Hi all
I tried this thread on the ‘Cinema4D’ forum, but thought I’d try it here as well to see if I could get more help …
At the moment I’m coding a crowd sim plugin for Cinema4D, but am having problems with finding help with the SDK. There’s ‘plugincafe.com’, but there’s no real tutorials for C++, and the forum doesn’t have much on for SDK newbies. Does anyone know of any good sites, or has anyone had experience with the C4D SDK who could give me some advice, please?
Cheers
Dan
I’m not too deep in the C4D SDK, I just wrote a shader plugin once. Do you have any specific questions or do you need a general introduction to the SDK or C++? Have you worked in C++ or with a plugin SDK before?
Sounds cool!! The problem I’m really having is although my C++ knowledge is fine and I’ve got all the SDK docs, I know really know where to start with a plugin, what type it should be (tag, expression, tool, etc) and how I could combine the C++ code with a scripting language (prob. C4D’s COFFEE language would be best suited)?
Also, I’ve been told it would be happy to combine the code with ‘Thinking Particles’, which I’m not too sure about, AND also to use ‘Xpresso’ for the brain node GUI. Where do I start? Also, trying to make the code package-independent could prove a bit of a bugger too!!
Unfortunately, TP and XPresso are beyond my scope, I’m stuck on an older version of C4D, but the 8.2 SDK doc looks like it shouldn’t be too hard to write a custom TP node. Is there a sample node in the SDK that you could use to start with?
About the type, I think a crowd simulation would need to implement multiple types, depending on your actual implementation. You should first start with a concept on how the user will use your plugin (will it be a part of TP? Will it there be a crowd object in the hierarchy view? Do you use a custom window or dummy objects to control its parameters?), and then think about the implementation.
Scriptability would be a cool addition, but I haven’t seen anything in the SDK that’d show how to create custom COFFEE commands.
Hmmm, ok, I’ll take a second look at the newest SDK docs. Not too sure where to go with the GUI design, but would probably have a seperate interface (like Shave) for configuration and then a new object for crowd ‘actors’. Also, may include new tools for actor placement, navmesh construction, etc.
In terms of scripting, if COFFEE won’t work, then I may look at the viability of Python. Also, not sure about combining the code with TP as not sure how that will limit the userbase, plus could be hard. Any other suggestions at all?
Dan
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