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I guess I have given plenty of time for those having downloaded the beta version to allow to provide their feedback. Time for this plugin to be released to the public. It has now been made available in my "C4DS plugins" blog. https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/blogs/blog/57-c4ds-plugins/ If you'd like to comment, make suggestion, ... please continue doing so in this thread.

Well, who would have thought. It is a funny coincidence that R20 does have this feature. We've been years without this ability and now suddenly solutions pop up in my mind as well as in MAXON's developers ones. There must be something in the air ... or we must have been smoking the same stuff. Oh right, I don't smoke. I don't know if this feature was already available in R20 betas, way before I dreamed up the solution. But I want to believe that MAXON's developers were inspired by this thread, and implemented their take on it. That way, the whole orphan point project at least wasn't "pointless". Still am jealous of @JLeaburn coming up with this terrific plugin name ... ROFLMOPO. My hat off to you, sir.

Yet another bike trip today (in a neighboring country, this time). Then, almost at the end of the trip, I encountered this township sign. I have to admit, the spelling is a little off, but I guess everyone knows which primitive object in Cinema 4D it refers too ...

Almost forgot I once made a short video demonstrating the workflow I used. The workflow heavily relies on the plugins I created, but things can be done without those (obviously with more manual work).

I haven't use Substance Painter in a while. Looking forward to continue with a project I put on the shelf a while ago. In the past I had created this utility plugin, which allowed me to import the generated Substance Painter textures into Cinema 4D in a more automated way. https://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/92673-speti-and-tina I am still looking for a way to provide access to all my (non-commercial) plugins, without requiring a specific website, nor the C4DCafe Store ... but that's food for another story.

Not good enough ;) The whole idea behind the topic is to provide "own-made" photos of 3D terminology. No links allowed to images (or any other material), which you don't own the copyright of.

Hi, Not a stupid question at all. The beta download is over and release version has been created, ready to be uploaded. However, before I do so, I am just waiting to allow for the other 61 people who also downloaded the beta to voice their feedback. Good or bad.

I am providing an update to the plugin, which resolves an issue I encountered when performing a "Revert to Saved ...". (updated plugin provided in first post)

Glad it's useful. And thanks for providing feedback. Very much appreciated. I wish everyone downloading and using this and other plugins would do so, as it provides the motivation to work on other plugins.

Made some changes here and there. Preparing for a release ...

A member over at CGTalk requested a way to select an object in the viewport and let the Object Manager automatically update its view to show the selected object, no matter the dense hierarchy. There is, by default, in the Object Manager's menu an entry "Scroll to First Active" which can be called using the shortcut key "S". I created a small plugin to perform this automatically, and also provided an option to enable or disable this behaviour. The option is added into the Object Manager's menu, as a toggle entry right after the "Scroll to First Active". Enabled by default. Included zip file should be extracted into the plugins folder. Scroll2Object v12.zip (works with R16 upto R23)

Thanks for the feedback. The import/export WAS on my todo list, but I have removed it, as I didn't really see a benefit. The whole idea behind this plugin was to provide for a speed up in switching between most-used tools. Setting up these most-used tools is usually a one-time action. As such, I didn't want to spend lots of time (compared to the whole plugin development) into providing a setup interface. Therefore, no drag-n-drop, no fancy graphics, nor extreme customizable setup. If you need to "shift/offset" the dial, you can do so by adding tools at the end, removing ones at the beginning. The whole drag-n-drop feature would also provide for shifting. I could implement that, but I won't. At least not for the current version. I need something for a future update ;-) Additionally, since selection of tools should be a quick and easy, I especially do not want to provide a too complex main GUI. No presets, nor sub-level selection, ... I agree there is a potential need to want to group tools in separate dials. I have been looking into a way to provide multiple dials. One for modeling, one for animation, etc ... But have not yet found a way to allow for an easy and dynamical way to access these, except for providing them as sub-plugins. This is the way the "Wheel of Tools" and "History Dial" are organized. Each sub-plugin can be assigned a shortcut, but each also needs a unique plugin ID. And this cannot be made dynamically. So, I am afraid beta 4 will become the release version.

