Hi @RyanTheDev,

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: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

Please elaborate on your question, there's no good reference or solution you can get without providing the context. What is a "custom file type"? do you mean you've implemented BaseSceneLoader plugin? When you try to open dialog? Is it happening on main thread? What's the code that does this? What does it mean "keeps failing" - does it give you error instead?

You can also have a look at SCENEFILTER::DIALOGSALLOWED flag, if it's applicable in your case.

Cheers,
Ilia

Hi @baca,

The expected workflow to achieve syntax highlighting in VSCode is using our C4D Connector Extension for VSCode. Please note, for syntax highlighting to work your VSCode need to be opened within some workspace (e.g. when you do "Open folder" in VSCode).

The approach from the c4dpy manual should still be working and the error you're sharing looks like command

"/Applications/Maxon Cinema 4D 2025/c4dpy.app/Contents/MacOS/c4dpy" -I

did not make an output that's expected by the VSCode. Please use the extension approach instead.

Cheers,
Ilia

Hi @Gemini,

please excuse the delayed answer.

It's hard to understand what exactly you're asking about.

If you want to create custom menu, please check the following threads:
Building menus with C4DPL_BUILDMENU in S26+
How to add "scripts" to a menu?

If your question is anyhow related to loading plugins from custom location, please check the g_additionalModulePath argument. Related discussion was in the following thread:
how to program plugins with python?

Otherwise, please give a more detailed description of what specifically you're trying to achieve.

Cheers,
Ilia

@Dunhou It seems corect! Well done.

@ferdinand Okay I will do it in the future. Thanks for the code snippet, always helps to learn!

Hi @llealloo,

please excuse the delayed answers.

To the best of my knowledge in the near future there're no plans for integrating usd python bindings into c4d python system.

By the way, with the 2025.0 release internal usd library was properly updated to OpenUSD 24.08, so we expect the double loading usd issue to be solved under OSX.

Cheers,
Ilia

I tried using a timer to solve this problem, but I still want to know if there is a more direct way

import c4d import threading from c4d.gui import GeUserArea, GeDialog GADGET_ID_GEUSERAREA = 10000 class DropArea(GeUserArea): def __init__(self): # Used to store all objects involved in the drag-and-drop operation self.currentDragObjects = [] # Flag to indicate whether a drag operation is in progress self.isDragging = False # Define a timer to delay the handling of the drag completion self.dragTimer = None def Message(self, msg, result): # Handle drag-and-drop messages if msg.GetId() == c4d.BFM_DRAGRECEIVE: # Check if the drag was lost or canceled if msg.GetInt32(c4d.BFM_DRAG_LOST) or msg.GetInt32(c4d.BFM_DRAG_ESC): self.isDragging = False return self.SetDragDestination(c4d.MOUSE_FORBIDDEN) # If the drag just started, clear the previous object list if not self.isDragging: self.currentDragObjects = [] # Initialize the storage list self.isDragging = True # Mark the beginning of the drag # Verify if it is a valid drop area if not self.CheckDropArea(msg, True, True): return self.SetDragDestination(c4d.MOUSE_FORBIDDEN) # Get the dragged file object dragInfo = self.GetDragObject(msg) if dragInfo is not None: dragObject = dragInfo['object'] # Check if the object already exists in the list to avoid duplicates if dragObject not in self.currentDragObjects: self.currentDragObjects.append(dragObject) # Reset the timer to delay the handling of drag completion if self.dragTimer is not None: self.dragTimer.cancel() # Set a short timer (e.g., 0.2 seconds) to determine if the drag operation is complete self.dragTimer = threading.Timer(0.2, self._finalize_drag) self.dragTimer.start() # Set the mouse cursor to a valid state return self.SetDragDestination(c4d.MOUSE_MOVE) # Call the base class Message() method to handle other messages return c4d.gui.GeUserArea.Message(self, msg, result) def _finalize_drag(self): # Delayed execution to ensure all dragged objects have been received self.isDragging = False if self.currentDragObjects: # Print all dropped files print(f"Dropped files: {self.currentDragObjects}") # Additional logic can be executed here, e.g., handling file paths or other content # Clear the object list for the next drag-and-drop operation self.currentDragObjects = [] # Redraw the user area (if UI update is needed) self.Redraw() class ExampleDialog(GeDialog): geUserArea = DropArea() def CreateLayout(self): self.SetTitle("Drag Area") if self.GroupBegin(0, c4d.BFH_SCALEFIT | c4d.BFV_SCALEFIT, cols=1, rows=0, title="", groupflags=0, initw=100, inith=100): self.GroupBorderSpace(8, 8, 8, 8) self.GroupSpace(2, 2) # Add the user area gadget self.AddUserArea(GADGET_ID_GEUSERAREA, c4d.BFH_SCALEFIT | c4d.BFV_SCALEFIT, 200, 200) # Attach the user area to the gadget self.AttachUserArea(self.geUserArea, GADGET_ID_GEUSERAREA) self.GroupEnd() return True if __name__ == "__main__": global dlg dlg = ExampleDialog() dlg.Open(dlgtype=c4d.DLG_TYPE_ASYNC, defaultw=200, defaulth=200)

Hey @MMayrh,

Thank you for reaching out to us. This is not how this parameter works. The parameter DOCUMENT_PREVIEW_IMAGE is of data type BitmapButtonStruct, not of BaseBitmap.

