@m_adam Thanks,it works well👍
2b524b98-f131-4d69-bcf0-4dec858821ab-image.png

this is code:

import c4d import random from c4d import gui # Welcome to the world of Python NAME = 0 LINKTO = 1 LINK = 2 TYPE = 3 class TreeView_Item(object): def __init__(self,): self.type = 'psr' self.selected = False self.obj_name = str(random.randint(1,100)) self.linkto_name = "" @property def IsSelected(self): return self.selected def Select(self): self.selected = True def Deselect(self): self.selected = False def __repr__(self): return str(self) def __str__(self): return self.obj_name class TreeView(c4d.gui.TreeViewFunctions): def __init__(self,items_list=None): self.items_list = items_list if items_list else [] def GetLineHeight(self,root, userdata, obj, col, area): return area.DrawGetFontHeight() def IsResizeColAllowed(self, root, userdata, lColID): return True def IsTristate(self, root, userdata): return False def GetColumnWidth(self, root, userdata, obj, col, area): """Measures the width of cells. Although this function is called #GetColumnWidth and has a #col, it is not only executed by column but by cell. So, when there is a column with items requiring the width 5, 10, and 15, then there is no need for evaluating all items. Each item can return its ideal width and Cinema 4D will then pick the largest value. Args: root (any): The root node of the tree view. userdata (any): The user data of the tree view. obj (any): The item for the current cell. col (int): The index of the column #obj is contained in. area (GeUserArea): An already initialized GeUserArea to measure the width of strings. Returns: TYPE: Description """ # The default width of a column is 80 units. width = 80 # Replace the width with the text width. area is a prepopulated # user area which has already setup all the font stuff, we can # measure right away. if col == NAME: return area.DrawGetTextWidth(obj.obj_name) + 5 if col == LINKTO: return area.DrawGetTextWidth("-->") + 5 if col == LINK: return area.DrawGetTextWidth(obj.linkto_name) + 5 if col == TYPE: return area.DrawGetTextWidth(obj.type) + 5 return width def GetFirst(self, root, userdata): """ Return the first element in the hierarchy, or None if there is no element. """ rValue = None if not len(self.items_list) else self.items_list[0] return rValue def GetNext(self, root, userdata, obj): """ Returns the next Object to display after arg:'obj' """ rValue = None currentObjIndex = self.items_list.index(obj) nextIndex = currentObjIndex + 1 if nextIndex < len(self.items_list): rValue = self.items_list[nextIndex] return rValue def GetPred(self, root, userdata, obj): """ Returns the previous Object to display before arg:'obj' """ rValue = None currentObjIndex = self.items_list.index(obj) predIndex = currentObjIndex - 1 if 0 <= predIndex < len(self.items_list): rValue = self.items_list[predIndex] return rValue def GetId(self, root, userdata, obj): """ Return a unique ID for the element in the TreeView. """ return hash(obj) def Select(self, root, userdata, obj, mode): print(obj.obj_name) if mode == c4d.SELECTION_NEW: for item in self.items_list: item.Deselect() obj.Select() elif mode == c4d.SELECTION_ADD: obj.Select() elif mode == c4d.SELECTION_SUB: obj.Deselect() def IsSelected(self, root, userdata, obj): return obj.IsSelected def DeletePressed(self, root, userdata): "Called when a delete event is received." for item in reversed(self.items_list): if