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So doesn’t Blender do all this without plugins....for $0 per month or (if you don’t like subscriptions) or for $0 for the perpetual license. And you can either pay $0 a month or the slightly higher fee of $0 annually for the perpetual license as well. Unfortunately, the perpetual license needs to connect to the license server 0 times every 14 days to stay active. You just gotta love 0! Dave

The way I try to look at things are If I really dont know how something is going to turn and its out of my control, it could go either way, so I rest on hope once I have tried to find the answers first. While Im waiting Im not emotionally working myself up fearing the worse when it could well not happen. Now if the worse does happen I deal with it then, Iv still saved myself a year of complaining, worrying about something I cant control, but maybe take that time to consider my options. If the worse case does not happen then Im thankful I didn't waste time and energy worrying. I know its easier said than done but its much better for the sole in trying to look at the glass half full, even if everyone else is saying otherwise. So while there are many questions unsolved, until then Iv got to crack on, get something done with my time, and spend time making something happen that is in my control. Help other people, get that job done, spend time with kids, family, turn the computer off maybe. Dan

So a couple of things that I wonder about as we try to navigate these very messy waters: MAXON made a major change to their whole pricing model and absolutely messed up the communications on it. Didn't they try their pitch on a test audience of select users ahead of time, collect the questions, listen to the concerns, and adjust? That is just good marketing when making a change of this significance. Or did they just persist by living in their own echo chamber, refusing to take outside input and challenge to their own views on their new business model. Building on Point 1, if the new culture of the new MAXON is to NOT adjust based on market response, then business history has shown they will have a short life span. Companies bigger than them have gone under very fast by refusing to listen to their customers and/or see the macro shifts going on around them (eg. Kodak, Lucent, etc). Blender 2.8 is a macro shift in the market that MAXON needs to pay attention to. Big companies like Ubisoft, etc. are making huge donations to the Blender Foundation. If the MAXON leadership team is feeling secure about the strength and purity of their new core or that they won a technical Oscar award, then they are again living in their own echo chamber. Core means nothing to the user unless they can see it in the features. Feeling proud that some modeling features are now under the influence of the new core? Well don't expect the user to do back flips over faster extrudes. What they really want is Bodypaint being updated to this century. Step out of your echo chamber because that thunder you hear behind you is Blender coming up fast. It may not be pretty by your standards, but it has a building momentum in the race while you are slowing down. There is some evidence that the heat generated over the absolutely mis-guided release of their new subscription model is changing some of their thinking. For example they are re-thinking Cineversity for perpetual license holders. I mean that alone is proof that they were not listening to anyone but themselves prior to the R21 announcement. Other proof is that the new features in R21 have very little to drive people to stay with C4D. If they were listening to the users, they would have made a decision to delay announcing subscriptions until a future release provided must have features like massive object handling, gpu rendering, full multi-threaded implementation across all aspects of the program, and a Bodypaint release that elevated it to best of breed status. So what became of the world tour announced at Siggraph? Didn't they talk about a 27 city tour? I have not heard anything about that since. Could it be that they were once again living in their own echo chamber thinking that the world would reach out to them with loving arms over the subscription plan? That they would be greeted as heroes wherever they went? Did our anger temper their hubris a bit? Good. So MAXON, please step out of your echo chamber. Start listening...and more importantly prove that you are listening. Even your defense of the new subscription model proves that you are still living in your own echo chamber because those arguments are all about how much better this is for MAXON: "It was really hard to maintain MSA licenses for 5 versions of C4D".....oh boo hoo for you. Kodak, Polaroid, Lucent....give a big warm welcome to MAXON. Dave

I got a mailshot yesterday for a £20K pc - checkout the chrome plated watercooling system in the close-up shots. Belongs in an art gallery. https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/reflectere-extreme

this is a tricky question, at least in my view... while it does make sense to make plugins sub based if the majority of c4d licenses will be sub soon, in some cases that can get quite expensive, even if a single plugin would be just 5 or 10 $ monthly. i have a bunch of plugins i like to keep around for everyday use, have them at hand in case i need them. there's the bigger ones like XP or redshift (which wouldn't just be 5 or 10 bucks a month), but also smaller ones i like to have available all the time. so the 60€/month c4d sub could easily pile up to 150 €/month including just the most essential plugins. what i would like to see here is basically the same i'd like to see with the c4d sub model: make it rent-to-own. in that case after a while i would only have to pay if i need an update to make it work again with a new c4d release or if i want the new features of that plugin. and if i'm fine with the current capabilities of that plugin and it works with the new c4d release i can just continue to use that version.

no, you don't have to redo all the weighting, you just have to paint some weights for that newly created joint so it can serve its purpose. also the pose morphs will stay intact, those only mess up if you change the point count on your mesh.

