So, C4D… where next?

#42

The internal workings of Maxon has is not a consideration of the customer but I admire your candour.

HSRdelic over on the Cafe made some big claims well over 3 years ago about the improvements that could be expected. He used very similar words to the above. Unfortunately for Dave, fewer and fewer people are buying that it’ll be OK just give it time. How much time? Keep paying you Subs to find out, eh?

Remember folks, the ‘new core’ was installed in R16 and C4D in 2020 is still plagued by priority issues and poor object handling. I said after the R17 debacle that it could be another 5 years before this is sorted, that now looks like an incredibly over optimistic forecast.

So Dave’s on the case… How did Dave initially respond to benefit the customer base? He makes C4D even more expensive for the loyal MSA customer who simply wants a perpetual license. Those people who’ve been backing Maxon to do right by them for the longest get an Adobe shaped boot in the groin. Well played Dave.

Maxon’s customers will hope that the adjusting of company structures won’t turn out to be as effective as rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic but I wish you the best of luck, without Maxon being a player there is danger of being an Autodesk de facto monopoly but I don’t think the outlook is all that great.

#43

How much middle-management does a company like Maxon employ? Get rid of 90% if not all middle-management, and move the resources that free up in actual efficiency and higher salaries of employees who do actual work.

Removing most if not all middle-management improves overall employee satisfaction, and drives creativity, ingenuity, and innovation.

It also drastically reduces overheads in other departments, such as HR and Sales, and clears the air of poisonous egos.

#44

I can’t and won’t go into any details on Maxons structure, but it is safe to say that minimal management ressources are not the solution. From my personal POV and 19 years of employment @ Maxon HQ i think we are doing ok now.

#45

I think you’ll find middle managers are somewhat less enthusiastic about your advice!

Everything you said is correct BTW, the benefits of flat management are well understood.

#46

All that is irrelevant, what matters is the output. They are still not aware of OODA loop…

#47

I will believe in Maxon again when:
1-Redshift gets ported to AMD GPU’s and Metal.
2-Redshift gets integrated in C4D as the default render engine FREE OF CHARGE

#48

Oh and please, switch the viewport colors back to their pre R21 state as default.
Modelling has become a NIGHTMARE. I can barely see the edges and ngon lines and now need to add a dark material on my mesh. More clicks for nothing!
Who the hell at Maxon thought this would be an improvement?

You brought the offline help back. Thanks a million times.
Now please do the same with the original viewport color scheme.
PLEASE!

#49

I’d like to see Redshift included free of charge as well.

#50

  1. You know the Metal port is being worked on mostly by Apple as it happens. I don’t think they’ve got much enthusiasm for supporting AMD on the PC.

  2. Maxon/Nemetchek paid a lot of money for Redshift, they want their return. ProRender is the free renderer in C4D.

Redshift’s USP was speed, technology is advancing very quickly especially with AI noise filtering is now robbing Redshift of its advantage. After speed Redshift is a very ordinary renderer. Arnold on 32 and now 64 core CPUs will give you a similar realtime performance as Redshift but at a significantly better quality. The next-gen GPUs will bring GPU render times down such that the difference between Redshift and other renderers like ProRender and Cycles is negligible.

Next-Gen AMD GPUs could be pushing 17-20 TFLOPs with hardware ray tracing which means ProRender becomes relevant. It’s free…

Redshift is a GPU Only renderer which may prove to be its biggest Achilles heel. Arnold, ProRender and Cycles can use the CPU too.

#51

Meanwhile, redshift is a functional Production-ready renderer.
Pro render is not.
And physicial is almost unusable as soon as you use a PBR workflow unless you have a 16-core machine minimum.

#52

I’d use Arnold every single day over Redshift. The quality of image and flexibility of the node system in Arnold aren’t just in a different ballpark they’re in a different league. Arnold works out much cheaper to use if you take advantage of their short term rentals.

Redshift always looks like a game engine without masses of work on materials. The VFX industry learned that hardware is cheap so just use unbiased renderers. Redshift have promised features they’ve not been able to deliver for two years, they talk a good game but their delivery on promises is weak. If they give a demo at the nVidia GTC gig this year it’ll be the 3rd straight year they’ll have promised Toon Rendering and random walk SSS and I still won’t be holding my breath. Development has slowed to a crawl since the Maxon acquisition.

Physical always has been a joke so you won’t have any argument from me. Maxon can’t keep anyone long enough to maintain it.