item.IsSelected: self.items_list.remove(item) def GetName(self, root, userdata, obj): """ Returns the name to display for arg:'obj', only called for column of type LV_TREE """ return str(obj) # Or obj.texturePath def DrawCell(self, root, userdata, obj, col, drawinfo, bgColor): """ Draw into a Cell, only called for column of type LV_USER """ if col == NAME: text = obj.obj_name elif col == LINKTO: text = '-->' elif col == LINK: text = obj.linkto_name elif col == TYPE: text = obj.type else: text = '' canvas = drawinfo["frame"] xpos = drawinfo["xpos"] ypos = drawinfo["ypos"] txtColorDict = canvas.GetColorRGB(c4d.COLOR_TEXT_SELECTED) if obj.IsSelected else canvas.GetColorRGB( c4d.COLOR_TEXT) txtColorVector = c4d.Vector(txtColorDict["r"] / 255.0, txtColorDict["g"] / 255.0, txtColorDict["b"] / 255.0) canvas.DrawSetTextCol(txtColorVector, bgColor) canvas.DrawText(text, xpos, ypos) def DoubleClick(self, root, userdata, obj, col, mouseinfo): return True class test_dialog(gui.GeDialog): def __init__(self): self._treegui = None self.treeview = TreeView() def CreateLayout(self): # Other than edit fields, buttons do not have a builtin bubble help. customgui = c4d.BaseContainer() customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_BORDER, c4d.BORDER_THIN_IN) customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_HAS_HEADER, True) # True if the tree view may have a header line. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_HIDE_LINES, False) # True if no lines should be drawn. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_MOVE_COLUMN, False) # True if the user can move the columns. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_RESIZE_HEADER, True) # True if the column width can be changed by the user. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_FIXED_LAYOUT, True) # True if all lines have the same height. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_ALTERNATE_BG, True) # Alternate background per line. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_CURSORKEYS, True) # True if cursor keys should be processed. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_NOENTERRENAME, True) # Suppresses the rename popup when the user presses enter. customgui.SetBool(c4d.TREEVIEW_NO_MULTISELECT, False) self._treegui = self.AddCustomGui(1000, c4d.CUSTOMGUI_TREEVIEW, "", c4d.BFH_SCALEFIT | c4d.BFV_SCALEFIT, 300, 300, customgui) if not self._treegui: print("[ERROR]: Could not create TreeView") return False self.AddButton(1001, c4d.BFH_CENTER, name="Add") return True def InitValues(self) -> bool: layout = c4d.BaseContainer() layout.SetInt32(NAME, c4d.LV_USER) layout.SetInt32(LINKTO, c4d.LV_USER) layout.SetInt32(LINK, c4d.LV_USER) layout.SetInt32(TYPE, c4d.LV_USER) self.layout = layout self._treegui.SetLayout(4, layout) # Set the header titles. self._treegui.SetHeaderText(NAME, "Name") self._treegui.SetHeaderText(LINKTO, "") self._treegui.SetHeaderText(LINK, "Link") self._treegui.SetHeaderText(TYPE, "Type") # Set TreeViewFunctions instance used by our CUSTOMGUI_TREEVIEW self._treegui.SetRoot(self._treegui, self.treeview, None) self._treegui.Refresh() return True def Command(self, id, msg): if id == 1001: item = TreeView_Item() self.treeview.items_list.append(item) self._treegui.Refresh() return True return True # Execute main() if __name__=='__main__': dlg = test_dialog() dlg.Open(c4d.DLG_TYPE_ASYNC,0 -1,-1,400,400)

