Bevel tools
Sculp projection mesh
here are more detailed videos on new feature
Watching through the videos now. Interesting how some of the big features have been in Blender for years. I find myself more envious of the “small” features in the release video.
EDIT: I take that back, those modeling tools are incredibly powerful compared to the Blender equivalents.
you’re right this new bevel tools is really powerful i like the ability to modify the bevel intersection pattern
Jep - the devil is often in the detail!
The R14 came with a viewport addition: outline selected objects, and with an ORANGE OUTLINE as default… very familiar don’t you think?
They also added sculpt module… snap tools similar to blender ones…
Now R15 with a similar bevel tool(I know, much more powerful than Blender, but very similar)… an edge loop slide function too! I almost forget the Dynamic Topology sculpt mode, yes, they have it too…
For R16 I’m expecting a bridge tool similar to Blender ones… AFAIK the Cinema 4D can perform the bridge function just with faces and don’t support edge loops. At least is this what my Cinema 4D friends reported to me.
I know that their tools are way better compared to Blender. But they’re very similar… very similar…
htis bevel tools is a mix of blender bevel and Marius Silaghi Quad Chanfer modifier for 3d max: http://www.youtube.com/user/obliviboy/videos
I hope blender bevel became more robust
Controlling bevel profile with a curve is a very cool option
I was impressed by the R15 update videos. It seems like a major update, especially the rendering features look very interesting to me.
I am working with Cinema 4D on a daily basis at work but still I prefer blender. Some of the tools in cinema are better but often the workflow is rather slow (many clicks, not too many good hotkeys). The interface is easy to learn but some things take a lot of time. I further more find cinema very slow. I am very familiar with blender and quite familar with cinema as well (having worked with it for the past 1 1/2 years), so I think I do have a bit of a day to day experience. It’s very good software but I still prefer blender for good reasons (a personal preference - but I am not a fanboy). Also the way bugs are fixed in blender is a huge plus. There’s a spline bug in cinema making objects move very hardly (e.g. when turning*) - but still it’s a bug that hasn’t been fixed in a long, long time and in my opinion that’s an essential feature. I love the way you can edit multiple objects at once. Cinema can also handle incredibly large amounts of polygons in the viewport without crashing (at work we have scenes with multiple actors containing up to 40 million polygons each).
*there are workarounds (but it takes time again)
I’m working in a Cinema 4D house for 9 years. There are 17 artists using Cinema 4D here and just me using Blender during 9 years. Cinema 4D is a very powerful tool. Especially the MoGraph module and 3d text tools and animations.
But our boss here just asked me if Blender can do the job that Cinema 4D is doing here. “Can Blender attend our necessities?” He asked me…
I’m comparing this two softwares and I’m very surprised with the similarities. Cinema 4D is greater and faster in certain areas, especially the render engine with several GI methods and noise free results in few minutes.
But I found very interesting that Blender can get very close in general, of course with limitations but in our scenario here this limitations are not even reached…
The entire workflow will change and will be more rustic in some aspects, for example, we work daily with 3D text animation and render. Cinema 4D offers tools that turns the workflow easy, comprehensive and very fast! With procedural control over the bevel(not the mesh bevel but the “curve” bevel) with various profiles and the MoGraph text with per character animations…
Blender 3D text is very limited but we can reach great results, I can say this because I already reached…
My boss believes so much that the open source software is growing so fast… He heard about other softwares that were closed and turned to be open source to have more opportunities to grow and continue the development by their communities…
We are moving toward Blender. An entire house of 17 artists will be based on Blender, moving from Cinema 4D to Blender.
I’m not saying that Blender is better than Cinema 4D. That’s definitely not the point here. I’m just saying that Blender is enough to our workflow and necessities. I’m saying that Blender is well regarded by the CEO of a company with 17 artists.
And this is very interesting to me… just want to share…
That’s really exciting Everton…! bevelled curves in Blender are nice, you can’t use differente materials yet, but you get good control on geometry. And to help general text workflow you can write some python scripts to help… quick example http://db.tt/6iIRF4JB
been a C4D user for many years, starting from last 90’s, and also think B3D is placing itself as a good alternative
WOW! Nice and simple script! Just a few lines do the magic…
But I will let the scripts for you, friend! You’re very good at this.
Thank you for the help!
I really like the Cinema 4D too. How easy is to create an interesting scene with a 3d text and do some animation with the words or per character animation… or simply add a Rigid Body tag and see the letters falling down separately. Very easy and well integrated physics. There is a GSOC project that aim to integrate all the existing physics in blender, isn’t it?
And thank you again for the .blend file, Liero. That was very helpful!
That’s the crucial point in what aspect can Blender do the job you need. Maya itself is good but only so great because of all the plug-ins and extras the provide the tool and special fx depth one might need.
But what if you have no use for Hollywood grade FX plug-ins? What if what Blender offers is actually sufficient?
That’s where it gets really interesting.
Now since you mentioned your company and the CEO being interested in Blender what is the teams opinion about Cycles?
They don’t know much about cycles… but they’re fearing the node system! 
As we all did when we met nodes for the first time…
And about the speed… But we’ll see how to minimise the impact over the render time difference since we work with very short deadlines…
I just watched the video on sculpting.
- Blender UI may be not great but this C4D isn’t better. It doesn’t look so.
- They used something similar to the shrinkwrap modifier (projection). The example isn’t convincing at all. I would like to see it working on more difficult cases. The usual cases, if I may say so.
Beveling is impressive though.
The Bevel idea is interesting - but I like to point out here that when I got into 3D modeling Amapi at that point had already the best boolean and bevel tools.
The profile bevel itself I find very interesting specifically useable for simulating edge details like in the woodshop.
Question I would have is if after doing one bevel job the effect remains parametric and later you can select another through the bevel created edge and add another bevel tag.
Does that work in C4D?
that curve control in bevele i think is pretty easy to put in to blender.
I use c4d in my daily job, for pack and animation, but now i try to integrate Blender because Cycles’s great for pack shots because of is realtime result for placing lights and good reltime rsearch of materials with the nodes, now, i hate using c4d render exept for animations.
Blender is really great for unwrap, c4d is horrible for unwrap. I still love c4d because of the object manager power, the logic of copy and paste a hierarchy(i still don’t understand very well blender way, but it’s probably just different and i have to adapt) the timeline, the cameras, the xpresso power and mograph power and it’s hard to make c4d crash. Even if i model in c4d, blender modeling workflow is very most powerfull and very speed. the snap options in blender are more freat because they work in object mode too.
Outside of Blender, the only other packages I would even consider are Cinema 4D or Lightwave.
C4D is probably the most user-friendly of all the packages and bloody reliable. With GI now available for the Prime edition, its just got better…