C4D SDK plugin help ..

#1

There was a plugin awhile back in V8, it still exists in the V9 and 10 sdk but needs to be complied, It is called liquid paint… you could paint metaballs without splines etc…the longer you left your mouse tip in one place the larger the metaball.
I do not know a thing about plugin design or development , I am also on a mac. I have been told that all is needed is to compile it but…
Can anyone help …a quick compile for me or what I need to do…software requirements etc

thanks

scott
http://zone3photo.com

#2

You will need XCode which you should either have on the DEVtools disk of your OSX installer, preinstalled or you will need to download from Apple Developer Connection (it’s free), then download the C++ SDK documentation from plugincafe and check it’s “Migration to XCode” portion which contains a walkthrough of building projects in XCode from a fresh install. It’s actually a three step process, opening the project file in xcode, a first time only change of the intermediate builds path in the preferences, and hitting the build button (you can ignore all the stuff in there about changing the project name and removing the files that you don’t need from your own plugin, that’s just if you’re developing your own plugins rather than wanting to just compile the existing sdk).

#3

Thank you very much for the info Per-Anders. Plenty of info to absorb! I checked the Xcode tools folder on my CD. I am going to DL the one from apple since it maybe more recent. Whats parts of the tool folder do I use…there is plenty inside? I just not sure where to start. For the Maxon SDK I will assume I should DL both the 9.6 and 10 version if I want to compile for both?
I may need to ask stupid newbie question since this is very foreign to me

PS…I just tried to use the original Xtools on my CD…wouldn’t work…kept crashing…too old I think…the one on apples site is taking forever( 1 gig in size) to DL so I thought I would try…OH well

thank you

scott

#4

well I tried…but I get many errors …185 to be exact:) I would love to say I could do this but…can anyone compile this for me…the liquidtool.cpp file in the C4D 9.6 SDK
its in the source/tool folder

scott

#5

Did you follow the instructions given in the SDK documentation? There shouldn’t be any errors (just one warning about there not being a folder yet, do you want to make one sort of thing). Are you sure you loaded in the XCode project and not the Codewarrior one in the 9.6 SDK? The project is all there ready for you to grab and compile, you don’t need to create a new project in XCode.

#6

I obviously made a big mistake somewhere…I did finally get it to compile Ok with no errors but it seems to compile everything( unless that is what it should do) Since I am just trying to create the liquid-tool plugin I am still not sure if I did it correctly
this is what I got( 3 folders)

_api.build
cinema4dsdk.build
Debug
I don’t see anything about the specific plugin that I want though and quite honestly I am not sure what to do with these folders…I tried placing them into the plugin folder but no plug shows( if it should)
I then double clicked teh specific file called liquidtool.cpp…and hit the build button. It goes through a long build process but again doesn’t really create anything

#7

No leave those files and folders be, the SDK compiles as a single project, none of the tools in the SDK are seperate plugins (you’d have to edit the main.cpp file to remove their registration calls as otherwise you’ll get errors about missing files if you just remove them). The result of the compile is a cinema4dsdk.dylib file in the Cinema4DSDK folder, that is the plugin. You do not need to do anything else.

You shouldn’t attempt to modify the project itself unless you know what you’re doing as otherwise you will most probably end up screwing up the project and stopping it form compiling correctly. It’s designed to compile from the off without any need to change anything (apart from the intermediate build paths in XCodes general preferences), you really shouldn’t attempt to do anything other than just compile the project given your current level of understanding as you’re just making your life a lot more difficult and complex than it needs to be (it really is very simple to compile provided you just follow the basic instructions, i.e. load project, set intermediate paths, build).

Now that you’ve been mesing a lot of things around you may find that you will need to delete all the SDK and intermediate build folders and reinstall them (possibly reinstalling C4D). Remember that the intermediate paths should not be in your plugin folder itself, but outside of the whole plugins folder somewhere (anywhere it’s jsut temporary files, but it also contains things like intermediate builds of the dylibs that will interfere with your main plugin loading in correctly).

#8

correct…I have a file called cinema4dsdk.dylib in the C4D SDK folder along with the files that always existed there…everything else( the 3 folders I mentioned) are outside that folder completely) just wasn’t sure what they were. That can’t be it though is it? since I still don’t have the option that I did back in V8 of painting with metaballs

I appreciate your patience with all this Pre-Anders

scott

#9

No, that’s it. It’s compiled and the tool is a part of the plugin. You will need to look for the tool under the Cinema4DSDK folder in your plugins menu, there you will find the Liquid Tool, which is the tool for painting metaballs. If the plugin hasn’t loaded then it will mostly explain why in Cinema’s Console (Windows->Console) displaying the list of errors.

Remember to leave the cinema4dSDK.dylib file in the cinema4dsdk folder as it will reference the res folder in there for it’s resources (dialogs, icons etc).

#10

not there…must have doen something wrong…I don’t have any errors in the console either…The only thing in the cinema4d drop down in flashEX V2 and ASCII animation import
OH well…it was interesting…If anyone on a Mac has this and is willing to share I certainly would be thankful

scott

#11

That’s very odd, what computer are you running? (CoreDuo/Core2Duo/g5/g4)

It’s possible that your machine is loading up the non UB version of 9.6 if you have a G4/G5, in which case it would look for Codewarrior built non UB libraries (Cinema4dSDK.XDL) rather than XCodes UB DYLIBs. You can try compiling and running the R10 SDK instead as it will force the issue, when you load R10 that is, apart from that the only solution would be to compile using codewarrior which would be difficult as it’s no longer available.

