why not cinema 4d?

Discussions about migration to other software
Cutman
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Cutman » 16 Apr 2014, 17:03

Eugen wrote:Quo vadis, Cinema4D...
I don't mean specific roadmap details, but the whole concept - is it meant to be a 'casual' 3D program for the masses, or do they want it to become more 'high-endish', a studio backbone and platform? All of this?
There are many good approaches, but as a whole, C4D seems to be somewhat... 'not there yet'.
What's there is fine, but what's the overall 'bracket'? What's Maxon's ambition?
After all, they are around now longer than Softimage, even Maya I think.
Well, they clearly price themselves in the high-end but I don't think the studio backbone is the market they are aiming at. C4D is more or less the de facto broadcast graphics app and for that purpose I wouldn't want anything else. It's for the small studio/freelancer who wants an application that does a bit of everything reasonably well. To be fair it does a lot of things very well indeed and with 3rd party renderers like Vray and Krak, particle and fluid sims it can be an excellent tool that punches well above its weight.

They may say they have the ambition to compete with Maya but really there are so many outstanding areas to get right it's just pie in the sky. I agree with C4D "just not there yet" unfortunately it's been like that for a long time. Xpresso, Thinking Particles, volumetric rendering, ability to cope with large numbers of objects, Bodypaint to name but a few areas that have not seen any improvement for as long as I can remember and are in dire need updating.

Horses for courses, C4D is great in the areas that it excels but is it a replacement for SI? That would depend on the scale and complexity of the projects you're working on and certainly it'll be right for many jobs but heavy ICE users will find it limited and would likely be better off with Houdini.

Maxon are recruiting developers if you know of any SI developers get them to apply!

Eugen
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Eugen » 16 Apr 2014, 19:23

Cutman wrote: Maxon are recruiting developers if you know of any SI developers get them to apply!
None that are (yet) available I guess... =p

Talking about developers:
I'm none, but I liked writing a plugin or two for Softimage. Wouldn't mind to 'bless' C4D with some stuff, too, if it made sense.
I already stuck my nose into the C4D SDK docs - completely foreign.

Here we go again:
I still wonder about that stupid restiction that most modelling tools are 'destructive'. Why ain't MoExtrude, then?? What does it do different under the hood?
Couldn't all the other deformers (or what the heck they are called), be converted to something MoGraph-like, too?


Question about curves... there isn't something like a 'subcurve' in C4D, is there?
That's a separate part of a curve object (a letter in a text object, for example), the pendant to polygon islands.
In Softimage, you have a selection filter for it, as well as for isopoints (U-coord. along a curve) and boundaries.
How would I select connected parts of a curve then in C4D? Only via 'select connected'? Bit awkward...

Cheers,
Eugen

Cutman
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Cutman » 16 Apr 2014, 20:23

Eugen wrote:
Cutman wrote: Maxon are recruiting developers if you know of any SI developers get them to apply!
None that are (yet) available I guess... =p

Talking about developers:
I'm none, but I liked writing a plugin or two for Softimage. Wouldn't mind to 'bless' C4D with some stuff, too, if it made sense.
I already stuck my nose into the C4D SDK docs - completely foreign.

Here we go again:
I still wonder about that stupid restiction that most modelling tools are 'destructive'. Why ain't MoExtrude, then?? What does it do different under the hood?
Couldn't all the other deformers (or what the heck they are called), be converted to something MoGraph-like, too?


Question about curves... there isn't something like a 'subcurve' in C4D, is there?
That's a separate part of a curve object (a letter in a text object, for example), the pendant to polygon islands.
In Softimage, you have a selection filter for it, as well as for isopoints (U-coord. along a curve) and boundaries.
How would I select connected parts of a curve then in C4D? Only via 'select connected'? Bit awkward...

Cheers,
Eugen
I have often wondered the same regarding modelling tools why they couldn't be a MoBevel? :) I expected Maxon to carry on developing Mograph but there hasn't been an update for a few years now. Maybe they'll surprise us later this year?

