Thank you again, it worked. I just had to take into account that the python310.win64.framework directory is now named just win64 in Cinema 4D 2024.

And I had to add the path to ai.dll too, because our Arnold translator had the same problem, the C4DtoA module no longer loads ai.dll on startup.

Hey @jochemdk,

That is the nature of threading restrictions. It is like crossing the street without looking left and right: It works fine until it doesn't 🙂

Cheers,
Ferdinand

Hello Herr May,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I am not quite sure why you think it should do that.

The angle between two vectors u and v is defined as:

theta(u, v) = arccosine(~u * ~v)

I.e., the arccosine of the dot product of the two normalized vectors. This is due to the so called circle functions, specifically this identity:

26ea0c5e-9de3-4885-bc15-34b4ee3342da-image.png

Under the hood, GetAngle does exactly what I declared above (just in a bit more efficient manner, as calculating the normalized vector is much more expensive than this little trick):

123bbf8a-568b-49a5-9ff3-2bac41f61339-image.png

As you can see, the correct solution to the arccosine of the dot product of the null vector with itself is 0.5 π, i.e., the value you got :

ebfd4607-e872-42ef-898c-d3a2de4d8dd8-image.png

You could now argue if that is a sensible result for a method that is called 'GetAngle' and if it should throw an error on getting an input vector or being called on a vector with the length zero. But you have also to keep in mind that the C++ backend is used by people who will know the identity pi_half = arccosine(~(0, 0, 0) * ~(0, 0, 0)) and might want to make use of it.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

@ferdinand Thank you for your reply

Hi @ferdinand,

Thank you so much for the comprehensive reply! Given all this I don't think it would make sense to keep trying to unit test this particular part of our code with Python. The last approach you highlighted with testing directly on the C++ side seems like the best option, so I'll give that a try. I'll have to see how to integrate this test with the rest of the unit tests (we have a lot and they're all in Python) but hopefully that won't be too much of a problem.

Thanks again for all the help,
Daniel

Got it! Thanks.

Hello @spektor04 ,

Welcome to the Plugin Café forum and the Cinema 4D development 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 Guidelines, as they line out details about the Maxon SDK Group support procedures. Of special importance are:

Support Procedures: Scope of Support: Lines out the things we will do and what we will not do. Support Procedures: Confidential Data: Most questions should be accompanied by code but code cannot always be shared publicly. This section explains how to share code confidentially with Maxon. Forum Structure and Features: Lines out how the forum works. Structure of a Question: Lines out how to ask a good technical question. It is not mandatory to follow this exactly, but you should follow the idea of keeping things short and mentioning your primary question in a clear manner. About your First Question

Please provide us testscript(s) and a testfile which would help us to reproduce the issue.

Thanks and Cheers
Jana

Hey @yaya,

okay, and your your plugin hook is ObjectData, right? Your plugin is the 'RagDoll' entity, in your screen grab? It is really hard to get here anywhere without code, but here are a few guesses:

Are you 'abusing' your ObjectData hook by modifying the scene it is contained in? ObjectData is bound to the threading restrictions in most of its methods, because most run not on the main thread. This is more relevant than ever with 2024, because more methods have been parallelized. You can modify the scene from an ObjectData plugin, but you must be on the main thread to do it, by for example defer execution to the MT or use a method like Message which often runs on the MT (but I would still avoid doing it when possible). Modyfing the scene means for example inserting, objects, materials, shaders, etc. or adding events. Modifying your cache to your likeing in getVirtualObjects is of course okay. This could also be a nasty side effect of the new data access system.

But these two are of course fairly speculative since I almost know nothing about your plugin. And you said, when I understand you correctly, that you already this problem in the past, and then somehow fixed it by illegally freeing the selection of the object.

I would recommend doing the following things:

Reduce the complexity of your example scene, that thing is way too complex. Make it as simple as possible by removing as many things as possible with the problem still happening. Run Make Editable and Current State to Object separately on instances of your faulty plugin output. Analyze the content of the caches to see what is actually happening in the places "where things go wrong". Either you are somehow missing full objects in your cache or skip some data, etc. Just do normal debugging then: Set a breakpoint on GetVirtualObjects in your plugin and step through the code, trying to figure out when you "loose" parts. Avoid skipping 'boring' parts as you easily miss the problem then.

Other than that, I will have to see code, because otherwise there is no magic wand move with which I could guess what is going wrong here for you.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

@ferdinand said in Adding ports to nodes.:

DescID

Thank you so much. I am pleasantly surprised at the level of your responsiveness. When I wrote "Global Data" I accidentally used the wrong word, I meant "Global Coordinates". I have read your links and code very carefully. Actually the concept of DescID is not so much complicated as confusing, the easiest thing would be to have something like an interactive online converter that could show the attributes of the desired objects and their corresponding id. I will try to understand the concept of DescID, deeper. And thank you again for your very detailed answer. Have a nice day.

MAny thanks Ferdinand. I will look into the BatchRender suggestion. That looks promising.

@ferdinand
Indeed, the allure of good looks can be captivating at times. In fact, my primary objective was to explore the development of a pie toolbar, which may seem unconventional but has always held a deep fascination for me. I sincerely appreciate your valuable advice and will certainly give it a try.

