Plugin Migration

Plugins that were written and build with older versions of the Cinema 4D C++ SDK (R19 or older) will not work in Cinema 4D R20. It is needed to adapt the plugin source code and re-compile the plugins for use with Cinema 4D R20.

The first steps are:

  1. Get the Project Tool from developers.maxon.net.
  2. Unzip the sdk.zip file that is part of the Cinema 4D installation.
  3. Run the Project Tool to create the needed project files.
  4. Open the "project" solution and build the example projects.
  5. Create a new plugin project, see Getting Started: Introduction.
  6. Configure the projectdefinition.txt to disable code style checks. See Stylecheck.
  7. Run the Project Tool to create the needed project files.
  8. Open the "project" solution to edit your source code.

The typical tasks needed to adapt existing code are:

  • The names of language folders must be updated. See Plugin Resources.
  • "include" statements may have to be added or removed.
  • The global resource instance must be renamed to g_resource.
  • The structure of enumeration values must be adapted.
  • "Classic" data types must be replaced with new MAXON API data types.
  • Error objects returned by functions must be handled.
  • Member functions must be adapted to a new naming scheme.
Note
When migrating a pre-R20 plugin, besides the changes needed in the code, both the Visual Studio and Xcode project files should also be re-created from scratch. Beware of using pre-R20 IDE project files to build R20 plugins. Instead, as pointed out above, create a new plugin project and use the Project Tool to create the new IDE project files.

More information can be found here: