TriState Manual

About

In Cinema 4D it is possible to select multiple scene elements at once. The Attribute Manager displays the parameters of all these selected objects. Only the parameters that are part of all selected objects are displayed. If the value of a given parameter is the same for all selected objects, this value is displayed in the Attribute Manager. But if the value of the parameter on the different objects is not the same a tristate is displayed instead, indicating that the values are not the same.

TriState is a utility class to make it easy to handle multiple parameter values and to display them using GeDialog gadgets. The TriState template class can handle Bool, Int32, Float, Vector, BaseTime and String values. Typically the TriState class is only relevant to create CustomGuiData / iCustomGui based custom GUI elements.

Note
TriState elements are only handled with GeDialog gadgets. Parameter descriptions (Description elements) define the parameters of a C4DAtom based element and do not handle any TriState.
// This example gets the names of all selected objects in a GeDialog::InitValues() function.
// The object names are stored in a TriState object.
// This TriState object is used to display the names with a text field element.
// check if both the BaseDocument and the AtomArray are available
if (doc && objects)
{
// get selected objects
doc->GetActiveObjects(objects, GETACTIVEOBJECTFLAGS::NONE);
// store all names in the TriState object
TriState<String> triState;
const Int32 count = objects->GetCount();
for (Int32 i = 0; i < count; ++i)
{
// get name
const BaseList2D* const bl = static_cast<BaseList2D*>(objects->GetIndex(i));
if (bl)
{
const String name = bl->GetName();
// store
triState.Add(name);
}
}
// the text field should display the value(s) stored in the TriState
// if the string values are not the same the GUI element will display "Multiple Values"
SetString(ID_OBJECTNAME, triState);
}
Py_ssize_t i
Definition: abstract.h:645
Py_ssize_t count
Definition: abstract.h:640
const char const char * name
Definition: abstract.h:195
BaseDocument * GetActiveDocument(void)
Definition: ge_autoptr.h:37
Definition: c4d_basedocument.h:498
Definition: c4d_baselist.h:2190
String GetName() const
Definition: c4d_baselist.h:2363
Definition: c4d_string.h:39
Definition: c4d_gui.h:946
void Add(const TYPE &val)
Definition: c4d_gui.h:992
maxon::Int32 Int32
Definition: ge_sys_math.h:60
const char * doc
Definition: pyerrors.h:226

Functionality

A TriState object stores multiple values:

The stored values can be accessed and analysed with:

// This example configures and uses a TriState object.
TriState<Int32> triState;
triState.Add(100);
triState.Add(100);
// check if the TriState is not empty and if all values are the same
const Bool isNotTriState = triState.GetTri() == false;
if (triState.HasChanged() && isNotTriState)
ApplicationOutput("Everything is the same");
// add a different value
triState.Add(200);
// check again
if (triState.GetTri())
{
ApplicationOutput("now tristate"_s);
const Int32 value = triState.GetValue();
}
PyObject * value
Definition: abstract.h:715
static String IntToString(Int32 v)
Definition: c4d_string.h:495
Bool GetTri() const
Definition: c4d_gui.h:968
const TYPE & GetValue() const
Definition: c4d_gui.h:980
Bool HasChanged() const
Definition: c4d_gui.h:986
maxon::Bool Bool
Definition: ge_sys_math.h:55
#define ApplicationOutput(formatString,...)
Definition: debugdiagnostics.h:210

Further Reading