Hello @leah.hayes, 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 It is a bit difficult to answer you first question, as it is multiple questions of which some are open ended, please have a look at Support Procedures: How to Ask Questions for future postings. Where is the Python code of the built-in character templates ... They are stored in {c4d installation folder}/library.zip/characters. Is there a supported way to extract or view a built-in template (for example through c4d.modules.character.builder.Template) so I can study how the auto-adjustment is implemented? I am not quite sure that I follow. All these rigs are just our standard CA component system decorated with some Xpresso and Python. Since there can be literally hundreds of nodes in a rig, I attached below a little helper script to scan for specific Python content or just the scripts in general that are embedded somewhere in the rig. Is there a public API entry point to trigger or implement this kind of auto-adjustment for other templates? That auto adjustment seems to be some kind of Python script which the authors of this rig provided. These CA rigs have been created by (technical) artists and not the members of the Maxon development team. See the print out below for details on the artist code for "auto-adjustment". Cheers, Ferdinand Result ==================================================================================================== Node: Character Component (Character Component) | Attribute: (2158, 130, 1022113) Value: import c4d from c4d import gui import c4d.modules.character as ca import c4d.utils as utils #Welcome to the world of Python def Bl2DIterator(bl2D): while bl2D: yield bl2D for bl2DChild in Bl2DIterator(bl2D.GetDown()): yield bl2DChild bl2D = bl2D.GetNext() def SearchInHierarchy(obj, name): allChildrenWithName = [bl2D for bl2D in Bl2DIterator(obj.GetDown()) if bl2D.GetName() == name] return allChildrenWithName[0] def ShowLayer(layersList, showName): for layer in layersList: layerName = layer[c4d.ID_BASELIST_NAME] if showName in layerName: layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_VIEW] = True layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_MANAGER] = True def HideLayer(layersList, hideName): for layer in layersList: layerName = layer[c4d.ID_BASELIST_NAME] if hideName in layerName: layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_VIEW] = False layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_MANAGER] = False def CharacterAnimateMode(characterObject): characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_HIGHLIGHT_OVER] = 4 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_MOUSEOVER] = 0 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_VISIBLE] = 2 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_OM_DISPLAY] = 5 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_LOCK_AM] = False def CharacterEditMode(characterObject): characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_HIGHLIGHT_OVER] = 3 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_MOUSEOVER] = 4 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_VISIBLE] = 3 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_OM_DISPLAY] = 1 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_LOCK_AM] = True def CharacterBindMode(characterObject): characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_HIGHLIGHT_OVER] = 4 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_MOUSEOVER] = 4 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_COMPONENT_VISIBLE] = 1 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_OM_DISPLAY] = 5 characterObject[c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_LOCK_AM] = True def CatchEmAll(obj, stop, listy): if obj is None: return #Actions go here if obj.GetType()==1019362: listy.append(obj) if not stop: if obj.GetDown(): CatchEmAll(obj.GetDown(), stop, listy) if obj.GetNext(): CatchEmAll(obj.GetNext(), stop, listy) return listy def SetGlobalRotation(obj, rot): """ Please remember, Cinema 4D handles rotation in radians. Example for H=10, P=20, B=30: import c4d from c4d import utils #... hpb = c4d.Vector(utils.Rad(10), utils.Rad(20), utils.Rad(30)) SetGlobalRotation(obj, hpb) #object's rotation is 10, 20, 30 """ m = obj.GetMg() pos = m.off scale = c4d.Vector( m.v1.GetLength(), m.v2.GetLength(), m.v3.GetLength()) m = utils.HPBToMatrix(rot) m.off = pos m.v1 = m.v1.GetNormalized() * scale.x m.v2 = m.v2.GetNormalized() * scale.y m.v3 = m.v3.GetNormalized() * scale.z obj.SetMg(m) def SetGlobalScale(obj, scale): m = obj.GetMg() m.v1 = m.v1.GetNormalized() * scale.x m.v2 = m.v2.GetNormalized() * scale.y m.v3 = m.v3.GetNormalized() * scale.z obj.SetMg(m) def ModeChanged(): characterObject = charop.GetObject() #Turning Off the Annotation # Main function leftAnnotationTag = SearchInHierarchy(characterObject, "LeftLeg_bind").GetLastTag() print(leftAnnotationTag) if leftAnnotationTag.GetType() == c4d.Tannotation: leftAnnotationTag[c4d.ANNOTATIONTAG_VIEWPORT_SHOW] = False #Hiding the Rig's Layers root = doc.GetLayerObjectRoot() #Gets the layer manager layersList = root.GetChildren() #Get Layer list for layer in layersList: layerName = layer[c4d.ID_BASELIST_NAME] if "Mixamo_Rig" in layerName: layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_VIEW] = False layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_MANAGER] = False mixamoLayers = layer.GetChildren() for layer in mixamoLayers: layerName = layer[c4d.ID_BASELIST_NAME] if "Retarget_Hierarchy" in layerName or \ "ANIMDATA_Nulls" in layerName or \ "Control Hierarchy" in layerName: layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_VIEW] = False layer[c4d.ID_LAYER_MANAGER] = False masterControl = SearchInHierarchy(characterObject, "Master_con+") hips = SearchInHierarchy(characterObject, "Hips") if nmode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_BUILD or \ nmode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_ADJUST: CharacterEditMode(characterObject) if nmode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_BIND: CharacterBindMode(characterObject) if nmode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_ADJUST and omode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_BUILD: #Changed search method to only search in Character Object #hips=doc.SearchObject("Hips") #masterControl=doc.SearchObject("Master_con+") #added Namespace Code nameSpace=masterControl[c4d.ID_USERDATA,16] results=CatchEmAll(hips, hips.GetNext(), []) for result in results: mixamo=doc.SearchObject(nameSpace+result.GetName()) if mixamo: matR = result.GetMg() matM = mixamo.GetMg() matR.off = matM.off matR.v1 = matM.v1.GetNormalized() matR.v2 = matM.v2.GetNormalized() matR.v3 = matM.v3.GetNormalized() result.SetMg(matR) if result.GetName()=='Neck1': #neck=doc.SearchObject(nameSpace+'Neck') #head=doc.SearchObject(nameSpace+'Head') neck = SearchInHierarchy(characterObject, nameSpace+'Neck') head = SearchInHierarchy(characterObject, nameSpace+'Head') if head and neck: result.SetMg((neck.GetMg()+head.GetMg())/2) print("Auto-Adjustment Complete") #Turning On the Annotation if leftAnnotationTag.GetType() == c4d.Tannotation: leftAnnotationTag[c4d.ANNOTATIONTAG_VIEWPORT_SHOW] = True if omode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_ADJUST and nmode!=c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_BUILD: L_Leg=doc.SearchObject("Left_IK_parent_rot_algn") #L_Leg = charop.FindObject("Left_IK_parent_rot_algn") if L_Leg: conTag=L_Leg.GetFirstTag() conTag[c4d.EXPRESSION_ENABLE]=False R_Leg=doc.SearchObject("Right_IK_parent_rot_algn") #R_Leg = charop.FindObject("Right_IK_parent_rot_algn") if R_Leg: conTag=R_Leg.GetFirstTag() conTag[c4d.EXPRESSION_ENABLE]=False if nmode==c4d.ID_CA_CHARACTER_MODE_ANIMATE: CharacterAnimateMode(characterObject) doc.SetActiveObject(masterControl, c4d.SELECTION_NEW) c4d.EventAdd() Code """Scans the document for all nodes that have multi-line string parameters that contain the word "adjustment" (case-insensitive) and prints the node name, type, parameter ID, and value to the console. """ import c4d import mxutils doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument def main() -> None: """ """ node: c4d.BaseList2D pid: c4d.DescID # Iterate over all objects and tags in the document that live outside of caches and within the # object branch of the document. for node in mxutils.RecurseGraph(doc.GetFirstObject(), yieldBranches=True, yieldHierarchy=True, branchFilter=[c4d.Obase, c4d.Tbase]): # Iterate over the description, i.e., parameters of the node. for data, pid, _ in node.GetDescription(c4d.DESCFLAGS_DESC_NONE): # The first level of this parameter is not of type string or does not use the # multi-line string GUI, so we skip it. if pid[0].dtype != c4d.DTYPE_STRING or data[c4d.DESC_CUSTOMGUI] != c4d.CUSTOMGUI_STRINGMULTI: continue # Try to read the value, the exception block is needed as not all parameter types are # accessible in Python (and this could be some kind of exotic multi level string data type). try: value: str | None = str(node[pid]).strip() if not isinstance(value, str) or not value: continue except Exception: continue # Check if the value contains the word "adjustment" (case-insensitive), if not, skip it. if "adjustment" not in value.lower(): continue # Print the match. print ("\n\n" + ("=" * 100)) print (f"Node: {node.GetName()} ({node.GetTypeName()}) | Attribute: {pid}\n\nValue:\n\n{value}") # For good measure, select the node and break the loop. (doc.SetActiveObject(node, c4d.SELECTION_NEW) if isinstance(node, c4d.BaseObject) else doc.SetActiveTag(node, c4d.SELECTION_NEW)) break c4d.EventAdd() if __name__ == '__main__': main()

