Hey, please excuse the long delay. Please have a look at Support Procedures for future topics, we do not allow for multi-question topics, as they have a tendency to derail. Is there a supported way for a C++ plugin to continuously receive ordered mouse movement events during a keyboard-initiated modal operation, without any mouse button held down? Yes, there are multiple ways to do this. I cannot highlight each way in all details due to the broad nature of this question and topic. Some ways are: Implement SceneHookData and implement ::MouseInput, ::KeyboardInput etc. Scene hooks are sort of spider in the net node types which exist always exactly once in each document. They are often used to do command and control tasks. Things like render regions or the simulation system in Cinema are all backed by scene hooks. Implement a GeDialog, start a timer via GeDialog::SetTimer and on each tick, poll the current input state yourself via GetInputState (the current state) or GetInputEvent (the last enqueued input event, could lie in the past). Implement a thread or job, and poll from there on each tick. Can EditorWindow::BfGetInputEvent() be used for this purpose? EditorWindow::BfGetInputEvent() just like GeDialog::GetInputEvent and similar methods is a specialization of the generic cinema::GetInputEvent. It is often better to use the global functions rather than the specific ones, unless one wants to filter out all events that do not go to a specific viewport or dialog. As hinted at above, you often also want to poll for the state and not for events, as they can be consumed (the user is still holding down "X" but something has already consumed this event) and temporally offset (the user is not pressing x anymore, but the event is still last in queue). Does calling BfGetInputEvent() remove events from the queue ... I would quite frankly have to check this, and this is probably not an easy "look it up in file foo.c on line 4555". Without checking, I would say that the InputEvent methods do not consume the events, as there is no way to signal back that you have consumed an event. The canonical way to consume events are plugin methods such as the scene hook methods discussed above, or similar methods of other plugin types. There you can then return true ore false to indicate if you want to consume an event or not. If BfGetInputEvent() is not suitable, which API or callback mechanism would Maxon recommend for this type of keyboard-initiated continuous viewport interaction? Are there specific thread, window ownership, or lifecycle restrictions? This is exactly why we disallow multi question topics I could write an essay alone on this because while this is a precise question it covers so much ground. In general, you should avoid polling the input state off main thread if you can. The input methods are not explicitly thread-unsafe but I would still avoid it. The reason is that the plugin type specific methods which are about inputs, such as SceneHookData::MouseInput, ObjectData::MoveHandle, or ToolData::KeyboardInput usually run on the MT. I would advise the against polling inputs in heavily parallelized methods such as SceneHookData::Execute, ObjectData::GetVirtualsObjects, TagData::Execute. While it might not provoke crashes, it is for sure not good for performance. Polling for the input in your own custom thread spawned from the MT is fine. But you usually do not have to use threading, there should be a plugin interface with input methods which fits your needs. And when the plugin interface you use does not have an input polling function, e.g., you implement a tag, it means that you should not poll for inputs there and use another plugin type or rethink your whole design. You could for sure make it technically work that a tag behaves differently depending on the key(s) the user presses, but from a Maxon point of view, this would be a rogue UX. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hey, sorry for the delay. I checked and it is not possible to have arbitrary node systems, i.e., node systems that are neither scene nor material nodes. In the backed of things, you actually have almost all you need, so you could implement a node system that outputs sound files for example. One of the major hurdles is that this menu is hard-coded at the moment: [image: 1793790825815-b6453bab-c4e5-4ea3-9273-eb76465a7257-image.png] So, there is no way to display your node system of a custom node space purpose type. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hello @mogh, please excuse the delay. Without your plugin this is not easy to answer. Your GetState looks okayish to me, the GetActiveObjects and c4d_progressbar (I assume this is a helper for our status bar methods) calls are not great as GetState can be called quite often, but I would not expect this to be a huge bottleneck unless the scene is really large (GetActiveObjects implies traversing the scene). The Message function however is not great. You free there without any safe guard (except for the document mode condition) your tool. Not only would the tool freeing then happen under a random message context, freeing a tool is also something that you can only do on the main thread (see the all new Scene Execution manual), as something could still work under the assumption that this tool is active. So, you would at least also have to add a main thread check there. But even then I would consider this not great code, as this is a bit awkward place to free a tool. Both methods do not look essential to the operation of a plugin. Did you try to remove code or methods to see what exactly makes it slow? Your second code listing looks much less rogue. As a tip I would still add an GeIsMainThreadAndNoDrawThread to your MSG_DOCUMENT_MODE_CHANGED condition. It is very likely that this message is only sent on the MT, but there can always be rogue plugins (or bad Maxon code) which violate such assumptions. Cheers, Ferdinand