Hey @markeee,

If I were to hire someone to do this, would it be possible you think?

Well, these 'is it possible?' questions are always hard to answer. As always, the wisdom applies that everything is possible in programming when you are just stubborn enough.

I am also not quite sure what you are exact question is. I assume you want some sort of interactive experience, where you drag the object, and it then places itself. Python is an exceptionally bad language for that, it is simply to slow. And even in C++, when you just try to use native tools, this does not look good.

When you would do what I did above in C++ while making it "nice", i.e., implement a tool that allows you to drag an object, and then for each tool update, let that dragged object state simulate in another thread in a dummy document for a few frames, you would probably end up with something that is quite slow. The reason is that we do not expose the core of our Simulation API, and you must go the overhead route of executing a whole document, when you just want to simulate two input objects for a few steps (i.e., frames in the context of document).

Long story short, even an experienced developer could not make this fast and interactive with the native public Cinema API. He or she would have to reimplement rigid body dynamics from scratch or use a lib like Bullet. All that is only sensible in the context of C++, and would probably cost 10's of thousands of Euros to develop, if not even 100's.

That is all to be taken with a grain of salt, because a good dev will look at your problem and say "what you want to do, is incredibly hard and expensive to realize, but I could do that which is orders of magnitude cheaper". And that route might work just fine for you. E.g., the little example I have shown above.

But that is all out of scope of support at the end of the day, we cannot give you advice on how to interact with contract developers. You would have to talk with one of them. And even for the "here is a cheap alternative"-route you probably are not done with a "here is 500€", but a good dev will charge you half a month of work for that. You can probably also just look on some forums or gum-road for a developer who is willing to do this for 500€ and be lucky, but chances are high that they will fail on such task.

Here are two examples for companies which do contract development for Cinema 4D.

https://www.gamelogicdesign.com/
https://www.pixel-nexus.com/

Cheers,
Ferdinand

FYI: I mean that all with no offense, you could be very well the representee for a studio which really has to solve this task, and does not mind spending real money on it. I am just outlining that this is a complex task which requires experts which are usually not cheap.

Good to hear!

Hey @uogygiuol,

Sorry, I did overlook the 'without having to load the complete gltf in memory' part of your initial question. There is no mechanism in Cinema 4D with which you could load a file partially, i.e., some visitor/delegate pattern which asks you for each element of a to be imported file if you indeed want to load it. That would be too complex to realize for the many file formats Cinema 4D is implementing.

What you could do, given your GLTF file is in JSON format, is mangle it into place, given that Python has very nice JSON support. But making sure that this file stays valid, when you remove elements from it, might be not so trivial. I am also not sure if you will ever come out here with a net-win where mangling the file in Python first and then loading it outpaces just loading the full file.

Could you shed some light on where this becomes relevant? Are your files so large that loading is a bottleneck? I struggle to see a bit where this could become a scenario with GLTF.

When you have some file "input.gltf" which contains let's say ten elements you are interested in, and the rest is garbage, the workflow would be to load the whole file, and then just delete everything that you are not interested in, and then save that file. You could also take the inverse route, clone the elements you are interested in into new document. But there you will break links (e.g., a material tag linking to its material).

In the end this is all a bit hypothetical. You do not disclose if there are material, animations, etc., and most importantly how the scene hierarchy is, e.g., could an Eberhardt{n} hold descendant nodes that must be preserved, e.g., Ebertraudt is the first child of Eberhardt42. This would of course make this all much more complicated.

When you want to also support 2024, I would suggest that you just monkey patch mxutils.IterateTree (as this seems to be all you need). I have dumped the implementation of it at the end. Doing it like that, would have the benefit that you would native code for 2025.

import c4d if c4d.GetC4DVersion() < 2024000: raise ImportError("This module requires Cinema 4D 2024 or later.") import mxutils # Etiher function form a local module, or define it here. with mxutils.LocalImportPath(__file__): from myLocalStuff import IterateTree # Monkey patch the function into earlier versions of Cinema 4D. if c4d.GetC4DVersion() < 2025000: mxutils.IterateTree = IterateTree

