3D-Pangel

Agreeing with you there....but if you just extended your image copy just a little bit more, you would see what gave me the concerns in my previous post: I can understand how the end of maintenance means end of support, but they also mention "perpetual license limitations" as well and then refer you to an FAQ for details but there is nothing directly addressing what happens to your perpetual license after your maintenance expires in that FAQ section. Am I over-reacting? Reading too much into it? Maybe. But the way these companies act only increases my paranoia rather than my trust. If you have more details about what happens to a perpetual license when maintenance expires, please share them. I may become a Octane user if they can be trusted to never abandon perpetual licenses....but who can say that for sure? Dave

The announcement that Redshift is going to subscription only has renewed everyone's fears that Maxon may drop the bomb in September that C4D will be moving to subscription only. No one really knows but it would follow the Adobe timeline if it happened. So that got me to thinking --- what is the biggest fear to the hobbyist about subscriptions. Well, subscriptions do move the user base from a "pay to upgrade" to a "pay to use" model, which kills all incentive for innovation and software development. Like other companies in a subscription model have shown us, over time you are paying for the same bugs, same missing features and essentially the same software year after year. And you cannot break away from that trap otherwise you will loose all access to your past work. ....but is that necessarily true? This has led to me to proposing the following C4D Core forum topic - Exporting. We do not talk about exporting to other platforms enough. What is the best way to prep your scenes, your texture files, your animation caches for export? What are the best export options? How important is clean topology in your models to creating clean UV's during exporting? Are their really good external export programs that solve these problems for us? Can you export to previous versions of C4D via FBX? What are the limitations? How far back can you go? Essentially, if the hobbyist became a master of exporting, would we fear subscriptions as much? Hard drive space is pretty cheap (a lot cheaper than what Maxon charges for a perpetual license) so just export your completed C4D work to FBX, alembic, whatever and store it for future use. Sub-categories on Exporting to Houdini, Blender, modo, etc could be created as well with tips on import settings within those programs as well. Honestly a whole cottage industry around scene conversions could be built up in this new subscription only world. Tutorials on converting from one platform to another, services for converting, and/or external programs for converting could be great market opportunities. Yeah....give Maxon what they want but use the subscription to your own benefit and not theirs --- go monthly rather than yearly -- only using the "latest and greatest" version when you need it -- convert it to another platform and default back to your last perpetual license for all the other months. While I love C4D, I perversely find beating Maxon at their own game gives me a greater pleasure. Just a thought. Dave

Not really sure whether Octane allows perpetual licenses or not. Like Hvanderwegen said, they keep that information pretty well buried. Otoy does have a page for purchasing annual maintenance but there is this rather ominous note buried deep in the page "see FAQ for perpetual license limitations and support terms after maintenance period expires". Well, you go to the FAQ page and I can find no direct question on this subject. So while giving the impression that perpetual licenses are offered, I really am not sure. Dave

I just love the spin they put in the letter as to why they moved to subscription only --- it is because given all the apps they need to support, it is imperative to Maxon that their users always run with the latest version. Oh...how condescending!!! Us poor stupid users won't be able to make the decision to upgrade for ourselves or we are too technically "unenlightened" to realize all the great and wonderful benefits that are to be had with the latest version. Really, this is for our own good. Well, you can't feed us cow patties and tell us its fillet mignon. But some people happily go along with subscriptions...simply because they cannot see past the next day. There is a rampant level of short sighted thinking going on in the world today. Where is the incentive for development and innovation when every user is locked into a pay-to-use software? There simply is none. Upgrade programs on perpetual licenses gave the user a choice - some which people have made on this forum. Not happy with the new release...not upgrading. By not upgrading, that was incentive for Maxon to continually provide new features with each release that will attract both old and new users. But with subscription, that motivation drops down to attracting new users only...and you can do that with the core features of the software rather than the newer refinements only seasoned users would appreciated. So subscriptions kill the need or desire for innovation and/or improvements to the software that only long-time users will enjoy. And you are seeing that today as I mentioned in my first post. Software companies are becoming like fixed market monopolies. If you want to keep using it, you have to keep paying. Sure you are getting the "full" software at a cheap subscription price...but not really. That is a price you are going to pay every year until you decide to switch to something else. And when you do, it all ends. No access to anything you have created or purchased that needs the software to run (plugins, models, scripts, libraries, etc). In light of this news, all I can say is thank you Blender and I am looking forward to 3.0. Dave P.S. In hind sight, switching from C4D Cafe (a C4D only) to Core4D (slowly becoming a C4D, Houdini and Blender site) was probably a brilliant move.