@ferdinand Okay, great that you really dug into this. That could well have something to do with it. However, if you look at my latest test plugin—the C4D scene—the "Illumination" checkbox on the Redshift light is enabled, yet when you select "Make Editable," the light still turns into just a Null Object. So, regardless of whether the illumination is on or not.. But as I mentioned earlier this only happens if the light originates from a temporary document in the code. Or rather, when the scene with the light is loaded into a temp_doc. e.g. LoadDocument() or MergeDocument() That is why simply checking the "Illumination" box does not work. Cheers

Hey, good news, this is fixed in the upcoming hotfix (2026.3.2).

@ThomasB That is not a misunderstanding. I am aware that MRDs can only see their own tickets. But we still needed that crash reported, so I did it. I would have done the same if you would not have been an MRD. I usually mention ticket IDs here so that I can come back and close bugs. As you might have noticed, I have moved this into the Bugs forum. You do not have to do anything regarding that ticket, it it inaccessible for non-Maxonians. But we are still very much interested in a version of your plugin or a workflow which caused the crash. Otherwise we will not be able to reproduce and fix the issue. When you cannot provide it, this is also not a biggie (please do not waste time on this), then we have at least documented that there is somewhere a problem with audio tracks and how they handle memory while post-processing audio; in case we run into the same issue in the future in another context. Cheers, Ferdinand To share plugins with us, you can either use a chat on backstage or send us a mail to sdk_support(at)maxon(dot)net. There is a good chance that when you use a binary data attachment in a mail, that our mail system will filter out that attachment. When you use backstage (and upload the plugin there in a chat) that data would be permanently in the assets of that forum. When you just give us a link, we will delete your data once we do not need them anymore for debugging.

Hey @ferdinand , Sorry I forgot click Submit button well, that is the info I need, I use same tech to get icons for CMD, and now waiting for svg part in the future. Cheers~ DunHou

