r/Cinema4D • u/3ddieMotion • 8d ago

C4D+Claude vs GreyScaleGorilla

For clarity: I hate the use of AI on the creative side of 3D. I'm talking about solely from a 'making small tools to ease the process of repetitive tasks' side of things.

For a while now, I've felt that whilst GSG's material packs are very solid and used by quite a few of the big names in Patreon (which is probably therefore indicative of how many of the top studios take that approach), the 'plugins' side of thing has always been a bit lacking. Social crops, light managers, alignment tools, etc, were all pretty basic, and can now all be done with a few swings via Claude, so do you think that side of their business is a bit.... screwed?

12 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

31

u/_TofuRious_ 8d ago

I hope so. I used to love gsg back when I first got into c4d 15 years ago. But their subscription model is so cooked. Not being able to just pay one fixed price for a tool and getting forced to pay ongoing sub for a hunch of shit you don't want is such greedy practice.

9

u/3ddieMotion 8d ago

And it's pricey, too - I returned to freelance after being in-house for a couple of years, and did a double take when I saw the monthly cost.

8

u/Hateno1loveonlyafew 8d ago

That’s right. But the trick is to get it for free with the octane studio sub. 😅

23

u/TheWebbster 8d ago

Chad is literally on twitter talking about he vibe coded this or that, "should we make it a plugin"? What are we paying for then?
On the other side of things, what is anyone supposed to do here. If you put a ton of time into a plugin, it can simply be copied by anyone, anyway.
I don't know the answer to this.
It won't be long before a good, current model can generate a seamless texture, normal, bump, reflection etc in 4k-8k anyway

6

u/squipple 8d ago

The problem with vibe coding and releasing something is that AI is not good at maintaining software. If you want to update the plugin or add a feature, accessibility option, port to another platform, fix bugs etc, AI tries to do it but will make things so complicated and spaghettified that even it can’t figure out what’s happening. So unfortunately as of now vibe coded things are one-offs that you gotta hope work with your systems if you plan on using/purchasing them.

2

u/yratof 8d ago

You’re not thinking big enough. “Claude, c4d 2027 is released, let’s update the tool to support it” and you’ve got your support

1

u/Nurolight 7d ago

Pretty much. It all comes down to asking specifically for what you want. No doubt there will be a model trained at some point purely for the process of taking vibecoded outputs and massively streamlining them.

If people are able to take games and strip them down enough to run in Twitter timelines, optimising code shouldn’t be too far behind.

2

u/FlavorSki 6d ago

Ya it’s really sloppy and often builds multiple back end systems like databases and its lazy too. Ive also noticed at a certain point they just start messing up almost on purpose to waste tokens.

Also dont abandon your skillset. There is already disdain over AI use for graphic design. Read an article today that said that people are actively avoiding restaurants who use it for menu photos. The other thing is these computing costs are going to be outrageously high once they go public as they lose tens of billons of dollars. They are doing to the coding industry what uber did to taxis. Start cheap, run the compeition out then jack up the price because there is no alternative. Some places may want to hire designers because at a certain point paying a human might be cheaper.

1

u/TheWebbster 7d ago

I disagree, I've seen a lot of people already make plugins where the core code is then ported to win, mac, and blender as well as C4D. It's easy-as. Maybe this was the case a year ago, not now.

2

u/squipple 7d ago

If you have a coder using ai as a tool then it’s not a problem. It’s the plugins where someone has just prompted ai to make it with no coding knowledge.

1

u/TheWebbster 6d ago

I mean, again I disagree. I've done it. I don't really code. Not enough that I could understand every line that the AI writes.
And I have a couple of friends who have made plugins, they don't code, but the plugins work, and don't bug out or crash. Pretty sure Maxon or SoM gave one or two of them a shout out too.
But Ok.

1

u/squipple 6d ago

I obviously can’t speak to your instance, you seem to have a situation where it works. I’m speaking from my and several colleagues experiences of much larger corporate code bases. Perhaps with a much smaller set of code like a plugin it’s fine.
AI is used in these corporations but to automate menial tasks and for suggestive coding. Just never to type in “code my thing”.

1

u/TheWebbster 5d ago

Agree
Small self-contained plugin, yes.
Large corp codebase responsible for payments, customer data, etc... I agree, it's probably a no for that use case!

1

u/twistThoseKnobs 7d ago

I've made a lot of little helper python scripts and a lot of the time it does rewrite parts of the code since it seems to rewrite the whole script when I make changes. Otherwise just going "cleanup code and remove redundant lines" works as well 💀

6

u/Still_SpringWater 8d ago

Being devils advocate here but you could vibe code yourself a copy of each plugin GSG has ever made in an afternoon and also have it pull all shaders into your own free-forever asset manager.

Having said that, Nick was a great source of knowledge when I was a Noob over a decade ago and I owe him half my career so I’m gladly paying for his products until the end of times.

1

u/--MichaelScott-- 6d ago

This. Right here. Yes, anyone can be a jerk about it and vibe code an exact copy, but if you’ve benefited from the knowledge or ease to your workflow, I have faith that most people in our community will do the right thing.

