Hey @ferdinand , Sorry for the late replies. You can only answer these with end user support and the beta community. I will do that. Although I haven't used the beta community yet, I'll post the same question there to better understand what the recommended workflows are right now. you would either have to limit the feature to 2024+ clients That's good enough for us. Our plugin officially supports only the latest versions of 2024 and 2025.

Hey @kbar, thank you for reaching out to us. Please remember creating new topics instead of posting in older one's, so that our forum remains a searchable database. I have forked your question. I understand the necessity and use case for this, but in the proposed form, this is not possible. At least not without more work than it makes sense to invest here. Because the license validation is one of the first steps in the boot sequence of Cinema 4D, and trying to evaluate a command line argument and use all the components of our API necessary to encrypt a file could easily lead to problems (as these modules might not have been loaded yet). What we could think about is offering this as a standalone tool. The issue is here that we cannot just ship the source for that tool (for third parties to compile it themself) as the source would then also be known to bad actors. And shipping it as a binary would be extra work. An alternative could be a REST service, but that is also extra work (but less than the former route). I currently have no time for either of this. At the end of the year I will probably do some website work, then we could think about the REST route. But it is likely that I then also do not have time for this. As an MRD, you also have the option to ask in our beta forums or make a source code sharing request. In the end, this is very simple code and could probably easily emulated with a couple of lines of Python code. That is probably the most sensible route, but we would have to involve PMs etc. here, if we are willing to do that. I myself am even not sure if I would greenlight such request due to the sensitive nature of the topic. So, unfortunately, there is no clear cut route here, although I definitely can see the use case. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hey @Amazing_iKe, Thank you for reaching out to us. That RenderDocument does not support animations is only partially true. Effectively it does not for users, but that is more a regression than the lack of an actual feature. When you look into its documentation, you will see that many symbols and arguments are animation related. And when you send it a document which holds an animation, you are paying the price for rendering the full animation. The regressed state is however that you effectively only have access to the bitmap of the last frame of that animation. There is also the issue that the OCIO workflow with RenderDocument is a bit clunky at the moment. We have these issues in our backlog by I unfortunately cannot make any guarantees as to when we will fix them. You have two options: Render the document frame by frame yourself with RenderDocument and then assemble the animation yourself. Use the BatchRender, i.e., what is shown to the user as the render queue. You can use this in a fully programmatic manner, but you are restricted to rendering documents that have been saved to disk, and the output will also be put to disk. I.e., you do not have the 'memory only'-aspect of RenderDocument. There are many topics about this subject on this forum, for example here where I showed how you abstract some of the disc-only limitations aways. Maxime also recently added some features to the batch render like switching cameras and takes, which makes it less likely that you have to modify the file. I cannot write examples for all possible routes here. You have to decide yourself which route you want to go, and when you are then stuck there, I will help you. What to pick depends on your goals. When you expect the renderings to be quick, doing it manually with RenderDocument could be a solution. For more complex animations, the batch renderer is probably the better route. Cheers, Ferdinand