Oh...you are talking about NoneCG whereas I was thinking that you were referring to DAZ (probably because I said in my previous post that DAZ to C4D conversions require some work). Yes...for the big model (the 8 city block model) I fixed the over shooting walls, the inverted signage, and relinked the textures. And this was in a model that was sold as a C4D model...so at least the tree's were Xref'd. They are big models....but not sure you can reduce that too much with instancing to a point where it will make a difference as they do have a great bit of detail and they want things organized at the block level as that is the lowest level in which they sell them. So how much a street light, mailbox, parking meter is duplicated within one block is not that significant. You could do that for the full collections, but then you have issues with breaking them down into sellable blocks. But I do agree that the C4D conversions where horrible and that is why I fixed them and sent them back. But I did for the 8 block model. Obviously those changes were not translated down into the free one-block model you downloaded. The Time Square conversion that I am doing (22 blocks) is time consuming just because there are a whole host of issues that need to be corrected in the FBX version. I used FBX just to avoid the texture problems as there are 1.3Gb of textures alone. 50% of my time is spent on organizing and renaming objects too. On my second pass is when I start to put in instancing -- but right now the focus is fixing the object import issues (wrong orientations or position), organizing the objects within the OM, redoing the lighting, and fixing corrupted geometry (which surprisingly is far less than was in the 8 block models). If I was truly nuts, I would try to remodel everything into quads....but this is a part time hobby and not a career. Dave

Well...we all new that this would happen someday, but I just got the following email from Maxon: So not sure if this means that my current perpetual license (including any upgrades until my maintenance plan runs out) will also shift to subscription only. Is this a precursor to Cinema 4D also moving to subscription only? Only time will tell. If so, then the countdown to full Blender mode has begun. Why? Well, the industry has shown that all subscriptions reach a point when you are just paying year-after-year to use the same old software with the same old and unfixed issues. We've seen that in Adobe products (especially Premier), in Autodesk products (Max) and even in Microsoft products. In short, all forward progress slows down considerably once everyone is locked into "pay-to-use" rather than "pay-to-upgrade" . This is especially true for mature industries and DCC is now a very mature industry. Dave

Where can you get that free city block? I do not recall any DAZ model that is that large (5000 objects or instances). Here is the link to what DAZ offers for free. Note that you can also get the latest version of DAZ Studio Pro and their DAZ to C4D scripts at this link. But I see no city model. Was the free city model from Renderosity? Dave

What I find really interesting is that like their initial release of their fluid solvers, Insydium just makes massive improvements with the next release. When xpFluidFLIP was initially released it was okay but very difficult to control. They then released xpFluidFX which is a world better than the other two solvers (FLIP and PDB) and my go to choice. Now it appears that they are doing the same with dynamics in terms of adding ease-of-use and improving the capability and quality over what they released last year when they introduced recursive volume breaking and spline dynamics. So what I find interesting is that I would imagine that this is all built around the Bullet physics engine...the same physics engine that is in C4D. So how many years has C4D been using the Bullet physics engine? Based on this video, is it fair to say that Insydium has passed C4D's implementation in terms of capability...and in one year? It does make you wonder doesn't it? Dave

