Ideas on how to recreate this molecule?

#21

Wow, more great news. That is wonderful to hear. Thank you!
I wasn’t aware of any of this stuff. It is all frosting on my new cake.

#22

I’ve also adopted Blender in my workflow and I use it on a daily-basis along with C4D.
I’m loving it but I’m not so excited about animation nodes/everything nodes…
Those setup are not easy for someone who is not proficient with math, vectors and other tech stuff like that. It’s closer to Houdini than C4D for sure.

The excitement among the Blender community about those node system is because it definitely opens the door to new fields where Blender was almost banned before. But the route they picked comes with a price which is learning complicated tech stuff, not suitable for motion graphics jobs which usually have tight schedules. Which is why C4D will keep serving its cause, at least for me. C4D and Blender aren’t mutual exclusive, they both work hand in hand in my workflow.

Also, the idea that the community will release node setups (sort of XSI Ice compounds) doesn’t makes thing easier from my point of view. For the simple reason that those setups are quite complex and they will serve a pre-determined amount of functions. They are closed box for people like me. I wouldn’t know what to change if I need to tweak the core of the node setup. So, again, C4D/Mograph wins here.

Other than that, my workflow has improved tremendously with Blender which, combined with some of its add-ons (HARD-Ops, E-Cycles, Physical Starlight and Atmosphere, Scatter, to name a few) becomes a truly powerful tool.

#23

I think you’re being over pessimistic about how difficult Everything Nodes will be and probably your ability to learn as well as the Blender communities ability to deliver solutions.

Looking at the design docs for the new Particle engine one of the goals is to add a lot of high level nodes out of the box, they want this to be approachable. I don’t see why this philosophy won’t carry across into the other areas of the Function Nodes.

I would also bank on the legion of Blender Tutorialists delivering hours of youtube content to educate the masses and I also expect the Blender equivalent of MOPs (Houdini based 3rd party Motion Graphics toolset) to be created very quickly.

Blender is going to get incredibly powerful so it is going to get more complex but I have confidence it’s going to remain approachable and be much less of a vertical learning curve that Houdini can be. One of the biggest features of Blender is the community which reminds me so much of the C4D community in the heyday, it will deliver a plethora of ready to play tools.

The new Asset Manager is being designed to store and share node setups for particles and functions as well as material node setups.

Big Project for 2020, https://code.blender.org/2020/01/2020-blender-big-projects/

#24

I love it that there are so many Blender tutorials for newbies like me. Here is a great website which my Blender teacher cousin-in-law steered me to:

That first video on new features got me twitching all over.