Once again, I am immensely grateful for your generous and incredibly helpful assistance, @ferdinand !

I don’t know why I didn’t mention SetParameter() in my original message, as this was the first thing I attempted before experimenting with the other methods I mentioned.

Thank you once again. I was able to throughly familiarize myself with GetParameter() and SetParameter() today.

Hey y'all,

Apologies if this is a pretty basic question, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to set the "Texture preview size" value of a new material, as such:

#include <customgui_matpreview.h>

Material* const material = Material::Alloc();
if (material == nullptr)
    return maxon::OutOfMemoryError(MAXON_SOURCE_LOCATION);

// To-do: Set the CUSTOMDATATYPE_MATPREVIEW to "None" (which is ID = 1)

material->Update(TRUE, TRUE);

I've tried every iteration of GetData() / SetData() and GetCustomDataType() / SetCustomDataType() I could think of, and yet, I either get an error, or (if no error) the value of the "Texture Preview Size" value is not changed upon being applied onto my object.

I was able to set Channel-related values, which is great, so I'm left wondering why I'm struggling with the Material's "Viewport" options.

I've scoured the forum before asking, but to no avail.

Thank you very much in advance! I very much appreciate it.

Thank you very kindly, @ferdinand! I had already started exploring the maxon::ParallelImage class as I suspected it to be the ideal path forward for my case, so it's great to have my suspicions be validated!

I will make sure to start a new thread if I have any questions related to this class.

Thank you very much once again. Your assistance has been indispensable!

Cheers

As always, thanks a million for your incredibly thorough answer, @ferdinand.

How many files to blend?, size of the files?, done in one batch or spread over the runtime of a user session?, etc. pp.

The exact number of drawn bitmap images depends on the settings set by the user through my plugin's UI, but on average, I would roughly estimate the number of drawn bitmap files to be between 200 and 500. The bitmap's dimensions are set to be 256px by 256px and the drawing process is all done in one batch upon the user triggering the plugin's primary action button.

Thanks for the heads up about the possibility of flooding Cinema 4D's job-queue with too many jobs. This is something I will be very mindful of and aim to prevent in any way I can.

I am extremely grateful for your generous support, but because you've presented multiple methods and concepts I was completely unfamiliar with, you'll have to bear with me as I carefully research and revise them over the week-end before opting for a solution that seems ideal for my specific case.

Thanks again for everything, @ferdinand. I will get back to you with my findings!

Cheers

Hey @ferdinand,

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if there was any hopes for the Image API to handle transparency one day? As you've stated yourself (and as I'm experiencing myself while testing my plugin everyday), iterating pixel by pixel in the goal of splicing channels is very slow when dealing with a lot of semi-transparent images.

Of course, I am gonna stick with the approach you generously proposed as it works, but a faster alternative would eventually be very welcome.

Thank you!

@ferdinand Yay! Amazing. I can confirm that my solution builds without any problems in 2024.3.2.

Big thanks to you and the dev team at Maxon!

Wow, thank you very much, @ferdinand! This was extremely insightful and informative. I didn't know what application_opt.pdb was until I read your message. Thank you.

I manually excluded/unchecked example.assets from my solution and rebuilt my solution and while this got rid of the "Forcing folder to be mounted as database (...assets/sdkdatabase.db) instead of nullptr" error, the objectbase1.hxx(537) error (which triggers a breakpoint), as well as the Symbol error are still there (the latter being expected I guess).

Do you see the SDK asset database in 2024.2?

In the SDK > Assets folder, I am seeing 11 presets divided in multiple categories, .e.g "Model" (1 item), "Material" (4 items), "Scene" (1 item), "Node" (1 item), "Node Operator" (1 item) and "Image Media" (3 items).

That said, I can confirm that the folder SDK > C++ > Asset API Examples is completely empty.

Are you using any firewalls or VPNs that might restrict access to that URL?

My firewall has remained untouched and no VPNs or anti-virus/spyware software are blocking requests to maxon.net.

For the time being, although inconvenient and dare I say a bit annoying, I can hit "Continue" in Visual Studio after the breakpoint is triggered.

I wish I could revert back to 2024.2, but I guess I need to message Maxon's team support to do so?

I guess I could also test with 2023, but that would be less than ideal.

Thank you once again for everything, @ferdinand. I really appreciate your assistance.

Hey guys,

I'm not sure exactly if this is a Visual Studio 2019 issue or a Cinema 4D issue...

I've been working on my plugin for months now and throughout the plugin's development, I've updated from 2024.1.0 to 2024.3.1. None of the Cinema 4D updates have ever caused any problems in regards to my plugin development, until now.

As of this morning, when building my solution in Visual Studio 2019, I get the error message: "Cinema 4D.exe has triggered a breakpoint."

Visual Studio 2019 then opens a new tab named "No Symbols Loaded", which contains the message "application_opt.pdb not loaded".

Additionally, right before the breakpoint is triggered, I noticed the following message being logged in Visual Studio 2019's "Output" window when building the solution:

Forcing folder to be mounted as database (https://assets.maxon.net/assets/sdkdatabase.db) instead of nullptr

objectbase1.hxx(537): CRITICAL: Method net.maxon.interface.nimbusbase.GetGraphNodeFromBaseList@72780fd07b2bfeae not implemented by NimbusBaseStaticImpl (requested by file:///C:/Code/sdk/plugins/example.assets/example.assets.xdl64). [object_impl.cpp(913)]

Cinema 4D.exe has triggered a breakpoint.

I have spent the last 1 hour and a half on Google reading StackOverflow threads and I have tried multiple things, none of which have resolved my problem.

I have not made any changes to my code after updating Cinema 4D to 2024.3.0 and 2024.3.1. All I did was open Visual Studio 2019 and click "Local Windows Debugger" to launch Cinema 4D.

Any insight or guidance would be immensely helpful. I wonder if I am the only one running into this issue since the latest update?

Thank you!

Absolutely wonderful, @ferdinand. I can't thank you and the team at Maxon enough. No worries whatsoever about the delay, you guys make up for it by 10 folds when you come back with a response.

Thank you again. I did indeed notice some similarities with the approach I pasted in my first message. I will try out your proposed implementation later today. I'm very eager to get the alpha channel working.

Thank you @ferdinand!

I'm using Google Chrome V.121 on Windows 11 Pro. I haven't changed anything in my browser (i.e. extensions, scripts, etc) since the forum was updated.

I'll report back on my findings next time this happens

Thanks!