I noticed recently that the website Eggtion.net that provides the plugin Roll-It had been redesigned and my favorite plugin was no longer available. I emailed the site, and got a reply saying 'thanks for the interest, and it's now back online'. Roll-It makes spheres (and cubes etc) roll convincingly when the parent is pushed around https://eggtion.net/roll-it there's also an egg object https://eggtion.net/egg-object you can see Roll-It rolling the feet in this clip

Yes I did the same with Adobe when I needed it. I got a discount by agreeing to lock into 1 year and my monthly amount worked out at $70 per month vs $120 if I paid monthly. So does it really matter? Are you intending on only using Cinema 4D for just 1 month? Do you only want to pay for every second month? If your intending on using it for a full year then get the discount and pay the 61.47 euros a month. If not then you can pay purely on an ad-hoc monthly basis and pay $104.54 euros per month. Its up to you and when you need a licence. I just don't see what all the uproar is with regards to the argument about the monthly not being monthly. If you don't need it for a few months they go pure monthly. All depends on what you want to use C4D for. Better than shelling out over $3500 bucks when your not even sure if you will use it for a couple of weeks.

after stewing it over for several days, even with the thought of getting R21 studio for cost of my Prime MSA, I came to the conclusion that in the long run it just is not viable for me to stick with C4D. I will not renew my MSA, keep R20 prime loaded on my PC and continue my journey in Houdini. One of the big factors with sticking with Houdini is it has a water/sand simulator as well as really good particles and pyro without the need of $$ plugins. Modeling tools are coming along but Houdinis bread and butter is FX and thus their focus but they do see people are clambering for modeling tools and they are working on them. Their support is terrific, even on weekends you can get email answers. I wish MAXON well and hope this works out for them, truly I do. Peace

Just curious why people keep comparing MAXON to Adobe? That is correct, MAXON is not Adobe. Why not compare C4D with Maya, Max, Modo etc... IE compare MAXON to Autodesk, or The Foundry. Just had a look now and Maya is $297 NZD here per month, C4D will be ~$100 NZD I think (60 euros). Both Autodesk and MAXON are offering perpetual licences. Modo subscription is $599 USD a year (or $931 NZD) or about $77 NZD a month. And they also offer a perpetual. Even Substances is $99 USD a month for a subscription. Thats more than C4D just for texturing! And it's not even part of Adobe CC. They all have a monthly fee which can be paid annually with a discount. Or you can pay the pure monthly amount which is slightly more. And from my past experience Maya broke every plugin every release as well. C4D was a rare gem where they were able to keep the plugins compatible for so long. This was done through extensive effort on their part, but meant they couldn't change much under the hood. Now they are updating all the internal code, and the SDKs to give plugin developers more features and power, so things change.

@Bolos no problem... the way you had set it up the parenting and the constraints are fighting each other. to fix it you have several options: - delete that psr constraint on your tongue controllers null and just put the null as a child of the jaw. - disable the psr constraint and pull the tongue controller null out of the hierarchy, and put it below the joints null (not as a child, just below), then make a parent constraint instead, leave it at expression: 0 ... set the tongue spline ik to expression: 1 regarding the hand on the belly: the problem here is that you have the hand resting at an area that shares influences from chest and hip (called belly in your case), and you can't expect the hand to constrain perfectly to the surface if you parent it just to one of those. the IMO best way around it would be to make one more joint between the hip and the chest like digitvisions suggested. weight the loops in the area where the hand lies 100% to that joint and parent constrain the hand to that joint then instead. another way would be to clamp constrain a null to the surface of the belly and constrain the hand then to that null. the clamp constraint you'd have to set to generators, because it has to execute after the skin deformer. hope that helps...

Yeah, but can it run Crysis?

I've been a MAXON / C4D customer for 19 years - and I couldn't agree more. It seems MAXON are now quite willing to penalise those with Studio MSA - who are much more likely to be locked in to the C4D ecosystem - in order to suck in new users. That's not an equitable way to treat your customers.

Hi Rick As a new user, who just invested £3,700 in R20 Studio; Cineversity access is not my main concern. I've looked at it, it's a nice extra, but for me, it's a non-issue compared to the more significant conversation. To me, the MSA was a right to upgrade my software at a reduced price each year. I phoned MAXON this week who said if there is a perpetual upgrade path to R22 it will be more expensive than the subscription. In my opinion, what needs sorting is perpetual licences. Especially a commitment to the fact that perpetual licence holders should be able to continue upgrading their licences at the same price, or less than a subscription.

The rig parenting is fine, i would add another spine joint between the hip and the belly/torso.