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I wouldn’t say there is a bulldozer attitude here from MAXON. So far it has just been Srek giving his views, Rick trying to answer questions and then you have the actual CEO here talking to everyone here! Come on now. The CEO! How much level of interaction do people want from a company? Just try and see if you can even get in contact with any human at Adobe! But I also agree with what Srek mentioned. Forums are a bubble. But I happen to like this bubble, same people always talking is fine with me. But we are a very small bunch of people here, at least the ones that actively post.

I like and respect everyone on this forum. And I read every message that is posted. I personally don’t have any other connections to any users in any other medium. This site is it for me. So I really enjoy the conversations here and see both sides of all arguments. So far this time round it has been quiet polite really. No overly aggressive comments, which is great to see. We are all professional adults here just doing our thing. And with COVID out there, and no real events to go to, this forum is a great place for people to come to. So everyone just keep on typing. Lots of us here are reading along and happy to discuss all topics.

It is a business. I hope they are caring about money. Money is what pays every employee their wages so that they can continue to work. And I highly doubt there are any managers getting bonuses. Also Maxon is no longer just a C4D company. They now have a very large portfolio of products. And all the business decisions now span a much wider market. I understand why perpetual C4D customers may not be that overwhelmed by this (and the previous S24) release. But for users on the subscription it means absolutely nothing. Just keep on working, use S24 or S25 if they have features you need and if you want to adjust your workflow, otherwise stick to S23 to R21. For the price of a new perpetual license today you could be on a sub for almost 5 years. I wonder how many customers would still even consider purchasing a perpetual these days. Doesn't make much sense. My last perpetual was R21 (and I own everything back to R17). However, I am a registered developer and do get access to the Beta versions. But for everything I would ever do R21 is perfectly fine for my purposes. I even do all my development in R21 (I only use newer versions to test compatibility). If I do leave the developer program I would loose my access, but then I would only get a sub if there was some feature that I really wanted to use. But in most cases there are other tools that already fill the gaps I would need anyway. Not sure what I am really getting at here other than to say businesses need to stay profitable and customers should do what is right for them. But for the past few years I keep seeing the same arguments and comments being thrown at Maxon every release. How much longer will people keep saying the same things? When it comes to business if something doesn't suit your needs then quickly move on. Although I have been annoyed at many companies for the direction they have taken, I understand it is just business, not a personal vendetta against me personally. Companies get bigger and have to get their big boy pants on and make hard decisions that will affect some of their user base, that is inevitable. But hopefully the decisions that Maxon has made will allow it to prosper and continue to expand, grow larger, get a bigger community and potentially one day dominate over their competition (Autodesk, The Foundry and maybe even Adobe). I say good luck to them and I am happy I could have helped and will be sticking around to take this journey with them until such time as my life takes me in a different direction.