Cheers,
Ferdinand

def GetRootNode(node: c4d.GeListNode) -> c4d.GeListNode: """Rewinds the passed `node` to its root. """ # CheckType(node, c4d.GeListNode) while node.GetUp(): node = node.GetUp() return node def GetFirstSiblingNode(node: c4d.GeListNode) -> c4d.GeListNode: """Rewinds the passed `node` to its first sibling. """ # CheckType(node, c4d.GeListNode) while node.GetPred(): node = node.GetPred() return node def IterateTree(node: c4d.GeListNode | None, yieldSiblings: bool = False, rewindToFirstSibling: bool = False, rewindToRoot: bool = False) -> typing.Iterator[c4d.GeListNode]: """Yields nodes that are hierarchically related to `node`. """ def iter(node: c4d.GeListNode) -> typing.Iterator[c4d.GeListNode]: """Iterates over the descendants of the passed `node`. """ # The visited nodes and the node to stop iteration at. visited: dict[bytes, c4d.GeListNode] = {} terminal: c4d.GeListNode = node # Walking a tree iteratively is faster for medium to large trees than a recursive or # semi-recursive traversal. See: https://developers.maxon.net/forum/topic/13684 while node: # We could use GeListNode.__hash__ here, but it turns out that it is much slower than # doing it manually with MAXON_CREATOR_ID (sic!). Probably because of the overhead of # __hash__ hashing the UUID into an integer? nodeUuid: bytes = bytes(node.FindUniqueID(c4d.MAXON_CREATOR_ID)) if nodeUuid is None: raise RuntimeError(f"Could not retrieve UUID for {node}.") # Yield the node when it has not been encountered before. if visited.get(nodeUuid) is None: yield node visited[nodeUuid] = True # Walk the graph in a depth first fashion. getDown: c4d.GeListNode | None = node.GetDown() getNext: c4d.GeListNode | None = node.GetNext() getDownUuid: bytes | None = getDown.FindUniqueID(c4d.MAXON_CREATOR_ID) if getDown else None if getDown and getDownUuid is None: raise RuntimeError(f"Could not retrieve UUID for {getDown}.") if getDown and visited.get(bytes(getDownUuid)) is None: node = getDown elif node == terminal: break elif getNext: node = getNext else: node = node.GetUp() # --- End of iter() ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- if not isinstance(node, c4d.GeListNode): return # Set the starting node. if rewindToRoot: node = GetRootNode(node) if rewindToFirstSibling: node = GetFirstSiblingNode(node) # Traverse the hierarchy. while node: yield from iter(node) if not yieldSiblings: return node = node.GetNext()

That is perfect, thank you for being through and concise, lifesaver.

Hi @derudo,

Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us!

Getting Started

Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules.

Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment. Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support. Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads.

It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

There's no single known "thing" we're aware of that could lead to such behavior. In other words, it can be lots of different "things" that caused the symptoms you're describing. Hence, without any further details everything I'm pointing out here is highly speculative.

I also don't think answering the question "What could have happened?" is by any means productive, so let's switch the point of view to "How one could diagnose it?".

Since you haven't posted any console output in your question, I assume you haven't checked that. This would actually be the first thing to check. Please refer to our Python Console Manual and searching on the forum.

Next, try to figure out if it's only UI that stopped appearing or your plugin isn't registered at all anymore. You can do this by checking (e.g. with some temporary print statements) if you plugin is actually functional.

On the screenshot you've posted the structure is kind of strange, but we're not sure if it's just a visualization matter of your software. Namely, the plugin.pyp file is expected to reside in the root of the plugin folder. Essentially, the following hierarchy level is not supposed to be there:
232c47cd-171e-4642-8c12-7661b51e6ce5-image.png
Please refer to the article Plugin Structure Manual: Directory Structure and double check your plugin in this regard.

If the points above don't lead to any result, try debugging it step-by-step. Namely, strip out everything except the essentials (like plugin registration) and continue adding things piece-by-piece until it starts failing. By the way, one can easily achieve this by using any version control system (e.g. git), as they typically provide a lossless way to manage your code (i.e. remove and add parts of code, without being worried to lose any of them). This approach could also have prevented your scenario in first place, when something stopped working and there're no clues about the change that has lead to it.

If this still doesn't help, you can share your plugin here (or send us via contact form, when confidential information is involved). However, I must warn you that our Support Procedures still fully apply, namely:

We cannot debug your code for you and instead provide answers to specific problems.

Cheers,
Ilia

Hello,
Thanks for your complete answer.
I think I will not start in thread management, but opted for your last solution which will still go through an external image but in an automated way by a python script.
Thanks again.

Hello @myosis,

Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us!

Getting Started

Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules.

Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment. Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support. Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads.

It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: Asking Questions.

About your First Question

All the methods you list simply do not exist (neither in C++ nor in Python), see c4d.utils.Neighbor for the type overview.

