dast

So far all discussions in this thread seam to be related to the introduction presentation. I missed the live presentation, and only managed to tune in right at the point when the beer o-'clock joke was dropped. Wished I had missed that as well. Anyway, was able to rewind the stream by half an hour and watch the whole introduction thing. This really didn't wet my appetite to watch any of the next presentations. So ... did I miss anything? Just wondering. Today is day 2 of those presentations. Yet, I don't see any mention of yesterday's presentations, nor any discussion. Again wondering if there's anything worth to watch?

The original Dials was limited to the 3D viewport only. When I designed and implemented the plugin this limitation was fine enough for me. I only use this plugin to speed up performing actions when working in the viewport. However, recently I noticed this plugin would also be handy to have when using in combination with my Seamilar plugin. Allowing to have direct access to the UV tools when working in its own UV view window. So, I went looking for a way to extend the original plugin. Skipping the technical details ... (<yawn> boring!!!) I found a way to get it working for R16 upto R20 ... on Windows. Digged a little deeper and managed to get it to work on macOS ... "kinda". The Dials widget can now be used outside of the 3D viewport, even outside of the main Cinema4D application window. Tested on single and dual monitor setup. The plugin now has an additional colored ring behind the icons, allowing to contract against the background. The transparency of this new colored ring can be adjusted in the settings. I am providing this new version as a free beta-version to existing customers, with no further support. Unfortunately this version will probably never leave the beta stage, as there are just too many issues with R21. EDIT: While not being able to provide a same experience for R21 users as for R16-R20 users, I have managed to get something working for R21 (Windows and macOS). Albeit with limitations due to a bug in R21, which probably only will get resolved in R23 "at the earliest".

Sorry, had to go back to the legacy 2.5 theme. I really liked to new theme and especially its new text editor. However, I don't know if it is my system alone, or a recurring thing with other users as well, but since a few days the website is extremely slow to load at times. I am using Firefox 78.0.2 on Windows 10. With the new theme trying to make this replay took forever. The page loads up, but not entirely, and a popup bar at the top of the page keeps mentioning: "A web page is slowing down your browser. What would you like to do? ... stop it, wait". This didn't happen a few days ago. Switching to the legacy theme gets rid of this issue.

So ... Yes, by now you might have realized I have reconsidered, and didn't stop development. Kind of. I still stand behind my first thoughts about R21. The only difference is that, since I was under automatic renewal of MSA (without realizing it) I was legally obliged to purchase the final MSA. That's what I did, and as a result I was able to update my plugins to "work" with R21. Why the quotes around works? Well, in my opinion, ... and that should be clear to all ... MY opinion. So, in my opinion this R21 release is just (*). How frustrating it has been to get some of the plugins to function on R21 as reliably as they were on previous versions. Sure ... bugs have been fixed, present in R20 and before. Sure ... new features have been added. But the whole new licensing scheme experience, and on top of that a completely new GUI. Come on, it's common sense that this would provide for quite some issues. And indeed! I have had numerous communications with the SDK support team. Great guys, by the way !!! Really! No sarcasm intended. Hats off to those guys who try to help whenever needed. Unfortunately, they are not able to help when the problems are deep inside the application itself. Even more unfortunate is that while the issues are confirmed to be bugs, a next update doesn't provide for a fix. Seeing we're kind of at the end of the R21 life-cycle I have no high hopes to see this fixed ... unless in R22 or later. Don't even get me started on S22 ... As I am personally not using R21, would I still develop plugins for R21? I am developing for R20 and previous versions. If it doesn't take much time and frustration to port to R21, I will. Else ... There you have it. In my opinion R21 was and still is (*). I am done venting. (*) funnily enough the forum software does not allow to use this word. It is spelled with a "c", an "r", then "a", and finally "p".

PolyDup v1.0 is done. Documentation finalized, implementation ported to R16 - R21, both on Windows and macOS. Plugin banner created and website updated (see first post).

I am starting to like the changes so far. Nice work. To me it looks like the new choice of colors (fore- and background) provides for a much more readable experience. At least that's how I notice it for the dark theme. The bottom bar icons ... yeah, I am not too sure about that one. But as it is work in progress, let's wait and see. One thing I found odd was that the bottom bar has a search icon, while the top banner area has one as well, with a text input field next to it. Again, since this is work in progress, that will probably be taken care of ... just wanted to point it out. Really nice work. Thanks for spending the time to make this forum more enjoyable.

Thanks for that. File has been uploaded here. That makes for a nice experiment, looking forward to which version gets the most downloads.

I wanted to upload the zip file into the download section, but I get an error that it only accepts .c4d .zip .obj .fbx files. Ironically it's a .zip file but still I get the error.

Why? It's an ego thing. I want to stay in control of the availability of the script. More importantly, I feel that having a topic on the subject allows to interact with the users. If changes need to be done on the script, it can easily be discussed in the topic. And I'd also like to refer to the recent discussion about the download section not being available, or hard to find.

