Dear Development Community,
As we continue to work to provide customers with industry-leading 3D solutions, Maxon will make significant changes to the API of Cinema 4D in its next major release.
This does not only include the feature additions and minor technical changes you might be accustomed to from past API releases, but also substantial changes to existing parts of the API. These changes are of technical nature and revolve around the const-correctness of the API. Primarily affected are the plugin hooks derived from NodeData and its derived interfaces in the cinema framework.
The Python API is not impacted by these changes as they do not translate into the mutable world of Python.
All developers who wish to publish their C++ plugins for this future version of Cinema 4D must make significant changes to their C++ code for it to compile. One should expect two to five times the normal workload of updating one’s plugins compared to a regular ABI breaking release such as 2023.0.0. We encourage all C++ developers with published plugins who wish to adopt their plugins early to apply for the Maxon Registered Developer (MRD) program, granting early access to future APIs and development pre-documentation. There will be no information exclusivity associated with the MRD program; non-enrolled developers will receive the same information as enrolled developers once the new API has been released.
We understand the difficulty in maintaining compatibility as we continue to make ongoing adjustments to the SDK to improve Cinema 4D and wish to assure our customers and development community that these changes are necessary and valuable. Thanks for continuing to enhance the Cinema 4D community.
Happy coding and rendering,
the Maxon SDK Group
