@m_adam that is unfortunate. When you say "next version" do you mean the next update to 2025? Fingers crossed!

Hi @Neekoe ,

There are many ways to save data, like c4d.storage.HyperFile or json-like stuff, or you can use WorldContainer, I like to use json for my plugins, but for more "c4d-like", you can use WorldContainer.

Cheers~
DunHou

import c4d YOUR_UID: int = 123456789 # Setting id, better to use a unique id, but not necessary SETTING1: int = 1000 SETTING2: int = 1001 def main() -> None: # Create a new BaseContainer for storing the plugin data bcWorld: c4d.BaseContainer = c4d.GetWorldContainerInstance() bcPlug: c4d.BaseContainer = c4d.BaseContainer() bcPlug.SetBool(SETTING1, True) bcPlug.SetInt32(SETTING2, 10) bcWorld.SetContainer(YOUR_UID, bcPlug) # Get the BaseContainer from the world container bcPlug: c4d.BaseContainer = bcWorld.GetContainerInstance(YOUR_UID) print(bcPlug.GetBool(SETTING1)) print(bcPlug[SETTING2]) if __name__=='__main__': main()

@i_mazlov Thanks for the reply. I may have described it wrong. I am talking about the image viewer. It seems that there is currently no API interface to get the number of frames rendered, nor can I get the total number of frames in the rendering settings.

Hi @Neekoe,

That's great to hear you've managed to solve the issue!

For your future postings please note that according to our Support Procedures:

We cannot debug your code for you and instead provide answers to specific problems.

This effectively means that you're welcome to ask your questions and attach the code snippet that demonstrates your question or issue you're struggling with. However, we cannot debug your entire codebase, so you have to isolate your specific question and the corresponding part of code yourself before asking the question.

Cheers,
Ilia

@mogh said in How to receive the high definition / Interpolation version of a spline?:

from the above helper I only get the points the spline is set to (eg. adaptive 5°) but I perhaps want more points in between.

That is not correct. As I said, splines have theoretically infinite precision, you are only bound in practice by the floating point precision you use for your computations - double, i.e., 64 bit in Cinema 4D. You get in your code just the cache of your spline and iterate over its points. That is more or less the same as if you would have just called BaseObject.GetCache() on your SplineObject which I mentioned above.

When you want to interpolate your spline manually, you must use the interpolation methods of SplineHelp, e.g., GetMatrix, which is sort of the most potent of all, as it gives you a full frame for each sample (i.e., not just a point but also an orientation).

I have a hunch that the actual question is how to build the cache of a spline as if it would have higher interpolation settings. And for that you should copy your input (unless it is already a dangling, i.e., non-inserted node), change its settings, insert it into a dummy document, and then call ExecutePasses on that document. Then you can get the cache, and iterate over its points.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

f91a1f2b-2eab-44ee-a689-a981e9d545f8-image.png

import c4d doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument # The currently active document. op: c4d.BaseObject | None # The primary selected object in `doc`. Can be `None`. def main() -> None: """Called by Cinema 4D when the script is being executed. """ if not op: return helper = c4d.utils.SplineHelp() if not helper.InitSplineWith(op, c4d.SPLINEHELPFLAGS_RETAINLINEOBJECT): raise RuntimeError("Could not initialize spline helper.") # Take exactly ten samples over the length of the spline, no matter how many vertices it has, # and how many points its current LineObject cache has. steps: int = 10 for i in range(steps + 1): # Get a frame for the offset #t. t: float = i/float(steps) m: c4d.Matrix = helper.GetMatrix(t) # Print the #t, the point #p on the spline, its normal #n, tangent #t, and bi-tangent #bt. print(f"{t = }, p = {m.off}, n = {m.v3}, t = {m.v1}, bt = {m.v2}") if __name__ == '__main__': main()

Understood Thanks.

curvature_comb.png

not bad for 5 hours of dabbling --- thanks to you @ferdinand

Gotcha's:
The Curvature was 90dgree rotated - LLM to the rescue ...

