Dear Community,
With upcoming internal changes, all support for the C.O.F.F.E.E. programming language will be removed with the next major release of Cinema 4D. No more C.O.F.F.E.E. plug-ins and no C.O.F.F.E.E. scripting within scenes (C.O.F.F.E.E. Scripting Tag, XPresso C.O.F.F.E.E. Scripting Node, MoGraph C.O.F.F.E.E. Effector, Interaction Tag) will be supported. For all these, a Python alternative will be available. Plug-ins or scripts written in C.O.F.F.E.E. will need to be ported to either Python or C++ in order to make further use of them.
We are aware that this decision may be quite irritating for some. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Sometimes you need to break with the past in order to approach a bright future.
Rest assured, we (MAXON’s SDK Team) will do our best to help you use Cinema’s Python and C++ SDKs. We will release a small plug-in at MAXON Labs in the not too distant future, which can be used to inspect scenes and detect any use of C.O.F.F.E.E. Future versions of Cinema 4D will also warn the user when a scene containing C.O.F.F.E.E. is loaded. In such cases (at the minimum) the next version of Cinema 4D will still show the C.O.F.F.E.E. source code in C.O.F.F.E.E. Scripting Tag, XPresso C.O.F.F.E.E. Scripting Node, MoGraph C.O.F.F.E.E. Effector and Interaction Tag but the code will not be executed anymore. This way it is still possible to port the code, even though C.O.F.F.E.E. was already removed.
Cheers,
MAXON’s SDK Team
Wait?? You’re removing the node based XPresso? When the entire world is picking up Blueprint? Code based C.O.F.F.E.E I can understand, because Python is better, but the node based scripting? That would be a very bad move. At least replace that with, a python based one.
No, XPresso will not be removed. And I really hope, the above announcement doesn’t suggest anything in that direction. Just the C.O.F.F.E.E. scripting node inside of XPresso will be removed, as it doesn’t have much use without C.O.F.F.E.E.
OK, but having a node based language part is really quite powerful. So I was quite surprised by this.. Because I use node editing with tools like UE4 & Unity all the time. So please excuse if I came across as over reacting 🙂 But it did come across as going in the very opposite direction. If you know what I mean?
COFFEE is kind of outdated, it’s a specific language. Why lost time to support it when everyone already know python? (Since python is the main VFX scripting language)
And you can still code in python inside c4d/xpresso/mograph so for me it’s a good news ! Less time spend on things that can’t compete with python mean less time lost for others features !
Python isn’t in itself node based, which was kind of the point. Nodes give a whole other level of productivity (not to mention there are people who are afraid of coding, but have no problems using nodes (Which is actually interesting)) So what I’m saying is that if they get rid of the C.O.F.F.E.E based code nodes, then why not replace it with a Python based version?
I think, we have a misunderstanding here.
As written in above announcement: “For all these, a Python alternative will be available.”
It is only C.O.F.F.E.E. language being removed for scripting and programming. Also C.O.F.F.E.E. itself has nothing to do with any node based workflow. The only relation between C.O.F.F.E.E. and XPresso is the C.O.F.F.E.E. scripting node. A Python scripting node is available in XPresso as well (already, not only with the next release).
So again: C.O.F.F.E.E. will be removed, but for every place you could use C.O.F.F.E.E. in, there is already a Python alternative available today.
@ANDREAS BLOCK: Hmm, it would seem so 🙂 Well, I’ll happily stand corrected then.
System presets -> Action Timer, Soft Target, Target and etc., based on C.O.F.F.E.E.. Will these nodes be rewritten ?
Yes, there will be replacements.
Some of the old nodes in System presets, contain errors or are working incorrectly.
Yes, quite a bunch of bugs have been fixed, while implementing the new nodes. Some speed improvements to look forward to as well.
where can I send suggestions for Xpresso improvement ?
For suggestions it’s best to use the form on our main website: https://www.maxon.net/en/support/suggestions/
@Michael You are really heavy by concept, aren´t you, man man.
How about cinema 4d lite. coffee was the only choice to write scripts there. I dont do that now but i had plans to develop some rigs for after effects users. Bat news. I hope maxon will integrate python scripting in lite version instead
Hi Rodion, thanks for the comment. I’ll forward your suggestion to our Product Management for further assessment.
Cheers, Riccardo
In other words, that hundreds of scripts in COFFEE can already be thrown away? Wonderful.