dast

Well, I wasn't too happy about the Mega sharing policy. Looking forward to try out the new shared location. Thanks for making that happen.

How to use the plugin: The plugin consists of 3 tabs: Assign, Config, Log. The Log tab: is pure informational, and has only been added in order to avoid to have the console window open next to the plugin. SPETI will thus only print out info/warning/error into this Log window. The console window will then only show python errors due to my dumb programming mistakes. So, for regular users: you can keep the console window closed ;-) The Configuration tab: is currently still very much work in progress and hence only has very basic settings available. Here you specify which texture set images from Substance Painter are to be used, and also specify the file name convention for these images. Usually you would only need to open this panel once to set things up, and you're done. However, since the whole plugin is early WIP it still doesn't do any persistent storage of user settings. This means it doesn't remember your settings, and reverts to the hardcoded settings next time you activate the plugin. (Will be handled in future version) The Assign tab: is where all the action happens. First thing you do is specify the path where Substance Painter has exported the different texture set images. In my workflow I only need a single path for all texture sets, but if need be to provide sub-folders per texture set or material, this might be handled in future version. Once a valid path is entered, the status shows how many files are available in that path, and depending your configuration settings will show how many texture sets this represents (1 texture set represents 7 images: basecolor, ambient occlusion, normal, roughness, metallic, height, ior). Next is how to create/update the material. There are 3 workflows I assumed would be useful to me. Again, if users require others it might be added in future version. 1. Work from the image files generated by Substance Painter. As mentioned, 7 images form a texture set (can be more or less, depending your workflow). Each texture set will result in a C4D material. The plugin will collect the available images per texture set and create the different C4D materials from that. The assignment of material to the appropriate object(s) is currently not implemented yet (will be handled in future version) 2. Work from existing C4D material (my default workflow). In my case the material is created as a simple color place holder, and is already assigned to the object(s). Selecting this mode will update the material matching the texture set name. No new material is created, and since material is already assigned to object(s) no assignment is needed. 3. Work from UVW Tag names. In my case I combine different objects to share the same UV texture space. By doing so, I give the UVW Tags that share the same space also the same name. This will end up to be the texture set in Substance Painter. The purpose of this mode is to create the materials for each UVW Tag. Assignment of the material to the object(s) is yet to be implemented. The options: are greyed out for now. If a material with matching name exists, it will be use, else a new material with that name will be created. As mentioned, assignment of materials is future development. The list: represents the items, depending the choice of workflow (from file, from material, from uvw tag). In case of "by file name" the list will show the detected texture sets in the given path. It shows a list of C4D material names in case "by material name" is selected. And when "by uvw tag" is selected it displays a list of uvw tag names. Each entry in the list can be select/deselected (use short cuts "all" and "none"). The plugin doesn't detect changes automatically. So if you modify the path or files, add/remove/rename materials or UVW tags, you will want to press the "Rescan" button to update the list to the latest items. The Import button: will process each selected item in the list and create/update the material with given name.

Edit 2017: Renamed topic from "Substance Painter Exported Texture Importer (SPETI)" to "SPETI and TINA" The original post was made for Substance Painter textures, but as it applies to any kind textures the plugin has been split off into 2 "versions", read more here -obsolete link deleted- Original message below and on next pages will still refer to Substance Painter. <end edit> Working with Substance Painter for texture creation I found it a waste of time to manually create each material from the numerous exported textures. Looking at the main character for my short story I had to import 18 texture sets (each 6 bitmap files). Knowing that many more objects had to be textured in the future, I soon started to look how to automate this material creation. For this I looked into scripting, and soon decided to make a plugin, which I could have named "Substance Painter Artistically Generated Exported Texture Importer". But went for the simpler "Substance Painter Exported Texture Importer" instead, SPETI for short. The main purpose of this plugin is thus to create materials from scratch, using the generated textures from Substance Painter as input. Or, in my case, to update the already prepared materials (having only the color channel activated). Since development has only been started, many more features have to be implemented. One of which is the configuration panel were users setup how the Substance Painter textures are to be mapped. Currently, the configuration is very basic, and matches with my workflow. More detailed explanations soon to come. Enjoy! Latest version v1.2 runs on R17 - R23 ... available in the download section.

Well, I don't think you missed anything, actually. The plugin has been out for a while now, and I have only received 2 positive feedback. I guess it must not be that useful after all. Additionally, due to a bug in MAXON's Python SDK an error was displayed in the console each time the plugin was loaded. This and other reasons made me decide to retract the plugin from distribution. However, I have now figured a workaround for this SDK bug and have reworked some part of the plugin. I have also made changes to the settings, as such changes made in the attribute panel are now persistent between Cinema 4D sessions. Unfortunately, the code used in this plugin is only available in R16 and above, and since you seem to be using R12 or older, I regret to say that the original or new version will not run on your system. Sorry. <removed older version>

You're welcome!