Okay, I think I was a bit overly cautious in my answer here. You gave my a very broad question, or to be precise, you gave me a video and a scene file, and did not really ask a precise question. I understand that asking good questions can be hard, especially with a language barrier. But when I have nothing to go by, I of course assume the worst case possible. The scene you have there is a trivial case, even the best case possible. You have there spline segments which lie in a perfect plane and which have no self intersections. You can treat them just like polygons (in the CG sense, not in the mathematical sense) and simply compute their normal over the first three vertices of each segment. Due to the fundamental property of a polygon - reversing the order of the vertices reverses the normal - you can then easily determine if two segments have opposite or equal winding. But all this starts to fall apart, as soon as you cannot make these assumptions. And I cannot help you to write the code for this, as this is then more than just a few lines. Hope this helps, and that I my answer was now less 'overly cautious'. Cheers, Ferdinand Result [image: 1780950951310-85f415e7-7f45-4c00-9651-b4091ee543e2-image.png] The code correctly identifies that in this six segment spline are four segments of one winding direction (clockwise in this case) and two of the other winding direction. winding_direction.c4d Code """Treats spline segments as polygons and compares their plane normals to find segments with reversed winding order. """ import c4d op: c4d.SplineObject # The currently active object in the scene. def main() -> None: """Called by Cinema 4D when the script is being executed. """ if not isinstance(op, c4d.SplineObject): return c4d.gui.MessageDialog("Please select a spline object.") # Get all points in the spline and organize them into their segments. points: list[c4d.Vector] = op.GetAllPoints() segments: list[list[c4d.Vector]] = [] j: int = 0 for i in [op.GetSegment(i)["cnt"] for i in range(op.GetSegmentCount())]: segments.append(points[j:j+i]) j += i if len(segments) < 2: return c4d.gui.MessageDialog("Please select a spline object with at least 2 segments.") # Now build normal data for the spline segments. This assumes: # # - A spline where all points lie in a single plane, a '2D' spline in 3D space. # - No self intersections in the spline. # - A piecewise linear spline, i.e., what Cinema 4D calls a 'Linear' spline. When we have a # 'Cubic' or 'Bezier' spline, we would have make it linear with 'Current State to Object' # first. # # We build the normal for each segment over its three first vertices. The reason why we are doing # this is because of the fundamental identity of a polygon (in a computer graphics sense), # reversing the order of the vertices of a polygon will reverse the normal. So if we have a # spline with two segments with reversed winding order, they will have antiparallel normals (normals # pointing in opposite directions). segmentNormals: list[c4d.Vector] = [] for segment in segments: if len(segment) < 3: print("Segment has less than 3 points, skipping normal calculation.") continue a, b, c = segment[0], segment[1], segment[2] edge1: c4d.Vector = b - a edge2: c4d.Vector = c - b normal: c4d.Vector = edge1.Cross(edge2).GetNormalized() segmentNormals.append(normal) # Now we just declare one segment as 'ground truth' and check if the other segments have normals # that are parallel or antiparallel to it. When we found a segment with an antiparallel normal, we # know we found a segment with reversed winding order. To check if two normals are parallel or # antiparallel, we just compute their dot product (i.e., spanned angle). When the dot product is # negative, the normals are antiparallel. print(f"Establishing the first segment normal {segmentNormals[0]} as ground truth.") baseNormal: c4d.Vector = segmentNormals[0] for i, normal in enumerate(segmentNormals[1:], start=1): isAntiparallel: bool = baseNormal.Dot(normal) < 0 print(f"Segment {i} normal: {normal} is {'antiparallel' if isAntiparallel else 'parallel'} " f"to the base normal {baseNormal}.") if __name__ == '__main__': main()

I started to work last Friday on a BaseBitmap.InitWithVectorImage. It will for sure not make it into the next release of Cinema 4D, as we are too close to that, and I cannot make any promises when or if it will arrive. But I see value in this especially since I realized that you cannot even really use this in C++, as VectorImageInterface requires access to some internal components to be rasterized.

@ferdinand thanks so much, problem solved!

I do not think that DRAW_ALPHA_FROM_IMAGE should not work. I just picked DRAW_ALPHA_NORMAL because it is the "most default one" out of the DRAW_ALPHA flags. I will have a look later. But you can for now probably just use DRAW_ALPHA_NORMAL.