While biking around I encountered this road sign. And thought it would be amusing to start a topic containing photos (made by C4DCafe members) of traffic signs or other street furniture, representing 3D related terms. Where the every day man in the street wouldn't now why we, 3D nerds, have a chuckle at.

While I mentioned I would skip further development for toggle and sticky keys, I just could not let go. I will leave out the technical details, but it was a nightmare to figure out and implement a workaround to the confirmed bug in Cinema's SDK. A real nightmare ... but that's history. The latest (hopefully final) beta does contain support for toggle AND sticky key shortcuts. There is also a MacOS version included. Both platforms support R16 and above ... at least until R19. I left out a few things that were on the todo list. The radius of the dials is automatically calculated from the number of defied tools, and from the specified icon size. No custom radius available, nor custom spacing. This beta contains quite a few bug fixes (probably still some remain ... deeply hidden). But, since the toggle and sticky features are "masterpieced hacks" they may have introduced nasty bugs or side effects. Not that I know of, or have experienced while testing out the plugin, but one never really knows for sure. Third party plugin support is added as well, meaning you can define plugins, tools, commands, ... Anything with a unique ID. Unfortunately, the "History Dial" can only detect actual tools (move, rotate, scale, ...) same as the native Cinema 4D history. While my implementation doesn't use the SDK (since the functionality isn't made available through the SDK) I guess it does rely on the same techniques used by MAXON, and thus has the same limitation. Just a guess of course. Currently no documentation is provided, but is one really needed? Just a note for those testing out the plugin. The "dials" consists of 2 black circles, populated with icons of the defined tools. As soon as the sticky key feature gets activated, by keeping the shortcut key(s) pressed down, the outer dial circle gets removed. This to visualize the difference between "toggle mode" and "sticky mode". When in sticky mode, the tool currently under the cursor will get selected as soon as you release the shortcut key(s). Finally, I decided to rename the whole plugin, as it actually contains 2 sub-plugins. As such, "Wheel of Tools" and "History dial" are now known as "Dials". <Dials beta 4.zip> (removed obsolete file)

Thank you. Yes, a MacOS version will be built when time permits. Changing the radius of the dial is already foreseen internally, but no controls are currently provided for the user to do so. I was going for an "auto radius" solution, depending on the selected icon size, and a manual solution for custom values. I have currently provided the ESC key only, as I am still working out other solutions to remove the dial. Clicking outside of icons will be one solution, though.

As I expected, implementing the bonus function as a separate History Dial was a piece of cake. The shortcut toggle and sticky key functionality on the other hand, not so. Usually, when people talk about shortcuts its a single key shortcut they're visualizing, but with most keys already taken up by Cinema 4D's native tools, I looked further and wanted to support multi-key shortcuts. Cinema 4D allows shortcuts with up to 4 keys (+ shift/ctrl/etc, per key) Unfortunately, while experimenting with shortcuts I encountered a problem with Cinema 4D, which has been confirmed to be a bug by the fine people of MAXON SDK support. As such, I am currently skipping any further development related to shortcut toggle or sticky keys. Latest version containing Wheel of Tools and History Dial (single plugin with two entries). <obsolete file removed>

Working on some other plugins (and life in general) did interfere with the planned release of PolyGnome 1.3 With a little delay I can now inform that the latest update has been finalized and distributed to the customers. Had some issues with building the plugin for the different Cinema 4D releases (R16 .. R19) as well as the different Mac OS versions. As such, I hope everyone received their appropriate version. Time to start working on the next update, but I'll first need to finalize a few other things.