Cheers,
Gheyret

Hello @Gregor-M ,

Welcome to the Plugin Café forum and the Cinema 4D development 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 Guidelines, as they line out details about the Maxon SDK Group support procedures. Of special importance are:

Support Procedures: Scope of Support: Lines out the things we will do and what we will not do. Support Procedures: Confidential Data: Most questions should be accompanied by code but code cannot always be shared publicly. This section explains how to share code confidentially with Maxon. Forum Structure and Features: Lines out how the forum works. Structure of a Question: Lines out how to ask a good technical question. It is not mandatory to follow this exactly, but you should follow the idea of keeping things short and mentioning your primary question in a clear manner. About your First Question

What you're trying to achieve is supposed to be happening on the main thread. It's difficult to guess the reasons of the crash you're stumbling across without any further information (e.g. the code showcasing the issue), but could be that MTCharacterBodyPart.GetParameters() function is not a thread-safe one.

Cheers,
Ilia

I see, thanks. But honestly i don't get it why the plugins folder isn't in the search path...

Hey @kbar,

Thank you for reaching out to us and pointing out the missing documentation. I will fix that. In the mean time I would recommend having a look at the Gradient and Field Sampling example in the migration guide, as I did explain the principal changes there.

In short, extraData is the means with which sampling has been made const. Before, sampling did change the field instance, now the to be mutated data has been separated out into that 'extra data', and you get your extraData when initializing the sampling. In the example I covered Sample, but things translate directly to DirectSample.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

Code from the migration guide:

iferr_scope; // #field is a #FieldObject sampled by the #BaseObject #effector. See the full example for details. // The input location we want to sample and the output data. We are only interested in sampling // FIELDSAMPLE_FLAG::VALUE, i.e., the field influence value of the field at point x. FieldInput inputs(Vector(0, 50, 0)); FieldOutput outputs; outputs.Resize(inputs.GetCount(), FIELDSAMPLE_FLAG::VALUE) iferr_return; FieldOutputBlock outputBlock = outputs.GetBlock(); // Create the field info for sampling the sample data #inputs for the caller #effector. const FieldInfo info = FieldInfo::Create(effector, inputs, FIELDSAMPLE_FLAG::VALUE) iferr_return; // Sample the field. In 2024.0 we now must pass on the extra data generated by the sampling // initialization so that #field can remain const for this operation. maxon::GenericData extraData = field->InitSampling(info) iferr_return; field->Sample(inputs, outputBlock, info, extraData, FIELDOBJECTSAMPLE_FLAG::NONE) iferr_return; // Iterate over the output values. for (const maxon::Float value : outputBlock._value) ApplicationOutput("Sampled value: @", value); field->FreeSampling(info, extraData);

Thank you @ferdinand, I'll need to work out how I implement but once again a thorough and considered reply....

Hey @Gaal-Dornik,

In Cinema 4D you can bind a command to multiple shortcuts, but adding arguments is not possible. You would have to poll the keyboard yourself to distinguish such events.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

Result:

49a4bee1-8135-412f-b238-43d21184e071-image.png

Code:

"""Runs different code based on which keys are pressed. Must be run as a Script Manager script. Pressing Shift+ALT+A while the script is invoked will print "Foo", while pressing Ctrl+Alt+A will print "Bar". See: https://developers.maxon.net/docs/py/2024_0_0a/misc/inputevents.html """ import c4d def CheckKeyboardState(*args: tuple[str]) -> bool: """Returns #True when the given key sequence is pressed, #False otherwise. """ result = [] for char in (n.upper() for n in args if isinstance(n, str)): if char == "SHIFT": c = c4d.KEY_SHIFT elif char == "CTRL": c = c4d.KEY_CONTROL elif char == "ALT": c = c4d.KEY_ALT else: c = ord(char) bc = c4d.BaseContainer() if not c4d.gui.GetInputState(c4d.BFM_INPUT_KEYBOARD, c, bc): raise RuntimeError("Failed to poll the keyboard.") result += [True if bc[c4d.BFM_INPUT_VALUE] == 1 else False] return all(result) def main() -> None: """ """ if CheckKeyboardState("Shift", "Alt", "A"): print ("Foo") elif CheckKeyboardState("Ctrl", "Alt", "A"): print ("Bar") else: print("None") if __name__ == '__main__': main()

Hello @BretBays,

Thank you for reaching out to us. Your posting does not contain an explicit question; there is no question mark in it. There is an implied question of us implementing what you describe, but the MAXON SDK group cannot do that, implement feature descriptions provided by users. I would recommend having a look at our support guidelines regarding asking good technical questions and the scope of support.

About your Question

If you want to CTSO, just CTSO the object or join it, we have examples for both cases in the modeling commands section of the Python examples. The problem with your function is also that it makes quite a few assumptions which do not always hold true, it for example assumes that the deform cache of something is always found directly on an object in the object manager (which is only true for editable polygon objects). What the script is calling 'direct copy' might also lead to results the user does not consider to be a copy.

CSTO is the way to go to 'duplicate that deformed shape to a simple mesh with no deformer'. If the output is then not a singular object, you can join the output or a subset of it.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

@ferdinand

This is a command, and you can c4d.CallCommand it, but that is all the control you have.

thank you Ferdiand,

Thanks for the response, it's all working properly now.

John Terenece

@ferdinand Great job!👍