Module net.maxon.c4d

– Build Cinema 4D plugins with Craftr 4.

Contents

• Features
• Legacy / Bridge API
• Todolist
• Configuration
• Version Matrix
• Example build script
• A note about R20
• FAQ
• Known Issues

Features

• Supports compiling plugins for Cinema 4D R12 – R20
• Provides legacy / dual API headers ^{1) More info below}
• Compiles plugins on Windows (MSVC), macOS (Clang) and Linux (GCC)
• Can automatically detect your Cinema 4D release and compiler version to adjust command-line flags accordingly (given that you installed Cinema 4D to a directory that is called Cinema 4D RX.YYY)
• Full R20 source processor support

Legacy / Bridge API

Many symbol names in the C4D SDK changed drastically in R15. Maxon provided a __LEGACY_API preprocessor switch that enabled most of the old names, however that switch is discontinued since R17.

This Craftr module provides the old C4D legacy API header as "c4d_legacy.h", which allows you to use much of the old API even in R17 to R19. It will be available by adding the net.maxon.c4d:addons target to your plugins' dependencies.

You can also depend on the net.maxon.c4d:legacy target instead which will add the c4d_legacy.h as a prefix header, thus you won't need to manually add this include to all source files.

The R16 SDK uses #define override on Windows which is actually invalid and Visual Studio 2015 (aka. 14.0) complains about this. We provide a <r16_compilerdetection_fix.h> header (depend on net.maxon.c4d:addons) that has this error fixed.

With R20, the Cinema 4D SDK changed drastically. Most prominent are the changes to enumerations which all changed to enum class declarations. Macros like NewObj()/NewMem() and functions like String::GetCStringCopy() return a maxon::ResultPtr<T> instead of a raw pointer which can not be implicitly cast to the type T*, rendering all existing code using these functions invalid.

This Craftr module provides a bridge API – meaning that it is a new and separate API that is compatible with the pre-R20 and R20 SDK. This API must be explicitly included with the "c4d_apibridge.h" header. It provides the pre-R20 enumerations (generated using the scripts/r20enums.py script) but encrouages use of API that is more similar to R20 (eg. aims to provide R19 compatible iferr() and ifnoerr() macros).

Todolist

• R20 projectdefinition: Handle more of the projectdefinition.txt properties
• R20 Linux: Plugin suffix? Compile errors with StrongCOWHandler in cpython.h
• R20 Python: Choose the correct link targets on Mac/Linux. On Windows, search for a Python 2.7 x64 installation.
• pre R20 Linux: Plugin suffix is .so?

Configuration

Version Matrix

Source: https://developers.maxon.net/?page_id=1108

Example build script

project('myplugin', '1.0-0')

c4d = require('net.maxon.c4d')

@target(builders=[c4d.build])
def plugin():
  depends('net.maxon.c4d:sdk')
  properties({
    'cxx.srcs': glob('src/**/*.cpp'),
    'cxx.includes': ['plugin'],
    'cxx.productName': 'myplugin' + c4d.plugin_suffix,
    'cxx.productDirectory': './plugin',
    'cxx.type': 'library',
    'cxx.preferredLinkage': 'shared'
  })

Depend on the net.maxon.c4d:legacy target instead if your project uses old API (pre-R16).

A note about R20

With R20, Maxon introduced a tool to produce project files from a projectdefinitions.txt file. Craftr supports building R20 projects without the MAXON Project Tool. Depending on the net.maxon.c4d:sdk target is no longer required and will do nothing (for backwards compatibility when building for previous Cinema 4D releases).

Craftr can however take the following information from the projectdefinitions.txt into account:

• Platform (validating if the current platform is supported)
• ModuleId (alternatively with the c4d.ModuleId target property)
• APIS (additively to the c4d.APIS target property)
• Type (Lib or DLL, overriding the cxx.type and cxx.preferredLinkage properties)
• Exclude, ExcludeFromBuild

FAQ

• Could this be used to compile plugins with MinGW? Unfortunately, no. The Cinema 4D API (actually, ABI) requires the /vmg /vms options in Visual Studio which render dynamic libraries compiled with MinGW incompatible. More info here.

• How to get the R20 Project Tool to work on non-Ubuntu systems? You may get an error like error while loading shared library: libprocps.so.3. Make sure you have a version of libprocs installed, eg libprocps7. Symlink it like so: sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libprocps.so.{7,3}

Known Issues

• The following Cinema 4D SDK's (and most likely all SDK's in that general release) can not be built with Visual Studio 2015.
  • R15.064
  • R16.021
  • R16.050