3D-Pangel

Just a thought, but we are all approaching this from the standpoint of how C4D will integrate Red Giant's 2D plugins. Maybe we are looking at this backward. Could some of C4D's architecture -- specifically its MoGraph architecture -- be adapted to a 2D plugin for Adobe? Or more specifically, maybe the merger will create a direct competitor to Element 3D? Or maybe the goal is to expand C4D Lite's capabilities as an Adobe plugin rather than C4D as a 3D application? My point is this: we all thinking that if MAXON acquire's it, it will be integrated in C4D. That may not always be the right assumption. This acquisition could have absolutely nothing to do with C4D (don't they already have enough on their plate?) and have everything to do with benefiting Red Giant. When I look at it this way, things start to make sense. Again....just a thought. Dave

Hmmm...So MAXON (a 3D company) buys a major plugin vendor for Adobe products (essentially a 2D company). This is odd and I don't see what it gains both companies. Now, Red Giant has a annual subscription model of everything for $600 ($50/month). I really don't see their products being part of the MAXON C4D subscription package for the current price - but my hope is that it is part of MAXON moving in the Creative Cloud direction. Hey....if $60/month got me C4D, Red Giant and Redshift, then that is starting to be attractive. But if it just adds another $50 to their subscription program (like Redshift did), then that is a far cry from Creative Clouds value. I hope we get more an announcement - other than "Hi. We are merging with Red Giant. Merry Christmas" - that goes into "why?". It would be nice if someone could paint a vision of the synergies of these two companies and how they work together for the benefit of the user. Just cause they all get along at trade shows and drink the same beer is not a compelling reason. Dave

I thought all MSA's ended on September 1st OR with R21. That is, if your MSA expires after September 1st you will only get R21 and that is it. I never heard that in any situation your MSA would allow you to get R22. But what you are saying is that people with an existing MSA which expired after September 1st will get R21 under that old MSA and by renewing their MSA one last time will get R22 at the $720 price. Wow....if that is true, then for those whose MSA expired before September 1st have just one more reason to feel mistreated by MAXON as they only get MSA pricing for R21 while everyone else gets it for R21 and R22. That just can't be true, but then again nothing surprises me anymore about the new MAXON. EDIT: I just read the well-written and very clear explanation from Cairyn and now understand that there are circumstances for some on the auto-renew plan who have an MSA expiring after 9/1/2019 to renew and get R22. So as I understand it, for mostly everyone (especially those in the US who do not have the auto-renew plan), that ANY MSA expiring after 9/1/2019 would NOT be able to be renewed. But for those on automatic renewal, the contract stipulates that cancellation must occur 3 months before the renewal date. Now this creates a window of opportunity because MAXON would have had to inform auto-renewal MSA participants in June that their auto-renewal is canceled if they wanted to follow the same rules for everyone else with MSA's ending on 9/1/2019. This would have raised questions prior to the roll-out of the subscription policy on R21 which MAXON may have wanted to avoid. So they kept quiet and accepted the fact that people with auto-renewal date BEFORE (9/1/2019 plus 3 months) December 1st would be able to get both R21 and R22 at MSA pricing. I am pretty sure that for everyone else with auto-renewal dates after 12/1/2019 got their cancellation notices on 9/1/2019. Okay...so is there anything that MAXON is doing that makes ALL customers feel like they are being treated fairly? This whole transition is complex, confusing, legally entangled, and therefore poorly communicated because the implications of the transition are not well understood by anyone. However you want to coach it, it still feels the same: It does not put the customer first. Dave

Okay...If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: PLEASE STEP OUT OF YOUR ECHO CHAMBER and stop listening to yourselves. Start listening to your customers. Never consider an action that benefits MAXON unless it ALSO benefits your customers and be darn sure that you have asked a good cross section of your customers if that action really is a benefit. The whole thread just shows how out-of-touch MAXON is becoming with the real world as you embrace the "modern on-line world". It also shows the massive shift of corporate culture going on within MAXON. There is a very obvious theme throughout all of your actions of putting MAXON's interests ahead of your customers. That is a losing strategy. We all see it and my hope is that you step out of your own echo chamber long enough to see it for yourselves. Dave

