R21 support

[simonEPZ3S]

From what I understand, you appear to drop support for the oldest supported version of C4D when a new "S" version gets released....if that makes sense.

My concern is R21 will be the next to lose support in C4DtoA when Maxon release S25 next year.

Because of the subscription model used by Maxon, I...and many others...decided to stick with R21 and I am just wondering if you have already made a decision about when you may drop support for R21?

I know it is early and I appreciate what a pain it is to support lots of versions of software but the sooner I know what will and wont be supported the sooner I can decide on what route I take with my 3D software and render engine 🙂

I appreciate any insight you can give on this subject.

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

Before the "S" releases we supported the last three Cinema 4D versions, basically what Maxon did. If I'm not mistaken, Maxon still offers supports for the last three versions (e.g. S24, R23 and S22), but we now support the last four (e.g. S24, R23, S22 and R21), so basically two "S" and two "R" releases.

That means R21 will be dropped when R25 is released (which I think should be this year).

I understand that the Cinema 4D releases are more frequent now (2 per year instead of 1 per year), but as you said, it is a pain to support many versions on all platforms, so I don't think we're gonna add more versions.

[simonEPZ3S]

Thanks for the quick and honest answer @Peter Horvath

When R21 support is dropped, does that mean R21 will not work or not have an installer or does it mean its a case of fingers crossed and it might work?

Thanks

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

It means that no official build is made for R21 after that. For instance we dropped support for R20 in C4DtoA 3.3.4, thus 3.3.3 was the last R20 build.

[simonEPZ3S]

Hi @peter.horvath6V6K3 

I know its been a while since my original post but I see that R21 is still being supported.

I went away to Octane last year as that supports C4D on much older versions and is also much cheaper than C4DtoA but I have a big project coming up that might better suit Arnold, hence me looking at it again, so I was curious if the original comments you made have changed and if you have an expected termination date in mind for stopping R21 support?

Maybe lots of C4DtoA users have stuck with R21 so it makes sense to keep supporting it.

Again, any insight appreciated.

[peter_horvath · Accepted solution]

We will continue supporting R21 for now, because as you said, a good amount of people still use it. For how long, I can't say for sure. It's likely that we will drop R21 when R27 comes out (probably this summer), but again, it will depend on what we see in the usage statistics and hear from people, so it might stay for longer.