Regnas
(• I don't speak English "by default", so... )
1
MoGraph Improvements
Slice, Dice, and Julienne Objects with Voronoi Fracture
Eliminate Overlapping Clones with the Push Apart Effector
Honeycomb Array, Scale to Fit Polygons, and other MoGraph Cloner Enhancements
Reset MoGraph Cloners and Share Falloffs with the ReEffector
Artistically Control the Influence of Effectors with MoGraph Weighting
VFX Features
Interactively Destroy objects with Voronoi Fracture
Add 3D Objects to Footage using the Object Tracker
Use Shadow Catcher to Create Alphas from Shadows for Easy Compositing
Modeling Improvements
Cut Lines and Splines in Polygon Models with C4D’s Line Cut Tool
Insert Symmetrical Loops in Polygon Models with C4D’s Loop Cut Tool
Use OpenSubdiv Smoothing for Compatibility, Performance, and Flexibility
Create Repeated Offset Cuts with C4D’s Plane Cut Tool
Shading & Rendering
Simulate Subsurface Effects and Worn Edges with Inverse Ambient Occlusion
Enhance the effect of Bump Maps using Parallax
Use C4D’s Thin Film Shader to Render Oily Surfaces and Bubbles
Random Graphic Textures with the Variation Shader Updates
Viewport Enhancements: Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Reflection Previews, & GPU Displacement
I do agree at least about the nodes part, it seems to me like Maxon is just not interested in that type of workflow for materials (so you have to wait until they unveil specialized shading features for what you want to do).
On the rest, there does seem to be some good stuff, and it does make it plain the timing of the AMD sponsorship of the Blender viewport project couldn’t be better (as it’s more or less the only application left without a fully modernized 3D view).
As for the new C4D release: quite nice release. Better than the previous one, and a lot of small improvements that will help in the daily workflow. The trouble is that C4D has many areas that really need attention. The material editor is merely one part - BodyPaint, particles, and other areas are very much lagging behind compared to similarly prized software.
The financial upkeep can be killing, though. C4d is just very expensive for what it offers, in my opinion.
I have a little space in my heart for C4D, having used it consistently from V4 on Amiga until V16, when the cost outweighed the love. That was when I embraced Blender. There are still many things C4D does well. I love the spline modelling tools, for example, and this is perhaps the one area where Blender is seriously lacking.
I actually quite like the material system of C4D, and find that although it’s entirely channel based, the implementation is akin to node based even if the flexibility of nodes is missing.
Having said that, purely on financial grounds, I don’t see myself going back.
Yeah there was a time I loved c4d and I was convinced that all the other software was bs,
I never directly interacted with the cg crowd and kept to my cringeworthy 3d renders of blocks
But that era died after r17 rolled in…
A bookshelf generator was deemed feature worthy… hm…
honestly I’m getting a bit of a “autodesk” vibe from maxon now
insignificant updates on every release that ultimately prove that the company has no clue what the user base wants and they charge a very hefty price for it.
I just watched some of the Cineversity videos on the new rendering features, I swear the more they add the greater the need to just get the whole system moved to nodes.
By now, their legacy material interface is a forest of buttons, panels, and modes (so you’re chest deep in options you may or may not use and where the interconnections and the guarantee something will work is not always obvious).
While they’re at it, they should move the entire Mograph system to nodes as well (I know they want to make the app. easy to use, but legacy UI’s can only be expanded so much before that ideal is shattered).
CG artists are not that gullible.
And I know I was pretty excited about R16 and R15 they didn’t disapoint… but oh my god r17 and r18…
Well anyway,
I’m not a c4d user so I’ve nothing to worry about, but if I were I’d start trying to switch to modo(if your are not a mograph artist ofc.)
The catch with these visuals is that you learn they were not created with C4D’s native render engine.
The rendering for this year’s video for instance was done in Arnold and last year’s was reportedly done in Octane (so you find that the app. may not be able to do that out of the box and you have to spend extra).
In short, a clear difference from the Blender Open Movie projects which every visual can be done out of the box (outside of the live footage for Tears of Steel).
Yes, @Ace Dragon and @fdfxd, you’re both right. An experienced person may not be easy to convince just by looking at this. But new and inexperienced users do, a lot. Just look at the threads here in BA started by beginers asking “is this possible with Blender?” or “How come I never see this quality in the blender open movies?”, “Why is Blender not being used in big studios?”…
You don’t fall for it, but that doesn’t mean that other people think the same; I know experienced people both in design and 3d that are all excited about this, just because that little short film.
As I said, is all about marketing, we’re in a visual industry, and good visuals sell. And that’s the biggest problem the BF faces, is not about creating the best 3D program in the world, is about how you sell it (I’m talking about attracting users, not the actual sell of a license).
Users that have years of experience just stick to what they like and are used to, but new users almost everytime look for visuals first, then ask around, then try by themselves, and then they choose a program to use.
Still, you want to make sure that the marketing is honest about whether or not it’s entirely done in the base software (ie. is it using plugins and is it simply using the advertised app. as a component in a larger pipeline).
Pretty marketing is fine, but make sure you’re not intentionally misleading new users to drive adoption.
Well, they never said they ONLY used C4D, so technically they’re not lying.
Even so, if the BF decided to pull something like this for 2.8 release for example, the marketing piece made for that purpose could very well be made using only Blender, which would be much more impressive
It is quite comical when they are blunt and say/show in the making ofs,
that they use anything in the creation process but C4D and limit
C4D to being merely an asset holing and viewing program.
Marketing should be something else especially for that pricetag.
to be fair, their renderer can produce quite good stuff but it is CPU only
and thus simply outdated.The Bodypaint part is also outdated and creating
UVs in C4D is simply horrible.
In my opinion, the pricetag has to be adjusted accordingly,
something around 200€ for C4D sounds quite acceptable.
for most professional users it is actually important that you can rely on external render engines and that you can establish a pipeline between different applications.
C4D´s renderer is very good, it just can be slow. CPU only is not outdated though - look at Corona for example. Very fast extremly capable, CPU only. Arnold, afaik CPU only. So two of the top render engines are CPU only. Lets see how that looks in three years - which is one of the reasons, why it is important to have access to external render engines.
Pricing of C4D is off in my eyes. It has developped from price/quality ratio winner to one of the most expensive packages.
