BaseLink across documents

WickedP

Hi Folks,

Can BaseLink store an object link across documents? I have an object that needs to reference objects in another document (in memory only). Assuming this reference document is open somewhere at the time, will BaseLink achieve this?

The link needs to work across main scene file opens and close. If not, is there something that can? Couldn't see in docs.

Trying to plan ahead. Cheers,

WP.

ferdinand

Hey @WickedP,

Thank you for your question. A BaseLink always requires a document within which it shall be resolved, when you do not provide one, it just takes the active document.

So, your question is a bit ambivalent. Internally, a BaseLink is based on GeMarker which identifies a scene element (C4DAtom) over the mac address of the creating machine, the time of creation, and a random UUID. The value is a constant attached to the scene element expressed as 16 bytes of data.

So, this value is persistent over reload boundaries and does not care for the document it is in - although copying a scene element will usually cause it to get a new marker, unless you tell Cinema 4D explicitly to also copy the marker. You can easily query multiple documents for containing a given C4DAtom via a BaseLink. But unless you deliberately forced markers to be copied, it is not possible that multiple documents contain the same C4DAtom.

Cheers,
Ferdinand