I have been using "Set Selection" on many occasions. Be it to create selection tags to apply different materials to an object. Or simply as kind of a clipboard to temporarily hold a set of selected polygons during modeling. However, in most cases I do not have enough with a single selection tag. It can happen that during a modeling session I need a few temporary selections, to be picked up later in the process when I need to work here and there on a model. As such, in the past I had a love-hate relationship with the "Set Selection" command. It was a very useful tool, except that it required me to always deselect the newly created selection tag before I could create another one. Reason for this is that if you perform a "Set Selection" with a selected tag, the newly selected items would be merged into the selected tag ... instead of being created in their own separate tag. I mostly use the Commander to quickly type "set se" and press enter. Or I would add the "Set Selection" icon into a modeling palette and dock it in the layout. Still, in order to be able to create multiple selection tags, I would need to execute the command, deselect the tag, and proceed with creating a new selection. NOT ANYMORE ... It finally annoyed me so much that I spend some time writing a script to provide the functionality to perform a "Set New Selection" ... NOT overwriting the current selection tag. This script will create a new selection tag of its own, use an appropriate unique name (just as the native "Set Selection"), store the selected items be it polygons, edges or points. I call it: Set New Selection. The good thing is, that you can execute this script from the Commander, or drag the icon into a palette and dock it into the layout. AND it can coexist next to the native "Set Selection". Which means you can still use the original behaviour if you want to overwrite a selection tag, or use the new one to create separate tags each time the script is executed. Isn't that neat? Yes, I thought so too! And the best thing ... it's available here, and it's ... wait for it ... free !!! Set New Selection.zip

I have added a few more options to the navigation widget. Here's a demonstration video showing the possibilities. Numeric inputs have been provided in the tool's Attribute Manager, allowing for fine tuning the position, scale, rotation. Quantization is available as well (using shift key during drag), with custom quantize values. Next I will be working on the documentation, before releasing the plugin to the public. Coming soon ...

Adding some features to the control widget. Next to the already available rotation adjustment it does now also allow to manipulate positioning and scaling of the injected extract. Right now you can move in X, Y and Z, rotate around Z, and scale in Z. Holding <shift> will quantize the movement, rotation, scale. Double clicking a control item will reset the X, Y, Z position, rotation or scale. There are still a few extra options I want to add before finalizing the plugin.

A long while ago I had uploaded a script, but cannot seem to locate it on the C4DCafé anymore. I cannot even locate the whole download section anymore ??? I tried to contact @Igor via PM, but the system mentions he cannot receive any messages (mailbox full maybe?), as such he will not even be notified by the trigger here. For your convenience I am uploading the script here ... (unzip the files into your scripts folder). Hope this helps. Points2Circle.zip

Update: I have not worked on this plugin for ages. Which means I haven't had the time to add support for the new node-based material system introduced in Cinema4D. Because of this I am provided the plugin here, free of charge, for anyone who still might take advantage of its feature set. The latest version (available for download at bottom of first post in this thread) should work on R17 - R21. I haven't tested S22, since not available to me, so feel free to provide feedback if it does. It definitely does not work on R16 and previous, and I do not have any plans to spend time in making it work in those versions of Cinema4D. There is no documentation available, except for the information provided in this thread. If anyone would be interested in providing detailed documentation, be it written or as a video tutorial, feel free to provide a link here. PS. I do want to keep this plugin exclusive to C4DCafé. As such, please do not distribute or upload the plugin anywhere else. Please respect the work of others, and don't claim credit for things you snatched somewhere.

Beta 4 available for download (at bottom of first post). While my current main focus is on developing for R20 (the latest version I am happily using) I do have spend the necessary time to port the plugin to versions R16 to R21, both for Windows and macOS. Unfortunately, a bug in R16 (maybe R17 as well) seems to interfere with pasting geometry. As said, for now I am focusing on R20, and will look for a workaround for the R16-R17 bug later on ... if there would be any interest for these versions. I have no access to S22, so cannot test if the R21 version of the plugin will run on that subscription version.

PolyGnome could do this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOAfiZrS9PA

Sorry, you've lost me there. The only difference at this point in time is that PolyDup can automatically detect how to orient the to-be-pasted geometry for a best fit, and it allows interactive rotation of the to-be-pasted geometry. Apart from that PolyGnome is identical, and has a whole library management. I do intend to extend PolyGnome to have auto-orient, interactive-rotation, and preview ... but I don't expect this to still happen before Q3 2020. I am really trying to picture your "merge the open ended selections in various combinations of new "closed" geometry" ... but it draws a blank. Care to elaborate what you mean?

Now THAT's some feedback. Thanks for bringing up these points, Dave. Some of the posted demonstration video show this already, but it sure is important to mention this. The geometry copied from one object is not limited to be pasted to the same object. It can be pasted onto any polygon object, of the current scene or any scene which is currently opened in Cinema 4D. You can thus copy geometry from object A in project B, switch to project C and paste the geometry onto object D ... When copying geometry it is "temporarily" stored into a selected slot. I mean "temporarily" as it will be overwritten with any new geometry you decide to copy and store into that same slot. At this point in time 5 slots are available. This plugin is meant to copy/paste geometry on the fly. It isn't meant to actually store the copied geometry into a library, which is what PolyGnome allows. However, I might provide a future update which allows a way to "export" the copied geometry towards PolyGnome's library. But nothing has yet been decided in this regard. Alternatively, it could be possible to provide a way to extend the number of available slots. But as any application allowing to copy/paste content to and from the clipboard is limited to a single item, I figured that having a way to copy/paste a few items would be enough ... without the need of having to provide a whole library management system. I might misunderstand your point, but PolyDup requires at least an open end in the copied geometry. Contrary to PolyGnome, PolyDup does not allow for welded or floating assets. With PolyDup the copied geometry is always welded when pasted. Replacing geometry will currently work, but only if the geometry matches in size. In future updates additional widgets might be provided to adjust the pasted geometry. Currently the plugin provides visual feedback if selected polygons do not match with selected geometry to be pasted. This is based on number of polygon stitches that are required to weld the geometry to be pasted with the existing mesh polygons. For now the plugin requires a matching number of stiches between mesh and pasted geometry. With this plugin I do not have the intention in duplicating the effort of PolyGnome, as such will not provide a way to build up libraries of assets. However, as mentioned earlier, I might provide a way to export copied geometry towards PolyGnome. Again, thanks for the feedback. Highly appreciated!