Why use anything but C4d?

[CullenJCreations]

I see everyone using Maya and 3dsmax. But in my years of experience Id never use anything but C4d. Everything about it (in my eyes) is superior to any other 3d program. Let me know what you think, what program you use, and why!

[Philip kelly]

Hi
Good question.
I played with them all over the years, formz maya, strata, C4D and then max.
Max had the best dwg importer at the time, and was made by the same company as Autocad which is the main stream cad package.
That's why I settled with it, also  Forest pro , Railclone and Vray at the time were the bread and butter of the business.
I have moved to Corona obviously, but that was my reason.
Back When I sued it C4D R11, it was not as good as Max for accuracy, more of a Graphic Product Package.
The snaps were not good either.
I loved it at the time, but I wanted to use the industry standard, and the company I was working for wanted to competing with the big boys.
Price wise they are about the same now.

Phil

[CullenJCreations]

Using the industry standard is probably whats going to get me onto max. I use a lot of free models and id say 6/10 times there isn't an .fbx or .obj file, only a .3ds. How was the transition from 3ds from c4d?

[Philip kelly]

it was a long time ago now, but the only way to get on it , was to drop the old software completely and just use that.
I had to do that from Formz originally.
Just start a project, tell yourself its not going to be your best work but it will your first full Max project, and don't look back.

Saying that I loved C4D the ease of use was fantastic, and I felt the same about Softimage, that was gorgeous package to use.
If I was in the Motion Graphic business it would be C4D or Houdini for me.
The very best of luck what ever you decide, but it is whats gets you out of bed in the morning is what you should choose, the excitement of looking forward to a project.

Phil

[clemens_at]

third party plugins and scripts/scripting.
I'm also a fan of "ugly" designed software :)

[dgruwier]

For arcviz, motion graphis and general purpose, Cinema 4D +  a decent renderer can probably beat anything except for Blender (IMO, when you factor in the price, and the completeness of the Blender feature set)
For VFX and more complex projects that require complex and heavy scenes, advanced, cutting edge features and lots of customization, Houdini is where its at (only downside I can think of is that Houdini is difficult and takes a while to get up to speed in)
For everything else like Maya and 3Ds Max, it's probably mostly a matter of people and studios having well established workflows and pipelines for other software, or needing it for specific pipeline steps like animation.

This is all, of course, ignoring Corona compatibility.

[Designerman77]

I see everyone using Maya and 3dsmax. But in my years of experience Id never use anything but C4d. Everything about it (in my eyes) is superior to any other 3d program. Let me know what you think, what program you use, and why!

I would not jump away from C4D just because Max is said to be some "industry standard". The differences are not like day and night.
Despite, C4D has such a great object management, besides a bunch of other qualities.

[Rhodesy]

I was a long time C4D user but jumped to Max a couple of years ago and wouldnt go back. Whilst Max definitely has its issues, it also has great features like edit poly / multisub mats/ realworld texture sizes and obviously things like railclone and forest pack, not to mention much easier ready made assets availible for purchase, which is a pain to manually convert with c4d each time. I much prefer the c4d interface but Max has a better toolset for arch viz and has better FBX/Revit support. I started with C4D back in version 8 when there wasnt much between max and c4d in terms of arch viz features but c4d has since become more of a motion graphics orientated package and I think will continue on that path. Max is a tough nut to crack but once you get in to it it makes more sense.