# c4d.plugins.RegisterTagPlugin( .... # That one nearly got me ;-) # c4d.TAG_IMPLEMENTS_DRAW_FUNCTION # R22

cheers

Thanks @Neekoe to have shared your solution and thanks @Dunhou for helping.
When you pass LV_TREE the Draw method is not called to have it called you need to pass either LV_USERTREE or LV_USER.

Cheers,
Maxime.

@freeze I wrote this a few years back which might give you a good starting point.

https://plugins4d.com/Product/FunRay
https://github.com/kentbarber/rtow4d

Cheers,
Kent

Hello @DayDreamer,

Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us!

Getting Started

Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules.

Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment. Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support. Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads.

It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

This is your first posting and you did well, but I would point you to our 'singular question' rule, as lined out above in the 'Asking Questions' link. While we usually cut user some slack regrading that, the rule exists for a reason, as topics otherwise tend to become gigantic. There are way too many questions in this topic, please split your questions into multiple topics in the future.

There is no mechanism to package and ship plugins under Cinema 4D. You can just zip a plugin folder and the user unzips it then in a path where his or her Cinema 4D instance is looking for plugins. xdl64 is the extension Cinema 4D uses for libraries under Windows, i.e., it is more or less an alias for dll (our library linking is kind of special and right between static and dynamic libraries, hence the custom name). So, no, Python plugins cannot be packaged as xdl64 because Python is not compiled into machine code but interpreted at run time. You can mix C++ and Python plugins in the sense that Python plugins can depend/interact with C++ plugins with the means of the Cinema 4D API. E.g., a Python plugin can react to messages sent by a C++ plugin or data placed by a C++ plugin (or vice versa). That is how our Python API works under the hood. But C++ and Python code cannot interact directly of course, as they are vastly different languages. But you can run our Python VM from C++ and eval the results. When you want to protect your intellectual property, you can use our Cinema 4D | Extensions > Tools > Source Code Protector which will encrypt a pyp Python module. But code must of course be decrypted at runtime to be sent to the Python VM, so, this will not really stop anyone who really wants your source code (a cracker for example). C++ is the by far safer option when intellectual property is important (but also C++ can be decompiled).

Cheers,
Ferdinand

"Thank you" seems poor and inadequate for that fantastic example, but I don't have the English vocabulary to go beyond that!

I have read through the example once, and I think I understand it. Since this has been a real Monday (tm), I'm going to let this simmer in the brain for a day or two, and then use the techniques you demonstrate to add GetBranchInfo etc. to my scene hook. Both the example and the video were great at explaining the steps needed to get "extra" information into the document, and are much appreciated!

So while it does not express the full extent of my gratitude, once again - thank you!

Thanks for helping out @spedler!

@ferdinand Thanks for reply. Perhaps not expressed clearly. For changing the axis of an object, it is not a problem. What I want to ask is whether the manual operation step of selecting the axis before the Move tool works can be implemented using a script.

Thanks you for your help 😄

Hi Kent,
the cast is safe. In the public API, NimbusInterface is an incomplete type. Only NimbusBaseInterface is defined there. But internally, NimbusInterface is derived from NimbusBaseInterface, therefore you can safely do the cast.

@ferdinand Thank you so much. He perfectly solved all my problems

Thank you very much for following up with this, @ferdinand.
At the moment, we are fairly confident about the way of fixing this issue after all the above discussion.
But I'll reach out with a bug report (even though I don't think this is C4D bug) for further information.

Hi @ArjenA ,

Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us!

Getting Started

Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules.

Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment. Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support. Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads.

It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

Unfortunately we're not able to provide you with support on designing an architecture of your application, hence my answer here is very limited. Though, you're very welcome to ask more specific questions 😉

Let's call your setup with physical board game, hardware and corresponding software as "backend" and the C4D part as "frontend". Generally speaking, there's nothing preventing you from making these parts communicating with each other and it all highly depends on your project setup: programming languages, physical interfaces, frameworks, etc that you're going to use.

You can start with saving your live data in a file on your disk filesystem and read it using Python API in cinema. Once you have a proof of concept you can start optimizing, for example, by implement a proper communication interface, for example, REST API or Websocket sound like good (but not the only!) candidates for this purpose.

With that's said, I wish you luck with your project. Feel free to make new postings with singular and more specific questions.

Cheers,
Ilia

@ferdinand Thank you for replying!