Maxon developing new core for Cinema 4D

[Mathaeus]

Didn't know they also have a Doritos setup Would be great to see this core in action, one day. For now no signs of optimizations, or maybe there is something irrelevant here and there. Transform chains do not behave like driven by lazy evaluation, no sign of breaking the loops into chunks... So easy to hit the wall. While ago I was impressed by certain features, but, for small example, when applied the built-in proximity shader to few hundreds of objects, got a few minutes of pre process before rendering. It's nice how it can extrude multiple curves at once, still taking individual objects as elements suitable for xpresso, but forget real time with this... an list goes further. Today it's linear like flap bird push toy.

It's only 3d these days, not having any nodes for shader editing. Even 'better', uv is fixed in 1:1 style to material, so forget any ambitious game texturing (and else) with this. Also, only 3d, not having a plain physically based built in material, it's only camera that is physical in new renderer... On top of that, particle system from 90's, cloth good enough for headphones modeling. But yeah, cloth and particles are able to compete against old SI cloth and old particles (which were removed from SI while ago) - but not against appropriate Blender's tools.

Regarding characters, even they'll do something related with new core (while I don't believe, probably the are focused on large archiviz scenes and that's it) - as someone noticed on Modo forums, small problem is that amount of complete character animation created in C4d and Modo together, most likely is smaller than yearly production of one middle gamedev team. Who will spend time to get familiar with this, except a few forum fighters for 'dignity' and inevitable *one* man doing some addons.

In short, traditionally it is selling as best companion to After Effects, to people who do not want to bother with 3d that much and do not want to learn anything, so it's expect able for for them to stay on track. It's After Effects or exactly AE plugins who are competitors, not any real 3d. 'Advanced' 3d features are not here to be used in reality, they are there just to give impression of complete 3d. Like on budget alpinistic equipment of unknown brand, someone would like to have, in same time, carefully avoiding any chance to use it.

[FXDude]

not any real 3d. 'Advanced' 3d features are not here to be used in reality, they are there just to give impression of complete 3d.

Hum.. not so sure about that.

Otherwise I guess we'll see (said the blind man )

[NNois]

The problem with C4D is that i think they lack of ideas.

It seems the same situation that Softimage was in last years.

Duhhh,
Don't you think it's lack of vision and lack of developers ???

Just look at Guillaume profile about his dev on Softimage... seems he did nearly all the dev the last years maibe they where just 2 or 3 dev ! while i thinks Autodesk continued to sells thousands of licenses

[Bullit]

A post by luceric in the xsi mailing list a couple months ago hints - i think it was the one there was a discussion of XSI ICE modeling limitations -that they didn't had much idea where to go with ICE, and in the end they went HQV instead of ICE. luceric said an options for ICE might have been a mograph kind stuff, but this in a sort of lets does this thing, instead of a coherent product vision behind.

[luceric]

I think the whole market has no idea what to do next, with people doing more and more content directly in the game engines, and the rest being so well established that people do not trust anything that works differently. Try to introduce a new way to do rigging, for example, or a new modeling method. It's a cool link to post on forums and send around but people do not use it. What the leadership at Softimage in 2008 wanted to do next was to move ICE out of XSI and into a game engine and real time, but eventually Unreal came up with "Blueprint", for example, because it's everyone's obvious next step anyway. They were also trying to buy a game engine and get into middleware. Houdini Engine, essentially, but running directly in the game engine.

[FXDude]

The problem with C4D is that i think they lack of ideas.

It seems the same situation that Softimage was in last years.

Duhhh,
Don't you think it's lack of vision and lack of developers ???

Just look at Guillaume profile about his dev on Softimage... seems he did nearly all the dev the last years maibe they where just 2 or 3 dev ! while i thinks Autodesk continued to sells thousands of licenses

My impresssion is that vision is what they have right, but has been reliability under pressure (not in terms of stability) that may have been lacking.

Otherwise I don't know how many (core) devs there are, but their new montreal office adds at least 9, and I happen to know for a fact that (core) devs rarely exceeds 20 (for any product regardless of scope), and that 'number of devs' is but one of many factors. (if even a key factor)

[Bullit]

I think the whole market has no idea what to do next, with people doing more and more content directly in the game engines, and the rest being so well established that people do not trust anything that works differently. Try to introduce a new way to do rigging, for example, or a new modeling method. It's a cool link to post on forums and send around but people do not use it. What the leadership at Softimage in 2008 wanted to do next was to move ICE out of XSI and into a game engine and real time, but eventually Unreal came up with "Blueprint", for example, because it's everyone's obvious next step anyway. They were also trying to buy a game engine and get into middleware. Houdini Engine, essentially, but running directly in the game engine.

Thanks for feedback luceric. I missed it.

[Hirazi Blue]

I think the whole market has no idea what to do next, with people doing more and more content directly in the game engines, and the rest being so well established that people do not trust anything that works differently. Try to introduce a new way to do rigging, for example, or a new modeling method. It's a cool link to post on forums and send around but people do not use it. What the leadership at Softimage in 2008 wanted to do next was to move ICE out of XSI and into a game engine and real time, but eventually Unreal came up with "Blueprint", for example, because it's everyone's obvious next step anyway. They were also trying to buy a game engine and get into middleware. Houdini Engine, essentially, but running directly in the game engine.

An interesting "alternate history".
Would this have meant the untimely end of XSI "as we know it" as well?

[luceric]

No, you would have used XSI as the authoring tool (for models, animations and ICE trees). The stand-alone ICE engine would have replaced the one built in XSI.

[Bullit]

I had no time to comment yesterday. I must say am a bit ambivalent on that idea, i understand that strategically thinking it makes sense with an horizon say 10-20 years. But things are not only grand strategic plans and tactical grinding stuff. There is something in between, if i can go to military doctrine in last century theoreticians felt the need to add another step. So there are Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels. Well all this to say that i think that ICE still wasn't at the end of development in Softimage.
Cloth could have been improved much further, no tearing for example, mograph like luceric said in mailing group, hair only works with users compounds, Lagoa was in a limbo. No FEM like solvers.