You very likely have not unpacked your resources. The resource folder found in an installation only contains a part of the application resources (we are doing this since release 2023 if I remember correctly). A good portion of the resources sits inside resource.zip for performance reasons and is unpacked on demand. You can just unpack the resource.zip into you resource folder without an performance or stability issues. [image: 1779175199591-b8e8db94-ae20-42b4-9a5d-e92ac928e89d-image.png] You as an MRD can also look at the Bugslife client, as it is probably the better example, as it uses more features of the quick tab GUI. But my answer above was targeted at a general audience who can see the resources for Bugslife but not Bugslife itself, and it therefore is not a good example for them. Just grep the resource folder as I did in my screen for files that match the path dialogs/*.res (i.e., are res files for dialogs) and contain the word QUICKTAB. Cheers, Ferdinand

Another small tip: you can simply use a single <br> for line breaks — there’s no need to use <b> or </b>. Also, just like in the script example, scripts can support localized language strings as well: """ Name-US:Example Name-CN:示例 Description-US:Example line 1.<br>Example line 2.<br>Example line 3. Description-CN:示例第 1 行。<br>示例第 2 行。<br>示例第 3 行。 """

Hello @mplec1, 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 The bake tag and by extension cinema::BakeTexture (and its Python equivalent c4d.utils.BakeTexture) unfortunately do not support Redshift, even for the older Xpresso based materials. Redshift uses the tools found in Redshift/Tools/Texture Baking for baking. And while you can programmatically create a bake set and then programmatically click the 'Bake' button in it (which both would also work in a headless version of Cinema 4D, such as c4dpy), the following dialog which opens to set baking details and actually start the rendering is sealed, i.e., you cannot interact with it from the public API. And opening such dialog would also fail in a headless Cinema 4D instance. So, I am afraid there is currently no solution for your problem. You can technically export the whole scene to a format such FBX or USD, and use the builtin baking output (which would also work in a headless environment, as long as you do NOT pass SAVEDOCUMENTFLAGS_DIALOGSALLOWED to the save/export operation). But the output of that automated baking is often of poor quality compared to manually baking object(s) via bake sets. Cheers, Ferdinand

The second ID is the sub ID. You can have a command (FOO = 100) which supports the sub-commands (BAR=1, and BAZ=2). So, you can then call CallCommand(100, 1) or CallCommand(100, 2) to invoke the two different things FOO can do. But as you said yourself, this is a rather unusual thing, and it is even more unusual that I manged to randomly click five things in a row that all have sub IDs What should also be said is that my little "extrude" log there does not really reproduce the modelling operations I carried out. It just runs the tools in the order they are invoked. And because when you run this right after your created the log, the extrude tool will for example still have set the same extrude depth from the last operation. But when you manually extrude something, and then run the script again, it will use these new current extrude tool settings, i.e., and not the ones from when your 'recorded' the log. The script log can be useful, but it is not the auto-script-recording feature users often whish it was.

Hello @Dimitris_Derm. No, with islands I do not mean different objects. With islands are polygon (selection) islands meant. And that is just the term that is used for these things. The "Plane" object below has two polygon islands, the left and right rectangle shown in the viewport, each composed out of 4 * 5 polygons. They are islands because they are topological disjunct from each other - you cannot 'get' from one island to another without jumping over a gap. [image: 1777019034509-a88ac530-c105-430c-bd11-f922f5688881-image.png] The same can be applied to selections, as shown below. Now the left polygon island in the mesh has two polygonal selection islands. You cannot get from one selection island to another without jumping over a gap (they are topologically disjunct). [image: 1777019065284-bf41be6a-3993-4eb1-b603-438df9aa1bb3-image.png] This is a requirement because as my code example demonstrates, when bridging in island mode, you just specify a polygon and a point (and set the flags), and the tool then 'grows out' the to be bridged patch from the given polygon, based on the active polygon selection. And this growing will stop at topological boundaries. So, when you would bridge from the selection in the lower left corner of the left rectangle (to some unspecified target in another mesh), it would only grow into these four polygons. The selection in the top right corner would never be part of the operation. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hey @Dimitris_Derm. , no there is currently no dedicated plugin class for MoGraph effectors and fields in Python, only the scripting objects exist at the moment. Cheers, Ferdinand

Ah ! They are called Proxy Tags and I can see the actual tag with the MSG_GETREALTAGDATA ! Thank you ️

Your approach is not necessarily worse, one could even argue that it is better. I personally would always avoid manually binding to an OS DLL via ctypes, but that is more a personal preference.