Yes, I know Houdini is being used for motion graphics works, but the schedules are very different from a C4D job. Houdini shows definitely all the advantages when some very specific setup is required, but for the majority of motion graphics jobs, that’s not the case. The advantage of having a tool that allows the user to create virtually anything is not cost-effective when what’s needed is already doable with C4D in less time and with a more contained budget — yes, Houdini artists are “pricer”
AN setups won’t solve the technicality of it. I know it sounds similar to the idea of XSI compounds but if at some point, the setup requires tweaks and different results, one still needs to be proficient with AN in order to adjust the node to fit the new direction. With MoGraph, the process is always designer-oriented, which means, faster, more forgiven, and less technicality involved.
I love Blender, I use it every day for my own projects and at work, but after a couple of years I can say with confidence that it excels at literally nothing. It is a great overall tool and that is the reason I love it so much. It is like HB graphite pencil. But sometimes its drawbacks make me really sad I did not choose Max or whatever commercial software for my work years ago. I miss many things in Blender and working with multi-milion polygonal scenes is just painful. Eevee is super fun and useful in some cases, but in the end it is just worse render engine compared to Cycles. Frankly, I am not surprised Blender is not widely used in the business.
There is Blender 2.8…which looks good… But one must consider the future of the software. In my opinion the trajectory looks promising as development funds increase.
If Blender can win over a few more studios…and pull in that revenue…it can really take off.
C4D manages high density models very well up to a point but make a cloner with just a few thousand cubes and the viewport becomes near impossible to navigate. Blender handles multiple objects far better than C4D. Fields might look impressive but the viewport lags so much with many objects Fields adds very little at the moment. I’ve done side by side tests and Blender is much more responsive is in the same situation.
C4D ships with 3 renderers (Standard, Physical and ProRender) all of which are way behind Eevee and Cycles in terms of quality and speed. Most professionals like myself have invested in 3rd party renderers like Arnold, Octane or Redshift because the Maxon renderers are too slow or too poor in image quality to use in production. The visual fidelity of the C4D viewport is way behind Look Dev and Eevee, just not in the same ballpark.
C4D’s Motion Clip system is way behind Blender’s NLA system for ease of use and C4D’s nodal rigging system Xpresso is way behind Animation nodes in terms of speed and depth of features. C4D’s particle system a very old version of Thinking Particles is single threaded and can’t cope with particle densities that clients expect which is why XParticles has become so popular. But Xparticles is an extra £600 and combined with $500 for Redshift Cinema 4D is an extremely expensive choice and that’s before you add Realflow and TFD for fluids. C4D has no native fluid sim tools like Blender does.
Many big name C4D studios have begun investing in Houdini and many C4D freelancers I follow are increasingly switching to Houdini Indie as well due to the slow development of C4D.
Download the trial of C4D R21 and you’ll find out how many of vanilla C4D’s tools are well past their sell-by date, I’m sure it’ll put a new perspective on what Blender offers.
I continue to be intrigued by Houdini, but as I’m predominantly a modeler I guess sticking with Blender is a better choice for me. Houdini is better for technical stuff and effects, like advanced particle systems and such, or not? Does it even have sculpting tools, next to non-destructive modular modeling tools?
Look not where Blender is at now, but where it’s headed. All it needed was to snowball and get noticed, and now its getting big grants. Also note back a few years ago AMD and Nvidia had a kind of monopoly going on where by you had to pay extortionate amounts of money for Quadro or FireGL cards which had a monopoly on drivers which enabled useable viewport performance with high/pro level polygon counts… Im guessing were are still working around that roadblock to an extent. Unless you’re happy to buy monthly subscriptions and quadro cards, then stick to Blender and enjoy the ride to 3.0 and beyond.
I wish I had enough hours in the day to learn Houdini. A well known C4D user at Man vs Machine started using Houdini for abstract procedural growth animations and spawned a lot of interest from the C4D community. He has completely dropped C4D now and very often gives presentations at SideFX meetings. I’d love to learn Houdini because it’s the one app that rules them all but I want a life outside of work, I can’t commit the amount of hours necessary to make it worthwhile.
I’m really happy with Blender and Animation Nodes and I’m confident Blender has a very bright future when the Everything Nodes project is complete.
I’ve used 3DsMax, Modo, C4d, Milkshape, Maya, Substance designer and painter, zbrush, mudbox, photoshop, After effects… so many more… I cancelled every remaining subscription, and I still own Modo 11, zbrush, substance tools and a few other solid licenses, but who cares. I have what I need and even what I WANT now, for FREE, FOREVER, and all within a few clicks. Welcome aboard
cool News! I’m actually considering dumping Maya for a combination of C4D and Blender. My subscription is up in 90 days and I think it’s even more than C4D. My only issue is if a client calls and needs an update on something, then I have to pay to work on it.