Thank you so much

Thank you so much

Ok thanks and sorry

Hey @Amazing_iKe, Thank you for reaching out to us. You do the same thing you did incorrectly in your other thread. You create an async dialog and you do not keep it alive. We would prefer it to keep things G-rated here. I.e., no nudity, no violence, and no weapons. I removed the image in your posting. With that being said, and when I try out your script (with the dlg thing fixed). I end up with this: [image: 1752854682502-fc83d223-abc0-4568-98fc-deb82596b059-image.png] I.e., it just works. But you docked your dialog (and so did I imitating what you did). I now cannot reproduce this anymore, but when I did something in my layout, I think I dragged a palette, I got a similar result as yours. That is not too surprising though as you implement here an async dialog in a hacky manner. You have no CommandData.RestoreLayout which would handle layout events for your dialog. Something getting out of whack with scroll areas is not out of question for such irregular cases. Please follow the patterns shown in our GUI examples I would recommend to follow py-cmd_gui_simple_2024, it also contains code for handling layout events. I.e., this: def RestoreLayout(self, secret: any) -> bool: """Restores the dialog on layout changes. Implementing this is absolutely necessary, as otherwise the dialog will not be restored when the user changes the layout of Cinema 4D. """ return self.Dialog.Restore(self.ID_PLUGIN, secret) And to be clear, it is absolutely fine to share plugins with us here. It does not have to be a script manager script. Things should just not get too long. Feel free to anonymize your plugin IDs when you feel skittish about sharing them in public. Cheers, Ferdinand edit: Okay, there it is again. Not exactly the same as yours but close. But I would still have to ask you to provide an example where this happens inside a valid async dialog implementation (with a command or a similar owner). It is not out of question that there is a bug but we still need a non-hacky example. [image: 1752856082257-df89038f-124d-434f-8cde-3442bd9aebba-image.png]

And just to be clear, using a modal dialog, e.g., DLG_TYPE_MODAL, is absolutely fine in a script manager script. Because then the GeDialog.Open call will only return when the dialog is closed (and you therefore do not have to keep the dialog alive). The hack I showed above is only needed when you need one of the async dialog types in a script manager script for testing purposes.

@ferdinand Thank you very much for your response and suggestions. I’ll make sure to follow best practices and provide a minimal, testable code sample when posting questions in the future. I’ll also give embedding a group a try. Thanks again for your support!

Thanks Ferdinand - Up and running again!

Hey, your second code snippet never sets self._result. Regarding loading vs. cloning documents: That I did it how I did it was no accident, but that does not necessarily mean that cloning things is bad. C4DAtom::GetClone is implemented in the different scene elements independently; i.e., BaseObject::GetClone, BaseDocument::GetClone, BaseTag::GetClone, etc. and C4DAtom::GetClone is just the empty implementation. The different implementations then rely on C4DAtom::CopyTo to copy data from the reference into a new instance of that scene element type. On top of that comes that Cinema 4D is largely Copy-on-Write these days, with data actually only being copied when you try to modify it. This all explains why BaseDocument::GetClone is so inexplicably performant, it just copies the metadata and only copies the real payload of the scene when it has to. On top of that comes that cloning from the same document from multiple threads in parallel could entail read-access violations (although somewhat unlikely). On the other hand, our rendering pipeline does exactly the same, it clones documents for rendering (the cloning is however done on the main thread). I personally would say what you are doing is probably okay, but I would not write such code as example code. I would have to spend more time on this to figure out if this is absolutely safe. Doing the actual cloning off-main-thread seems risky though (but is probably also fine in 99,9% of the cases). Cheers, Ferdinand

