Darf's back! Yea!!

[DeathCarrot]

wahay! :applause:

[JoelOtron]

Hey Adam

What I got out of that was that he's tying up loose ends, but moving on to new things. I was surprised that he is going to be working on what I assume are plugins/filters for After Effetcs and Photoshop. I guess he's ditching 3d?

[AdamT]

Hmm, you may be right, but it's a little cryptic. My impression was that he was at least not ditching 3D developement altogether, but expanding and maybe focusing on 2D stuff. At the very least it's nice that he's finishing up the Penny/Jenna ports. I figure once he's done that he'll have invested a fair amount of time into decoding the R8 SDK. Once that's done more developement may follow?

I can certainly understand the focus on PS/AE, which have a much larger user base and greater potential for sales. I guess time will tell.

[Per-Anders]

You may be right... when it comes down to it PS and AE have a huge customer base compared to and 3D app... but it's at least really good news that he's tying up these loose ends at the very least, to me it sounds like at least he's going to continue support for the plugins he developed for Cinema, even if he doesn't carry on developing new stuff for Cinema.

i actually think that even if it's just that, then it's still good news for us in the long term in that, Darf has the knowledge, and should he ever feel the need or desire to again he's not closed the door on the possibility of making cool new things for Cinema in the future.

[lllab]

yeah, i am looking forward for jenna.

really missed it in v8, also penny ...
and of course i am corurious about the ps/ae stuff:-)

great darf!

lllab

[LucentDreams]

all I cna say is when he does, guys, make sure you provide the money to back up your support, no stupid "$100 what the FU..", oyou want the tools, got to be willing to support it, as for the AE PS stuff, you'll notice that one of SLa's two strangest points, is its noice, very nice capable noise whcih I'm sure Darf has been continuing on, and optimizing any chance he has had, and I know many software developers and users from all walks of fate have probably been intrigued and impressed witht hem I'm sute thats his main development, who knows what else, David is a tleneted guy.

[the vapor]

Great news, bring it on Darf. And Kaiskai is right, we all need to fork out the £££'s for whatever Darf comes up with.

It'll be really interesting to se what he does in terms of PS plug development, PS is in desperate need of a few new funky filters and FX and if anyone is going to come up with the goods it's Darf. Yummy.

[AdamT]

Well, I don't subscribe to the "you gotta buy *whatever* he makes theory," but I will buy Jenna when it's available for R8. Always intended to as a matter of fact. Already have Praline and I *highly* recommend it.

I guess I'm just assuming that Darf's going to be selling new copies of these plugins as well as providing updates to existing users. Hope that's true....

[medula]

Thanks for the heads up Adam!

Ya, I'll happily fork over my money for a JENNA update without flinchin! Wahoo!

I don't own Penny, but I will when it gets released!

What a nice way to wake up! :D

[LucentDreams]

sorry to come off the wronf way Adam, I didn't mean, buy anything he makes, what I meant, is when bhodinut announced its closing, on the three forums I most commonly visit, I saw soooooomany posts on "I was just about to buy X' I thiknk part of the reason Darf is doing this, might be because he can see those anxious to get their plugins, and those complainging/disappointed about lack of R8 support which was getting them a little bit of a bad name even from those giving condolences or admiration and such.

I'm saying if you said you were about to buy such and such, try to buy it. I mean we all have limited money and such of course, I'm not the greatest in this subject, I had to get my brother to buy Spinpoly cause I have no credit card, buts that pretty much my spending limit anyway.

i just hope maxon will help Darf out a bit on thislast mission for R8 users

[AdamT]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
i just hope maxon will help Darf out a bit on thislast mission for R8 users
I hope it's not the last mission, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Either way it would probably be a good deal for all involved if Maxon bought Bhodinut's plugins and added them to the Cinema toolset a la SLA.

[flingster]

this sounds promising.

very glad about this...i just hope that he continues to develop for C4D.

(if he releases a R8 version of Jenna (possibly even adding functionality) then he's gonna get some bucks off me for it.....can't wait...:drool: )

[JoelOtron]

Hey Kai--

I was using Jenna onsite at my last job. Since I've gone solo, I've been buying my own software a little at a time--starting with C4d. I was holding off buying my own copy of Jenna till I got R8. Of course just after I finally received R8 we got the bad news. So I would be one off those who really were intending to buy it.

But I know that there are a lot of people out there that fit the category that you illustrated.

Also, in support of Adams point of view, its a shame that the Maxon developers base is so volatile that we all feel as users that it is up to us to keep them in business through buying plugins if we feel we need them or not. I feel on a personal level that I'd like to do this --as I'm part of a team in a way and want the team to be successful. But I don't feel that way about Adobe plugins. I know whether I buy an Adobe plugin this month or a year and a half from now, it will still be there and I won't have to worry--in most cases --that the software company is going to go belly up.

