices of $270 rather than $720 a year). Heck I would even opt for Maxon One if that price dropped for Indies as well to half price. Maya and Houdini have indie licenses for less than $300 a year. Blender is free. Not sure what is keeping Cinema 4D immune to this type of competition unless indies are just not that big a market for C4D. Dare to dream. Dave

Well, we all knew this day would happen. The saving grace to it all is that Maxon is delivering the goods and that causes me to place more trust in subscriptions. My initial fear with subscriptions was that you would be paying for software that was not improving. That really has not been the case. Plus, they are integrating their acquisitions into C4D. That is huge (IMHO) and again leads to trust in subscriptions. Maybe I had Adobe fears from the "Adobe guy" but he is actually turning out to be quite the Maxonian in terms of the trajectory that C4D is on. Does he deserve ALL the credit? Sorry but no, that would be unfair to rest of the product managers and developers. But to be fair, he does deserve some of it from the acquisition strategy and the team he is building (they are still hiring) to support their internal development strategy. Enough said. So for how long will they make upgrades to R25 perpetual available? Let's say for kicks and giggles that R23 to R25 perpetual upgrades are always available. Honestly in 5 years will they still be selling it for the same price? That is not a good look. My hope is at some point they have a "fire" sale on an R23 upgrade to R25 before closing it out forever. A good way to end the perpetual run. Also, they should take the R25 new license purchase option down from their website. Imagine being a complete newbie to C4D, excited by the option to get R2023 perpetual as an upgrade and spending $3495 in an on-line purchase ONLY to find out it is not upgradeable. I actually added it to my cart and there were NO warnings directing you instead to a subscription. That will create some issues (I would imagine) for the Maxon customer service team. Hopefully, they see that problem and take action. Dave

Agreed. But then again, the only program out there I know of which can do true large-scale fluids is Houdini. And by large scale, I am referring to the feathering of the water Now is that accomplished by just adding millions of particles or by something in the simulation itself and the rendering? Built in "foam" shaders are NOT what I am talking about as all they do is add white particles on top of the water. So unless a fluid simulation can match this quality from Houdini, then it really cannot do large scale fluid simulations (IMHO). Dave

PC's are ridiculously easy to build these days and you need to be capable of replacing/upgrading the components. So with every build, I use sites like Puget to learn about the latest tech and what works with some of your favorite aps (they actually had articles on how Redshift performs with certain GPU's). But then I always go for two things: price and warranty. Relative to price, I compare the cost of the components to the total price from a PC vendor and the warranty that vendor offers. Now, OEM's (original equipment manufacturers) usually offer a 1 to 2 year warranty on their stuff. You can get up to a 3 year warranty on the nVidia cards. So if you build your own, you then have to register all the components to get the warranty. If you buy a pre-built PC, you register just that PC. By itself that is not much of a benefit to push you towards buying from a PC vendor. But.... If you can get a 5 year warranty for just a few dollars more from a PC vendor over the total cost of the individual components, should you decide to build your own, then that is the choice I make. If I can get someone else to build the machine and give me the extended warranty (it has to be more than 3 years) for less than 10% over the cost of the individual components, then that it is the path I follow. Dave BTW: I do keep my machines a long time and those extended warranties have paid for themselves for each of the 3 workstations I have purchased over the last 17 years. I recently just purchased a new workstation (with a 5 year warranty) to replace my 2015 machine (it runs great....but it's GPU cannot run Redshift GPU anymore). Unfortunately, that machine won't be here until February.