I’m going to defend ProRender 2.0 because I have used it in production with Intel’s denoiser and the render times and quality were absolutely fine. PR2.0 has come a long way from that massive disappointment that Maxon shipped in C4D. I expect ProRender to come of age with AMD’s new GPUs and ray tracing hardware.

Of all the renderers it’s the only renderer that can do rasterised with ray tracing, biased rendering and full pass tracing. This flexibility will make this renderer a very useful production tool.

#53

Very interesting. It’s actually the first time that I hear someone using PR in production. I thought the engine was just ok for still images, not animation.

#54

Im not following your logic. how next gen GPUs or Nvidia denoiser are robbing Redshift of its advantage if Redshift can also use them to speed up its rendering power? Also, if I spend 4K in a 64 cpu core render, yes I expect it to be really fast, but how many high end video cards can 4K buy me?

#55

Redshift barely got any speedup when they used RTX because they had a very capable ray tracing system in CUDA.

ProRender does not yet use RTX and there’s no AMD ray tracing hardware to use. ProRender will probably get a significant boost from RT hardware, Cycles and E-Cycles have also benefitted greatly from RTX with nVidia and the OpenCL version will likely get a huge boost too when AMD release the new GPUs.

These other renderers are getting much bigger gains than Redshift from RTX as so are closing the gap. E-Cycles in my experience is only marginally slower than Redshift. Redshift will get faster on new hardware too but overall the gap has closed even more to the point the difference is not worth worrying about.

Had we stayed using C4D we would be using Arnold now. But we would also be using a renderfarm so I would rather buy a 32c or 64c CPU for test renders/lighting etc rather than expensive GPUs. The CPUs would also be used in the rest of the content creation pipeline so they’d get used on multiple tasks whereas highend GPUs basically have one task only, rendering.

Even if you had 4k worth of nVidia GPUs you’d still need more to do real world projects. I personally favour having enough render power locally for previews/lighting and then send to a reliable renderfarm.

You can put 4k worth of GPUs in a Redshift renderbox and it’ll still look like gash compared to Arnold no matter how fast Redshift renders.

#56

Thank you for the detailed answer.

#57
#58

OMG thanks!!!:):):):):):slight_smile:
I don’t want to sound like the grumpy guy but why did Maxon change the color?

#59

Yeah, the new color is unworkable… They should revert that asap…

#60

Oh and please, switch the viewport colors back to their pre R21 state as default.

+1
my eyes are protesting.

#61

Most interesting thread. Been around 3D a long time (www.chippwalters.com) and I have to say I’ve seen this same story unfold many times before. Most recently with Newtek, e-on and Trimble (owner of SketchUp). A couple of years ago, I used SketchUp for creating an historically accurate Alamo for a large scale commercial AR project. It was only barely up to the task.

I had used Lightwave as well-- and years earlier e-on software. All companies ended up vectoring in the same direction Maxon appears to be headed. SketchUp is now a joke and limited by it’s architecture–same is true with Lightwave (limited by architecture). The same 3D die hards are the last in their respective forums proclaiming it’s virtues. The rest of us have left.

As I looked around, someone mentioned Blender. I, like many of you, thought to myself, “never would I use an open source solution-- especially NOT Blender.” Then I got turned on to masterxeon1001 and his awesome hard surface modeling workflow. I called a buddy of mine who works in Hollywood and he said HardOps was only available in Blender.

So, with great reluctance, I decided to approach Blender with an open mind-- knowing learning any complicated 3D software would take patience and time.

I was fortunate to make friends with masterxeon1001 aka Jerry Perkins, and he helped me get started-- and frankly I haven’t looked back. My Blender experience has been great. I typically use the beta products and they are remarkably robust. I’m currently working on a AAA model with over 2m tris with over twenty 4K PBR texture maps and it’s very smooth.

The damn thing hardly ever-- and I mean HARDLY EVER crashes. As much as I thought I hated working with non-supported OS software-- Blender has changed my mind. Heck, they literally have a new build EVERY DAY. In fact I have many more problems with Substance Painter than I have with Blender.

I know Blender isn’t for everyone–heck I thought for sure it wasn’t for me. But, I would challenge any of you to give it a try. The non-destructive modifier workflow is just amazing. Yes, just like every other 3D app out there, it’s not 100% intuitive (tried C4D and had just as much trouble figuring it out-- it’s just what you’re used to and/or have taken the time to learn).

My 2 cents…