Nice ideas! Thanks for suggesting them. I very much like the bonus function actually. I don't recall the tool history to be available via the SDK. But then again, none of my plugins are simply making use of the SDK and are always based on some twisted ideas or design. So, I am looking forward to implement my own history. As for 1) and 2), while these seem obvious and simple to implement, there are some side effects involved that might actually make it tricky. But it's a challenge like another. A tricky sticky, and a woggle toggle ... let's see what we can come up with.

Spend quite some time to turn the concept plugin into a usable one. It's always the little things that take the most time to do, so getting a release-ready plugin required many things to be polished-up from the concept version. With that out of the way, I sat down and started designing the configuration part of the plugin. I envisioned a full graphical, drag-n-drop user interface ... but as this would require some time to implement, I went instead for a very low level and less time consuming solution. While not being a fancy nor state of the art configuration window, the user can now specify the tools to be made selectable. I hope the configuration window is self explanatory, but if needed I will provide for a short tutorial video, showing how to set things up. (in the meantime I did a short video ...) Tested on R16 and R19 only, but I expect no issues with R17 nor R18. While in theory every available (native) tool in Cinema 4D could be inserted in the Wheel of Tools, I have only tested some selection and modeling tools. I might expand the functionality of this plugin in a later version (provide "double" wheels, extra "layers", options, presets, ...) for now I will leave it as is, and see what the general response will be. And may even rename the plugin into "Toolbelt". Earlier today, I had posted this message, and had provided a first beta. While making the demonstration video above I realized the plugin had a major fault. As such, I removed the download as well as the whole post. It didn't make much sense to report anything without the actual (beta) plugin being available. So, I took the time to fix some things, re-record a demonstration video, and upload the whole thing all over ... as beta 2: (anyone having downloaded previous beta, do yourself a favour and throw it away ... download this one instead) A "first" beta version (windows only for now): <obsolete file removed> Just press the "ESC" key.

Thanks. I assumed I wasn't the first one to come up with this idea. But as far as I know, there hasn't been any plugin available which provides this functionality. I am still wondering why this is? To be honest. This idea had been in my mind for a long time now. It's only recently that I was able to implement it.

[Edit - Note: this thread should be located in the "Programming - C++" section of the forums. It ended up in the "Python" section by accident during one of the forums reorganizing sessions] While working on a plugin I got the idea of making this small utility: Wheel Of Tools. It allows the user to set up a list of most used tools, which are presented as a circular palette to select from. Available directly within the viewport. Current state of the plugin is only a concept, and I am mostly focusing on the actual tool selection. The part where user does set up the tools still needs to be worked out. For those familiar with PolyGnome, you probably already understand where I will be heading to ... Wheel Of Tools, once fully implemented, will be the base for a new way of interacting for the main part of the PolyGnome plugin. Edit: While many have seen in this plugin what they expected it to be, this is NOT a radial menu plugin. It merely represents a list of tools in a circular way.

I don't have the python SDK in front of me, but I guess NBIT_OHIDE is that flag you're looking for

While version 1.3 is currently in beta, I couldn't resist working on yet another feature: interactive rotation of assets. As always, I first prepare some concept to try out and see if things can get worked out. While being far from fully functional, I simply had to share next concept video showing off the interactive rotation (interactive scaling is next on the list). I am not planning to include this feature in the 1.3 version as this would delay the release, but hopefully will get it ready for a next update.

For sure I remember your request during beta testing. Back then I mentioned this was a very nice feature, with great added value. But I also mentioned I wasn't able to provide a user-friendly solution, and as such it needed to wait before being implemented. As a result of the newly added Assetizer, I could now easily introduce this feature. Apologies for taking so long to finally get your feature implemented. Welding is performed by the plugin. No manual weld/optimize is required. I tried showing it in the video, but I just realized now I erroneously used points instead of polygons to demonstrate the feature.

Further adding features to the latest version. For those assets that require some helper / placeholder / proxy / whatever you may call it: Disposable Polygons. This is something I wanted to provide for a long while now, but needed the "Assetizer" functionality to be able to handle this feature.