Take that Embergen? (Note the question mark). The debate floor is now open. Dave

Welcome, Glad to find another David from the Northeast on Core4D!!! Your work looks great. If I may, what is your current version? There was no information posted on your profile. Also, you are a really long term C4D user - so that deserves recognition! Did you ever hear of sites old name: C4D Cafe? Welcome, Dave (from NH)

Oh I agree that this is NOT a good thing. I think my posts have plainly laid out this possible future as a nightmare scenario. But remember that this future of "everything on the cloud" is also rolling out on the backs of a whole generation of cell phone users who are freely downloading apps which offer NO guarantees of data privacy. It is one thing to be concerned over your right to past C4D files existing in the cloud, but there are whole generations of people who freely put the contact information of everyone one they know on the cloud (how else can you migrate to from your old to new iPhone) along with personal photos and text messages. Plus, these same people are using Siri freely in their homes quite unaware that Siri is listening to EVERYTHING. For older folks who still remember what true privacy was like, this is horrifying. But try and explain your point of view to someone in their 20's or 30's and they look at you like you are a superstitious, knuckle dragging moron: "Why does this bother you? It's perfectly safe and okay. Oh, BTW...can you give me permission to track your phone's location?" If everything wasn't moving quickly to a cloud central storage model, then data science would not be the fast-growing field that it is today. Honestly, I think the battle for personal privacy and ownership was lost long ago. Dave

Xfinity roadmap is to provide over 2Gb/sec download rates to the home by 2025 (more than double what they can provide now). I just set up a 2.2Gb/s WAP (wireless access point) in my home to support that bandwidth in the future. It is coming otherwise you would not find those products on the market today. When you think long term (and again, all my discussion is taking where SaaS has come in the last 10 years and projecting out to the next 10 years), it will be a mistake to think that internet bandwidth will ever be the weak link. Ultimately, within that long term view, there will be tipping point. More people on internet appliances working in the web than on PC's. We've already seen those type of transitions. Look at your old analog phone. There came a tipping point where IP telephony became the major way of doing things and they just stopped making analog phones. What makes you think that won't happen to PC's in the LONG TERM? Dave

A very good post. Let me just chime in here relative to the internet. I work for Cisco (world's largest end-to-end telecommunications equipment manufacturer) in the area of manufacturing and with our product development teams. I have seen what is coming. All I can say is that Cisco and our competitors and suppliers are positioning themselves as if everything is going to go to the cloud and are now designing/building equipment that can accommodate the bandwidth issues. Even software companies are pushing for personal cloud storage for all your PC files. Windows 11 is now pushing OneDrive for personal cloud storage of all your personal files. At work, Office 365 automatically opts in to have all your work files stored to the cloud. Even virus protection software like Norton and Bitdefender are pushing personal cloud storage as a mitigation against ransom ware ("Don't risk losing all of your files to ransom ware but use our cloud storage service"). A big player in all of this is also Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, some pretty big players out there pushing cloud storage for both businesses and the individual user. Given the revenue potential of SaaS, it is not hard to imagine that with all your files on the cloud and all your software being licensed and not owned right now, that within the next 10 years the software goes to the cloud as well and all you need is an internet appliance to make the connection. I would not be surprised if Maxon is looking at a cloud based version of C4D right now. Purchasing Forger may be a first step into that world. Relative to the environmental impact, PC's going to the cloud is not going to have that much of an impact as smartphones are already driving data center usage more so than PC's. On average (based on 2021 numbers and 2022 predictions) 73 million PC's were sold compared to 1.5 billion smartphones (a 20:1 ratio). Each of those devices require an internet connection through a datacenter. So, the size of the data center and the carbon footprint generated by those datacenters is being driven by smart phones. Most people do not recognize the impact that cellphones have on the environment both in their manufacturing (and they do require rare earth metals to be mined as well) and their overall power consumption via datacenters. Also, as 1.5 billion people are not being born each year, that means that close to 1.5 billion OLD phones are being disposed of this year --- and hopefully in an environmentally friendly way. So relative to your justified concern over the environment, shutting off your cell phone before shutting off your computer or internet appliance will have a more positive impact. Dave

