10-year C4D veteran moving to Blender

Hello Blender world. I just wanted to say hello as a new Blender guy. I’ve used c4d for 10 years but am moving to Blender now.

Two things motivated me to make the move:
-2.8 and the many outstanding features
-Maxon’s move to subscriptions.

I plan to donate to the foundation and as I get more familiar with the software…join in discussions. Go Blender!

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I hope you love it as much as I do :slight_smile:

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Hi horusscope…sure liking it so far! Especially Eevee.

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Eevee is my favorite too :slight_smile:
Cycles is for the hyper-realism camp, it is good. I remember trying LuxRender and Octane years ago and I had a lot of fun with them too. Still, I almost never aim for realism in my work, so it’s Eevee all the way.

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I’ve used Octane on c4d for four years. It’s good stuff. Of course Eevee isn’t going to create eye candy like that…but it’s even faster than Octane.

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Welcome aboard Ice and i think you will not regret that move since i myself switch from 3ds max a few month ago and i became quickly a blender addict.

Modeling with the right combination of hotkeys is second to none and Eevee is simply fantastic, the amount of early test i did with Eevee can be found in this thread if you want to see what Eevee is capable off in a very short time, as an example the shot in the fog was done with volumetric in less than 5 min.

link; The Watch!

I don’t know how cinema 4D was handling heavy scene or model in edit mode but this is currently my only real grip with blender since performance is dramatically reduce at the moment.

My submarine scene is 900,000 faces and in shading editor each undo take between 15 to 25 seconds making it a chore to texture a model.

I can barely animate a 20,000 faces character without lagging.

They are currently working on these issues so eventually it will get smoother.

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Go ahead partner, and welcome aboard Ice. This voyage is going to be a little hard at the beginning but once you are familiar with it and what you can achieve, believe me you’ll be fascinated with this powerful software.
So I hope you don’t give up or get frustrated.

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Welcome on Board, Ice! I found my way to this place some weeks ago.

I am switching after 8 years of using C4D. Before I was using 3D Studio since R3 and up to 3dsmax R2012. :joy::+1:

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Good to see other adopters here.

I’m switching to blender for personal work, professionally I stick to Max for another year (subscriptions are due in a week… :wink: ) because of all the libraries.

What I like about blender is the quickness of a lot of things, starting with the startup of the software, saving etc. and the seemingly endless possibilities once you get into scripting.

What I don’t is the feel of inconsistency in the UI. E.g. you have tons of parameter input fields where you don’t have any clue to what you change because theres no unit going with it. Sometimes you have change parameters in the decimals, sometimes in the thousands in order to see something change (e.g. in smoke sims). You just don’t get any reference as to in what range you have to change stuff. I know that this must be hard for certain values but I never have that feeling with max.

To all the adopter I wish the best efficiency possible in the switching process. And a lot of joy with the new software.

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@IceCaveMan

Hi IceCaveMan. I’m assuming the same IceCaveMan from https://forums.cgsociety.org, right?

I also started in Cinema4D but I don’t necessarily plan on leaving it. I use Blender to supplement it specially with the UV tools.

Have a great stay here! The Blender Community is really helpful.

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Welcome!

To get accustomed to Blender I suggest to watch lots of (beginner) video tutorials and familiarizing yourself with the many keyboard shortcuts.

15 year veteran mostly using Maya, with some C4D and Houdini. I’ve used Blender over the past month and I’m going back to C4D and Houdini, slowly getting away from Maya. Blender just wasn’t stable enough with large scenes and didn’t really do a great job at any one thing, other than modeling (once I got the right paid plugins). C4D and Houdini still steamroll Blender in certain areas which I’m working in.

I hear you, for me is the MoGraph tools in C4D, can’t be beaten.
But I love Blender and I’ll keep using it for modelling and maybe quick look-dev mockups. It’s definitely a great Swiss army knife.

Ex-Maya user here. My switch was accidental and project based at first. But, after its end I couldn’t use Maya any more. It felt redundant in many ways and surprsingly less intuitive than Blender. Though, I really miss redshift. Eevee is ok, but it’s not suitable for my type of work. Cycles is also ok (especially e-cycles) but I can’t wait for redshift to be released for Blender.

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Thanks all for the welcomes, tips and your impressions.

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I started with Hexagon and Silo, then moved on to C4D R13. While C4D R20 will remain on my computer and get some use, my plan is to do the majority of my work in Blender.

My reasons are pretty much the same as yours with a bit of a twist. I had to do some catch-up upgrading last year and ended up without an MSA (long story…it had been included in the offer). I decided to wait and see if R21 had anything worth upgrading for. I tried to buy a new MSA at the beginning of August but it had been discontinued with no notice.

I am not going to pay their sub price nor their upgrade price as it will be the default Studio pricing now. I have Broadcast and the Studio pricing is almost double. For the people with the Prime version, it will be triple.

I have been dabbling with Houdini a bit, and their apprentice pack is iirc $250/year and they can handle a lot of the things that Mograph does. So if I ever get proficient enough, I will add that to my Blender toolbox. That also will give me access to different rendering packages.

Good luck to you and to all of us starting on this new adventure!

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I wondered if there would be an influx of C4D users after the R21 announcement. R21 looks poor and the subscription is a big turn off.

I am also a 10 year long user of C4D since v11.0 and decided to look at Blender a few months ago. I was blown away with what I discovered and Blender 2.80 felt like a completely different Blender which I immediately took to. I’m still very noob but I’m enjoying learning on a daily basis that Blender is way more powerful than I ever imagined and way more developed that C4D in many areas.

The speed of development of Blender is amazing and I expect many more C4D users to find Blender very attractive in the months and years ahead. Everything Nodes will take Blender to a whole new level in Motion Graphics and I don’t think Maxon has anything to respond with.

I don’t post much here but I’ve learned a lot just browsing these forums and have been inspired by many examples in the gallery. Cheers

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I’m a 10 years C4D veteran myself and now I use Blender only. No regrets. For mograph stuff, Animation Nodes plus the future b-particles is the way to go.

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Animation Nodes may be promising and perhaps it’s possible to get similar results.
However, from a motion graphic job standpoint, working in the companies where motion graphics is an established asset which allow those companies to generate part of their income, time is extremely precious and I don’t see AN possibly get ever close to C4D’s MoGraph tools speed-wise.
Which is a pity as it’s now clear Blender’s UI doesn’t represent an obstacle anymore and I’m sure several places would be willing to adopt it considered it would also allow them to save money in license and subscriptions.

Personally, C4D and Blender are meant for different tasks as they both excel in some areas and lack in others. I wish Blender had more tools like C4D MoGraph, Fields, X-Particles, but that’s just my wish and I know it is not very sound as C4D and Blender have their respective reasons behind their development. But I like to think of a Blender version with all those nifty things so I could just use it for all my works :slight_smile:

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You can re-use your AN setups which cuts half of the problem regarding velocity. I have a vast library of node trees to use and re-use in a lot of works, basically “plug and play effects”. If nodes were a problem per si, Houdini wouldn’t be used at all for motion graphics and we know this isn’t the case.
I can see in a short future Blender becoming a rock in the path of the “mograph” people, because I really like where B-Particles is going, which I think it will be Blender’s X-Particles. :slight_smile:

If I had time and a good english, I would like to create some AN tutorials with a C4D perspective and mindset.

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