Hi there, have been doing a little research on C4D for possible implementation (for people moving into 3d, so Maya could be a little overwhelming) I am trying to find out what might be considered the weak areas? Would it be a given that UVs are not great?
As a migration option, I want to minimise surprises, so uvs could be augmented with Unfold 3d. So a current Maya user who came from Cinema 4d might have some good advice… on what areas just are unworkable on a project etc.
Many thanks.
A
unfold3d is the native maya unfold and packing solution… dont worry about the uv tools… they are up to date in maya 2018…
i would worry more about the speed you could do projects in c4d… in maya you need much longer todo easy stuff… on the other side where are the limits of c4d maya starts to shine…
its easier to help if you tell us what you like todo and why are you jumping to maya…
Hey there, sorry I’m not being clear. I am a 3d expert using Maya. I am researching using c4d in our department for motion graphics artists
moving into 3d. I know c4d would be less intimidating for users starting off and it may suit our needs (broadcast) - alas It’s my job to make sure
the solution is correct, so I want to find out about weaker areas of c4d etc.
So I saw that people complain a bit about uvs (so we could buy https://www.unfold3d.com/ software to augment as a solution). I was just wondering
what other areas are unworkable as solutions in c4d at the moment. All the basics look good to me, I just felt somebody who moved from c4d to Maya,
would be able to definitively say such and such is something you need to check out before a migration.
Thanks !
Many people complain about the lack of modeling tools in C4D.
It has all the basic tools needed. But kids today can’t seem to do anything manually anymore. Without all kinds of fancy options.
Another “weak area” is advanced rigging and animation.
IMO. It does have pretty good basic rigging and animation tools. Just not quite to Maya’s level.
You can create the missing stuff yourself using the SDK. But most users are utterly clueless about this.
If you learn the C++ and Python SDK’s. The things you can do with C4D is amazing.
The built-in XRef system is horrible compared to the one in Maya
Working and sharing in large teams might be a bit of a struggle.
The .fbx exporter tends to fall behind the current versions a lot. And it takes MAXON a long time to update them.
For motion graphics work though. I can’t think of a better app than C4D.
IMHO. Everyone should own both MAYA and C4D. They compliment each other very well.
The main problem is the cost of paying for both. ouch!!
-ScottA
I will add on top of what Scott said, i think people are mainly complaining about the modeling workflow more than the tools themselves.
I personally find the modeling workflow in cinema very slow not really efficient.
Back in days, i used a lot cinema mainly for the mograph module and the text tool.
But these days honestly nothing much left for cinema, now that maya is having Mash wich i found much more powerful, you can use it the easy way with the mash editor or digging in the nodes and wire things like you want and even combine them with soup.
So at the end you have a very expensive package that doesnt do that much very well.
As you said UV sucks really, modeling tools will do the job but slow workflow in general,
add to this if you want fluids and particle you will just have to get TFD and Xparticles so you can add to this the price of these two plugin.
That being said the strongest point of C4D is the ease of use.
I have some friends (graphic designers) and when they ask me what soft they should use to start 3d and include 3d text etc on their work i always recommend C4D
Cool, more or less what I thought, didn’t want to make assumptions, not being a user.
Also, in terms of SDK and pyton, how easy is the scripting, is it well documented ?
Maya is really easy to whip something up fast to do what you need.
Tks.
A
can’t really tell on that side, never tried python on C4D so don’t know how deep is the api.
The SDK documentation is not that great. But you can ask for help from support and other users on the official forums at plugincafe.
Lots of sample code can be found there in the forum threads.
The best part is that It’s completely free and open to anyone. You don’t need to pay for it. (Suck on that one AD 
).
My personal favorite is their C++ SDK though.
It’s very plain jane, old school, generic C++. Without many weird proprietary syntax used.
If you’ve never used C++. You can learn C++ very easily this way by applying the SDK classes and methods and letting the app do all of the drawing stuff.
It’s a really fantastic and fun way to enter C++ coding.
They even have an SDK called Melange that lets you do things with .c4d files without even having Cinema 4D installed.
It’s really fun. And I’ve been using that with Qt to make some fun apps with it.
I have a few tutorials on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottAyersStuff
-ScottA
Cool thanks a lot, had a poke around - looks good I’m sure I could do most things with it, it would n’t be coding a pipleline, just modified versions of this and that, macro type stuff.