Please explain further. Geometry Spreadsheets is a new term to me. Thanks, Dave

I think Maxon would be well served to look at Blender's implementation of nodes. Maybe Blender is better at promoting what nodes can do than Maxon, but to the casual observer it just feels like there is more success with user adoption of nodes with Blender than there is with C4D users. If true, then why? Are C4D nodes too complex? Do they operate at a lower "programming" level than Blender nodes? Do Blender nodes operate no lower than a pure nodal allegory to their standard modeling/animating commands (similar to modo's "tool pipe")? If so, then they are probably easier to learn and more inviting to the average user for experimentation and further study. Remember, there is always a trade off with ease-of-use and power with any programming language and nodes are a programming language after all. You miss that sweet spot and over-pivot to choosing power (but at increased complexity) and adoption will be slower. Choosing more power over ease of use means the nodes operate at a layer closer to the programming language itself. But they have to in order to provide the flexibility that makes them powerful. So, which of the following will lead to higher adoption rates: Having 400 ways to configure 10 different nodes to do a series of the same thing in various flexible ways or 1 way to use 1 node to do something similar but with less flexibility? Not sure if that explains the point I am trying to make. I can follow RS nodal trees, but I cannot follow scene nodes and that could explain why I am struggling to explain their complexity. Hopefully all of this makes sense but even if it does not, then chuck it all aside. BUT PLEASE look at Blender nodes and then ask why the difference in the rate of adoption between Blender and C4D users? There has to be a reason and that reason could help C4D. Otherwise, nothing changes. Dave

Well, that answers it then. But when you look at the computing industry in general, we all knew this day was coming. Software as a Service (SaaS) really sucks for the consumer, but everyone is moving to it. Microsoft no longer offers MS Office as a purchased perpetual license. Office 365 is now subscription only (I wonder about the "365" tag at the end....it kind of rubs in the fact that they are making you pay yearly). Honestly, how far will SaaS go? Will it extend to the operating systems? If you want your computer to boot in the morning or your cell phone to turn on, then pay the annual subscription fee. Will it extend to driver support? Well, your computer boots but the screen flickers because the latest OS is incompatible with the GPU drivers. Pay the subscription fee to get the latest GPU drivers. You may even see unscrupulous hardware vendors forcing those incompatibilities just to generate licensing revenue for their latest drivers. Forget that every piece of software you run could go to SaaS, but imagine if that extended to all the drivers and OS? And I have even yet to touch the internet and the potential for subscription sites for your favorite sites (including this one). You pass out $5 a month to maintain 10 or 20 licensing subscriptions to both keep your PC and your most common apps running along with connectivity to the internet and pretty soon you're dropping over $1000 a year. Sound crazy? Well....10 years ago SaaS was just being introduced by Adobe and now it is everywhere. Imagine what happens in the next 10 years? If people start to be over-burdened with licensing costs (and the headache of maintaining all those licensing costs) then I see a greater drive for everything going to the cloud. This completely removes the need for a personal computing device. You just have an internet appliance to access all your software from your ISP. Your ISP maintains the hardware and offers different levels of service and software in a tiered pricing model. You want basic MS Office capability? That is one tier. You want render farm access with C4D? That is its own tier. Oh...and within those tiers come monthly caps on data usage. Sorry, but your tier only supports 1 Tb of data consumption a month. Please pay $30 more for the next terabyte. Scary world, isn't it? Now, the safe haven offered by open-source programs is not guaranteed. They undermine the big tech companies' ability to milk as much as they can out of SaaS. As more of our computing infrastructure moves to SaaS, there will be an increase in open-source adoption. This is where the cabal of big tech companies push for the cloud and the internet appliance. As more people shift to the internet appliance, individual PC hardware sales will drop. It will just be cheaper for people to go with the internet appliance than pay annually for the software to run on your own hardware (helped along by these same companies raising their annual licensing costs). The law of supply and demand kicks and pretty soon owning your own hardware becomes cost prohibitive. Without a PC, you are limited in your ability to run open-source hardware because you can pretty damn well bet that your ISP is NOT going support access to open-source software. This is sort of happening now with Windows 11 "S". "S" mode in Windows 11 ONLY allows you to download software from the Microsoft App Store under the interests of insuring that you are free from malware and viruses. "For your protection" Microsoft tells you that Windows S approved software from their app store are completely virus free. Interestingly enough, Google Chrome is not an MS App store offering even though its software is at the core of MS Edge. So I guess "S" stands for "security" and not "Subscription". But who are we kidding? Dave BTW: For people who think that PC companies will fight to keep selling their hardware, here is a shocking revelation from someone who has been in the electronics hardware manufacturing business for over 30 years: These companies hate building hardware! It's hard. It has supply chain issues. There are warranty repair and reverse logistic issues. There are regulatory requirements on the materials they use. The cost of releasing a new product is very high. Lots of cost for not a great margin -- especially in the consumer market. But software is soo much easier to manage because its only cost is people. It may cost a lot for the first item, but after that it is all pure revenue. Selling software is like printing money when compared to hardware. Thus, all the big hardware vendors will be motivated in the push to cloud computing once they figure out how to sell their software into that platform as well. Ever wonder why nVidia keeps churning out all these really neat graphical applications? Who would have expected that from a hardware vendor.