But I guess if we look at the big picture--C4d still is a "baby" in the larger 3d arena IMO, and its a much closer knit community than Adobe. So with that kind of dynamic it makes sense to try to support its development in any way we can--if we can.

But I can understand why many software users in general are not used to looking at software companies in a "wholistic" way.

Did any of that make sense? I need more coffee. :surprised

[AdamT]

It does make sense, and to be honest there have been times when I've bought Cinema plugins more out of a sense of appreciation for the developer than for a burning desire for the particular product. This is especially true when the developer has provided a bunch of really useful free plugins, as most Cinema developers have (e.g., Vreel, Paul Everett, Bhodinut, Samir, Fabian, Aquacafe, etc.). So I don't really consider it spending $40-50 bucks for a so-so plugin, but spending $40-50 bucks for 5-6 plugins, some of which I use a lot, and of course $40-50 towards encouraging further developement. *But*, I ain't buyin' *every* plugin that falls of the cabbage cart. ;)

[LucentDreams]

not all the plugin developers, but a few like bhodinut, are trying to do that as their main source of income, I know Paul Everett was trying to be in this category as wel, not sure what he'sup to outside of plugin developing, but you'll note he is doing some serious plugins now, real hardcore like Mymate, and Visual Selector, probably the most functional and pwerful animation plugin available for C4D, and as I noticed capable of helping in far more than just animation.

With such a risk as making it your main source of income, it allows you to spend more time developing plugins, but in the hopes many people will buy it. Solidsplines is still a top seler in the C4D world, which seems odd as plugins like Visual selector do soooo much to make life easy, and mymate is something a lot of users were asking for, something "just like viper"

look for a new thread in a few days with some great information on plugins available.

[AdamT]

MyMate is pretty good--I have it--but certainly not just like Viper. Frankly it's only really useful for testing the application of two or more materials on a single object, which is something I don't do a lot of. Visual Selector, OTOH, is awesome.

[ThirdEye]

It would be really nice and useful if we had an interactive render region a la Mental Ray in XSI, that would be really amazing and it would speed worflow a lot. Maybe they could exploit their Raybrush technology for that, who knows...

[JoelOtron]

I've bought a few of the "smaller " plugs as well. I have supernurbs--which I used for a few months than stopped using at a point for some reason. Then R8 made it obsolete.

I bought Splinebooler from Samir--but it was a little too "complicated" for me in terms of what had to be done to boole a spline. Much easier to do my splinebooles in illustrator. But, as Adam says, if I look at how much I use some of his other plugs--like MESS--it justifies the few bucks I spent on Splinebooler. By the way--is any one using his big "D-pack" set? Sounded interesting but a little over my head in terms of understanding its benefits. I actually feel that way about a lot of Samir's descriptions of his plugins. Sometimes I get an email from him and I think: " what the hell is that?" Could be the language barrier expressed through the mind of a programmer.

I bought Surface Painter from Paul E--and that one has come in handy a number of times. I use quite a few of his freebies--expressions as well--pretty often. I really wanted to get MyMate when I got the email announcement just for the support--but havent heard a lot about how the users are feeliing about it till now.

Bought Micheal Stearner's MSA and Helix--and they are worth every penny. Would love to see more plugins from him!

I will buy Jenna now that the good news is in. That is one helpful plugin.

I was also using Fizz at my old job--thats a must have-- I will probably buy that one now that the price is slashed. But I also want to give TP a whirl first and see if it makes fizz redundant. My feeling is that since its fast and easy it will still be a useful one even if TP can achieve the same results.

I had Bodypaint, Dynamics and Shave at my old job too--didnt really find a use for Shave--so I'm not sure about it yet--I miss BP though. I've actually had some fun with dynamics and used it on a project or 2 in the past--but it does require a lot of testing to get things to jive right. Not sure if I'll buy that one or not.

Adam--you mentioned Praline. What has that one done for you? didnt get a good sense whather that one would be useful.

I am getting ready to buy a whole lot of stuff I need in the next few weeks. unfortunately sometimes its hard to add software that you dont neccasarily need to your budget.

Sorry--for rambling here--havent posted anywhere all day--so I thought I'd make up for it here!

[AdamT]

The main Praline shaders I use are Rufus and Bhodinut Fog.

What Rufus does is allow you to use an environment map as well as raytraced reflections without blowing out the overlapping parts, as Cinema will otherwise do. Basically Rufus creates a mask of the raytrace-reflective area and prevents Cinema from multiplying the real reflection by the environment map: a simple function but it makes a huge difference.

BT Fog lets you set both the near and far attenation of the fog effect, so you can prevent a sky dome from being obliterated. Again, a pretty basic function that can make a render look a whole lot better.

Ruffl is another good one. It allows you to adjust the contrast of raytraced reflections--great for chrome effects.

Raylength is good too. It let's you attenuate reflections by distance and some other stuff that I still haven't figured out.

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