Setting Preferences via script

pyr

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to roll out a few default preference settings across all company workstations, but I can’t find any solid reference or example on how to do it properly through Python.

Basically, I’d like to change things like:

some Memory settings (Picture Viewer cache, etc.)
a few File options (Autosave paths and intervals)
certain Redshift preferences
and enable the Verify Script check

My goal is to make sure every workstation starts with the same defaults, ideally via a startup script or a deployed config.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found any working example in the documentation or SDK that shows how to access and write these preferences in C4D 2025 / 2026

Does anyone have a current example or best practice for setting preferences programmatically in recent C4D versions?

Thanks a lot!
— Tobias

pyr

After digging through some older threads and testing things, I found that this approach works — based on the discussion here:
https://developers.maxon.net/forum/topic/13555/python-how-to-get-axis-scale-from-the-preference-settings/2

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:

    # get preferences
    pref = c4d.plugins.FindPlugin(465001632) 
    # Memory ((465001628, 1, 465001632), (888, 133, 465001632))
    desc = c4d.DescID(
        c4d.DescLevel(465001628, 1, 465001632),
        c4d.DescLevel(888, 133, 465001632)
    )
    
    
    memoryPref = pref[desc]
    
    memoryPref[c4d.PREF_MEMORY_PVHARDFOLDER] = "c:\\blubb"
    c4d.EventAdd()
    
    


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

To discover all available IDs inside a preference node, you can list them like this:

    for bc, descid, _ in pref.GetDescription(0):
        name = bc[c4d.DESC_NAME]
        
        print(name,descid)

So this topic is solved

ferdinand

Hey @pyr,

yes, that your own answer is correct, thank you for sharing it! But since 2026.0.0 there exist better ways to discover symbols and container values. Have a look at the mxutils change notes for 2026.0 for an overview.

With g_c4d_symbol_translation_cache you can discover the symbol for a plugin ID such as 465001632 and with GetParameterTreeString you can inspect node parameters in a human readable form.

Cheers,
Ferdinand