Speaking of double takes:

Seriously? Mr. Shave and a Haircut is now at Maxon? I guess that would follow after Shave and a Haircut was acquired by Epic Games and then made free. That was a great hire. Dave

Given how well the new symmetry tool works with the R26 toolset release, you can understand why it had to come last. So far, the most negative thing I have heard is with the icon (color or missing) --- so take the win. Also, finally Maxon ups their marketing game with a snazzy launch video! But I do have one burning question:

Agreed, but was still hoping to filter on more than one column at a time (which I failed to clearly state) and looking for the same filtering capability that you would see in Excel whereby your results get paired down with each new column filter. Dave

Some very fair arguments all around. Now while I don't specifically know how Maxon product development team works, based on the old posts by 3D-Kiwi and how I see software development proceed where I work (Cisco), I do believe that they have a multi-year product development timeline which they strictly follow. Within Maxon I am sure that there are Senior Software Architects who have a strong say into what makes sense regarding the order of implementing new features in that timeline. The architects take into account how to rewrite large segments of the code in an order which ensures stability throughout the entire code base while meeting the goals of the product managers in terms of the requested features in that timeline. This also does not mean they work serially as some parts of the code will have no impact on others (e.g.: will cloth dynamics impact sculpting? Probably not). Therefore, many different software branches can be created in which separate areas of the program are improved in parallel over time. Pretty sure that there are software branches under development for release we will not see in two to five years (most product development timelines fall within that range depending on the industry). While we all complain, Maxon did change the entire core of the program and still provided updates each year. That is like building a new engine on a train while that train is still barreling down the tracks. There were no derailments and more importantly it got done. That accomplishment proves that the process of laying out a well-thought-out product development timeline is the right way to go and a testament to Maxon's ability to do what some of their competitors failed to accomplish. Also note that every release requires a full QA audit and testing. Here I will speak from personal experience. Where I work, I implemented a full peer review for every software change made to our product test code regardless of the magnitude of the change. Everything went through that peer review using "Beyond Compare" (a program that shows changes in code line-by-line between old and new versions) because even changing something small could have an unintended consequence. The programmer could have fat fingered a space in a sub-routine that will never be called when testing the "intended" change. It just happened while they were paging through the code on the way to the area that needed to be worked on. So, you just can't change something like the color of checkmark and release it. If you open the code, everything needs to be reviewed. Therefore, to be efficient, even trivial changes need to be bundled with more major changes within its own software branch and all that gets a peer review. It is time consuming but necessary and it pays dividends in the long run. Therefore, changing the color of a checkmark was very easy to do and was probably done when the negative posts reached a much smaller number than the 271 listed. It was just that Maxon was NOT going to create a separate branch and go through a QA cycle for a checkmark color change. This also points to why plugin developers can implement changes faster than Maxon. Someone also made an excellent point about Maxon Labs. That needs to be brought back to address user complaints in the short term. Plugins don't need separate development branches or full code reviews to be released. Maxon Labs is a tremendous way to up their level of customer service outside of their release schedule. One other suggestion for Maxon: COMMUNICATE MORE. Not sure why a simple message like "Hey we heard you about that check mark color. It will be taken care of" needs to be such a secret. They don't even need to commit to anything other than "Here is what we have heard and are considering from our user base" followed by a long list of items. You see your pet peeve on that list, and you shut up. They did not commit to it but rather just agreed to consider it. Being heard is half the battle and goes a long to keeping the user base at a low simmer when it comes to complaints. Rick Barrett: I love it when you post on Core4D. As it seems the rate of your posts increases more prior to a new release announcement, I hope you are listening now. If so, please speak to re-invigorating Maxon Labs as a means to address user needs in the short term with work-flow plugins. Also, any guidance you can provide regarding whether or not Maxon will endeavor to prove that users are being heard via more open communications will be appreciated. Dave

