starting with COFFEE

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 22/08/2007 at 19:42, xxxxxxxx wrote:

User Information:
Cinema 4D Version:   10.1 
Platform:      Mac OSX  ; 
Language(s) :   C.O.F.F.E.E  ;  C++  ;  XPRESSO  ;

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Hi all,

I'd like to start with COFFEE and I'd like to do so by checking out prior examples. However, it would seem that every link to old open source plugins is broken, all the good old tutorials are gone, and the COFFEE SDK download isn't as helpful as I'd have hoped.

As far as programming goes I'm coming from a Maya background where you can watch everything happen and essentially build scripts by echoing commands.

So where have all the good example scripts gone? Is anyone maintaining a repository somewhere?

Thanks in advance.

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 22/08/2007 at 20:54, xxxxxxxx wrote:

MEL scripting is far superior to COFFEE (I might regret that). :) COFFEE is meant as a more accessible scripting/plugin interface. Xpresso is a more user-friendly scripting interface. You can do a lot with COFFEE, but not everything (for instance, it cannot create animation). The real power is in C++ plugins.

The Windows CHM has links to tons of examples. The HTML, which is obviously your only option for MacOS, may or may not have these links. This I'll have to defer to the real support (Matthias) who is away until the 26th.

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 23/08/2007 at 03:52, xxxxxxxx wrote:

There are links to some features, yes, but most of the examples are not fully working scripts -- more like bare-bones tests. I'm looking for more fully-realized examples to get a sense of script execution flow.

I'll have a look for the Windows CHM. Maybe it's different? As for animation, the tool I have in mind does need access to keyframes and to the ability to create keyframes for PSR and User Data -- so I shouldn't bother with COFFEE and I should just stick to the SDK?

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 30/08/2007 at 02:19, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Just to add to Robert's reply you can't compare MEL with COFFEE. As far as I understand Maya is basically a frontend of MEL so there is a MEL command for everything you have in Maya. It's a real script/macro language. COFFEE on the other hand is just a Cinema4D specializied Java/C++ style language that has to be updated with every update of Cinema4D. Currently COFFEE is not as complete as it should be and I can't say when it will be updated. Especially the animation part is somewhat broken (everything with BaseTracks/BaseSequence/BaseKeys). So COFFEE is still useful if you just want to call a bunch of commands or automate things or just want to make some modifications to your objects (there is no ngon support curently). It's also quite handy to just try out stuff or even write some small plugins. It really depends on what you want to do. The C++ API is very powerful and often even easier to use than COFFEE. There is little you can't do with the C++ API.

As for COFFEE examples, there are only some few complete COFFEE plugin examples in the COFFEE SDK docu. Most stuff only explains how to use a function. So I think you should try understand the COFFEE plugin framework (a thing you don't have to worry if you only write scripts).

cheers,
Matthias

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 30/08/2007 at 03:50, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Cheers on the reply, Matthias!

Yeah, I've noticed so far that COFFEE is really great for macro stuff -- automating a series of commands -- but I do need to modify BaseTracks and BaseKeys, so it looks like the C++ API is it. What I'm doing isn't terribly difficult but without access to animation it's impossible.

(Something else that's been bugging me is that the internal COFFEE script window is a little broken on my machine -- when I click to position the mouse cursor, it's never positioned where I clicked, but about two or three characters to the left. =/ )

I guess the person who makes a truly interactive COFFEE interpreter with built-in help and stuff, or who writes a C4D Python plugin, will be king, eh? :)