Hi @ferdinand,

Yes, this example was written with the help of AI, and I performed a basic review;

I wanted to avoid installing dependencies, so I used the currently supported ctypes, but I indeed did not fully consider the issue of supporting every operating system. Thank you for the reminder.

Best regards,
Anlv

@ferdinand Thanks for the encouragement, much appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some community advice. I’ve accumulated a collection of personal scripts from my previous work, and I’m now planning to integrate them into a single plugin to release for free.

However, I’ve realized that the integrated features are quite similar to several existing paid or subscription-based plugins on the market. I’m a bit concerned about whether releasing a free alternative would be seen as "harmful" to the developers who rely on those paid tools.

What is the general etiquette regarding this in the developer community? I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you!

Hello @ferdinand,

Thank you very much for your detailed guidance and for pointing out the necessary forum procedures.

Following your suggestion, I managed to implement the multi-file selection feature by utilizing a third-party GUI API, and I successfully outputted the selected file paths to the console.

Please note that this solution has only been tested on the Windows so far. I am sharing my example script below in the hope that it might help other developers facing the same requirement:

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes


# Flags used by the Windows file dialog.
OFN_EXPLORER = 0x00080000          # Use the Explorer-style dialog.
OFN_ALLOWMULTISELECT = 0x00000200  # Allow selecting multiple files.
OFN_FILEMUSTEXIST = 0x00001000     # Require selected files to exist.
OFN_PATHMUSTEXIST = 0x00000800     # Require the selected path to exist.
MAX_BUFFER = 65536                 # Buffer size used to receive the result.


# OPENFILENAMEW structure used by the Windows API.
class OPENFILENAMEW(ctypes.Structure):
    _fields_ = [
        ("lStructSize", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("hwndOwner", wintypes.HWND),
        ("hInstance", wintypes.HINSTANCE),
        ("lpstrFilter", wintypes.LPCWSTR),
        ("lpstrCustomFilter", ctypes.c_wchar_p),
        ("nMaxCustFilter", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("nFilterIndex", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("lpstrFile", ctypes.c_wchar_p),
        ("nMaxFile", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("lpstrFileTitle", ctypes.c_wchar_p),
        ("nMaxFileTitle", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("lpstrInitialDir", wintypes.LPCWSTR),
        ("lpstrTitle", wintypes.LPCWSTR),
        ("Flags", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("nFileOffset", wintypes.WORD),
        ("nFileExtension", wintypes.WORD),
        ("lpstrDefExt", wintypes.LPCWSTR),
        ("lCustData", wintypes.LPARAM),
        ("lpfnHook", wintypes.LPVOID),
        ("lpTemplateName", wintypes.LPCWSTR),
        ("pvReserved", wintypes.LPVOID),
        ("dwReserved", wintypes.DWORD),
        ("FlagsEx", wintypes.DWORD),
    ]


def open_multiple_files():
    # Create a writable Unicode buffer to receive the file path data from Windows.
    buffer = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(MAX_BUFFER)

    # Configure the parameters for the file-open dialog.
    ofn = OPENFILENAMEW()
    ofn.lStructSize = ctypes.sizeof(OPENFILENAMEW)
    ofn.hwndOwner = None
    ofn.lpstrFilter = "All Files\0*.*\0Text Files\0*.txt\0\0"
    ofn.lpstrFile = ctypes.cast(buffer, ctypes.c_wchar_p)
    ofn.nMaxFile = MAX_BUFFER
    ofn.lpstrTitle = "Select Files"
    ofn.Flags = (
        OFN_EXPLORER
        | OFN_ALLOWMULTISELECT
        | OFN_FILEMUSTEXIST
        | OFN_PATHMUSTEXIST
    )

    # Call the native Windows file selection dialog.
    comdlg32 = ctypes.windll.comdlg32
    result = comdlg32.GetOpenFileNameW(ctypes.byref(ofn))

    # The user canceled the dialog, or the call failed.
    if not result:
        err = comdlg32.CommDlgExtendedError()
        if err:
            print("GetOpenFileNameW failed, error code:", err)
        return []

    # Read the returned content from the buffer.
    # Single selection: returns a full file path.
    # Multiple selection: returns [directory, file1, file2, ...].
    raw = ctypes.wstring_at(ctypes.addressof(buffer), MAX_BUFFER)
    parts = [p for p in raw.split("\0") if p]

    if not parts:
        return []

    # If only one file was selected, return the full path directly.
    if len(parts) == 1:
        return [parts[0]]

    # If multiple files were selected, combine the directory with each filename.
    directory = parts[0]
    filenames = parts[1:]
    return [directory + "\\" + name for name in filenames]


def main():
    paths = open_multiple_files()

    if not paths:
        print("No file selected.")
        return

    print("Selected files:")
    for path in paths:
        print(path)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Best regards,
Anlv

Hi everyone,
I found that through the “Open...” or “Merge...” options in the File menu, I can open “Load File(s)”, which allows handling multiple files.
However, with c4d.storage.LoadDialog(), I can only select a single folder or file.
In the latest SDK documentation, I couldn’t find a method to load multiple files. Is this an internal API?
My current workaround is using AddMultiLineEditText, but it’s not very user-friendly.

import c4d


def main():
    path = c4d.storage.LoadDialog(
        title="Select File",
        type=c4d.FILESELECTTYPE_ANYTHING,
        flags=c4d.FILESELECT_LOAD,
    )

    print(path)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()