If you create a Text object and then make it editable you'll have a spline with several segments. You can go into point mode and select points on the splines and use selected connected to select all the points on a segment. If you want to select individual segments as far as I know you'll have to Explode Segments and the single text spline will be split into its individual segments in the Object Manager. There's probably some fancy keyboard shortcut that does it that I don't know.

You can address individual segments of a spline in Xpresso easily enough with the Spline Operator.

BTW have you discovered the Commander? Shift-C. Will bring up a search and it's great for finding rarely used commands and stuff you never thought C4D could do.

Hrvoje
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Hrvoje » 18 Apr 2014, 12:56

I have often wondered the same regarding modelling tools why they couldn't be a MoBevel? :) I expected Maxon to carry on developing Mograph but there hasn't been an update for a few years now.
Which is not true :)
For R15 Kerning was done and quite a few internal changes regarding performance, especially with Fracture object.

Holger Biebrach
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Holger Biebrach » 18 Apr 2014, 16:02

Hrvoje wrote:
I have often wondered the same regarding modelling tools why they couldn't be a MoBevel? :) I expected Maxon to carry on developing Mograph but there hasn't been an update for a few years now.
Which is not true :)
For R15 Kerning was done and quite a few internal changes regarding performance, especially with Fracture object.

Yes, Mograph was actually updated silently over the last two years. Performancewise it is a totally different thing working with Mograph R15 than with R13. Much improvement there. Featurewise there have been also some improvements.
Maxon did not communicate this a lot as well as many other under the hood improvements. Where Luxology Marketing would have screamed out loud MAXON keeps silent. I don't understand MAXON-MArketing. Very restrained Marketing we have.

Eugen
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Eugen » 18 Apr 2014, 16:25

Holger Biebrach wrote:Very restrained Marketing we have.
... Softimage did have almost none at all in the AD era, for that matter.
Very unwise not to, because advertising is a necessity, and Maxon could need some more development money, I'd reckon.

Btw, if you guys have beta access, by all means, give them the boot to go for more proceduralism! That's the part of C4D that still (somewhat) sucks. I'd be fine with most of the rest.

If it makes any sense, how about setting up a Softimage-crossover wishlist?
Luxology cares, SideFX cares, what about Maxon?

Cutman
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Cutman » 18 Apr 2014, 18:05

Eugen wrote:
Holger Biebrach wrote:Very restrained Marketing we have.
... Softimage did have almost none at all in the AD era, for that matter.
Very unwise not to, because advertising is a necessity, and Maxon could need some more development money, I'd reckon.

Btw, if you guys have beta access, by all means, give them the boot to go for more proceduralism! That's the part of C4D that still (somewhat) sucks. I'd be fine with most of the rest.

If it makes any sense, how about setting up a Softimage-crossover wishlist?
Luxology cares, SideFX cares, what about Maxon?
Maxon are certainly not short of income their account are very healthy, they could certainly do with more money being funnelled into development. If you look at their Brand video you'll see that they've got more marketing people than developers though it's not clear what all those S&M people do.

One of the biggest upgrades to Mograph has been via a 3rd Party developer Tools4D with his additional effectors vol. 1. The selection effector is an excellent tool which allows you to effect selections and vertex maps with falloff, everyone should have it. But this tool also shows the limitations of C4D as selections only work on polygon objects, if this was able to work on parametric objects it would be even more useful. I'm pretty sure he was responsible for much of the original Mograph, shame he's not still with Maxon.

I should've remembered the performance improvements to the Fracture object because let's face it R15 was a very thin update by even Maxon's standards and the fracture object improvement was a highlight. I can only think they're going to give us a massive R16 update.... or perhaps they just wasted development resources on Cineware AE plugin during the R15 cycle. The Team Render inclusion (NET Render killing) was a fiasco for many workflows as it simply was not ready for production. Oh and I wonder what $30 plugins Maxon are going to purchase, rename, change the icons and include in R16 to bulk up the feature list? Not much left surely.