But isn't the Project Asset Inspector (PAI) new? If so, I would imagine that working with its code would be quicker to implement as it may already be optimized and as such will not require as significant a rewrite to add new features. A good interim step would be to add search and filter capability to the PAI as a right clickable option for each of the PAI columns (Scene Element, Breadcrumbs, et). Ideally, I would look at how Excel works with searching filtering columns in a spreadsheet and try to replicate that as much as possible. Using wild cards in its filtering capability would be huge in trying to find certain textures in large scene files. Far more powerful than working with a simple search in the material manager. Just a thought. Dave

Poor man's clay mode in Houdini....move all your textures to a different folder. 😃 Dave

Hardware as a Service (eg. renting hardware and not owning it) has a certain attraction especially for those addicted to having the latest iPhone. Does it include warranty repair against accidents? Does it include automatic upgrades to the next version? You can't accidentally damage software that a re-install can't fix so repair/replacements of a leased hardware item is a service that may entice some to a HaaS....though it all comes down to cost. Now what I hope this does NOT mean is that some future IOS upgrade converts your existing phone to a leased service. You pay, or Apple shuts the phone down. I own the hardware so you cannot shut it down without my consent. You can deny me future upgrades but you can't shut it down. Also, Microsoft is putting their own spin on this with Windows 11. It comes in "S" mode for "your protection". In S mode, you can only download certified Windows apps from their App store. Doing so ensures that all software is free from viruses and malware. Well....pretty sure that the majority of malware exposure comes from visiting shady internet sites or unwittingly opening up emails scams so not sure that sticking to Windows apps from their "App store" is a guarantee of protection. Interestingly enough, the Chrome browser (which Edge copied liberally) is NOT an approved Microsoft App. Go figure. Right now, you can opt out of S mode and into F mode. Hopefully it stays that way as not a lot of DCC apps are in the Microsoft App store. But most people are already locked into Microsoft apps because MS Office is subscription only. Honestly, pretty soon the only thing that people will end up owning will be the food they eat....but I would be more than happy to return what I have used back to the greedy bastards who try to implement that money making scheme. Dave

All, I just posted the completed Death Star Laser cannon to the downloads section at Core4D. Have fun. Now, while it is rigged for animation, there is one huge gap that I could just not get to work: actually firing a laser bolt via particle animation. I tried to get this particle animation to work using Thinking Particles as I wanted to remove the dependency on plugins (much easier to do with X-Particles), but it was a complete failure. Ideally, you would want the controls for Thinking Particles to fire off a laser bolt particle being tied to the animation slider for gun recoil: One laser bolt being fired each time that slider is animated to 100% (full extension). I am hoping that there are some Thinking Particle experts out there who can make this improvement. In the download folder is an animation of the gun firing (too big to post here). For gun recoil, I found that 5 frames for recoiling back after firing (100% to 0% on the recoil slider) followed by 10 frames for the gun to move forward again (0% to 100% extension) matched best to what I observed from clips in the original movie. Have fun animating....and if you find yourself quietly muttering "Die you rebel scum" under your breath as you animate it then I have been successful. 😃 Also, should you download the model and improve it in any way (better modeling, texturing, or rigging controls) then please pay-it-forward by reposting to the Core4D forum. Dave