It took a while longer to complete this plugin, as I wanted to add a few more options. And as always, it's small changes which take the longest to implement. Since I still am not satisfied with the current state of the plugin, I'll release it as a 0.7 version. Incomplete for now, but functional. Short introduction to the tool's attributes: - output path selection: is where you select the folder/directory location to store the generated color maps - file name: currently a fixed file naming convention. Usage of tokens might be a future option (default 'ColorID_<UVW Tag Name>') - format: allows the user to output the color maps in PNG or JPG (other formats might be a future option) - size: current available sizes are 1K, 2K, 4K (default 1024x1024) - background: allows to choose between a black or white background color (default black) - padding: allows to extend the UVWs by choosen number of pixels (defalt 0 pixels) - UVW Tags: a list of available UVW Tag names. Each entry is a checkbox which allows the user to selecte/deselect the entry for generation. At the right of each entry the number of objects with the same UVW Tag name. Each entry results in a color map being generated sharing the UVWs of the polygon objects with the same UVW Tag name. - Generate button: when pressed this will start the generation process. At the left of the button a progress will be displayed. As explained earlier, this plugin only generates the colorID map. UV unwrapping and creating the shared UV map (needed as input the the colorID mapper) is left to the user. See Learning Expedition 001 for more details about these steps. (Learning Expedition 001) <file removed, since obsolete> enjoy!

In my current workflow I am combining multiple objects onto a same UV map, in order for further painting in Substance Painter (etc...) In order to use masks for the separate objects, the only way I found today, was to manually create a colorID map in C4D by selecting each object, selecting a different color per sub object, and selecting the "outline polygon" + "fill polygon" in the TextureView. A tedious task if the asset is build up from a lot of sub-objects. After several attempts at automating this via scripts or bakes I had to give up, as nor the python SDK, nor the baking process would allow me to reach my goal. Several months later, I still had this idea for script/plugin in the back of my head and was waiting for the SDK to catch up with what the user actually needed. Instead of waiting any longer, I researched how to obtain this goal with the current python SDK and some "ingenious" workaround. So over the course of this weekend, I went ahead and wrote a plugin with the help of my wife. She was following an online course to learn the basics of python and found it a challenge to help create this plugin. After two days the basics are implemented, only a few more days are needed for refinement. At left the tediously, manually created colorID using the inbuilt tools. At right the result from two days of coding. Choice of colors still needs to be fine-tuned in the plugin, but so far I am more than happy to (finally) have an automated process. Plug-in to be finalized in the coming days/weeks. I'll keep you updated.

Good to see you found an appropriate home for those files. I know it's not the same as having back all those lost attachments in their original posts, but it's a start already. Thanks for uploading and sharing those files. Edit: I thought you had managed to upload the files to the cafe, but I see now that its an external link to mega.nz My bad.

I haven't cut anything in my example. I just used some of the already available geometry of the round Circleshape to continue the flow as supporting edges for beveling. I only selected the edges to show which I meant, no cutting was done, no deformig of that round Circleshape. So, is using already available geometry to provide for support edges further down the model a good or a bad idea?

Thanks for the tutorial, holgar. Just got to watch it today. Learned some nice new tricks I didn't know of. Maybe a question or two about your tutorial to start the discussion. When creating the handle, you mentioned in the end you should probably have taken a different start. Do you mean you would have used geometry from the circular part to use as supporting loops for the bevel of the handle ? Or did you mean something else. I don't have a real workflow to be honest. Except I do tend to be a little too precise, in that, when I am creating supporting edges I mostly do so with the bevel in solid mode, as this generates the supporting edges at exact same distance from the main edge. Which gives a more symmetrical rounding effect. Too precise, maybe, but that's something I cannot overcome. "Just eyeballing it" isn't part of my vocabulary, sorry 'bout that.

I agree with Igor, it would be somewhat too early to just decide and abandon right now. Since only officially started the 11th, we're now the 13th ... only two days have gone by. In my case I must confess, I had the whole month of December off from work (and half of November), so I had lots of time available to start learning Python, plugin writing, and more importantly, I was right in the middle of UV mapping all characters of my short story. All perfectly timed for the UV mapping expedition. Since modeling for my short has been completed for a while, and due to limited time available again due to work, I am less focused on this expedition. Which doesn't mean I am not following with great interest, as I am always looking to speed up and enhance my modeling workflow. I am simply not able to contribute as before. Keep the expedition going!