Hey @lionlion44, Thank you for reaching out to us. We cannot provide support on third party libraries (Octane). But, yes, in general you are on the right track. We have this C++ example, which I loosely translated to Python. The thing to do which you are missing, is to check if such VP already exists, as you otherwise can land in a world of hurt. For everything else, you would have to talk with the Octane devs (of which some are here on this forum), if there are any special further steps to be taken for Octane. Cheers, Ferdinand """Provides an example for generically setting a render engine in Cinema 4D. Note that there is no guarantee that every render engine has a video post node, and when it has one, that it uses the same ID as the render engine. But it is highly conventional to implement a render engine like this. Derived from the C++ Example "Set Render Engine to Redshift": https://developers.maxon.net/docs/cpp/2023_2/page_manual_redshift_rendrer.html """ import c4d import mxutils doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument # The active Cinema 4D document. def SetRenderEngine(doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument, newEngineId: int, createsVideoPostNode: bool) -> bool: """Sets the render engine of the given document to the specified ID. """ # Make sure we are on the main thread, as we plan to modify the document and ensure that our # inputs are what we think they are. if not c4d.threading.GeIsMainThread(): raise RuntimeError("SetRenderEngine must be called from the main thread.") mxutils.CheckType(doc, c4d.documents.BaseDocument) mxutils.CheckType(newEngineId, int) mxutils.CheckType(createsVideoPostNode, bool) # Get the currently active render engine ID and get out if it matches the new one. renderData: c4d.documents.RenderData = doc.GetActiveRenderData() currentEngineId: int = renderData[c4d.RDATA_RENDERENGINE] if currentEngineId == newEngineId: print(f"Render engine {newEngineId} is already set, no changes made.") return True # Try to find a video post with the render engine ID. There is no absolute guarantee that every # render engine either has a video post node or that is gives it the same ID as the render # engine (but it is strongly conventional). if createsVideoPostNode: # Try to find an already existing video post node with the render engine ID. node: c4d.documents.BaseVideoPost | None = renderData.GetFirstVideoPost() while node: if node.GetType() == newEngineId: break node = node.GetNext() # There is no video post for the render engine, so we try to a new create one. if not node: try: node: c4d.documents.BaseVideoPost = c4d.documents.BaseVideoPost(newEngineId) renderData.InsertVideoPost(node) except Exception as e: raise RuntimeError(f"Failed to create video post node for render engine {newEngineId} ({e}).") # Finally, we set the render engine ID in the render data. renderData[c4d.RDATA_RENDERENGINE] = newEngineId return True def main() -> None: """Called by Cinema 4D to run the script. """ # Setting the standard render engine, here we do not have to create a video post node, since # the standard renderer is one of the rare cases that does not have a dedicated video post. SetRenderEngine(doc, newEngineId=c4d.RDATA_RENDERENGINE_STANDARD, createsVideoPostNode=False) # Set Redshift as the render engine, which does have a video post node. SetRenderEngine(doc, newEngineId=c4d.VPrsrenderer, createsVideoPostNode=True) # Push an update event. c4d.EventAdd() if __name__ == "__main__": main()

Hello @Kantronin, Thank you for reaching out to us. Your script does not work because it does not follow the conditions of MCOMMAND_JOIN. Joins the objects that are parented to the passed null object. Passing multiple objects into SMC will not join them. edit: Moved this into the correct forum and added a small example. Cheers, Ferdinand Here is how I would write that in modern Cinema 4D. I have seen that your screenshot is from an older version such as S26, or even older, but I cannot write code examples for such old versions. There are multiple things that wont work in such old version such as type hinting and the mxutils lib, but you will be able to copy the general approach - move everything under a null while preserving the transforms. Code """Demonstrates how to join all objects in a document. """ import c4d import mxutils 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. """ # There is no super good way to do this in the manner you implied, joining everything in a # document. I clone here the whole document, which is not the cheapest operation (but also # not as expensive as it may sound like). When we do not have to join everything, it is better # just to clone the things you want to join. En even better way could be to not clone anything # and instead use undos to revert the transform and hierarchy changes we have to make. temp: c4d.documents.BaseDocument = doc.GetClone(c4d.COPYFLAGS_NONE) firstObject: c4d.BaseObject | None = temp.GetFirstObject() if firstObject is None: c4d.gui.MessageDialog("No object selected.") return # Get all objects in the document, and move them under a null object. We must record and # restore their global matrices, when we deconstruct the scene and move it all under one null # object. allObjects: list[c4d.BaseObject] = list(mxutils.IterateTree(firstObject, True)) null: c4d.BaseObject = mxutils.CheckType(c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Onull)) for obj in allObjects: mg: c4d.Matrix = obj.GetMg() # save the transform of the object obj.Remove() # Technically not necessary in the Python API, as it will do it for you when # you call things like InsertUnderLast. But C++ will not do that and a node # cannot be inserted more than once in a document, otherwise the fireworks # will start. obj.InsertUnderLast(null) obj.SetMg(mg) # restore the transform of the object under the null # Insert the null object into the temporary document and then join all objects under it. temp.InsertObject(null) result: list[c4d.BaseObject] = c4d.utils.SendModelingCommand( command=c4d.MCOMMAND_JOIN, list=[null], doc=temp, mode=c4d.MODELINGCOMMANDMODE_ALL, ) if not result: c4d.gui.MessageDialog("Failed to join objects.") return # Now insert the joined object into the original document. joinedObject: c4d.BaseObject = result[0] joinedObject.SetName("Joined Object") joinedObject.Remove() doc.InsertObject(joinedObject) c4d.EventAdd() if __name__ == '__main__': main()

Works! Thank you!