Where can you learn more about this? One of the biggest advantages to C4D is X-Particles. The latest release is just outstanding in that it does exactly what you are alluding to here: integrates everything with everything (particles, object breaking, object physics, spline dynamics, fluids, etc). I would say that should MAXON ever improve C4D's ability to handle massive object counts, then X-Particles will be giving Houdini a run for their money as a much friendlier option for doing some pretty cool VFX work (Houdini will still have the lead on absolutely outstanding jaw dropping VFX work, but it won't be as much fun to create). For me, X-Particles will be one of the toughest things to walk away from should the future force me to into MAXON's subscription policy. Dave

Wow...that is impressive. I do agree, TFD is still a great package and I have no idea how Jawset makes money given all the free updates. A very generous developer if you ask me (he must do this a side job and for the praise of those who use TFD). A very crowded field indeed but I am still going with my rank ordering for the reasons listed. I would like to learn more about FumeFX but so far, that intro video (while enticing) is not enough to sway me given that I have XP and TFD. In fact, I would imagine a large base of C4D users who do fluid sim's have either or both of those packages so FumeFX will have its work cut out for them to attract new users. Now, there is a growing criticism against C4D for NOT having its own native fluid package given that all its major competitors at its price point have fluids and for the aging TP module. Not sure how that is going to be addressed, but I suspect it will at some point. Will it be in R21? Not sure. But if C4D does implement fluids at some point, I would suspect that it will also offer similar viewport performance to FumeFX given past criticisms against C4D's viewport performance that they have worked to improve. So will one of FumeFX's advantages (viewport performance) be replaced by C4D's own native fluid package at some point? No one really knows. .....but (as 3DKiwi often says): Fun times ahead! Dave

FumeFX does look like an interesting product, but I would imagine the cost to be around $700 (the same as the Max price). That is less than the X-Particles/Cycle4D bundle price (around $900) but for $200 more you can do so much more than fire and smoke (fluids, grains, fracturing, cloth, dynamics, OpenVDB and a whole new render engine). Now, there are some good controls that I find interesting within FumeFX for controlling the simulation, like C4D's FFD and setting some conditions using effectors within FumeFX itself based on velocity, etc. But those controls pale to what can be done if you use particles to shape your smoke FX. I did not see anything in that video on whether or not FumeFX works with Thinking Particles in C4D. Art directing explosion and smoke effects with X-Particles question/answer structure is just plain powerful and now XP has also incorporated Fields into its particle group structure which just takes particle control to an entirely new level of control. Plus in XP, you can use fluid particle advection to power cloth and physics simulations as well or use it to drive the motion of your MoGraph objects. Plus, you can pass everything through the OpenVDB modifier to get some truly interesting results (like smoke turning into water bubbles as seen in the XP reel). Plus XP has multi-physics capability in that a fluid simulation can drive a cloth simulation which in turn can drive a smoke simulation. That is an advantage over TFD, FumeFX and even RealFlow. Realflow for C4D has multi-physics but only within its own fluid/smoke simulations (true multi-physics capability exists within the Stand Alone version of Realflow, but that would be an unfair comparison as we are discussing C4D plugins). To the best of my knowledge, RealFlow for C4D and FumeFX has no capability to work with other non-fluid dynamic simulations but as XP now has cloth and rigid/soft body dynamics incorporated into its software, those boundaries are blown away. So again, the advantage goes to XP. Now TFD's advantage over FumeFX is that it is GPU accelerated and it works with X-Particles. That was an important capability for TFD before X-Particles incorporated ExplosiaFX. So that just leaves TFD with the unique advantage of GPU acceleration. Given that TFD also works with X-Particles still makes it a smarter choice than FumeFX at this point. But as you can infer, I am leaning towards XP as the best overall solution. So if I had to rate all the fluid packages out there today for C4D, it would be: X-Particles (it just has everything...and I do mean everything) TFD (GPU accelerated makes it unique and it works with XP....sooo…..) Real Flow (great engineering grade software, but too slow). FumeFX (Last place based on the information from the video. Hopefully we learn more in the future that will give it a unique advantage over its competitors). So FumeFX has some tough competition within C4D. The only potential advantage to FumeFX would be the ability to handle massive fluid simulations with less effort than XP. There is nothing to point to that being the case, but I would be interested in hearing about that from others who use FumeFX today. GPU acceleration is important, so even TFD still has FumeFX beat. But compared to XP (both CPU based), XP is (for the reasons listed above), the better choice. Its power, control, ease-of-use and capabilities just can't be beat. Dave