+1 for Kitbash 3D. Especially if you get on their mailing list and get notified of a new release as all new Releases are 50% off for the first week. So you can get hiqh quality model collections of 60 or more models for as little as $45 for prop-collections and $99 for full kits. Plus the textures alone make for a great collection as they are usually 4K and include color, height map, normal map, roughness map and metallic. If you miss the first week then you have to wait for their usual sales on Black Friday, summer sales, etc. Another really cheap source but which requires a bit of work is DAZ 3D. I mention them because they do have a script called "DAZ to C4D" which works "somewhat" okay as instances don't always translate that well and everything will require re-rigging and/or re-lighting. But the models (and some of them are very beautiful) can be purchased for as little as $10. My favorite DAZ artist is Stefan Morrill or "Stonemason" (who is having up to a 60% off sale right now - check here) Also, there is Archmodels and their collections of which some come in C4D format. They are having a 50% off sale until tomorrow (see here) Their models are pricey but the quality is outstanding. I am into models of cities, building, street environments and their Archmodel Collection 215 of NY brownstone buildings is absolutely amazing in that the interior of each building is modeled as well. Find it here Finally, there is NoneCG. Now, they are pricey but what they give is incredibly detailed models of entire city blocks right down to the trash in the streets. They just finished their summer sale (40% off). As I love city modeling, I was able to get their NYC City block collection for 50% off of 8 complete NY City blocks (found here). Now, there were some issues with the C4D conversion they did (corrupted geometry - flipped textures, etc) which I did fix and send back to them. As such, we struck a deal for their massive Times Square collection of 22 NYC blocks (found here) which is NOT currently available in C4D format but I am converting it for them now. The model is over 1.7Gb in size with another 2Gb of textures. This is a huge endeavor but a passion project for me (I am having the time of my life). I think I have over-pivoted into obsession as I am even adding Xpresso controls for all the traffic lights and cross walk signals and for the street lights, billboard lights and window luminance maps so you switch from day to night. Like Archmodels, some of their buildings have the interior modeled as well, but everything came in wrong so I am straightening all that out and adding interior lighting controls as well. I wanted to add cloth sims to the flags but the NoneCG guys said that was going too far. At some point, when done, I am going to purchase RealTraffic for C4D (from C4DPlugins) and put in cars and traffic patterns (thus the reason why why the traffic lights were rigged) with the hope that maybe that creates a partnership between NoneCG and C4DPlugins (makers of RealTraffic). What is the point of having a detailed model of NYC without traffic? C4DPlugin could sell pre-made traffic set-ups for the NoneCG models....maybe? Dave

Underneath all the discussion of scene nodes vs. Xpresso, three very important points are being completely missed: C4D's legacy for ease-of-use. Sorry, but the Maxon team has a 35 year history of making the difficult very simple with such tools as MoGraph, Xpresso, and the Object Manager. Scene nodes being rolled out as a "tech-demo" immediately sends the connotation of complexity -- just by its name alone. Add to that examples of complex nodal trees to do things that are easy to replicate in MoGraph and you have a hard sell to a user base that has grown comfortable with easy to understand drag and drop functionality. Adding insult to injury is the hard line tone coming from Maxon: "Scene-nodes is the FUTURE. GET ON BOARD OR BE LEFT BEHIND". Really? Very interesting marketing strategy there Maxon. "Telling the user" rather than "listening to the user" is never good for a company. Some people have even stated that there is a bit of shaming going on relative to Scene Node adoption (Are you smart enough for Scene nodes?). Well that has to stop and the arrogant pugs who behave that way need to be taken to task. When you combine these three points together, I do believe that what the average user is internalizing is this message from Maxon: "We are throwing out everything that you have grown to love about C4D in favor this new architecture ". That is not good. My recommendations is to continue the development of Scene nodes as it is smarter way to proceed but it should always be marketed/communicated/demoed as what it is being developed to be - and that is an "under the hood" capability. Maxon needs to reinforce the message that you can live quite comfortably with C4D and all the benefits of the new architecture without ever having to look at a scene node. Making statements that Xpresso is going away in favor of scene nodes does not help. The last couple of posts were very informative in explaining how Xpresso and Scene Nodes address two completely differently workflows so my assumption is that the functionality of Xpresso is still required but a future version of it will exist under the Scene node umbrella. If true, that is the message that should be communicated and every effort should be made to make the new scene-node equivalent of Xpresso look and act like Xpresso does today. Sorry...I know it is more work but 35 years of training brought us to where we are today so you proceed at your own peril if you don't respect that. In summary, Maxon needs to reset on how scene nodes is being marketed. You do have a hard sell on your hands and these forum discussions are not helping and thus my recommendation to reinforce that it is an under-the-hood application. One way to quickly get that point across is to develop new and more highly requested tools (such as proper symmetry) as complete scene-node constructs. "Hey, we know you all love all the power of this new tool, but did you realize that its 100% built on scene nodes?" If you do that a few times, or replicate some of the cool modeling modifiers that were coming out of Maxon Labs (like extrudifier or coons mesh, etc) as 100% scene nodes and people will quickly catch on. Add to that the ability for all those dis-enfranchised plugin developers to switch to creating scene-node developed tools in a way that protects their IP and removes some of the headaches for licensing, marketing, etc via a Maxon developed portal (hey...how about the ultimate greeble tool in scene nodes?) and now you start flipping the script on how Scene nodes is being perceived by the user. Just a thought. Dave