R25 Full Change List https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/4406578092690-Cinema-4D-R25-September-14-2021 NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS User Interface Enhancements New modern scheme and updated icons New layouts Updated attribute layouts for easier and more intuitive access to key attributes Document Tabs - easily switch between open documents Layout Tabs - easily switch between layouts for different tasks New Layouts Switch - easily revert to old Cinema 4D layouts Window size and position maintained while switching layouts (ctrl to recall stored position) Fix Column and Fix Row options maintain the size of layout elements while resizing window / adapting to new resolutions Dynamic Palettes - icon palettes dynamically change based on document mode, active tool or active object type Shortcut sets in Command Manager Virtual Sliders on Numeric Attributes Numeric Attributes increment based on cursor position Option to expose any tag with the Object attributes New Coordinate Manager with Auto-Apply and Reset Transform Non-modal Color Chooser popup Snap and Soft Selection toolbar popups Variable size thumbnails in Material Manager Improved display of selected element in dropdowns New 3-point Viewport Lighting HDR/EDR Viewport Asset Browser Preset System Store presets within the Asset Browser, will category, keywords, smart search, previews and more Define multiple presets for any object, tag, tool or other Attribute Manager element Specify a default preset to be applied whenever the item is created Partial presets allow specific / selected attributes to be stored as presets Easily choose between stored presets or a specific Attribute Manager element Define presets for any Import / Export format Custom preset types for specific Cinema 4D content: Render Settings Viewport Filter* Timeline Filter Color Chooser Swatches, BodyPaint 3D Swatches & Brushes, Sculpt Brushes* Sketch & Toon* Icon Presets* User Data Interfaces Takes Bevels* Gradients* Spline UI* Sky Automatic creation of preview images for many preset types (marked above with an asterisk) General Asset Browser Improvements Place any asset within an icon palette for easy access Place Favorites or any Smart Search within an icon palette for easy access Popup mini-browser can be moved, or pinned open to add multiple assets Simple Mode provides easy access with minimal UI to specific categories or searches Option to Convert Legacy lib4d Content Browser libraries Improved Drag & Drop (object manager hierarchy, material manager, polygon selection, material links) Improved Spline Import Import Adobe Illustrator / PDF files Imports stroke and fill information Imports stroke/fill color with support for multiple color spaces and gradient fills Imports vector symbols embedded within artwork Import SVG Files Generate extrusions and sweeps to represent filled and stroked paths Offset paths parametrically based on layer and path order Update Illustrator files dynamically while keeping settings Capsules Use Capsule assets created in Cinema 4D's new Scene Node core within Classic Cinema 4D Primitives Object Groups Geometry Modeling and Selection Modifiers Tap into the power of Scene Nodes to add unique functionality within an Object Group or Geometry Modifier Group Scene Nodes / Scene Manager Splines Spline Primitives - 4-side Arc Circle Circular Arrow Cissoid Cycloid Flower Formula Helix Linear Arrow n-side Profile Rectangle Segment Star Text Scene Nodes Spline Core - Create Bezier splines with tangents Create B-Splines Create splines with Nurbs weighting Attach weight, color and other attributes to spline points Interpolate position and spline point attributes along spline Tesselate Splines with Adaptive, Subdivided, Natural or Uniform point distribution Output the length of a spline Line To Mesh Generator - Extrude, Loft, Lathe, Sweep operations Data Integration Import Data Node - CSV data import Get Member Node - get array from container by name/index Get Member Info Node - output an array of members within a container Sort Collection - sort all arrays of an array collection based on one array within the collection Command-line argument - parse a command-line argument as an input for Scene Nodes Data Assets Bar Graph Global Pins Utilities Hex to RGB Geoposition to Equirectangular Geoposition to Sphere DMS to Geoposition Angle to DMS Flightpath Spline Nodes and Node Assets Surface Blue Noise Distribution Surface-Scaled Blue Noise Distribution Calculate Curvature Create Normals Geometry Axis / Orientation / Resize Jitter / Jitter along Normal Smooth Geometry Transform Element Modulo Selection Select All Select by Weight To / From Barycentric Pivot Transform Node Editor Enhancements Improved modeling selection workflow with selection string parser Error highlighting, Info Area callout and improved Console error reporting Updated Modeling Selection Workflow with Selection Parser Store cached geometry within nodes Redshift Integration Updated Redshift Lights User Interface Convert standard lights to Redshift Lights KNOWN ISSUES Cinema 4D R25 will break plugin compatibility with the C++ API, and in some Python plugins. The Content Browser has been deprecated and removed. A new menu option in the Asset Browser allows users to choose a lib4d and convert to assets. There are three notes to know about Spline Import: SVG files from Inkscape currently will not load Layers >1 level deep are only supported when Illustrator files are saved without compression Path Names are not imported

Off topic but I would like to say I am really enjoying the conversations happening in this thread. I just wish we could all keep chatting like this usually, instead of just once every 6 months when a new version of C4D releases.

When I worked at Maxon it definitely felt like a small start up, part of the charm and fun of the company at the time. But in the last 5 years they have definitely expanded, and taken on huge debt as well. I am not familiar with the old system by I was sure this one you mention has been in place for a few years now. Since I also questioned why students should pay at the time. But this company they are using easily fills the need to verify a student is who they say they are. Yes MAXON could have probably paid them to remove that fee. But I can see why they chose this solution instead of having to hire permanent staff to handle all the verification steps involved. I guess if enough institutions reported this as an issue they may work out a deal with that company to pay the costs. But it looks like this company is set up to work as a service and as I mentioned it was most likely the fastest way for Maxon to move to a new solution that can be automated and work in with their new licencing system. These are all guesses mind you, from a product design and delivery perspective with a thought to ROI.

To me it looks like it is the OnTheHub Kivuto estore that is charging the fee. So Maxon has handed off all the work involved in getting this coupon code, for all your students, to another company. And that company is charging the fee to cover their costs to provide this service. What is involved in this? It looks like the company checks the credentials of every student to ensure they are a student. You have to use your schools email address, which must get verified to ensure it is legitimate, then you probably get an email with the coupon. So that is the service you are paying for. https://estore.onthehub.com/p/MaxonOne?&pr=true Maxon will still be incurring costs on their side such as bandwidth download costs and authentication servers etc... As much as you would all like to think, Maxon is not Autodesk. They are not the same size or have the same income. So handing this off to an outside company to deal with would actually save them money by not having to build a separate system, and support it, when it brings in no value. Plus it would have made it much faster for them to get this offering out to students.