DAZ has a pretty good export function with a C4D preset already. The export format is OBJ for which C4D has improved the import capabilities with each release. To use, here are some general steps in DAZ: Select Export in DAZ and chose OBJ On the OBJ export options, select the C4D preset Make sure that Invert Positive Direction under the X axis is checked. If you plan to render the model in C4D, then make sure that Disable Write Surfaces is NOT checked. Otherwise, you will not get your textures. On OBJ import into C4D, make sure that Flip Z Axis in NOT checked. Now, this is just for the models and textures. I do find that lights do not transfer as well but I always redo the lighting in C4D anyway. I also rework the textures and clean up some of the modeling so it not one-click easy as these directions imply - there is some work to do afterwards. As I do not do character animation, I cannot speak to how well those items can be imported or if they can be imported (Riptide Pro users will need to chime in here). So if you are waiting for a plugin or for the resurrection of Riptide Pro (whatever became of that plugin?), that does not mean there is no path from Daz to C4D....there is a path but you have to work on it a bit....but that is half the fun. Dave

Wow. Loved it. There is a psuedo making of video found here which shows him teaching the robots in his workshop. Now, when looking at the full video, I tend to think that it is not all CGI robots (maybe only at the end when they are shooting lasers and destroying the place). Actually, it is more impressive if it wasn't because programming robots is not easy especially if you want them to be performing to a beat. One of my first jobs was introducing robotics into electronic assembly --- it isn't easy. Now, there is nothing that says the robots are actually performing the music - rather they are programmed to make certain movements in time and rhythm to the musical beats which may explain why the musicians among you are seeing performance inaccuracies. But that does not mean they are CGI. I believe that those are real robots strumming those guitars, beating the drums, etc...but I think they are just faking it rather than making music. Robotic "Milli Vanilli" if you will (the old timers out will get the reference. For everyone else, go here to learn more). Dave ...and for those who just love different type of music (like myself), then you have to see this (oh...and its all real by the same artist): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs

NOTE: This sale is really an... ALL INSYDIUM 50% OFF SALE So it is not just X-Particles as inferred in the subject line but Cycles 4D, Cycles/X-Particle bundle and (the most exciting part)….. 50% OFF MAINTENANCE Plus you can purchase up to 3 years of maintenance at this price if you so desire. Honestly, at the rate they keep improving X-particles (their latest update continues to impress), I do wonder what's left to release in the future? Sure, you can make it faster or handle monstrous particle sets, but those are probably limitations of C4D and not 100% in their control. Relative to what is in their control, like additional features, I am left to wonder what else is on their development timeline. My brain hurts trying to think of some particle control or modifier that they don't already have and on top of that add fluids, grains, volume breaking, particle dynamics, object dynamics, etc...etc...etc. ;-) Now, this is said with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but even Next Limit is having trouble keeping up with X-Particles relative to their C4D plugin. I looked at the feature list relative to the cost and I did not see any breakthrough features that would make me want to run out an buy V3. I have always been an Insydium enthusiast. I just hope I remember on Monday to renew my maintenance! Dave

Really impressive and I hope it leads to more dream jobs (or maybe it has but you can't tell us just yet). What would be cool is to have three side-by-side images: Wireframe, Final Render, Final sword as used in the show (if possible). In short, it would be interesting to see if the prop department could add as much detail to the physical sword as you did with the render (possibly a 21st century version of man vs. machine) or how they were inspired by your work -Dave

