The C.o.f.f.e.e Book Is Here!

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On 17/10/2007 at 05:32, xxxxxxxx wrote:

The (I hope) long awaited book teaching C.O.F.F.E.E. is finally finished
At last, something written in layman terms (as much as possible, of course), teaching you how to use the scripting language of Cinema4D.

You can get it here:

http://ruimac.com/coffee_book/

A very special thank you to Tavy and Tank, from 3dattack.net, for their support and help, in this endeavor.

Oh, by the way, I can't create the user accounts needed to send you the book, while I'm at work. So, I can only send the book link when I get home. That is why I stated at the site that it may take a day or two to deliver. That is the WORSE CASE SCENARIO!! Usually, the longest it may take are 8 to 10 hours. So, please, be patient. Everyone will receive the book links in due time.

Rui Batista

p.s. Any comments are always welcome, of course

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On 02/11/2007 at 11:02, xxxxxxxx wrote:

I just finished all 12 chapters. Nice intro to COFFEE for me (a complete COFFEE newbie) and refreshing writing style. I like the way Rui thinks.    The early chapters are extremely basic and logical. These first chapters attempt to explain object oriented programming in an almost overly simplistic way but are a nice review for anyone with any programming experience at all. The later chapters felt much more overwhelming with many details which might work if copied-and-pasted, but not as completely explained.   Only a couple of types of plugins were used as examples (PluginExpressionTags and Menu Plugins) with the reader left to 'modify' the examples for the other types.   I believe this leaves room for more tutorials (hint hint...)

I think this little series of articles provides the missing link in understanding between C plus plus and C4D. The basic plug-in tag chapter was very clear (although there were many charming spelling errors and a couple 'bugs' in the code which might frustrate someone without any programming experience at all). I also found some variation between what the text said and what I was able to find on my computer (ResEdit version created file in a different place, I was never able to find documentation for certain objects mentioned (e.g. RDATA_XRES) in Chapter 11 (the Menu Plugin) even after doing a 'find' search in the files referred to.

I imagine it was very hard to find the best compromise between simplicity (for artists) and precision (for programmers). I think the overall effort was well worth it and I am extremely grateful for this "toehold" into COFFEE.   Rui says he is not a programmer, but he could have fooled me. That said, it could be argued that the distinction between classes (which serve as templates) and objects (which are instances of classes) should have been more clear.

My only other comments relate to the Maxon documentation/SDK or lack thereof, and nothing to do with Rui's book - I find the various SDK and other Maxon support document versions confusing and poorly documented.   It still seems a bit of a 'dark art' to me. I am hungry for more organized basic reference information (such as a well commented C4D_symbols.h and clear documentation about which versions of C4D (9.5, 9.6, 10, 10.5) each of these references apply to. Currently there seems to be a lot of mix-up about what works with what and it's just trial and error....seems a little disorganized for a company like Maxon with super-bright programmers...   ;-)

Thanks again to Rui for this very needed book.

My $0.02

Dell

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On 02/11/2007 at 11:29, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Thank you for the review, Dell :)
Its true that, with what we have about COFFEE, its still a hit&miss; business. I still have to do lots of digging and trial/error attempts to work out how to do something.

If you found some spelling mistakes (it was proof-read but some may have passed through) and, more importantly, if you found code bugs, please, do tell me. I want to make it as good as possible and I'm willing to correct them.

As for the missing documentation (about the RDATA_XRES, for example), I could only find "documentation" about it, in the C++ documentation. There is still lots of stuff missing.

I'm already working on a second book but this one will focus on a broader area. It will still include COFFEE, but it will not be intended to teach it, of course.

Once again, thank you for the review (and please contact me at [email protected] to tell me about the errors)

Rui Batista

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On 02/11/2007 at 16:58, xxxxxxxx wrote:

I'm already working on a second book but this one will focus on a broader area<<

Bravo! I'm not sure what you mean about 'not intended to teach it' but I assume you mean it will not be an elementary beginner's book. I look forward to it and hopefully will know enough to understand it. Thanks.

Personal email to follow...

best regards,

Dell