R19 and earlier SDK plugin development

These tutorials are mainly applicable to Cinema 4D R19 and earlier. The ones currently available are as follows:

• Compiling the SDK example using Visual Studio
• Addendum - compiling the SDK on a Mac
• Creating a channel shader plugin
  • building the interface
  • coding the basic plugin
  • writing the shader code
• Creating an object (spline) generator plugin
  • the interface
  • code part 1
  • code part 2
• Creating a menu (CommandData) plugin
  • the interface and header file
  • the plugin class
  • the dialog class
• Creating an ObjectData generator plugin
  • the interface
  • set up and resize handles
  • GetVirtualObjects()
  • generating the object

Cookbook recipes:

The pages linked here do not contain full tutorials, but code snippets and explanations of how to achieve a specific task in a C4D plugin. They are things which I have had to find out how to do in the plugins I develop. Some are the result of my own research, some are from posts at Maxon's Plugin Cafe site; all due credit is given for those.

I've written these pages as a reference for myself if I need to do the same thing in future plugins, but I hope others will find them useful as well.

• Plugin cookbook #1 - Getting a colour from a gradient element in a description
• Plugin cookbook #2 - Show or hide description elements
• Plugin cookbook #3 - Generating a dynamic spline in an ObjectData plugin

Other information:

• Undocumented description flags

In addition, a complete open-source plugin, 'ToggleGI' is available for download. This contains the full source code, which is heavily commented so you can see how it works. Download the .zip file here (491K).

Page last updated June 23rd 2021