⚠ I therefore must assume that you are using an AI, like, for example, ChatGPT, which hallucinated these methods. Please note that we reserve the right to refuse support when confronted with undisclosed AI gibberish, especially for beginner content. Always state when you used an AI to generate code.

Something such as an edge does not exist concretely in our API and many other APIs, i.e., other than for points and polygons, there is no explicit data type for edges which would be stored. Edges are defined implicitly by CPolygon. To filter a selection for edges of a certain length, you would have to convert edge indices to polygon and point indices and then measure the distance between the relevant points.

Cheers,
Ferdinand

Result

074e2ada-a9ce-45b4-800a-acf7e060941a-image.png

Code """Deselects all edges in the edge selection of the active object whose edge length exceeds MAX_EDGE_LENGTH. Must be run as a Script Manager script with an editable polygon object selected. """ import c4d doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument # The currently active document. op: c4d.BaseObject | None # The primary selected object in `doc`. Can be `None`. MAX_EDGE_LENGTH: float = 25.0 # The maximum length of an edge before to be considered too long. MAX_EDGE_LENGTH_SQUARED: float = MAX_EDGE_LENGTH ** 2 # The square of `MAX_EDGE_LENGTH`. def main() -> None: """Called by Cinema 4D when the script is being executed. """ if not op or not op.IsInstanceOf(c4d.Opolygon): raise ValueError("The selected object is not a polygon object.") # Get the edge selection of the object and turn it into a list of selected edges indices. Also, # get the points and polygons of the object. selection: c4d.BaseSelect = op.GetEdgeS() selectedEdges: list[int] = [i for i in range(op.GetEdgeCount()) if selection.IsSelected(i)] points: list[c4d.Vector] = op.GetAllPoints() polygons: list[c4d.CPolygon] = op.GetAllPolygons() def getPointByIndex(poly: c4d.CPolygon, index: int) -> c4d.Vector: """Returns the point of the polygon at the given index. CPolygon has no index access, so we fix that here. """ if index == 0: return points[poly.a] elif index == 1: return points[poly.b] elif index == 2: return points[poly.c] elif index == 3: return points[poly.d] # Iterate over the edges and find the one's that are longer than MAX_EDGE_LENGTH. An edge index # is defined as: # # "The edges are indexed by 4 * polygon + edge where polygon is the polygon index and edge is # the edge index between 0 and 3." # # So, we must revert that here, then measure the edge length, and collect all too long edges. tooLongEdges: list[int] = [] for edgeIndex in selectedEdges: polygonIndex: int = edgeIndex // 4 edgeInPolygonIndex: int = edgeIndex % 4 poly: c4d.CPolygon = polygons[polygonIndex] pointA: c4d.Vector = getPointByIndex(poly, edgeInPolygonIndex) pointB: c4d.Vector = getPointByIndex(poly, (edgeInPolygonIndex + 1) % 4) # Getting the length of a vector is quite expensive, so we compare the squared lengths. edgeLengthSq: float = (pointA - pointB).GetLengthSquared() if edgeLengthSq > MAX_EDGE_LENGTH_SQUARED: tooLongEdges.append(edgeIndex) # Print the indices of the edges that are too long. print("The following edges are too long:", tooLongEdges) # Deselect all edges in the object's edge selection that are too long. for edgeIndex in tooLongEdges: selection.Deselect(edgeIndex) # Push an update event to Cinema 4D to redraw the object. c4d.EventAdd() if __name__ == '__main__': main()

@ferdinand Thank you for your detailed answer.

Hi @mia-elisenberg,
Thanks for reaching out to us!

I must note that as per our Support Procedures we cannot debug your code. Hence, in your future postings I kindly ask you to try simplifying your code to a minimal viable example, which highlights your question.

