I am not sure if i am happy with all this Adobe integration of Maxxon.
If you make a living of creating 3D pack shots, this is getting harder to sell my services to clients (“we can do it ourself in Illustrator now”)
And sure, my quality will differ from theirs…but will clients be prepared to see that?
And i am not sure what ithe benefits are for Maxxon. I can understand Adobe benefits from this.
So…not sure if i, as C4D user, must be happy with these developments.
surely it is all about reach? Not sure if it pays off though? It seems to be a race to the bottom. once they start giving it away with a box of cornflakes, people think its free/aka, worthless. Not sure if that is working, and/or if that is converting to sales? only Maxon would know if that has all turned out to be a good thing or not. I guess it must have worked out somehow, as they are splashing it around a bit.
Yes. It looks like Maxxon wants to “the biggest”…i rather have a company that wants to be “the best”
And now i also see they made an app to animate your face?!? What the h#ck is going on at Maxxon???
adobe is adding basic 3d abilities to their apps regardless of whether or not maxon makes it easy. Turning it down would be like when Kodak ignored the digital market because they didnt want to hurt sales of their own products.
If you are losing work because people can quickly make their own pack shots, then maybe it is time to move on or up your game? Not to be too harsh, but this stuff is only going to get easier for people, you will need move on to something more difficult that Joe Bloggs can’t make himself. Animated shots of products, product promotion videos, folding/unfolding animations etc.
I’ve no idea why you think they can do it themselves in illustrator? Have you even downloaded it and tried it? There is no magic “make my thing” button - there are some
You still have to use cinema 4d to set up the scene and cameras. this just makes our job easier for creating layouts and not having to revert to C4D for renders - or more likely I’d use this just for quick versioning for the client then use a proper render for the final.
It’s also likely no client will ever know or care about this… or even an illustrator expert as they’d still need a full copy of C4D to do anything involved. Sure there are standard products in the online store. 95% of jobs wouldn’t use them. they’d need some thing bespoke.
Cineware has been around for years for After Effects and proven to be very useful for some simple jobs.
Besides that, Adobe has is own software (Dimensions) for these type of things. So it’s more about taking it to the ‘next’ level and making your workflow more streamlined.
Yeah but mostly it’s a deadloss.
The only advice to No Name is to keep pushing forward, offering more and better services to increase their own value. Keep thinking about your business to offer things that can’t easily be done in house. You’ve got to do the hard stuff.
If you think where AI, hand held scanning 3d devices and realtime rendering is going to lead it will pay not to be a modeller and renderer.
Well. I have to disagree with that. I’d estimate it Saved me 30% of my time in comp and setup over the years - depends how you use it and what you do I suppose.
AI Modelling… well it will be a long time before it can just make exactly what is in the clients head! There is no magic button… Just you telling the client how hard this shit is.
Rendering advancements helps us. End clients for the most part have very little understanding about it. When they mention anything stupid like that… I show them this and ask them to pick 2.
The other thing is when a client suggests an impossible timescale, “You can say that if you like…actual time might get in the way of that.” - Surprisingly I get a lot of work.
I’m afraid you need to keep up. https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/generative-design
One of my areas of interest is generative design and you’d be surprised how much money is being thrown into it right now. What is currently a highend engineering solution today is a plugin in a few years.
Take these baby steps, https://www.thegrove3d.com/ as an example of generative-design for generating trees. It doesn’t take a genius to see that AI and rules based product design is right round the corner.
Games companies are all over Procedural generation of environments using tools like Houdini HDAs in their pipelines, just add AI and a few rules and a computer can be left to design authentic feeling environments and iterate several in the time it takes to boil a kettle for your coffee.
The problem is the client wants good, fast and cheap so while you are happy to provide two of the options you competition is offering all three in no time if you take your eyes off the ball.
I’m afraid you re a bit condescending.
I know all about that and Generative design still doesn’t magically make an Animation EXACTLY how you want it or deal with billion stupid variables that go on in a clients head.
Trees are fractal… that’s nothing new. At all. So are procedural environments or Textures. All these things are still just tools and it’s up to you if you tell a client…
“Ah you want a forest…”
“That’s easy I’ll have one by lunchtime” or
"A FOREST are you mad? That’s weeks of work… BUT I can do it… "
As for competition… The second a client says cheap and fast - I put the phone down. I don’t need the stress or them. Anyone that gets on that train is basically already at the bottom of the Barrel. Work for FULL price or for Free but never EVER cheap. You’ll never escape.
Also you missed the Point. Relativistically the Middle does not exist and it never wll.
The Grove simulates the growth of plants, it’s not just an L-System with bells on.
You seem to be making strawman arguments. I never said AI would do everything for you. But the way AI and generative design works is to create vast numbers of iterations quicker than a human could design.
F1 teams are using AI in designing various parts of the car, particularly suspension components drastically cutting down development time and cost. Architects are using AI and generative design for similar reasons.
If you want to be prepared do some research where AI will impact on your job, or don’t. Your choice.
Fait point about The grove. It’s is more involved than I thought! Very nice in fact.
Re: strawman arguments - “If you think where AI, hand held scanning 3d devices and realtime rendering is going to lead it will pay not to be a modeller and renderer”
Both those skills CAN be complete subjective. AI may well help out an make your job easier, but it’s a long time before an AI can parse a client’s insane brain when the say things like “Can you lose the wobbly thing form where it is, but still keep it somehow? Make it better overall at the start and tighter around the edges to the point it makes your nose bleed” - This is a real change from this morning.
Engineering / nature is one thing. Art and perceptual is another.
Great info in your post @Infograph. I look forward to more such informative and insightful contributions from you in future. I agree that AI is going to displace a LOT of our jobs. Your comparisons of content aware fill etc are spot on. Even film colourists could be replaced at some point. I also agree with you that procedural workflows/methods are the way to go.
We really need to find some way to leverage AI as an asset rather than try to compete against it. And that definitely means changing how we work. Any thoughts on where we need to change?
Thanks for your kind words, I thought I was the devil incarnate a few posts ago.
I love technology, I love how it can truly benefit our working lives. AI is a different beast as I’m excited by it and terrified by it in equal measure. Can we as a species show restraint and only use AI to assist the workforce rather than replace it entirely? I don’t know but I seriously doubt the future we were promised as kids of work free utopias will exist. We appear to be on the precipice of a public health catastrophe and I see market analysts suggesting the markets are more important than public health and human life. I know how the 1% feel about me right now and I know how they’d view AI, more profits…
I’m sure it’s against forum rules to go on a political rant, so I won’t. But going down this current path will end in disaster not utopia.
Let’s just say I prefer this version of you compared to some other posts I’ve read in the past. 
This is the direction I fear. Creatives being replaced entirely by the engineer who can grow neural nets with his tree generator in real time. Doesn’t matter it visually looks like crap, he simulated it several days faster than an artist with the same tool and he’s cheaper.
“Creatives” in every field have always had their special snowflake status eradicated
by technology from the Master chemists at Eastman Kodak to the pencilers at
disney. 
.
The consumer who casually snaps a 4k image with his Iphone does so with the same utter disregard that the movie watcher will have while streaming an AI created, climactic"boss fight" between some CG hero and his nemesis.
So displacement of CG “creatives”,by technology, is just as inevitable .