I have added the tool icon to a new panel (and saving the layout obviously), and am able to select between the plugin and live selection tool, or path tool, or loop selection and back. While staying in edge mode (or uv poly mode) the tool doesn't get greyed out when switching to another tool and back. I am not sure to know what's going wrong on your side. I'm currently working on a windows 8.1 laptop, but have developed the plugin on a windows 7 desktop machine. Haven't tested it on mac. Hoping others can confirm the same issues you have, to track down the reason for this different behaviour.

I understood the need to allow edge (or "seam") selection in non-edge mode, which is the reason I introduced the 1.1 version which also worked in uv polygon mode. As you have already found out. I didn't think it could be usefull to allow the tool in any other mode, but I don't see why I wouldn't allow this. It is not much work to alter the current implementation to also work in any component mode (polygon, edge, points) as well as in uv polygon and uv points mode. However, I am not sure if this might or might not introduce unwanted side effects or unexpected glitches. One thing to remember is that it is always the edges that will get selected in whatever mode the user is, and that selected edges will be custom drawn in all non-edge modes (green lines). Due to limitation in the Cinema 4D SDK this custom drawing is quite limited (no line thickness, etc ...) On the other hand, I don't think I understand what you mean with "persist in a layout panel"

Having been using this plugin quite extensively the last weeks, I noticed I could speed up my workflow by allowing to create seams when in UV polygon mode. This way you don't need to keep switching to UV polygon mode for applying projection mapping, relaxing UV's and back to edge mode for selecting edges/seams on the next object. While working to implement this addition to the plugin I noticed that I couldn't simply re-use the same color between the two modes, since UV polygons are drawn the same as edges are, so once UV polygons are selected the seams would never be visible. Hence the reason I decided to show the seams as green edges in UV polygon mode. Just as for the modifier key, I could provide for some user control in the plugin's attribute panel ... but I decided not to do so. Here's the latest version which allows to select seams in both edge mode or uv polygon mode. (edit: link removed)

Fixed the drawing issue, and made it a feature. You can now select to show the hidden edges while hovering. After using the tool for my own project, I changed the default state to be "single via modifier" as I mostly use the tool in extend mode. Fixed the state of the tool to only be available in edge mode, and show the cursor accordingly. Also provided a new icon. Updated plugin, ready for distribution ... version 1.0 (edit: link removed)

Thanks for bringing this up, something I didn't know yet. However, I am not to fond of using the move/rotate/scale tool for selecting stuff as I have more than once slightly modified things this way. Trying out this trick of yours I also found out that in edge mode the selection sometimes makes a strange "twist". I knew about the "automapping" in 3DCoat (and this works OK), but in my workflow I need to keep the imported UVs, as I have named and grouped the UVWtags on purpose. Of course, I could redo all this in 3DCoat, but there is more in my current workflow that is limited by going to and from 3DCoat, hence the need of all scripts I wrote before realizing I would be better of by unwrapping in C4D, which resulted in this plugin. In the meantime I have fixed the drawing issue, have had some more ideas, and will try to update this plugin in the next few days. Note that this plugin was primarly written for my own use (I can live with cr@ppy icon and attribute panel), and thus is focused on my workflow (no n-gons, mainly quads, R17, hardsurface modelling, ...)