Maxon appears to operate in a vacuum and a Softimage crossover list would just go unread, it's not as if users have not been submitting feature requests like crazy over the years, I certainly have. Paul from Tools4D setup up a feature voting site https://cinemaplugins.uservoice.com to make it more visible what C4D users are wanting from the developers. The only thing Maxon are interested in are feature requests in their own system that get filed under V for Void and are never seen or heard of again.

Luxology are interesting, they regularly serve up dreadfully buggy software yet have an excellent two way relationship with their customers and they most certainly get a shellacking on their forum but they never close threads and their customers love them. Peebler is an excellent ambassador, Maxon need someone like him.

I can see from my twitter feed that many C4D users are looking at Houdini and HelloLux a well know C4D artist and trainer is now putting out Houdini training. I see many others dipping their toes in the Houdini pool which says to me people are beginning to look elsewhere for more power.

Eugen
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Eugen » 18 Apr 2014, 18:33

Cutman wrote: Luxology are interesting, they regularly serve up dreadfully buggy software yet have an excellent two way relationship with their customers and they most certainly get a shellacking on their forum but they never close threads and their customers love them. Peebler is an excellent ambassador, Maxon need someone like him.

I can see from my twitter feed that many C4D users are looking at Houdini and HelloLux a well know C4D artist and trainer is now putting out Houdini training. I see many others dipping their toes in the Houdini pool which says to me people are beginning to look elsewhere for more power.
Maxon guys must seriously be in the nerd department. Not good.
Attended this Modo webinar these days. He's a good salesman for sure, and he was even loose enough to let the attendees look into the roadmap, even behind 801.
That's the attitude!


Houdini... playing around with it, too.
What it has got regarding powerful, procedural workflows, it lacks in simple and tight workflows.
UI layout and buttons are good, that's not what I mean, but it's just always a few clicks too much to pick up some speed, even if you know your ways. That must become better.
I'm encountering crashes, too, even with very simple experiments.

Nonetheless it's absolutely a promising software, but I'm a bit afraid that all the DCC dinosaurs, including Houdini, miss the most important trend of these days - a maximum simplified workflow. Easy to get in for beginners, deep toolset for the pros. This is not a contradiction!

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Hirazi Blue » 20 Apr 2014, 22:33

I'm not sure if this has already been mentioned (I did a quick search :-s ),
but on Tuesday, April 22 the FMX (April 22-25, Stuttgart, Germany)
will host a panel discussion entitled “CINEMA 4D as a complement/alternative to Softimage”.
More details can be found here.
;)
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

Eugen
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Eugen » 22 Apr 2014, 13:38

Nice find, thanks!
Is this going to be recorded? Can't find a link on the FMX page.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Hirazi Blue » 22 Apr 2014, 13:46

It looks like a "sponsored event" and as such might follow different rules
(i.e. Maxon will probably have to decide if they record it, not FMX).
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

3D-Django
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by 3D-Django » 22 Apr 2014, 18:44

Maxon just announced a bridge to the Houdini engine...

http://www.maxon.net/en/news/press-rele ... tware.html

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talent103
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by talent103 » 22 Apr 2014, 19:20

well played! Well Played. :-bd Please get me off the Autodesk sandbox!

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talent103
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by talent103 » 22 Apr 2014, 19:29

Yep
10259825_10203729630427680_1040156439889163918_n.jpg
10259825_10203729630427680_1040156439889163918_n.jpg (13.84 KiB) Viewed 4737 times
Moderator edit: Please try to limit the use of profanities, even in pictures... ;) - HB

Eugen
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by Eugen » 22 Apr 2014, 22:52

Hear hear! Options are opening up.

Wondering if Fabric Engine will skip C4D for that reason...

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MauricioPC
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Re: why not cinema 4d?

Post by MauricioPC » 22 Apr 2014, 23:04

Eugen wrote:Hear hear! Options are opening up.

Wondering if Fabric Engine will skip C4D for that reason...
If FE also addressed C4D, than C4D would be a perfect option outside the AD world.

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