You can test to see if the file is being loaded in by modifying the “main.cpp” file and adding in

GePrint("it got this far!");

in the “Bool PluginStart(void)” routine after the various if(!Register… lines then it will print out “it got this far!” in the console provided the plugin actually loads, and you can use that to work out roughly which line it’s failing on, or even if the plugin is loading at all.

#12

I am on a Quad G5. Since I didn’t get any errors I would assume that all went OK but…Where exactly after…

  Bool PluginStart(void)
  
  should I paste that line ?
  
  like this
  
  Bool PluginStart(void)
  {
  GePrint("it got this far!");
  
  I will keep trying..can I just use BBedit for this
  thanks again

SUCCESS!..well kind of…I tried V10 and all went OK…plugins are all there…same steps as I did in V9.6 but again that version doesn’t work so…I prefer to still work in V9 because of speed issues( it is still faster than 10 on my system and there are obvious plugin incompatibilities etc
The SDK of both 9 and 10 look the same but obviously something is different…visially can one check or look at something with BBedit to tell?

  Fun little tool but does anyone know how to control the placement..it seems to place it outside a specific area..at least I have it working just have to figure out how to control where the globs are placed:)
  scott
#13

The placement is controlled by the mouse, in the MouseInput routine check the mouse polling loop and you will see the line:

cl->SetPos(bd->SW(Vector(mx,my,500.0)));

This sets the position of the object cl (a clone of an earlier allocated sphere) to the world coordinate (bd->SW is the basedraw or viewport call to convert a vector from screen space to world space) for the mouses current position and 500 units in front of the camera Vector(mx, my, 500.0). You can modify this however you want, however I would recommend at the very least reading through some of the SDK documentation on this stuff first, you would want to look up about BaseDraw, Vector and BaseObject classes.

#14

well I tried to understand this but can’t say that anything really made any sense. I changed the 500 value to both 800 and 10 and didn’t notice anything different. The globs still place them selves perfectly outside a circle based on the position of the orange and green triangles…any hints. I actually enjoy trying to figure this out…just don’t see my gooey brain getting anywhere:)

scott

#15

I’m afraid I really don’t understand what you mean. There are no orange or green handles, just a red triangle in the middle of the viewport, and you just click and drag and it draws a metaball surface where you click and drag in teh viewport (but 500 units in front of the camera). Do you have a screenshot to show what it is you mean?

#16

I never mentioned handles…but triangles…but here is a couple screen shots. As you stated they seem to place the metaballs 500 units from the placement point or the center( world) Changing the values in the code you offered doesn’t seem to change anything. I can work around this but it certainly would be helpful if I could control this better or for that matter have it so that the metaball could be placed on or snapped to polygon points( sorry I wish too much:)

#17

The placement is 500 units from the camera not from the center of the world. Move the camera back and the next time you paint it will be further back with it. I’m not sure why changing the value there is having no change on the position of the metaballs for you, are you sure you’re recompiling (building) the code after making a change?

If you want them to snap to surfaces then you must implement the code to get the distance of the surface point from the camera and put that in the z of the vector (where 500 currently is), for that you can use either the ViewportSelect class or the SelectionListCreate function (and the C4DObjectList), which both use opengl to speed up object picking, failing that you can use the GeRayCollider class which manually casts rays into the scene.

#18

you are correct…I wasn’t compiling it( fixed) I have it at 900 …seems to give me the look( placement) I need …and yes again moving the camera back changes the placement point but again moving the camera around in a static still scene that is already setup isn’t a good thing:) so…
the other info about ( ViewportSelect class or the SelectionListCreate function (and the C4DObjectList),) etc…sorry beyound my ability but this sounds like it would be different for each scene correct?.since each scene would have a differnt value or distance from the camera each time. I think the optimum would be something similar to the extrude along spline(ESA)plugin…where when a point is selected and the plugin( liquid) selected the metaball would grow from that point in either an XYZ direction…again way beyond my ability to code but wishful thinking

I am still trying to figure out why V9.6+( compile) isn’t working though

#19

Your 9.6 is working, but your version of Cinema that is loading up is not the UB/XCode version, this means that dylibs will not load as plugins with it on your machine, you would have to compile with Codewarrior to create an .xdl library which would be able to load as a plugin, which unfortunately I believe is no longer available.

The classes I mentioned allow you to find a Z distance for any point in screen space regardless of the scene, however you can calculate a z based on the last point by getting the currently active object from the document, converting it’s global position coordinate to screen space using the basedraw functions (Vector BaseDraw::WS(const Vector &position); ) and then using the z from that vector as your new z. It wont be very accurate because it will be based on the objects axis rather than any points in the object, but it will be close enough.

#20

all your help is greatly appreciated…I am attempting to find a V of codewarrior so that I can compile the 9.6 V. I will attempt to figure the rest but most likley this will be as far as my brain will let me go:)

cheers

scott