Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Why is Maxwell's Cinema4D support always lagging behind of late? We only received "official" Cinema4D R12 support in the 2.5 release, months after R12 itself was released (and R12 was available to devs much earlier). I understand resources are limited, but they do not appear so limited as to block Rhino and other apps from receiving Fire support at the time of 2.5's release.

JDHill, I am not questioning your ability, and much appreciate your hard work on the plugin. However, from posts you've written, it sounds like the problem is that one person alone simply isn't enough to keep Maxwell for Cinema4D development current. The inability to keep up with either Cinema4D's or, now, Maxwell's mainstream development is fairly strong evidence of the problem. If left unaddressed, that certainly makes for a rather bleak future, as Cinema4D+Maxwell users fall further and further behind. R12.5 isn't that far off in the future, after all.

Fire was the primary feature of the 2.5 release, yet apparently no Cinema4D-specific support for it exists in 2.5. I'd just like to know whether Next Limit intends to do anything to ensure Maxwell Cinema4D development receive adequate support to keep current with both Cinema4D and Maxwell releases? That's clearly not happening now, will Next Limit take action to try and do so in the future?

For Maxwell customers, we made an R12-compatible plugin available October 1st on this forum, exactly one month after Maxon released R12. R12 being available pre-release for developers is neither here nor there; by policy, I do not write code for platforms when they are in beta stages.

That's my perspective on the Cinema development progress side, and I believe there are still quite a few other render plugins which do not yet support R12 at all.

With respect to Maxwell, I would say you had a point if this were a paying Maxwell 3.0 release where you had a Cinema plugin missing a major feature like Fire. But it is not. So as I wrote you before, it will be implemented here, but it will take time due to non-trivial plugin redesign being necessary to make it work nicely in this environment.

JDHill wrote:So as I wrote you before, it will be implemented here, but it will take time due to non-trivial plugin redesign being necessary to make it work nicely in this environment.

Hi JDHill,

I really appreciate your good work with the Cinema plugin!

Can you give any timeframe for the Cinema Fire plugin? Weeks, Months or next year’s Christmas time?

Kind regards,

Prowler

I can't really give any timeframe. I can say that since Fire is a publicly released feature, I won't hold up development at all in internal testing -- I'll make it available to customers here on the forum as soon as there is something reasonably stable for you to play with.

JDHill wrote:I'll make it available to customers here on the forum as soon as there is something reasonably stable for you to play with.

Great! Looking forward...

JDHill wrote:For Maxwell customers, we made an R12-compatible plugin available October 1st on this forum, exactly one month after Maxon released R12. R12 being available pre-release for developers is neither here nor there; by policy, I do not write code for platforms when they are in beta stages.

The R12-compatible plugin you made available Oct 1st was itself pre-release, though, and in your own words, had only received testing by you. As I thought I made clear, a release R12-compatible plugin didn't appear until the 2.5 release in Dec. I'd hope you could understand how customers might be as wary of using pre-release software for their "production" needs, as you are about developing for it. Also, it's worth differentiating "GM" (e.g. final binary) releases from pre-releases, as developing against a GM release doesn't transfer the same level of risk as developing against pre-release SDKs/binaries.

JDHill wrote:With respect to Maxwell, I would say you had a point if this were a paying Maxwell 3.0 release where you had a Cinema plugin missing a major feature like Fire. But it is not.

Sorry, but the distinction you're drawing between "paying" and "non-paying" releases is meaningless. Maxwell 2.5 is a "paying" release for any customer that buys licenses at or after 2.5's release. I'm about to buy more render nodes, at which point 2.5 will be a "paying" release for me. Why would customers buying 2.5 be entitled to any less support or quality than those buying 2.0? Customer revenue pays for Maxwell development, so they're all "paying" releases, and customers should receive the same level of support/quality regardless.

JDHill wrote:So as I wrote you before, it will be implemented here, but it will take time due to non-trivial plugin redesign being necessary to make it work nicely in this environment.

My issue is that overall, Cinema4D support appears to be slowly falling behind the level of support provided to other packages. For example, I notice NextLimit have just released a beta Modo plugin with Fire support. That a feature available today (albeit in pre-release) for Modo, is apparently an unpredictable distance in the future for Cinema4D, represents a significant disparity (IMO). I'm simply asking for NextLimit to increase the resources allocated for Cinema4D support, until the disparity is addressed.

Hi Jeremy!

I wish you all the best in 2011 - brilliant ideas and all the tools for you programming genius to help maintaining Cinemaxwell.




So, are there any news for the development and integration in the cinemaxwell plugin?

JDHill wrote:I can't really give any timeframe. I can say that since Fire is a publicly released feature, I won't hold up development at all in internal testing -- I'll make it available to customers here on the forum as soon as there is something reasonably stable for you to play with.

hows going, Jeremy ?

any news, estimate, info on progress, issues etc ?

not pushing in any way, just curious.

cheers

Aniki

Very soon, sir.

(I am away at a trade show this week, otherwise I would have made something available to test already)

JDHill wrote:Very soon, sir.

(I am away at a trade show this week, otherwise I would have made something available to test already)

now thats more that exciting

enjoy the show then, keep up the awesome work !

cheers

Aniki

JDHill wrote:Very soon, sir.

(I am away at a trade show this week, otherwise I would have made something available to test already)

I've love to volunteer for testing as well!

Hey JD, awesome job on the plugin-preview. Works perfectly!
Strange nobody noticed it yet!
Cheers and keep up the great work.

I'm glad you like it -- there is alot of new code here, so be sure to let me know if you run into any issues.

it'll be a pleasure to test

Great! Works nice, Fire is a lot of fun...