What Are Your Main Difficulties In Coffee?

[Horganovski]

Hi Rui,
I have your first book and found it very good although I haven't gone through all of it yet. I did learn enough to make some workflow scripts that I use, for example I have one that searches for a Stage object and parents it to a new dummy stage object to act as a toggler (can't just switch them off in R10) and then reverses this when you toggle.

I have to say my biggest frustration with Coffee is looking at the Console and the script log and seeing nothing come up when I'm doing things in Cinema.. in some other apps it seems a bit more transparent, and it's easier to create macros as every click of an icon gets shown in the console. In Cinema I'm often left wondering if a function is scriptable at all (like my recent posts here about nudging keyframes in the timeline) or if the code I need will only be found by digging through the SDK.

cheers,
Brian

[spedler]

I think the kind of thing I'd like to be able to do in COFFEE is create plugins which operate as 'tools' and whose parameters appear in the attributes manager when you select the tool. Simple example, when you click the live selection tool some parameters appear in the manager. COFFEE doesn't seem to be able to do that - or if it can, I don't know how, and would like to!

[art3D]

A quick reference for non-coders.

This reference would contain a short description of all functions together with a "non-coder-readable" example. By this i mean an example of a code line written in correct syntax.

Hola Rui,
i've bought your first book and based on what i learned from you, i worked out the GlobalGizmoFake (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=182&t=722225&highlight=global+gizmo+fake)-script. But to do more with Coffee, it's too time-consuming for a non-coder like me to get into the SDK / reference of Maxon besides my regular work. Those SDK / references are written from mathematicans for mathematicans. I am too stupid for this and so i would appreciate an "easy-to-read" version a lot.

Sincerely,
Knut

[Kuroyume0161]

COFFEE doesn't have the ability to create custom tool plugins - only menu (command), filter (import/export), tag, and, lately, animation track plugins. Object, tool, scenehook, video post, message plugins are not possible. You would need to go C++ or Python (Py4D).

[spedler]

Thanks Robert. I sort of figured that might be the case but was hoping I was wrong. I'll have to dust off the C++ skills someday...

[mogh]

I introduce myself so the answers will make more sense in general:

I am a Product Designer who comes from old-school gaming (Unreal Engine) over 3D (Cinema 4D since version 5.) to CAD (Solidworks, Pro/E) with a lot of general PC/mac knowledge and some Spaghetti-code skills in PHP and html coding by hand. (no ajax or javascript) i lost my Perl / CGI skills completely.

I can do some cool stuff with Xpresso, for TP I always need some recourses to lookup but it works.

I Have your book, and while i kinda understand and like the first chapters i get lost somewhere in the middle and cant read anything at the end ... (copy pasting script parts would be much appreciated instead of screenshots)

Explaining the Objective C thing marked on a easy example, instead of detaching it in a graphical way would make that chapter fit more into your book.

So in general for a beginner some more iterations of simple scripts would be my truck to pull me over the hill but I somehow don't get there.

- What are the things that baffle you most?

the documentation ... I tried to reuse some code-snippets and always search for that magic comand i cant find ...

- What were the subjects/concepts that were harder to grasp?

in general hence i have basic PHP knowladge i stumble more over the structure (object oriented ?! coffee ? ) than the basic if else case for snipets

- What are the things that you would like to do in COFFEE but you can't because you don't know why?

didn't really get that far but i have more than a ducent ideas in my head ...

- What are the things that you would like to do in COFFEE but you can't because apparently COFFEE is not able to do it?
- What would you like to know about programming, in general?

greetings

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