As far as I know your only option would be to collect your "segments" yourself. At least, that is how I have been doing it.

I have done something similar using HideElement to show/hide a group of elements in a GeDialog, but in my case there is no gap left.
However, the group I am hiding is the first in a list of groups, as such there are other elements after that can fill up the gap.
Have you tried having additional elements after? Maybe a simple empty AddStaticText, just to try out?

@r_gigante said in Merge Tags:

Hi @C4DS, thanks for following up and sorry for the delay.

Thanks for getting back.
No worries regarding the delay. I had lost track of it as well.
And since this topic seems to be quite "advanced level" I can understand an answer isn't readily available.
Although I am not to sure what to make from your response?

The part which says " it's not doable without ... " seems to imply that it might be possible, but on the other hand it also seems not possible at all, since hooks into the modeling commands are currently not available (and will probably never be available in near, nor far future).

So as far as I seem to understand tags are currently only good to be used for storing data (and so on) ... if the objects they are assigned to remain static. Merging of objects, splitting, cloning, etc ... none of these actions can be handled properly by 3rd party plugin developer. Not for existing tags, not for custom created tags.
If that is the end conclusion, then that's good to know.
Not the answer I was hoping for, but nonetheless good to know.

Thanks for your time.

@r_gigante said in How to find back a specific BaseTag assigned to a BaseObject:

I think that when a new BaseList2D is created from scratch (not cloned) the data set via AddUniqueID is not kept.

That I can understand.
But if you:

• create 2 objects
• create a polygon selection for each object
• give both selection tags a specific name
• perform an AddUniqueID on both selection tags
• do a connect + delete with the 2 objects

you end up with a single merged object, which has 2 selection tags, and both still have the specific name ... but none have the added unique ID. Surely you start to think something is really wrong.

If a new BaseList2D is created from scratch, and the name is taken over, then why is the added unique ID not taken over? I don't get that. To me this is just another bug.
Someone thought of providing an interface in the API to add a unique ID, and also provide an interface to find it back. And someone even thought about copying over the name ... But no one thought of copying over the unique ID data?

@r_gigante said in How to find back a specific BaseTag assigned to a BaseObject:

FindUniqueID

Looking up FindUniqueID in the documentation I noticed AddUniqueID and had hoped this could be used with a custom defined ID to store some data in the selection tag. Then later, performing a FindUniqueID with the same unique ID to find back that specific tag. Not necessarily for storing data to be retrieved, but to have an ID added to the tag, which no other tag has.

Unfortunately, the added unique ID does not survive a connect + delete action.

From the documentation I had the impression the added data would have been maintained.
I am right to expect the data should have been maintained?

@kbar said in BaseShader global vs local filename:

On a side note: man these emojis are weird looking.

I mostly never use emojis, as I seem to misinterpret their meaning ... and most people already find it hard understanding what I mean ;-)

@m_magalhaes
Thanks for reminding me of the GeDialog::CoreMessage.
I totally overlooked that.

@kbar
Thanks for the tip

Actually, looking back at my original code I now notice what I did wrong:

BaseShader* colorShader = colorChannel->GetShader();
if (colorShader && colorShader->IsInstanceOf(Xbitmap))
{
	GeData data;
	colorShader->GetParameter(DescID(BITMAPSHADER_FILENAME), data, DESCFLAGS_GET::NONE);
	texturePath = data.GetFilename();
	// when the filename doesn't contain a directory this means the bitmap
	// is located in same directory as the scene file
	// -> get the path of the scene file and prepend it to the bitmap,
	// as we need a full path to load the bitmap
	if (texturePath.GetDirectory().IsEmpty())
	{
		BaseDocument* doc = object->GetDocument();
		Filename path = doc->GetDocumentPath();
		texturePath = path + texturePath;
	}

Simply had to replace the last line of code:

texturePath = path + texturePath;

with

texturePath.SetDirectory(path);

I cannot imagine I never tested the original code. As such, I assume it did probably work back then in R19 (maybe by accident), but definitely doesn't in R21. Maybe not even in R20.

Hi,
When one creates a material and loads an image into the color channel Cinema4D pops up a messagebox, saying:
"This image is not in the project search path.
Do you want to create a copy at the project location ..."

When you reply "no" the full path to the image can be obtained from the BaseShader.
When you reply "yes" only the image filename (without full path) is stored.

How to know if the content of the BaseShader's parameter BITMAPSHADER_FILENAME is a full path or simply the image's filename?
In other words, how to know to simply use the obtained data from the parameter as a global path, or as a local path relative to the project's tex folder?

@gheyret said in BaseBitmap.ScaleIt() IS NOT WORKING:

bmps.append(image)

This does append the original image to your array of bmps being returned, not the scaled up one.
you should do:

bmps.append(dst.bmp)