Very impressive. You are like Leonardo Da Vinci --- a renaissance man who is both skilled at art and science! I loved the 100 pendulum animation. Just so satisfying to watch! Great stuff, Dave P.S. For Jed's next assignment, he will model quantum entanglement in 5 dimensional space -- stay tuned! 😀

Will this training be sold through the Cafe? One under-served area in my mind is lighting and how to get great lighting using Redshift. Environments, IES lights, GI and mesh lights. When to mix and match local lights, HDRI, and GI? How to optimize your rendering times when using each type of light in Redshift. And most importantly, how to create a mood with the lighting. Another area would be composition (the rule of thirds, the golden rectangle, the golden spiral, etc) Lighting is only discussed relative to its technical aspects (eg. what each setting does). Composition never gets discussed - at all! This is a shame because there is a whole art to lighting and composition and so many looks that can be achieved with lighting for whatever mood you want to create. The art of lighting with Redshift could be a whole series in itself and a big winner because there is not much I can find on the "art" of that subject in the CG world. Dave P.S. You may also want to add a question on current C4D version number as well if you are looking for that information.

If I may, these threads always follow the theme of C4D staying in the forefront of the technology on pretty much EVERYTHING. We want it to be the best or at least rated in the top 3 of every possible element of digital content creation: modeling, sculpting, painting, texturing, rendering, EFX, dynamics...the list just goes on and on. And for what Maxon charges, that is not an unfair request. But history has shown that Maxon can NOT keep C4D current in every area. Maxon knows it so they have started to acquire or license other technology: Redshift and Ministry of Flats to name a few. Or, they have developers spin off and create outstanding plugins like X-Particles. One question though: Why do we keep thinking that every aspect of DCC software needs to be developed in house? Far more critical and larger applications than C4D are not 100% developed in-house. Whole sections of networking IOS software are outsourced so why can't Maxon follow that model as well? The jewel in Maxon's crown should be their architecture, the UX design standards and quality requirements. And then rather than have people writing the code, they have people writing the standards that contract software developers need to follow. This should be happening already but honestly it doesn't feel that way given how certain aspects of the program are aging so badly. This may also be why Blender is so successful. Everything is outsourced. They have a whole community of developers working to grow that program. If this is NOT happening already or is against Maxon's culture or goes against their standards on safe guarding their intellectual property, then what I would like to see is a greater and deeper partnership with these third party plugin developers such that their plugins follow the same internal logical consistency as the rest of C4D. Everything works together so you barely even know you are crossing from C4D domain into a plugin domain. Load the plugin and the tools that go with that plugin just appear in the standard tool pallet along with the native C4D tools. All the plugins work as additional modifiers that can be stacked in the Object Manager rather than have their own separate interface. Some do that already, but to be a Maxon certified plugin (do they still even have that designation?) you need to follow these standard UI rules. Also, and this a big one, there is one single NODE editor for anything requiring a nodal interface: Xpresso, material nodes, scene nodes, Redshift nodes, Plus tags that allow you to mix and match shaders, lights, cameras, UV's, weight maps, etc created by various 3rd party developers with the render engine of your choice. Everything is interoperable and exchangeable. The core C4D application becomes the tonic water in your software cocktail. All the separate modules just flow together into one well designed cohesive application. Maybe the new core and scene nodes are the first step to make this happen...but honestly, I can't see it going that way. Finally, coupled with all this there is a huge price drop for the main application. If we have to buy plugins to round out the application then you can't be charging us full price. Honestly, that is why I hate subscriptions. You have to pay yearly just to use a program that history has shown can't keep current with the rapid pace of technological change in all areas. For some, the wait for those changes will be longer than others but they keep paying. Something's got to give...either how Maxon manages their development or how they manage their upgrade policy...but somethings got to change because Blender really does look more attractive with each release. Dave