I am okay with violence, provided the violence serves the story and is not just mayhem for mayhem's sake. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Game of Thrones (including right now to get ready for the final season) even though that show has some violence that puts Love, Death and Robots to shame. But I enjoy every episode because I am emotionally invested in the characters...and that is the difference. Does the violence serve the story....does it help make the villain more evil or the hero/heroin more heroic? As long as I am rooting for the character(s), then the violence does not bother me as much. As long as it makes the danger more real or give you a taste of what things are really like (as in the opening battle in "Saving Private Ryan"), then it is necessary. I just felt that some of the violence in LD&R could have been dialed back a bit and not taken anything away from the story points...and that is the test point on why I felt it was unnecessary and gratuitous. Again....just because you can render it doesn't mean you should. Dave

I also thought the entire series was pretty amazing visually. Relative to Sonnie's Edge, while visually striking (the beasts were amazing), the violence at the end actually made me a bit queasy. Watching her head get crushed and eyeballs pop out was bad enough...but then having the guy stick his cane into her crushed flesh and pull up a loose flap left me wanting to tell Blur Studios (whom I highly respect) and Dave Wilson (the director) that just because you can render and animate something doesn't necessarily mean you should. Same sentiments can apply to "The Secret War" -- sorry dead bodies of children with the backs ripped open or lying blood covered against the cabin really added nothing to the story. There was enough dismembered body parts lying around to convey the plot point that these critters were nasty. Also watching a soldier with his head half ripped off fall in slow motion was another queasy moment for me as well. You could trim some of those scenes and nothing would be taken away from the excitement of the story which was very good. Just because they are digital characters does not make it okay to push the gore to new heights -- especially now when the characters are becoming so real. That is my only criticism to what was otherwise an outstanding anthology that definitely bears repeat watching (except the first and last episodes -- my stomach can only take soo much). Dave P.S. For those who may disagree, then consider the following before you reply: If people love watching gore in movies and games, then have we evolved much since the days of the Roman Empire when gladiators used to kill each other in Colosseum as public entertainment? Just a thought in case anyone thinks that we are an advanced society that has evolved to a new age of enlightenment.

Yes. The best part of the e-on software tools was Carbon Scatter and that is the one tool they are not continuing. The mis-steps made by that company show how easy it is to lose your dominant position in a marketplace. Don't some 3rd party renderers also offer some pretty good instancing capability as well? I know Cycles has the ability to scatter and rotate instances and Octane has that capability as well as scale randomization. Also, Forestor has a some good scattering control capability built into their tree plugin. But Carbon Scatter was just the bomb. You could feed it anything and control it pretty well. Never played with Surface Spread...I will have to give it a look. Dave

So does that impression change with R20? I know you can't determine that for anyone but yourself -- but what do you think? For me, OpenVDB is challenging my perception of traditional modeling (hey, it's still all quads right?). Nodes has power but deep to get into. Fields blows my mind. Couple fields with XP-2019 and it is a bit staggering what you can accomplish. So again (IMHO), R20 almost makes it worth the wait....and it was a long wait. Now had they thrown in a better symmetry tool...well then.... Dave

It just occurred to me that maybe MAXON is using Safeharbor to test out an upgrade policy similar to what Modo has: all upgrades at the same price.....hmmmm…..

I saw this and felt I had to pass it on: Safe Harbor Studios is offering upgrades to R20 Studio at $1695 from any release from R16 to R19 and from any version from Prime to Visualize. Find out more here: Obviously, this deal is a no brainer for anyone who has R16 Prime and who considered R20 Studio out of reach at $3600+. Not such a great deal for people who missed out on renewing their R19 Studio MSA, but then Safe Harbor added this sweetener for pretty much everyone: Note that you not only get R20 but the next release as well (presumably R21 --- I mean, they wouldn't pull a fast one and give you a maintenance release...would they? Hmmm....best to check into it if interested). Unfortunately, only for US and Canada ---- and here I was hoping 3D-Kiwi would find a cheap path back into C4D!!! Dave