Regarding your question, creating keyframes for nodes can be a little trickier comparing to the ordinary objects, but the general data accessing scheme stays the same. @Dunhou has thankfully posted the simplified example for your question, which already shows crucial pieces of how one would access the CTrack, CCurve and CKey for the node port. (@Dunhou I won't get tired showing our appreciation in playing an active role in our community! 😉 ). Namely, you're expected to use GetBaseListForNode to get the BaseList2D element that corresponds to the node you have. Additionally, NimbusBaseInterface.GetDescID can be used to get the DescID of the port. After you have this information, the process of interacting with animation data isn't any different. Your can check the animation examples in our repository: Cinema-4D-Python-API-Examples/scripts/04_3d_concepts/scene_elements
/animation.

The only thing I'd like to point out here is handling color data. Namely, CKey is designed to operate with float values, but Opacity channel works with color data. Hence, you need to create a separate CTrack for each color channel. You basically do this by pushing your DescID one level further to access the elements of your color data. Please find small example below (based on the code shared by @Dunhou):

descLevelsRGB: list[c4d.DescLevel] = [ c4d.DescLevel(c4d.COLOR_R, c4d.DTYPE_REAL, 0), c4d.DescLevel(c4d.COLOR_G, c4d.DTYPE_REAL, 0), c4d.DescLevel(c4d.COLOR_B, c4d.DTYPE_REAL, 0) ] opacityValue: list[float] = [0.55, 0.66, 0.77] # example data to store in the keyframe ctime: c4d.BaseTime = c4d.BaseTime(doc.GetTime().GetFrame(doc.GetFps()), doc.GetFps()) for opacityChannelDescLevel, opacityChannelValue in zip(descLevelsRGB, opacityValue): # Get opacity channel DescID and push it to access color channel channelDescID: c4d.DescID = nimbusRef.GetDescID(opacityPort.GetPath()) channelDescID.PushId(opacityChannelDescLevel) track: c4d.CTrack = c4d.CTrack(opacityPortBL2D, channelDescID) opacityPortBL2D.InsertTrackSorted(track) curve: c4d.CCurve = track.GetCurve() key = c4d.CKey() track.FillKey(doc, opacityPortBL2D, key) # this is optional key.SetValue(curve, opacityChannelValue) key.SetTime(curve, ctime) curve.InsertKey(key)

Cheers,
Ilia

@i_mazlov I get it, thanks for your reply.

@Dunhou @i_mazlov
Thanks a lot.😊 😊 😊

Hi @serco, there is multiple way to execute a script automatically when Cinema 4D is opened.

Use python_init.py, this force you to add your script into the temp folder. Bu it can be done for a particular instance of a Cinema 4D or it can also be applied to all Cinema 4D versions that use a given python version. Implement a Plugin and react to PluginMessage various event are sent to Python, and you can hook into them to execute your code. This require to have a Python plugin loaded by Cinema 4D. Depending of your needs there is c4dpy which act as a Python Interpreter, where you can pass directly your Python file as an argument. Then again depending of your need you may be able to start what you want to do next.

Cheers,
Maxime.

I get it, thanks for your reply and keeping the idea.
If there are any workarounds or alternative solutions in the meantime, please let me know.
I look forward to any updates regarding this feature in the future.
Cheers~

Hi @BretBays Happy Christmas ! Thanks for getting back, and indeed PLUGINFLAG_COMMAND_OPTION_DIALOG is the way to go. Find an example in CommandData with Options Dialog - Docked command button

Cheers,
Maxime.

Thanks a lot for reporting this kind of issue !
This is going to be fixed in the next update of the doc.

Cheers,
Maxime.

Hi thanks for the question, I've opened a bug report, for the moment the only workaround would be to remove the Morph and re-add it.

For the moment the name in the treeview is only updated when manually edited from the treeview and on the insertion of the item in the tree view.

Cheers,
Maxime.

Hi @i_mazlov
I can't use C++ at the moment, so I thought I'd try MultilineEditText for my purposes.
I looked for This post in the forum and now I have some ideas.
Thank you for your reply!

Cheers~

Thank you for your reply and solution！
Cheers~