I remember seeing both of these at the time and especially thinking the project tab was a great idea. But then it dropped off the radar. Creating a project is only the first part. The rest is all marketing. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc… and having a custom website that highlights the products with good SEO so that Google picks it up. Also getting them into resellers hands like ToolFarm or HelloLux. I myself don’t do much marketing, but each time I do anything I see a bunch of sales. But sales and marketing are full time jobs all in of themselves. Which is why I don’t do much personal development anymore. I have too much to sell and need to get back to that instead of just making new stuff, that no one will ever use unless they know about it. So don’t give up on new ideas. But when you have something make sure to get the word out about them.

I was actually pretty saddened to hear that he has left. I often wonder how well they treat their developers there. Was be being funded at all by the blender foundation or was he doing it totally on his own just to get tools in that he himself wants to use. His Patreon was only $125 a month. I do not know how the blender foundation operates at all. But his leaving is a great loss for the community.

If they had waited then everyone on R23 perpetual would not have any way to get access to the features of S24. For an R23 perpetual user this update includes all the S24+R25 features.

Capsules are actually pretty amazing. It allows anyone to essentially create a "plugin". Without doing any coding at all. So now any casual developer needs to think if it makes sense to write actual code to create a deformer or modifier, or just do it with nodes and never have any c4d upgrade compatibility problems ever again. I expect to see lots of neat new features coming from the community in future. Even possibly from myself. https://www.maxon.net/en/cinema-4d/features/capsules

Keep your plugin up. Just state what versions of C4D it is compatible with. It will still be useful to perpetual users who won’t go to R25.

👋 Welcome Mike! Looking forward to seeing some more of your shots. Cheers, Kent

I think what would help for a lot of hobbyists or people just wanting to get started (ie not an already established company with a budget) would be to include a very low cost Indie version of C4D. Otherwise how will MAXON attract new customers just starting.

I am curious to know what features, from S22 upwards, would you really liked to have had? I would not call R21 crappy at all.

I am not personally seeing any development jobs being taken away by AI. But when you start to think of a new idea for a product you do have to seriously consider what the best approach would be now. Whether you go for the algorithmic approach and develop it based on the well defined knowledge, research and logic, or if you instead should see if there is a large data set that you could instead create a model, using machine learning, that would be able to produce a "good enough" result instead. Most recently I have been thinking about painting software for creating new materials and textures etc... and it almost makes no sense now to do it the "old" way and instead create a model based on real world photos and have it generate the texture you want. The creative feeling of painting is what I enjoy, but if you are after an end result for a production then getting to the end result as fast as you can is more desirable. And this will eventually apply to many cases in 3D, as shown by the work Nvidia are doing right now. I should probably start focusing on tools and workflows to integrate GANS into C4D. This site here is absolutely nuts. https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ Just keep refreshing the page for new generated faces.

The same thing goes for us developers as well. We are moving away from developing something that is understandable from a code/math perspective and instead are now just feeding in parameters to a black box and blindly using what ever pops out the other end, without gaining any insights or knowledge about how the results came to be. Almost feels like a dumbing down of science. A bit like just going to Wikipedia and trusting the answer is correct with no references or info how that answer came to be. Off topic but in another crazy use of AI... this company used an AI to scan users behaviour on their networks and anyone who wasn't blinding typing rubbish, sending un-required emails or creating meaningless Jira tickets was deemed "unengaged and unproductive employees" and then fired. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/386534/Xsolla_lays_off_150_after_an_algorithm_ruled_staff_unengaged_and_unproductive.php

I wrote their GLTF importer and store content browser plugin for UE4. I like to feel that I contributed to this buy out. 😀

If you’re already familiar with git workflows then you could also take a look at achorpoint. Also made by a ex MAXON employee. https://www.anchorpoint.app

No he did not create XPRESSO. Sebastian was the one who brought Python to Cinema 4D, among many other things.

Sebastian no longer works for Maxon. After an incredible 11 years he is now off on his own creating a very cool artist friendly version control system called Snowtrack. Worth checking out. https://snowtrack.io

I didn't even know that existed. Thanks.

There are lots of legal and tax related issues if you are to set up a store. For these reasons I would only ever sell plugins via a site like GumRoad or FastSpring.

Kent what do you mean by this? You guys never had more exposure than you have now. If you have any suggestion, well I was always open to hear them and implement. It might be that I am on my phone but to find it I had to click the hamburger menu icon->Browse->Forums. Then scroll down the page for a while to find the developers section. A while back there was a item right on the main page. But this got removed. I am not complaining at all. I know how hard it is to prioritize what gets shown on the main page.

All the devs at Core4D here are all great. Check out their work in the developer forums here (which is pretty much totally hidden from the site now unless you hunt for it). https://www.core4d.com/ipb/forums/forum/345-programming/ But let’s get back to R25! Very keen to hear what you would all like to see or expect to see…