Ahh....good point...and then if the seed values create too drastic a change, you clamp the values to within the ranges you desire. Now for a LOT of lights (like 100's in the tunnel example), clamping a random value to a minimum or maximum of a range is a lot different than randomizing within a set a range. Groups of lights could still have the same minimum or maximum clamped values. You are on a roll Srek....any work arounds to getting true randomness within a set range using index driven seed values without having to clamp the results? Dave

Can we get some clarification on this from anyone who works at Maxon? Is the Asset browser going the way of Cineversity for perpetual license holders (eg. not available)? Honestly, most companies operate under the philosophy that creating customer loyalty via providing outstanding products and services is the key to their success. How often do we hear the words "unparalleled customer service is what we strive to provide". Well, making training and assets free to perpetual license holders is definitely one way to make them "unparalleled" services to the customer. Unfortunately, I fear Maxon no longer thinks of us all as "customers". We are licenses and we come in two classes: subscription and perpetual. The subscription class is more valued to Maxon than the perpetual class. Perpetual license holders are the lower class and that is why things are taken away from them in favor of the subscription class. Why the disparity? Why are the two classes treated differently? Well, you can monetize every service with a subscription license on an annual basis. If you want to keep using the software, you are forced to accept this monetization of services in a subscription license. That could be their end-game once ALL licenses are subscription. The people who don't think that will ever happen probably also thought that Cineversity would always be available to perpetual license holders. Honestly, if Maxon is doing this, then why are people thinking that an "Indie" license is a realistic expectation? When companies lose touch with "customer care" and only think about product and service monetization, then they also risk losing big to their competitors that do put the customer first. Blender's rapid development schedule definitely speaks to their customer commitment. How we have wished the same from Maxon and the comments on this thread such as "how long have I waited for..." again support this point. Dave

Maybe not an R25 request, but as we are talking about Xpresso vs. Scene nodes, one thing that I have always wondered how to do is set up a set of controls by which you could control and randomize the settings of all the child objects. I know you can control them with the Hierarch Operator in Xpresso, but what if I want to have slight random changes with each of the child objects....and not just object size or orientation which can be done with a random effector but any of the settings with the lights in a scene. For example, imagine the lights in a freeway tunnel. What really makes that scene look realistic is when every light has a slightly different level of intensity. Well, there are hundreds of lights in a freeway tunnel and to do each by hand is tedious. There is a constant chorus of "add randomness to your models because life is NOT computer perfect" but that philosophy never makes it to lighting. So is there a way using scene nodes or Xpresso to vary the light intensity on each light at once...you pick a starting intensity (for example 90%) and then you set a min/max range (for example 10%). You apply these controls to the parent once and all 100 or 200 lights that are children of that parent will have an intensity that varies between 80% and 100%, But not just light intensity, but radius or decay, volumetric inner and outer distance....pretty much any of the light controls. I know this capability already exists for cloner objects...but I have not found it for scene objects like lights that can't always be cloned as they need to be in specific locations. So can scene nodes do it? Dave

One thing which I like about Otoy is how they partner with key plugin developers. They do have a "subscription" bundle where for about $480 USD a year you get Octane, Embergen and World Creator. While certainly attractive, my disdain for subscriptions of all types forced me to really look into what the costs are in comparison to purchasing the software rather than leasing it. In comparison, the cost to purchase Octane is about $700 with a $200 annual upgrade cost. The cost to purchase World Creator is $289 (for Windows). There is not that much information on the cost to purchase annual maintenance for World Creator other than a reference in the FAQ section that it will be 50% of the purchase price - or $144.50. Embergen follows a "lease to own" model (which I wish Maxon would consider) for $240/year for the hobbyist that decreases to $144/year in year 3. So to own all these separately would cost ($700 + $289 + 240) or $1229 in your first year and cost ($200 + $144 + $144.50) $488.50/year if you wanted to stay current. So you pay $749 more in your first year to buy everything rather than leasing ($1229 vs. $480) and then $8.5 more each year ($488 vs $480) over a subscription cost to stay current. Nevertheless, the moral of the story is that in some cases subscriptions look more attractive than perpetual licenses....but you still do not OWN the software. Here the differences are not that great between the two and they could change over time as prices change. The BIG difference being that with subscriptions you have no choice but to continue subscribing should subscription prices increases if you want to still use the software. With perpetual licenses you do have a choice if maintenance fees increase. For an additional $8.5 a month, it may be worth NOT jumping on that bundle. Dave