The cloner is not a big issue anymore. Either with the matrix swap or with the instances option in R20 it’s possible to increase the number of clones quite drastically.
Agreed, C4D needs third-party plugins such as for instance Redshift, X-Particles although I haven’t found a place that hasn’t bought those plugins. The maintenance fee is reasonable and if you make money by using those tools, it’s peanuts we’re talking about. Obviously, for an independent, mileage may vary.
I’m personally loving Cycles, not because it’s free, but because of the quality. I only wish it was faster. The speed so far it’s been a deterrent for me.
Yes, I’m trying the AI denoiser and the results are great indeed. I’m not considering eCycles at the moment as, from my understanding, it comes as a separate build and not as an addon, but perhaps I’m wrong.
It’s 2019 and your answer is to turn your animated scene into Matrix dots for previewing? When you convert a cloner to a Matrix object dynamics no longer work so there are limitations to this approach.
Cinema 4D is now one of the most expensive subscription options available yet it is the one that needs the most 3rd party plugins to make it usable in production. It would be fine if Cinema 4D needed an odd plugin but it doesn’t it needs a plugin for particles, cloth, fluids, smoke, texture painting/UVing and a modern renderer. This is the vast majority of a 3d application!
It’s not peanuts at all, it’s a continued and significant investment per seat to have these plugins installed so it’s just as significant to a big shop to a small shop to a single freelancer. IMO the developers have rested on their laurels and allowed cinema 4d to fall apart from neglect.
As you say, "look at where Blender is going." And, where and how far it has already gone. That’s the sheer power of open-source (“cooperative”) software development. The hardest problem for any commercial software company is establishing and then maintaining an ongoing revenue stream to support continued operations.
Plugin for cloth and texture painting is stretching it too far. Besides, for cloth no one can compete against Marvelous Designer, and the same can be said for Substance Painter. A bundle with XP / Cycles 4D will cover most case scenarios except for UV. You can do as I do, I use Blender for modeling + uvmapping, Cinema 4D for Motion Graphics and Zbrush / Painter to complete my workflow… although Im moving towards another job… im gonna use Unreal Engine for Virtual Scenarios, so im slowly discarding C4D. I believe this is my last year with it, because I only need 3d assets and Blender truly shines at modeling, unless I have to animate something (I dislike Blender for animation) to send it as fbx to Unreal… Mixamo Rig in C4D will do wonders, but I have to test it first.
Let’s proceed with order.
Matrix: I said prior to R19, in R20 it works definitely better and in most cases, no need to switch to matrix.
Subscription costs: most expensive? this is the cost for 3ds Max (similar price for Maya)
I don’t see how C4D is the most expensive.
Third-party plugins: except for particles and render (which, by the way, for many motion graphics jobs physical is more than enough), cloth works fine, and UV as well although it is definitely outdated (the reason why I use Blender for that, and above all for its modelling tools).
C4D is not the only 3d software that needs external plugins. As I said, I’ve used 3ds Max and many max users call it a HUB for a reason.
Also, thinking in terms of one software to rule them all doesn’t apply anymore. Nowadays companies know that in order to full fill their tasks their pipelines have to involve different tools. I don’t think the perfect software exists, otherwise, we wouldn’t be here discussing all this and Blender would already dominate the market
To me, this is not an argument of C4D better than Blender, or Max better than Maya and so on. It’s never been. Like I said before, each software has its strengths and weakness. I love where Blender is going. I only reacted to the statement that it should be already adopted for motion graphics works. That’s not its strength and, even in the case of AN, it will take skilled users in order to take full advantage of that type of workflow.
Not much different from what you said before about wishing you had enough hours to learn Houdini. That’s the case for motion graphics artists: there isn’t much time to spend and that’s where C4D comes useful. We can discuss all day about A vs B, but denying the simplicity and therefore the advantage of C4D in that area is denying a fact.
Hi Luis. I was thinking this week that one really could look to Unreal or Unity as where you do final animation, lighting and rendering. They have GPU based simulations. RT is only going to grow. Blender is a nice complement to either Unreal or Unity.
I’ll still have C4d R20…grow my Blender skills…and then continue to learn Unity. I was angry at Maxon but in truth it’s a win for me.
1 Like
Renzatic
(Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)
39
Kind of an aside here, but if your major concern is non-interactive stuff, wouldn’t UE4 be the better choice?
Welcome aboard, I have noticed your posts about moving to Blender on CGSociety, so I was wondering if you were going to show up on BA.
Blender right now, with the help of a massively increased development fund and new management, is going at the fastest pace I’ve ever seen outside of the GSoC period. I think 2.81 is going to bring a lot of new stuff, but it’s always recommended for beginners to stick with official builds.