Congratulations on all the new events in your life. Question: Didn't you also do a tutorial on the new reflectance shader in C4D? Did you pull that because of nodes? Do the 80% discounts only apply to your tutorials, that is does it apply to Tim Clapham's as well? Just wondering why the discount codes do not seem to work on some of the tutorials as indicated in the previous post. Thanks, Dave

Very classy speech! Did he give a shout-out to Hrvoje? He also mentioned “Bjorn”. Could that be Srek? Now that is cool! Great day for MAXON users and creators everywhere! Dave

I would assume by soft body interactions that the particles are spheres or blobs of some sort and/or you going for a type of bubble look? If so, I do recall a YouTube video from Insydium as part of their XP4 2018 Sneak Peek where Bob Walmsley applied an xpCloth modifier to a sphere, added some xpTurbulence and other modifiers and got this very cool looking softbody type animation (without the overhead that true softbody dynamics can give you). He did it as a demo and was surprised at quality of the results. I can't remember which YouTube tutorial it was as it wasn't labeled as "how to make bubbles using cloth" but rather part of a feature overview. You could ask at the Insydium forums. I hope that helps. Dave

I am not sure how many particles you are generating, but I am just wondering what you want to edit/keyframe outside of the native controls in X-Particles that makes you want to bake the particle animation? XP has some pretty good controls for insuring you are getting the desired particle motion. If you are only dealing with a small amount of particles, then maybe just use MoGraph. I can't imagine going through the keyframes on very high particle count animations that is possible with X-Particles (eg. many hundreds, thousands or even millions). Now, if you want to cache the particle animation for quicker feedback and to scrub the animation back and forth, then use the xpCache object under the Other Objects tab. You can either drag in the emitter or the generator depending on what you still want to be able to change after the file is cached.

OMG.....Okay...you know I am a huge fan of Ragdolls 3. In fact, today was a bit rough and I thought I would go view Ragdolls 3 again to raise my spirits. And lo-and-behold, there is Ragdolls 4 ….. and it was funnier than Ragdolls 3 (….."oh my colon....oh my ankle"....that line killed me). I know I have been traveling a lot (122,000 miles in 2018....or over 8 days sitting in an airplane)….but how did I miss the release of Ragdolls 4!!! In any case, thank you...thank you...thank you. Just brilliant! Dave P.S. You should have a banner "25,458 Ragdolls injured...and counting" P.P.S The fluids in Ragdolls 4...was it X-Particles? I did not see it listed in the credits.

I wonder if the new Fields capability was in view when the academy was voting? I had a chance to play with it this weekend and was absolutely impressed. Not sure what the timing was between R20 release and the nominations (if they even have them for technical awards)….but I wonder if fields factored into the award or not. It would be interesting to know. Overall though, the entire MAXON team deserves an award (IMHO). R20 has really delivered on all fronts. I am so behind on my WIPs, but there is just so much to learn in R20 and time is very limited for a hobbyist. The priority goes to learning. Plus, I have made a commitment to really grow my X-Particles 4 skills as the speed improvements with the latest release and the new capabilities really make it an exciting package....actually, X-Particles should get its own little Oscar. I also anticipate that spending more time on learning new capabilities than on finishing WIP's will be the norm for a while as the new core continues to permeate everything in the program over the next couple of releases. All I can say is this: Hrvoje was right! I privately scoffed at some of his "just wait and see what's coming" comments in the past....but he was right! Dave

I came across this in my travels and thought it was pretty interesting: https://www.linkedin.com/company/maxon3d/ It shows the location of all their offices and the LinkedIn pages of all their employees across the world (99 in total - though not all are full time employees). Some LinkedIn pages leave out the name but not their position. Overall, pretty interesting as I have always wondered just how many people work for MAXON. It is larger than I thought. Dave

Wow....no one responded to this news after almost a month? When you consider past winners of the Academy Technical awards (Ed Catmull, Houdini, Nuke, Photoshop, etc.), MoGraph stands with some pretty notable contributors to the industry. This is quite the achievement. Hopefully, in time, they post the awards ceremony on YouTube. That would be kind of cool to see. Congratulations Per-Anders Edwards! Well deserved. Dave