btw, same on windows

Hey @Dimitris_Derm., The example py_msc_licensing shows you how to change the icon of a node at runtime. The example uses this to change the icon of unlicensed nodes and the trick is to listen for the message MSG_GETCUSTOMICON. The example py_obj_assetcontainer shows you how to place icons in cycles (Cinema slang for drop downs). The trick is to set the label of the cycle item to "{Label}&i{IconID}&", e.g., "Cube&i5159&" would display the cube icon next to the word "Cube", because 5159 is the cube object icon id. You can do this both in resource files and dynamically as the example does it. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hi @ferdinand , Yes, I do need the dimension overlay to coexist with another active tool. The plugin is mainly intended to help adjust objects to realistic dimensions and proportions. When precise dimensions are not required, the overlay helps me quickly resize and place objects in the scene. Once that is done, I can turn off the dimension overlay. The plugin can be enabled or disabled directly and includes some settings, with usage similar to the Symmetry tool. Inactive objects do not display dimension information, and grouped objects are measured as a whole, so the viewport does not become a sea of dimension annotations . Cheers, Anlv

Hello @hey2495, Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us! Getting Started Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules. Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment. Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support. Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads. It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: How to Ask Questions. About your First Question I would try closing the file into which you imported the Alembic file. I just checked it, when I import any Alembic file, Cinema holds a lock onto it while the file into which you imported is still open. That seems to be an Alembic specific behaviour, not to say a bug. But it should be avoidable by simply cloning or merging the imported document, so that you can close the import document. I will give the exchange team a heads up on this. Cheers, Ferdinand

Man this saved me so much time too. Thank you.

First of all, you should open new topics for new questions, as one otherwise tends to derail old topics, which makes it hard to for others to follow things later. I forked your topic. And I also do not quite understand what your question is. GetClosestMeshPrimitive returns you the primitive type via primInfo. When you only want to get the closest point on a mesh, I would build a KD-Tree for its vertices. You then get the closest vertex and its index for your point p. Then you orthogonally project p onto the polygons attached to that vertex (via cinema:: Neighbor). Then you chose the closest point. We have this Python example for KDTree and I also used Neighbor there. Building a KD-tree or just brute forcing it depends a bit on how often you want to do it. For just a handful of points, brute forcing it is usually faster. I am sure you can also do this with DistanceQueryInterface and the uvw coordinate returned in the PrimitiveInformation, but all that extra work where you have to deal with all the primitive types seems like more work than it is worth. And when you want to do this in a generator (by the looks of your screens), using a manual KDTree approach will make it easier to parallelize it effectively and make it go zoom zoom instead of computing all that extra data. Cheers, Ferdinand

Thank you all for your answers. Will test this.

Thank you @ferdinand for looking into this, as well as bumping the request to the RS developers. Any update on this would be appreciated! Thanks.