@ferdinand Thanks for detailed explanation. Let me introduce the goals that the custom deformer plugin wants to achieve. (As can be seen from the cube, cube. 1, cube. 2... in the image, each object has a weight tag.) The custom deformer plugin needs to preprocess and store some data before the ModifyObjects () function works. (By clicking a button) Access the weight tag of each object to be deformed in Message (), preprocess and store some data, and then use the preprocessed data to execute the ModifyObjects () function to correctly process the deformation calculation. [image: 1751680146980-9c418a15-9d3c-4466-83c2-0481e7b67c69-image.png] In C4D, it seems that the Surface deformer has achieved a similar function [image: 1751680414378-5ef7303f-0ea2-4d3b-bed4-c342a755350c-image.png] (there are certain benefits to restricting the custom deformer plugin only to the parent level, as there is no need to spend effort on correctly linking the corresponding preprocessed data when the ModifyObjects () function works.But it did break the general logic operation of the deformer) The only way you could do that is by checking each deformed object being passed into , to be the parent of the also passed in (i.e., the deformer also simply accessible via ). Only for an which is the parent of would you then carry out the modification.

Could you provide an snipped where you show how to cache it in a plugin?

Hey, I now know how our API will look like in this regard in 2026.0.0. Its compile/runtime behaviour will be as for 2025.2.1 and before. And we will introduce a new flag NOHANDLEFOCUS which must be set when attaching the area when one explicitly wants to ignore focus events. So, you will not have to change your code when you were happy with your user area behaviour as it is has been. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hi @Tpaxep, 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: How to Ask Questions. About your First Question The tool has indeed been updated, but the docs were not. Here is how to call it. Note that you have to pass a polygon index, this is mandatory and it needs to be adjacent to one of the vertex to indicate a direction of the ring selection. Here is your script adapted, to be run on a sphere that was made editable. import c4d from c4d import utils def select_ring_edge(obj, v1Id, v2Id, polyId): bc = c4d.BaseContainer() bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SEL_STOP_AT_SELECTIONS, False) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SEL_STOP_AT_NON_QUADS, False) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SEL_STOP_AT_POLES, True) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_BOTH_SIDES, False) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SWAP_SIDES, False) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_FIRST_VERTEX, v1Id) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SECOND_VERTEX, v2Id) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_POLYGON_INDEX, polyId) bc.SetData(c4d.MDATA_RING_SELECTION, c4d.SELECTION_NEW) result = c4d.utils.SendModelingCommand( command=c4d.ID_MODELING_RING_TOOL, list=[obj], mode=c4d.MODELINGCOMMANDMODE_EDGESELECTION, bc=bc, doc=c4d.documents.GetActiveDocument(), flags=c4d.MODELINGCOMMANDFLAGS_NONE ) c4d.EventAdd() return result def main(): doc = c4d.documents.GetActiveDocument() obj = doc.GetActiveObject() if obj is None: c4d.gui.MessageDialog("select obj.") return firstVertex = 346 secondVertex = 347 polygonIndex = 312 result = select_ring_edge(obj, firstVertex, secondVertex, polygonIndex) if result: print("DONE") else: print("ERROR") if __name__ == '__main__': main() Note that the same settings also apply for the ID_MODELING_LOOP_TOOL, just modify RING by LOOP in the constant so MDATA_RING_SEL_STOP_AT_SELECTIONS become MDATA_LOOP_SEL_STOP_AT_SELECTIONS. Cheers, Maxime.

Ok? will do