Doing some UV mapping lately I couldn't help but notice that unwrapping in Cinema 4D isn't really a pleasure to do. Granted, in most cases fancy tools and features aren't needed to get things done. Still, soon enough, I was looking elsewhere to get the unwrapping done. Checked out a few 3rd party tools, looked up some tutorials, and finally decided to give 3DCoat a try. Installed the demo and started working my way through. Surprisingly I got nice results out of it, easily ... and quickly. Which made me almost decide to buy the software only for it's UV unwrapping/mapping feature alone. But as I was trying to import and export between 3DCoat and C4D ... the horror began. [SideStory] Main reason for this horror was that 3DCoat had some problems with the exported FBX that I was feeding it. After some investigation I found out that it was related to UVW coordinates that got messed up during the modelling phase in C4D. I honestly thought that while modelling all UVW coords would remain between 0 and 1 on the canvas. But apparently during the process of applying modelling tools one after the other onto a mesh some of the UV points would try to escape the canvas ... Which gave quite some trouble to 3DCoat, resulting in some very nasty crashes and computer lock-ups. Not wanting to give up on 3DCoat I started to look into python scripting to get the current default UVW coordinates corrected. That was two weeks ago from now. A few scripts later, I finally was able to modify all UVW to force the coords onto the canvas ... but that wasn't enough: there was still the problem of overlapping UVs. Which I thought needed to be fixed by applying a decent UV projection for all objects. Since the pyhon SDK (nor the C++ one) does not allow to process the UV projections, I was left with manually creating an UV map for every single object. Only to be able to import it into a 3rd party software and do the whole UV mapping all over ... NO WAY. [Sidestory end] So I sat down and considered to do all the UV unwrapping in C4D only. Without going to 3DCoat. Apart from the nice unwrapping algorithm in 3DCoat, there was also this very nice tool which enhanced the workflow tenfold: being able to select seams to cut the mesh by simply selecting single edges or edgeloops, or partial edgeloops. THAT was what made UV unwrapping in 3DCoat so easy, quick ... and 'fun'. Now, after all those years waiting for MAXON to provide us with some more tools regarding UV unwrapping I would have thought this would have been the number one on their list. But knowing it would still take a while to get anything from C4D developpers, I wrote down some ideas and took a first look into ... <TADA> ... plugin writing. So, last weekend (it's thursday now) I looked into the Cinema 4D Python SDK, and started browsing, reading, looking up and collecting information. Today I am proud to present to you: Seamilar, the seam selection tool. No, it is NOT similar to 3DCoat's selection tool ... it's "seamilar" (read: inspired by). This is only a version 0.8 demo as the plugin is not yet in it's final release state. The icon looks like cra#, and so does the attributes panel. And some drawing issues still need to be resolved. The idea is to be able to easily swap between single edge selection and "extended" selection mode. To swap between the two modes a modifier key is used (SHIFT or CTRL defined by user). The attributes allows the user via radiobutton to specify the default mode (single or extended) and as such the alternative mode via the modifier key. When selecting "Extend via modifier" , the default mode is single. When SHIFT (or CTRL) is pressed the tool swaps to extenden mode for as long as the SHIFT (or CTRL) is pressed. As soon as the modifier key is released will the tool return to the default selection mode. Below are some example screenshots: How to create a selection loop Selecting edges between selected edges and A more complex example and finally the plugin itself: (demo version 0.8) <older zip file removed>, see later post for latest version Enjoy! Edit: Oops, forgot to mention. R16 and above only.

I appreciate the effort to provide different themes, and I do prefer the new Envision Boxed theme, as it is less dark than the Envision Clean Dark. While the default IPS Light is ... well, a little too light. So, this Cinema-like theme is probably my new favourite. Only drawback is the "header" (with cafe logo at left and browse and activity at right) when scrolling through a page. Nice to know I am browsing the C4D cafe, but it takes up some room.

Some of the new features can be useful, but I find the new 'unread topic badge' to be overkill. Currently, the unread topics are showing as bold text. That's already easily identifiable. The extra green 'unread topic badge' is then only resulting in information overload. Also, some of the colored texts (light pink, light blue, yellow) are almost unreadable when viewed with a non-dark scheme. I understand some favor dark scheme, but if the purpose is to have a variations of schemes, then color of text should be adjusted so that it remains readable for whatever theme is selected. There, I've expressed how I feel about it

A few days ago, a topic was started related to earthquake data someone thought to be occuring in 3DKiwi's area. Well, I guess the whole Cafe, or even the whole Cinema4D community, has been hit by a major earthquake. All these threads popping up as a result of Nigel jumping ship. I have the impression it's growing out of proportion it literally becomes a joke. Some messages, with Nigel being refered to in the past tense, even read as if the good man has died. Don't get me wrong. I understand there is a lot of frustration that is now being exposed due to this proverbial "last drop", as I was originally part of this stampede. My apologies to Nigel/3DKiwi for feeding the fire. Time for me to seek shelter and wait for this fire to pass by or burn out.

I noticed the "pissed off" attitude in many posts over the past week/months, but honestly, didn't see this coming (*). On the other hand who could blame you. I have mentioned it earlier in a private message, and I will mention it here again: thank you 3DKiwi for all the time and efforts. If it wasn't for the Cafe and tutorials I probably wouldn't have purchased Cinema4D back in 2005 in the first place. Lately however I have felt the same as many regarding MAXON: "too little, too late", and am still making up my mind about the renewal of MSA. As a hobbyist I am not ditching C4D Studio just yet, but R16 (maybe R17) might be my last version. Sad to see you go. Whoever will take over this place, it won't be the same without you. (*) Now I "get" your replied private message.

I understand you need some rest after this epic project. Congrats from me as well. On first screening I probably didn't get all the details. I get the main story line, but will have to watch it a few more times to get all the pieces of the puzzle fit. I have this bad habit of trying to watch behind the scenes instead of following the story. I noticed that particular scene wipe as well. Didn't figure it out as being an homage, but as there was only a single wipe in the whole short, I probably should have guessed. Nice touch. The little guy seemed to have trouble with his googles now and then. Nicely done.