Cinema4D; what needs to change?
polycounter lvl 10
For some of us, Cinema4D is favoured for its ingenious scene management system, ease of use, mograph capabilities, tag system for non-destructive workflows, rock-solid stability, excellent OSX support and seamless integration with Adobe's products.
What Cinema4D isn't so well versed with is game development. Indeed, it would seem Maxon has gone out of its way to ignore the needs of game developers altogether. Their latest release (Cinema4D R17), has met with lacklustre fanfare and even harsh criticism at the relative scarcity of new features.
Lately, word coming down from the grapevine has it that Maxon is finally starting to commit themselves to various community outreach initiatives, in other words, they're going to listen to their customers for a change. My guess is that Maxon is eager to break into new ground now that some of their principal offerings such as a once superior text engine is now under threat from Maya 2016 SP3. It won't be long before other applications start including mograph capabilities, the holy grail for C4D, as part of their feature base. One of the new features they are working on among others is OpenSubDiv to help bring C4D up to par with other applications - still a long way to go however.
I'm not sure how many polycounters use C4D but I think this would be a great opportunity to voice our needs and state bluntly what needs to change to better accommodate game artists.
For an example, the Bodypaint module, which I like, has a UV editor that is atrocious. You can only select UV points, not shells. Worse is the inability to view all UVs from multiple selected mesh objects; the UV editor will only show UVs from the first selected object. You cannot apply topological changes to a mesh without damaging the UVs whereas other programs are more graceful with how UVs are affected by the removal of edge loops and other modifiers. I actually end up having to use Maya to create and apply UVs - it's that bad.
Another major weakness is the lack of a modern viewport for things like PBR.
There is no native game export functionality.
There are no baking tools of any kind.
What would you guys like Maxon to add to C4D that would see you use the application full time for game art or, at the very least, entice you to give it a second look?
What Cinema4D isn't so well versed with is game development. Indeed, it would seem Maxon has gone out of its way to ignore the needs of game developers altogether. Their latest release (Cinema4D R17), has met with lacklustre fanfare and even harsh criticism at the relative scarcity of new features.
Lately, word coming down from the grapevine has it that Maxon is finally starting to commit themselves to various community outreach initiatives, in other words, they're going to listen to their customers for a change. My guess is that Maxon is eager to break into new ground now that some of their principal offerings such as a once superior text engine is now under threat from Maya 2016 SP3. It won't be long before other applications start including mograph capabilities, the holy grail for C4D, as part of their feature base. One of the new features they are working on among others is OpenSubDiv to help bring C4D up to par with other applications - still a long way to go however.
I'm not sure how many polycounters use C4D but I think this would be a great opportunity to voice our needs and state bluntly what needs to change to better accommodate game artists.
For an example, the Bodypaint module, which I like, has a UV editor that is atrocious. You can only select UV points, not shells. Worse is the inability to view all UVs from multiple selected mesh objects; the UV editor will only show UVs from the first selected object. You cannot apply topological changes to a mesh without damaging the UVs whereas other programs are more graceful with how UVs are affected by the removal of edge loops and other modifiers. I actually end up having to use Maya to create and apply UVs - it's that bad.
Another major weakness is the lack of a modern viewport for things like PBR.
There is no native game export functionality.
There are no baking tools of any kind.
What would you guys like Maxon to add to C4D that would see you use the application full time for game art or, at the very least, entice you to give it a second look?
Replies
+ a proper "reset" normals function
Thats the biggest downfall, I can work with anything else, but this is a major issue, causing many problems with all sorts of stuff. Also baking works but currently only from the same mesh in lower sculpt res. Being able to bake to another mesh would be great.
The second would be overhauled UV tools.
They also have a PBR plugin called Pixelberg which I haven't tried yet, but it's something I'll look for sure when I'll do some real time stuff again.
I agree with the other points, BodyPaint is embarrassing, when I was working on the only "current gen" asset I made, I had difficulties positioning the decals, its scaling algorithm is so crap that the text became unreadable, I had to use Krita just for that. But other than the general slowness (every time you move around it refreshes viewport, even if it's fast, you see the textures and the general shading popping, and it's annoying) it's still a valid 3D painting application, the UV part is, well, prehistoric?
Some people justified this by saying that since there are many alternative tools, there's no need for fixing, for example Octane render to get the nodal material system, or use 3D Coat to do the UV work, but again, this contradicts the "all in one package" mentality that all the major DCC applications are built upon.
R17, for me, was not that big of an improvement from R16, I'm not that satisfied with the new spline tools (it is also laggy), I preferred to work with the old one, and the Polygon Pen hasn't received updates whatsoever. The autofit for the Deformers is still bugged, so I think they don't really look at their tools after they implemented them.
VERTEX COLOR TOOLS
NORMAL BAKING TOOLS
ok, finished!
(you know, their FBX exporter actually sets vertex color info, but no tools to vertex paint. I wanted to throw my computer in the sea after learning that little gem)
Maxxon, if you are listening, please add vertex coloring. It's the main reason I reluctantly advise people to use Maya now
Two questions; is it possible to dock the nightshade UV editor as part of a saved layout rather than have it as a separate window?
Also, if I accidentally close the nightshade UV editor, I'm unable to bring it back via the python launch command. The normal UV editor has its icons stripped from it so I can't use that. The only option seems to be to quit maya and restart it again and reload nightshade via python.
Again, thanks for providing the community with an awesome toolset.