Interesting. The comment that it is ONLY for Blender 2.92 and that to use it for different versions (like 2.93) could create problems has me concerned in that Blender upgrades itself so fast. I get the sense that Renderman for Blender does not keep up-to-date with Blender's release cycle and as such limits the time that it is useful. If Renderman for Blender was open-source, then not a concern...but it costs about as much as any other 3rd party rendering application. Not sure if keeping up with Blender's release cycle is unique to Renderman or a problem with other 3rd party rendering applications (like Redshift). Dave

Great is too small a word for what was shown in that demo. Is it just me or does it feel like there is a paradigm shift here with how terrains are created --- in particular the ability to customize different areas of a terrain using fields or using particles to create different types of erosion? So much for Rock Engine from 3D Quakers. If they can now use xpScatter to populate tree instances over these terrains with as much control as Frank's past plugin surfaceSpread, then I would imagine that Insydium has officially become a contender to watch in the landscape generation market. Bravo...very well done! But, like with mesh tools, still confused if this is part of X-Particles or its own separate plugin. Given that TerraformFX has its own logo, I am inclined to think it is its own plugin. Actually, and I hate to say it, but Insydium could stand to make more money making this its own plugin than making it part of XP. TerraformFX will have a much different development path as well (tree population, dynamic trees, roads, sun, skies, etc.) while maintaining tight inter-operability with XP they way Cycles 4D does (clouds, rivers, waterfalls, etc). Dave

It is both a reference and it has step by step tutorials. At 46 hours it has both. They do walk you through the interface and explain the logic of Blender's interface. For $17 I thought it was worth the risk to purchase it. What is interesting is if you go the web-site to get course information, you will see 12 sections listed. But once you purchase the course, you get a listing of 19 sections in the tutorial menu - so that does hint that they are adding to the course over time. I took a screen shot a provided it below: Note that they spend two hours on "Understanding Blender" - so I would imagine that is a gentle introduction for newbies into Blender. Notice that I said "I imagine" when I discussed that chapter. Here is why. I ran into a problem with Udemy's streaming capabilities. During my morning workout, the tutorial would stop after about 4 minutes and a System Administrator message would pop up and say their Engineers are working on it. Move to another tutorial and it happens again. After 4 attempts with 4 different tutorials, I switched to Insydium tutorials which always stream like a champ in glorious 1080P - so I know it is not my network. Hopefully this is just a temporary problem but if not, then fortunately I can download each course and put it on a USB drive to then watch while working out (I will admit that Samsung TV is amazing -- and very cheap too). Probably need a 64 Gb drive for the entire course. Dave

I purchased the Blender Encyclopedia and so far am quite impressed with the course. It truly is an Encyclopedia that mixes both step-by-step training with individual training at the tool level. They also explain each node of Cycles and Eevee. Plus, if streaming at 1080P does not work for you, you can download each course which fits right into my workout set-up as the TV I use does have a USB port in the back which can be used as a source. I also "hear" that they will update some courses with each major release as it was called the 2.8 Encyclopedia but they also say it covers 2.9 as well. Overall, it is a pretty good reference for $16.99 (normally $103 after 6/23/21). Now the disappointing news. I do NOT have a set of 6-pack abs. If you think I do, you are confusing me with Hrvoje. I mean, I am 60 years old after all and while I think I am doing pretty good for my age, I am still completely invisible to all should I walk the beach....and I am at peace with that. Dave

This is not what my wife used to test me, but I think it may help. I just searched for "What type of learner am I", and this site came up. To validate that the site actually does what it says, I took the test and it confirms I am a visual learner. Only 20.6% of the population are visual learners. It also said that all visual learners are good looking, good natured, trust worthy and have a fine set of six-pack abs. Yes....I can definitely vouch for the accuracy of that test. 😄 Dave

