We will very likely never abandon this technique. The issue is more that there are a lot of hacks in the Spline Mask code and almost none of them are shown in the public code example. And we cannot publish all of these hacks both for strategic (we do not want to show all of our internals) and practical reasons (we cannot explain all the nitty gritty details there). It was not such a good decision to publish that code example; which as far as I understood came to pass as a user asked as to how the Spline Mask object has been realized. But we probably should just have said "no" then. Just as much as I probably should not have shown you that simulation hack. Hacks lead to more hacks and more problems. Cheers, Ferdinand PS: And to be super verbose, you ONLY need this pattern when you "have to" implement a spline that has other (spline) objects as inputs. When you have implemented regular splines like this, you should probably revert that.

I would heavily recommend using the extension, as it will automatically curate the paths for you. I.e., when you use the extension and connect to a Cinema 4D instance, it will make sure that the dummy modules of that Cinema 4D version are on the search paths. But when you really do not want to use it, you can also just edit your config so that the dummy module paths are discoverable for auto complete and the linter. [image: 1731583351292-2a76cd6c-35aa-451f-82db-02b03694e72d-image.png] What you will need in any case, is the Python and Pylance extension for VS Code, as they are the extensions which make use of these settings. When you install the connector, they will be installed automatically as a dependency. [image: 1731583415824-0b5d77af-5f23-4203-9a0a-276b8eafc62e-image.png] Cheers, Ferdinand

Hey @baca, feel free to send us a mail to sdk_support(at)maxon(dot)net in case you cannot share code publicly. But we have to have a look at your code to see what is going on. When you say this worked before, we either have a soft regression (you did something which you should not but it somehow worked and we now broke that) or a strong one (we broke something that should work) on our hands. And for that we will need code to see what is going on. And I would not say that the performance penalty is dramatic, it more likely will be neligable. But if everyone would do that everywhere, Cinema 4D would come to a crawl. I would say you can ship your plugin with that "fix" when it does not cause any issues for you. But we should work towards solving this properly. Cheers, Ferdinand

Hi @baca, sadly it is not possible to get the exact same random in Python than the one used internally for this feature. So the only way would be to actually clone some objects an retrieve their position as shown in read_modata_color.py. The previous example retrieve the color and not the position, so instead of retrieving the MODATA_COLOR, use the MODATA_MATRIX. Cheers, Maxime.

Hi @baca, this is unfortunately not possible there is some default CheckDirty in place to support the default FiledList, but since you can not override CheckDirty in an effector yourself you can't add another FieldList dependency check. Cheers Maxime.

@m_adam good to know, thanks.

Hi @m_adam , That's sad... Thanks, anyway.

@ferdinand Thanks again I'll have time to check it later today. But it seems clear.

Hi @baca VC_SAFETY has been removed in 2023.1, you do not need it anymore, since the message can't fail anymore. You should keep it for old code but for new code, just leave the vc_flags empty will be enough. Cheers, Maxime.

Thanks @ferdinand, Thats gone too far, we can close this subj now. I think I have a solution already. I just wasn't clear enough in the beginning, I just wanted to know if PolygonObject can be forced to produce it's cache object by a command. I made an experiment where I spawn flat geometries between other flat geometries. Like planes in-between of deformed soft body planes. Here's working example: Setup: [image: 1699565133962-417b1a04-77c9-4163-bc6f-36c2800323f5-image.png] And simulation: [image: 1699565001814-cloth_multiply__03_.gif] Once you clone original geometry — it's flat, and there would be intersections and simulation will be broken. So you need to blend newborn geo point positions in-between of existing geometry points. Once you blend it — there are no intersections, it nicely continue with soft body simulation. But softbody dynamics build constraints for every new object. And if geometry first appears as deformed — wrong constraints are initialized, and each new object becomes crumpled real quick. Also there's "Mix Animation" -> "Follow Shape" checkbox, which rebuild constraints (or adjusts them - who knows?) — and it reads original point positions, as I understood. So I had to have both — original geo, and cache. Where cache used to simulate geometry in 3D, and original object (CacheParent?) will be used for constraints.

Hi just to let you know that with the release 2024.2 the issue have been fixed and it is now possible to retrieve the value of a Vertex Color Tag in point mode. Cheers, Maxime.

Hey @baca, Just as an FYI, this bug has been fixed and it will be included in one of the upcoming releases of Cinema 4D, quite likely the next release. Cheers, Ferdinand

@ferdinand said in c4d.MCOMMAND_EXPLODESEGMENTS makes target object dead: Select 0th polygon in a mesh. SMC: MCOMMAND_SELECTCONNECTED SMC: MCOMMAND_SPLIT Delete the selected polygons. When no polygons are left, exit, otherwise goto 1. Oh, great idea. Not that elegant, but seems legit. Thanks again.

Hi, sorry, the display of this tab is hardcoded an only available for a couple of builtin objects. What you can do is have a Matrix object in object mode that point to your generator, the rs tag being applied to the matrix object. You can also create that setup inside your generator. Below, i am using a cube but that could be your PointObject instead. Keep in mind that python is slow, using it for point cloud or anything related to particles might be super slow. from typing import Optional import c4d doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument # The document evaluating this python generator op: c4d.BaseObject # The python generator hh: Optional["PyCapsule"] # A HierarchyHelp object, only defined when main is executed def main() -> c4d.BaseObject: . cube = c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Ocube) parent = c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Onull) cube.InsertUnder(parent) matrix = c4d.BaseObject(c4d.Omgmatrix) matrix.InsertUnder(parent) matrix[c4d.ID_MG_MOTIONGENERATOR_MODE] = c4d.ID_MG_MOTIONGENERATOR_MODE_OBJECT matrix[c4d.MG_OBJECT_LINK] = cube matrix[c4d.MG_POLY_MODE_] = c4d.MG_POLY_MODE_VERTEX rsTag = matrix.MakeTag(1036222) rsTag[c4d.REDSHIFT_OBJECT_PARTICLE_MODE] = 2 return parent Cheers, Manuel

@baca said in Cinema 4D R2023 - c4d.plugins.RegisterObjectPlugin issue: Any suggestion how to properly handle that kind of issues -- just catch exception and warn user using message box somehow? Correct you can catch the OsError and check if there is the word 50 in the exception message. Would it be reasonable to switch to NodeData from ObjectData -- It depends of your plugin if this is at the end an ObjectData then it's irrelevant, if this is just an object that you store in a list in memory or in a custom GeListHead then NodeData is perfectly relevant. does RegisterNodePlugin has separate 50 plugins registrations? Yes each type have 50 plugins. What's the logic behind plugin initialization order -- alphabetical, date-based, random? Folders from g_additionalModulePath are iterated by alphabetical order and each files are then iterated by alphabetical order too. Cheers, Maxime.

@m_adam thanks!

Hey @baca, as I said, the control object structure you want is not possible. I tried and wrote the necessary code when I answered here initially, and Cinema 4D will really start to freak out. You cannot have nested hierarchies of muted caches. If you really want to do this, then you must use the approach proposed by me. If you want to also hide the objects in renderings, then you will have to also set that parameter. If you poke around long enough, you might find a solution by muting the caches, but this is out of scope of support. As I said, I did already try when I wrote my first posting, maybe you have more luck. But as also stated in my first posting, you are poking here the sleeping bear called "classic API node dependencies". Cheers, Ferdinand

@ferdinand thanks for explanations and example.

@m_magalhaes Thanks Manuel, I appreciate your wise support every time. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

@ferdinand Thanks, no issues so far.