54c636b2-05c8-4e3a-af41-9edf7e80bd24-image.png

The documentation is a bit misleading here. This is not the document preview bitmap, but sort of the preview bitmap delegate. I.e., an entity that is used to retrieve a preview bitmap (for a document in this case). A BitmapButtonStruct wraps a node, an ID, and a dirty flag.

3e4681a7-7db6-45b7-a1da-5279cc028cf2-image.png

This parameter does not make too much sense in the Python API, here is what the C++ API does when the parameter is access for a document:

459e7ff6-a8fe-4abf-ae35-adc803c17170-image.png

I.e., it returns itself (the doc), the ID of the parameter (DOCUMENT_PREVIEW_IMAGE) and the dirty state of its internal current preview bitmap as the BitmapButtonStruct bbs. What you could technically try, is implement a node, e.g., an object, and then set that object as the preview provider for a document. Your node would for that have to implement MSG_DESCRIPTION_GETBITMAP, because that is what effectively will be called. But that is all very theoretical, DOCUMENT_PREVIEW_IMAGE is largely unused in our code base, and I do not see any implemnation for the SetParameter part. So, the document will likely just ignore you trying to overwrite its preview provider. There could be some base implemenation kicking in, but I doubt it.

But what you definitely cannot do, is just set there a bitmap to overwrite the preview image of the document (assuming that was what you wanted to do). That would also not make too much sense since a document is constantly recalculating its preview image. So, on the next update that image would be gone (if it would work like that).

Cheers,
Ferdinand

Yes, we will treat it as a bug. Apparently we implemented it, but then someone disabled the implementation (probably because it caused performance issues or something like that), and then we forgot do follow up on that disabled implementation. Generally we cannot give ETA's for fixes but we try to do them in a timely fashion, i.e., within a couple of minor releases such as 2024.1, 2024.2, 2024.3, etc. I am not the dev here, so I can give even less guarantees. We will update this thread when something blocks us from fixing this in the near future.

And yes, it does work in C++. The reason why this is not working in Python is because of the C++ API changes with 2024.0. This link shows how you sample things in C++, the changes revolved around making sampling a field a const operation, i.e., an operation which does not change data on the object. Which was before not the case and now requires that mutable data to be manually passed arround as the extraData as shown in the example. The changes were carried out to speed up the core of Cinema 4D.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

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. Therefor I moved your topic to the General Talk which is the place to make request to the community. While Cinema 4D SDK board is purely about development questions.

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: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

There is no such plugins (at least that I'm aware) in Cinema 4D, however you may be able to find issue in your mesh via the Mesh Checking features available in the Mode of the Attribute Manager.

1d38a2e5-3304-415b-803b-bf6859b55c34-image.png

I let the community answers regarding your request in case a developer have done a plugins that may fit your needs.
Cheers,
Maxime.

@ferdinand Thank you very much for your reply

Hey @Gregor-M,

Thank you for reaching out to us. As a general note: Generally you should not continue such old threads, as this is usually counter productive. But in this case this is fine, since your question is just a repetition of the OT's question.

I currently do not have that much time, but the issue is related to OCIO. At least that was the case in the past. A BaseBitmap carries color profiles for the principal OCIO color spaces such as 'Display' or 'View Transform'. RenderDocument did not correctly setup these profiles, or more precisely something with copying over these profiles to the final result went wrong. But that should have been fixed, but the recent OCIO changes might have introduced a regression. There is not much what you can do and I will earliest have time next week.

I had a quick look, and when you enable "Scene" as the configuration, the bitmap will look just like the native one. That is because it will then use the display space and view transform of the scene and not the ones attached to the bitmap (so this indeed seems to be the old issue).
8f701195-a918-4c84-a829-59a12cf65e64-image.png

I would say this just a cosmetic effect (an admittedly annoying one), but your actual saved bitmap should look the same when you open it in Photoshop or a similar app. Will have a look in a week!

Cheers,
Ferdinand

@i_mazlov
Thank you very much for the hint with the texture view and for the helpful links.
The second thread I have already read, but was not able to find the solution so far. I study these examples. Thank you.

Hi, sorry for bringing back up this topic but the Compare() method still gives weird results in 2024.5.1.

Cinema_4D_D5fWj9O4RQ.gif

Comparing a material duplicated with Ctrl-Drag returns sometimes True, sometimes False Comparing a material against a copy-pasted version (in the same scene) always returns False Comparing two identical materials both copy-pasted together in one-go in another scene always returns False, even if True was returned in the original scene.

Please note that I'm using Corona Materials here but results are the same with the Standard Material.

Thanks you!

Thank you, @f8bet00net.
Yeah, I remember I had gone though this with you before. But recently, we found there is a way to customize TreatSpecificWarningsAsErrors settings in projectdefinition.txt for MSVCBase.props for windows VS projects.
So I asked this question again just to double confirm if we could do similar things for MacOS XCode settings.
Thanks for confirming this is not possible on MacOS.