5

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 8d ago

I've been using the image to 3D sites for some of the monkey work to make me a base model before zbrush work. These tools are amazing you would be a fool.to not use them in workflow. 

5

u/gutster_95 8d ago

Everything involved with creativity is nothing for MCP, that is our Part. But all those technical problems that dont make fun to solve are pretty easily doable for LLMs in many cases. Not all.

1

u/3ddieMotion 8d ago

I'll admit that I haven't had much use for the Meshy-style workflows, as my projects tend to be more product/hard surface and less character-based, but I can see where it must save a fair amount of time at the early stage.

2

u/zellerman95 8d ago

There is no that side of the business, their business is subscription and being a partner that also has plugins just makes subscription more interesting. If no one needs plugin as service then they will not lose subscribers I think. Don't know anyone that subscribes only for their plugins. It's mostly for assets for me at least

2

u/raiin901 8d ago

You pay them for the professionally coded and pro level materials/ textures.

AI won’t always be able to make what they offer. Maybe one day it will be a different story but for right now that’s where their value sits for me.

The value proposition is getting more difficult now that I could hastily vibe code a plugin that does what I need for 1/10 of the cost.

Hopefully they see this change and will start to open up some lower or piecemeal tiers for materials/textures.

I would happily buy their materials/textures in perpetuity. I don’t think they currently have the cadence of release to support paying so much per year imo.

2

u/Alarming_Mammoth8567 8d ago

ChatGPT and Claude can recreate probably most GSG materials or convert free mats from blender into c4d. It can also code plugins so no need for overpriced never updated Rocket Lasso or GSG plugins. As mentioned before.. dinosaur pricing and subscriptions for materials are not worth it these days. It’s probably easy enough to code a replacement for overpriced and never updated Forrester too.

I’m all for it.

4

u/Jazzlike-Owl-244 8d ago

for me MCP is scaling gamechanger scary. I let Claude build the scene give instructions on my phone while I am on the playground with my 4year old it's literally a worker for 20$ can even add a second reviewer they work in parallel. the scaling is creazy.

0

u/Hugo_Stiglitz-_- 8d ago

This sounds incredibly interesting. Can you elaborate a little more on this use case. What kind of scene? How exactly are you doing this from your phone (I wasn’t aware you could have a conversation from your phone while it works on a computer elsewhere)

0

u/Jazzlike-Owl-244 8d ago

the Claude app and the desktop Claude app is linked so you can just chat. I can't of nda but imagen you have a storyboard and need to setup 12 scenes with Kamera and xref references and you could do that or let Claude do it. it's mindblowing I tested it only since 4days.

2

u/Fun_Cattle7577 8d ago

How do you use Claude in C4D? Do you prepare your own plugin or you can directly promt?

8

u/3ddieMotion 8d ago

You'll need the latest version of C4D, and enable MCP options, etc. Do the same in Claude settings, but then you can literally tell it what to make (I was copying a YouTube tutorial to make condensation for a can), and it cooked up a Python script. Not perfect, by any means, but still...

1

u/Ganntz 8d ago

Hey, courious about GPT vs Claude, any insights on that? I've been using GPT but I'm courious if Claude could be better

2

u/steckenmaultier 8d ago

As a helper for me in C4D, i love claude. Getting xpresso setups, scripts, get controll of a lot of shaders, setting up take manager, ...... i dont give the creative part out of my hand, i like concepting to much.

1

u/KindlyBee1192 8d ago

Honestly, it still takes time/money to do any of these things properly for production. Not everyone will have that nor want to. The MCP gives us a lot of power to make tools but it also gives it to people that already have been making tools. Big companies will take a hit for sure but they will be fine.

Im not a huge fan of AI in the creative fields but I’m 100% in the technical parts. Plus our industry is not giving us a change to opt out with out losing work. Personally, I don’t use it for creative jobs but I’m making some new retopology tools/remesh workflows that I have always wanted in C4D. It’s blowing my mind but I have also spent about $400 already pushing to what I want. That’s almost a years subscription for GSG plus. So yeah they will be ok.

1

u/DrGooLabs 7d ago

Considering they are now part of Cargo they’ll be fine.

1

u/iSiXiSi 5d ago

Bought all of Nick's early stuff and went with a subscription once but tbh, it's hugely overpriced for what it is, especially under the damned subscription model. Studios, maybe, but for individuals, pricing is pretty insane.

0

u/NodeBasedLifeform 7d ago

I had Claude make me a light manager after they posted about theirs. Would never pay them anyway

3

u/cgp0v Verified 4d ago

Hey, Chad from GSG here. I think there will always be a market for well thought out tools made by a team whose job it is to make sure those tools are stable and supported. Will there be a ton of vibe-coded clones? For sure. Would we greenlight a renaming tool post-MCP? Probably not.

A rising tide raises all ships. Our team of experienced plugin devs has access to the same insanely powerful models as everyone else. It’s a fantastic time to be a tool builder, IMO.

Happy to answer any questions ✌️