Wolf, There is a lot you said there that I agree with. I laughed at your comments about trueSpace. What a pile of crap and the way Caligari went under in the end (remember proTeam) really biased me against all subscription programs. Relative to learning multiple programs, my struggle is finding the time as this is a hobby for me after all and not a full time vocations. But with that said, the cost of the Udemy Blender 2.8/2.9 Encyclopedia just dropped in price again from $23.99 to $16.99 so I am probably going to purchase it. I think Blender 3.0 is going to create a much stronger attraction for me as I hear more about some of the UI changes. Personally, I hate learning via short cuts because I find I am always stopping the tutorial, rewinding 10 seconds, and listening to pick up that short cut again. I feel like yelling at the instructor: "Yeah! We know you are an expert! Stop showing off and slow down!" My wife, a high school advance calculus math teacher, told me that there are various learning styles and tested me to find out which style I learn best with. I am a visual learner...I need to see it...so verbal shortcuts in a tutorial are barriers for me. Modo tutorials also use a lot of verbal shortcuts and I think that prevented me from going further with the program (that and their whole object paradigm which for the life of my I still can not understand). I do agree that C4D tutorials tend to be more "show" than "tell". Oddly, as my time is limited, I tend to do most of my learning while working out on the exercise bike early each morning 4 days a week. When Covid hit and the gyms closed, we canceled our gym membership, purchased an Echelon bike, some weights, a squat rack, and a 50 inch 4K internet enabled TV for the basement. Set up a high-speed ethernet over powerline connection to the TV and now I can stream YouTube and purchased tutorials to watch while working out (thankfully 50 inch 4K TV's are pretty cheap because that is the only way to see the UI while on the bike). The remote is attached to bike so I can rewind and repeat really interesting sections. Something about just watching the tutorial, taking it all in rather than stopping and repeating the commands on my PC really help me internalize what I need to know. While I may not exactly remember every single step, I do remember what needs to be done but more importantly (especially if it is good tutorial), the purpose, approach and the reasons behind it. Also, once the technique is internalized, I also remember the tutorial it came from in case I need a refresher while at the PC. 46 hours of Blender Encyclopedia training being streamed from Udemy may be the way to go for me to learn Blender. I do feel that there will be a point in the future when the technology of all these programs catches up to each other and there is not that much to distinguish one program from another in terms of features, stability or ease-of-use. At that point, the annual subscription or perpetual license costs will no longer be able to be cost justified. In short, the changes/improvements will get less and less each year as time goes on but the upgrade/subscription costs will stay the same. It will be at that point I move to Blender. Dave

Wolf, Well...that is disheartening as I really love your modeling tutorials. Your explanations are clear and the logical choices you make in approaching a modeling task just resonate with me. You are right up there with Cerbera, Vector, DasFrodo, etc. and anyone else in my mind who is better than me (and that opens it up PRETTY WIDE so my apologies for forgetting to mention anyone). I did look at that course and it is definitely something to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, at 25+ hours of instruction that is a bit of time commitment and probably one which I would only be willing to make when I finally decide to leave C4D. Dave

To a certain extent, I agree with everyone. My main test for whether or not I can work with a program is to spend the first couple of hours working my way through the interface without the benefit (and in complete absence of) any training. C4D just clicked with me...I could figure it out. Not so much with modo (the object manager in the early versions was a stumbling block and I have never looked back) and to a lesser extent the same with Blender. Now, with that said, I am still finding out smarter ways to work with C4D after 16 years. There are elements of the UI that make me wonder why I didn't find that years ago. The answer to that is simply that you fall into a methodology and keep to it out of habit. So I think that comments to people's initial exposure to Blender are just as valid as expert's criticism of the interface. All is good feedback. But if I may add something --- from watching the Blender tutorials, there is almost this "pride" over being able to navigate through the bumps in the Blender UI and/or workflow. Which makes me wonder if that pride suppresses complaints and therefore creates a status quo that people do not dare challenge. I mean, why can't primitives remain parametric until the user decides to make them editable? That should be an easy fix. I hear some complaints about it but the response on the forums from Blender "gods" is almost like "How dare you question our culture -- Shame on you for bringing it up!". This is an over-exaggeration, but you get the point. These guys are the experts! They are the publicly recognized power users. They have a voice but they don't support the person raising the issue....they just explain it away with something along the lines of "Hey, this is Blender and it has always been that way". To me that is complacency from people who could make a difference as I would imagine they have close ties to the development community. The fact that they can't explain why it is not being addressed implies they have accepted rather than raised the issue. That complacency to accept things that could be changed is never good. Now in contrast, users bringing up long standing complaints over C4D don't get shamed for bringing it up but the response from the C4D gods is usually a disappointing "Yeah....brought this up 5 versions ago and on every revision since then. I have no idea what the developers are doing". Hey, at least they are trying. Dave