Maxon Registered Developer Program

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Dear Community,

The Maxon Registered Developer (MRD) program provides enterprise level support for Cinema 4D developers. This posting lines out the benefits and requirements of the program.

Please see the Support procedures topic for information about scope of support and how we deliver support in general.

Benefits

The most tangible benefits of the program are:

Access to development licenses for the current beta of Maxon One products (Cinema 4D, Redshift, ZBrush, Red Giant, etc.).
Access to the internal alpha and beta forums, and the Maxon employees operating in it.
Access to the continuous build output of the current alpha or beta (via the forums).
Access to the bug tracker of Cinema 4D.
Access to non-public features of Cinema 4D aimed at development.
Access to more in-depth 1:1 email support or virtual meetings with the SDK Group when necessary.

Enrollment

To enlist to the program, you must reach out to us via our contact form and demonstrate the following criteria of eligibility:

Reason: Explain why you require MRD membership. Ideally name the development project you intend to work on and illustrate what you intend to do.
Past Work: Demonstrate that you have successfully developed public or non-public plugins for Cinema 4D or other DCC applications. Alternatively name other software products you have worked on. You should provide here a link to a website, a video, or something similar that showcases your past work.
Number of Licenses: State the number of development licenses you request.
Account Handle: Provide the id.maxon.net e-mail handle(s) of the account(s) to which we shall assign the beta licenses when your request is approved. When you do not have an account, you can create a new one for free. We generally prefer to assign multiple licenses to a singular Maxon account but can also handle multiple accounts when necessary. The number of accounts here determines also the number of forum and bug tracker accounts you get.
NDA Signee: Provide the name and last name of your Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) signee (see Process below).
Company: Provide the name of a company or organization on behalf of which you are applying. Only applies when you apply on behalf of a company. Freelancers and content providers do not have to provide this information.

It is strongly recommended to follow this exact bullet point form. Lengthy applications are not necessary, one thousand characters should suffice for most applications. See also the Examples section at the end.

We must also point out that the MRD program is strictly bound to development tasks. Quality assurance, documenting how your software products work in conjunction with Cinema 4D, or (program) management all do not qualify as such. See the section Alternatives for other options. When applying for these, you must still follow the bullet points lined out in this section.

While the MRD program is aimed at commercial development, it is not exclusive to it, nor must one be an employee of a big company to apply. As stated above, Maxon views third party developers as crucial to its success. So, do not hesitate to reach out to us!

Process

Once you have sent your application, the following will happen:

Approval: We discuss your request internally and either approve or deny it. In either case we will reach out to you with the outcome. This usually takes two weeks but can take longer in complicated cases.
Non-Disclosure Agreement: Once your request has been approved, we will ask you to sign an NDA regarding the alpha and beta access of Cinema 4D.
On-Boarding: Once you have been approved and signed your NDA, you are now an MRD, congratulations! We will hand you over to the capable hands of our Beta Team which will provide your licenses as well forum and bug tracker access.
Renewal: The MRD membership itself has no fixed expiration date, but we might remove members who have not been logged into our beta forum for more than one year. So, make sure to log in at least once per year (login is the actual criteria, although participating in the community and bug reporting are of course an effective way to establish yourself as a valuable partner).
- The development license(s) associated with an MRD membership expire with the development cycle of Cinema 4D on May 1st and October 1st independent of when your MRD has been granted. We require MRD members to renew their licenses manually, but a brief e-mail asking for continuation usually suffices.

Alternatives

Sometimes the MRD program is not the right fit, either because users cannot enter the NDA or when the intended usage is not development related. In these cases, other options can be an alternative. This can either be applying for a Not for Resale (NFR) license for the current release candidate of Cinema 4D - without access to anything beta and bug tracking related -, or a strategic partnership for cases where management, marketing, or training are the reason you are reaching out to us.

When you already know that this applies to your case, please make sure to state so in your initial outreach. Please understand that such cases will take longer to process.

Examples

Here are two example applications to provide orientation for how a potentially successful application could look like.

Company Application

Dear Maxon SDK-Team,

I hope you are all well! I am Jane, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the development team at SomeBrand. We are looking into adding support for Cinema 4D for OurApp and would therefore like to request Maxon Registered Developer membership. Please find our application below.

Reason: We want to develop a bridge application between Cinema 4D and OurApp via a Cinema 4D plugin. The main goal is here to exchange metadata between OurApp and Cinema 4D, so that both applications are always in sync.

Past Work: Please refer to the www.somebrand.com/products section on our website to get a sense of what products we are shipping. Our main focus are procedural texture generation and asset databases for small artists up to big studios.

Number of Licenses: We would need at least 2 development licensees, better would be 4.

Account Handle: Please assign all licenses to [email protected], we just have created that account.

NDA Signee: Jane Doe

Company: SomeBrand

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us when you have questions about our application. It would also be great if could sync up in a quick meeting, could you offer a slot?

Sincerely,
Jane Doe

Individual Application

Hey Maxon SDK-Team,

I am John, and I run a small YouTube channel named ArtistCodingBits. I cover there Python development from the perspective of a technical artist. I have created scripts and plugins for Cinema 4D before and would like to cover this subject on my channel. I therefor want to request Maxon Registered Developer membership.

Reason: I want to produce video content about Python scripts, plugins, and general technical artist and pipelining subjects in the context of Cinema 4D. I am planning to release roughly three videos per year on this subject.

Past Work: Check ArtistCodingBits for my video content and my private GitHub for some Cinema 4D scripts and plugins I wrote. In my day work I am an technical artist at SomeStudio, but I run my YouTube channel privately.

Number of Licenses: I need one license.

Account Handle: Please assign all licenses to my account [email protected].

NDA Signee: John Doe

I also have a question: When approved, would it be possible to be featured on Maxon's social media channels?

Cheers,
John

Happy coding,
the Maxon SDK Group

This topic deliberately has been left open for on-topic questions. Due to its informative purpose, this topic will be strictly moderated.

24/10/2024: Added example section and split up NDA signee and company name.