we’ve had great response to the recent introduction of subscription pricing for Maxon products, and are excited to be welcoming lots of new users (and potential customers for you) to the Cinema 4D community!

The Maxon Registered Developer (MRD) program helps to ensure that you’re informed as we continue to improve Cinema 4D and the Maxon ecosystem. The program began almost 2 years ago to ensure 3^rd-party plugin vendors and independent developers are informed about new releases and API updates. The program provides early access to updates to secure plug-in compatibility. We are looking forward to continuing to partner with you to further develop the ecosystem around Maxon products.

To apply for basic membership to the program, nothing has changed: sending an email to us is enough – we’ll send quarterly emails with the latest news, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

For full membership (including beta releases and beta discussions) you need to sign an NDA and own either the most recent Cinema 4D perpetual release or, since the release of R21, an active annual Maxon subscription including Cinema 4D.

Since we reserve the right to decide on received registrations individually, kindly include in your request a proof of your Cinema 4D (or related) development efforts. In addition we might provide, at our sole discretion, time-limited subscriptions to developers we think could bring a significant contribution to the Cinema 4D ecosystem.

Please note that total access membership will automatically expire on 1^st of June and 1^st of December each year, and all developers are asked to re-apply at least one week before expiration to avoid any service interruption. Basic newsletter membership never expires unless you unsubscribe.

Regardless of your registered developer status, we look forward to providing the best support possible at developers.maxon.net and to working closely with you to build the Maxon ecosystem!

Looking forward to your registrations,
MAXON’s SDK Team

Cinema 4D R21 HF1 Released

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Riccardo Gigante

MAXON released hot-fix 1 (RC HF1, version 21.026) for Cinema 4D R21.

In parallel, we updated the SDK documentation for C++ and Python.

C++:

Python:

Recommendations for Building Cinema 4D R21 C++ Plugins

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Sebastian Bach

Changes introduced with Cinema 4D R21 make it necessary to recompile C++ plugins.

The MSVC settings of the R21 SDK enable support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) by default. Clients, that do not support this instruction set, cannot load the created plugin binaries.

The AVX settings are defined in the frameworks\settings\Base.props file. To disable AVX support, simply remove the line

<EnableEnhancedInstructionSet>AdvancedVectorExtensions</EnableEnhancedInstructionSet>

On macOS, it is advised to enable the legacy build system when using Xcode 10.1+. The legacy build system is enabled under “File” / “Project Settings” / “Section Shared Project Settings/Build System” / “Legacy Build System”.

Getting Started

Hi,
first time around?

Pick the right API for the right job

The very first thing you will need to do is choose which API will suit your needs.

Cinema 4D has… three APIs, the first two may be used to add functionality and are part of the product’s distribution:

C++
The C++ SDK is what is used internally by the development team to write all our product’s functionalities. It is robust reliable and the obvious choice for commercial plugins. The C++ SDK offers the most extended capabilities of all APIs. Yet, if you are new in software development the learning curve may be a bit too steep. Then you probably want to have a look at the scripting languages.
Python
Python is a scripting languages. It is a good choice for TDs, easier, more flexible to use than the C++ API, but the feature set exposed is a bit less extended. In general Python provides the means for very rapid development. On the other hand your sources are harder to protect in Python, your algorithms are easily exposed to all for reading.
Cineware
Cineware is a bit different, as it provides means to exchange data with the “outside world”. It can be downloaded on this site.

Find information

All APIs have their own documentation which can be downloaded from this website. That documentation contains two things: articles explaining concepts and a functional documentation of the header files. The later is generated directly from our sources and is written by our development team. We publish relevant articles on our plugin development blog. These articles eventually find their way into the API documentation.

The first place to look is on your chosen API’s page. We will explain how to setup your development environment and get results fast.

Find help

We all need help once in a while. For this we have the Plugin Café forum where all are invited to ask questions and provide answers. Our support engineers will do their best to provide a solution to your problem.