Hey, yes it is. The trick is c4d.LV_CHECKBOX_HIDE, the relevant bits happen in GetDropDownMenu. Cheers, Ferdinand I removed the command, you can directly run this in the script manager: import c4d PLUGIN_ID = 12345678 PLUGIN_NAME = "ListView Dropdown Prototype" ID_TREE_VIEW = 1000 ID_FILE_NAME = 1001 ID_IMPORT_OPTION = 1002 ID_IMPORT_OPTION_DEFAULT = 1100 ID_IMPORT_OPTION_HIGH = 1101 ID_IMPORT_OPTION_MEDIUM = 1102 ID_IMPORT_OPTION_LOW = 1103 dummyfile_list = ["hud.stp", "material_reference.wrl", "front_axle.stp", "body.wrl", "wheel_variant.stp"] class DummyFile: def __init__(self, file_name, import_option="Default"): self.file_name = file_name self.import_option = import_option class DummyFileListView(c4d.gui.TreeViewFunctions): def __init__(self, dialog): self.dialog = dialog self.files = [DummyFile(file_name) for file_name in dummyfile_list] def GetFirst(self, root, userdata): return self.files[0] if self.files else None def GetNext(self, root, userdata, dummy_file): current_index = self.files.index(dummy_file) next_index = current_index + 1 return self.files[next_index] if next_index < len(self.files) else None def GetDown(self, root, userdata, dummy_file): return None def GetId(self, root, userdata, dummy_file): return id(dummy_file) def GetName(self, root, userdata, dummy_file): return dummy_file.file_name def IsSelected(self, root, userdata, dummy_file): return False def GetColumnWidth(self, root, userdata, dummy_file, column_id, area): if column_id == ID_FILE_NAME: return area.DrawGetTextWidth(dummy_file.file_name) + 24 if column_id == ID_IMPORT_OPTION: return 120 return 96 def GetDropDownMenu(self, root, userdata, dummy_file, column_id, menu_info): if column_id != ID_IMPORT_OPTION: menu_info["state"] = c4d.LV_CHECKBOX_HIDE return if not dummy_file.file_name.lower().endswith(".stp"): menu_info["state"] = c4d.LV_CHECKBOX_HIDE return options = { ID_IMPORT_OPTION_DEFAULT: "Default", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_HIGH: "High", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_MEDIUM: "Medium", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_LOW: "Low", } for option_id, label in options.items(): menu_info["menu"].SetString(option_id, label) menu_info["entry"] = next( option_id for option_id, label in options.items() if label == dummy_file.import_option ) menu_info["state"] = c4d.LV_CHECKBOX_ENABLED def SetDropDownMenu(self, root, userdata, dummy_file, column_id, entry): if column_id != ID_IMPORT_OPTION: return #this is logical but does not do the trick .... if not dummy_file.file_name.lower().endswith(".stp"): return options = { ID_IMPORT_OPTION_DEFAULT: "Default", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_HIGH: "High", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_MEDIUM: "Medium", ID_IMPORT_OPTION_LOW: "Low", } dummy_file.import_option = options.get(entry, dummy_file.import_option) self.dialog.tree_view.Refresh() class ListViewDropdownDialog(c4d.gui.GeDialog): def __init__(self): self.tree_view = None self.file_list_view = DummyFileListView(self) def CreateLayout(self): self.SetTitle(PLUGIN_NAME) tree_view_settings = c4d.BaseContainer() tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_BORDER, c4d.BORDER_THIN_IN) tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_HAS_HEADER, True) tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_HIDE_LINES, True) tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_RESIZE_HEADER, True) tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_FIXED_LAYOUT, True) tree_view_settings.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_ALTERNATE_BG, True) if c4d.GetC4DVersion() >= 24000: tree_view_settings.SetInt32(c4d.TREEVIEW_VERTICAL_SPACE, 4) self.tree_view = self.AddCustomGui(ID_TREE_VIEW, c4d.CUSTOMGUI_TREEVIEW, "", c4d.BFH_SCALEFIT | c4d.BFV_SCALEFIT, 500, 220, tree_view_settings, ) if not self.tree_view: return False layout = c4d.BaseContainer() layout.SetLong(ID_FILE_NAME, c4d.LV_TREE) layout.SetLong(ID_IMPORT_OPTION, c4d.LV_DROPDOWN) self.tree_view.SetLayout(2, layout) self.tree_view.SetHeaderText(ID_FILE_NAME, "Dummy file") self.tree_view.SetHeaderText(ID_IMPORT_OPTION, "STP import option") self.tree_view.SetRoot(self.tree_view, self.file_list_view, None) return True def InitValues(self): self.tree_view.Refresh() return True if __name__ == "__main__": dialog = ListViewDropdownDialog() dialog.Open(c4d.DLG_TYPE_MODAL, 0, -1, -1, 500, 220)

You likely have to call UpdateOcioColorSpaces, just follow the example. There is btw no guarantee at all that DOCUMENT_COLOR_MANAGEMENT entails a render space of ACEScg. That is just the default, the user could have changed that. I am also not sure what all that RDATA_IMAGECOLORPROFILE code is meant to do. It depends a bit on what your plugin does and what self.IsForceLinear is meant to express. Only so much: An OCIO document does not necessarily entail a bitmap with a non-linear color profile, and OCIO also does not mean that the bitmap has to be 32bit. You are however missing UNDOTYPE_PRIVATE_DOCUMENTDATA undo management for setting the color management.

@ferdinand Okay, I will handle the plugins and files at an appropriate time.Thanks reply

@ferdinand Thanks for your detailed explanation. Although the precision conversion leading to value changes is not an error, it is indeed not what we want in terms of the results. For example, when dealing with the weight of some points, using SetWeightMap() will update the weights of other points, resulting in numerical changes. Only using SetWeight() can at least ensure that the weights of unoperated points do not undergo numerical changes (but using SetWeight() must tolerate the print warnings outputted by the console)

Hi, @ferdinand and @Anlv this is most awesome! All way beyond my capablities so thanks a lot for the scripts!

@ferdinand Thanks for your detailed explanation and the implementation of the sorting function. It's very helpful！

Thanks Anlv It looks like its adding the emitter into a null is what's causing it. Fixed with deferred CallCommand(1062577) (no sub-id (1067510) silently no-ops). Emitter fields greys if the emitter/group are parented under the setup null or generator. Sibling placement below plugin object + rename works fine.

What I meant was to use the Cineware Unreal bindings, but I am not sure if they support it. Going the export route is a big backwards when Cinema has specific bindings. https://www.maxon.net/en/cineware I will give the Unreal dev a bump when I see him again.