Cinema 4D Release 21 has been announced. The new release introduces several relevant changes for plugin developers.

• Existing C++ plugins must be adapted and re-compiled for R21.
• Building C++ plugins will require Visual Studio 2017 or Xcode 10.
• Only one version of Cinema 4D will exist in the future.
• A new licensing system replaces the old, serial number based system. Plugins, that base their licensing scheme on that serial number, must adapt.
• Also, the SNHookClass plugin type has been removed.

More information on Cinema 4D R21 is found here:

• Cinema 4D R21 Overview
• Complete Feature List
• Cinema 4D R21 FAQ

The adapted C++ and Python SDKs will be published with the release of Cinema 4D R21 in September.

Dear Community,

we will need to leave you alone for a few days during which you'll experiment limited support bandwidth since the MAXON's SDK Team will be traveling to Frankfurt am Main to attend a yearly-recurring company meeting.

See you next week again,
Riccardo in the name of the entire team

Dear Users,
   we'd like to make you aware that it's now possible to delete both posts and thread started by yourself. Once deleted the posts/thread will look greyed out to you, meaning that you can still safely restore it. All the deleted posts/threads will be also reviewed internally by Global Moderators to be sure that no knowledge is lost or looks inconsistent. Global moderators will also purge, from time to time, those deleted posts/topics deemed as unnecessary.
Last but not least, you are now provided with a "Topic Tools" button, where beside giving you the option to delete a topic, gives you the option to mark a topis as Ask as a question.

Cheers,
  MAXON SDK Team

Dear Community,

   in the wake of promoting a more and more effective communication and improve our UX on managing Cinema 4D APIs, we have introduced by today a new Q&A mechanism which is immediately available to you.

The new Q&A mechanism, which works in parallel with the current support discussion paradigm gives you the chance to set a topic as an "unsolved question" - by selecting the "Ask as a question" from the Topic tools drop-down and, upon the different answers are received, to mark it as "solved" by selecting one of the posts as "correct answer". Please also bear in mind that the topic can also be set to the "solved" state from the topic-tools drop-down without explicitly marking a correct post.

A typical workflow is:

1. Create a topic by using the usual "New Topic" button.
   
2. Once prepared, use the "Submit" button to enter the new topic in the discussion board.
3. From the "Topic Tools" drop-down select the "Ask as a question" and the thread will receive an orange "Unsolved" label appearing behind topic title.
   
4. Wait for answers to come.
   
5. Decide which of the posts is the correct answer for you and by clicking on the post menu icon select "Mark this post as the correct answer"; the topic is then marked as solved and the selected post gets green-framed to identify what you consider the correct answer.
   
   
6. In case there is no single post representing the solution, you can still mark the whole topic as solved by using the "Topic Tools" button and "Mark as Solved".

Last but not least a few additional notes:

• MAXON, through its forum moderators, can at anytime and without any notice, override the topic status from "Unsolved" to "Solved" or viceversa.
• you, as the user who has created the topic, can always revert back the topic to a normal state by using the "Make this a normal topic" from the Topic Tools drop down or the the unsolved state by selecting the "Mark as Unsolved"
  
• two additional buttons are now available in the top navigation bar which can be respectively used to get the list of all the unsolved and solved topics.
  
   

Cheers,
   MAXON SDK Team

Dear Community,

considering the recent release of the new discussion board, we'd like to open a discussion on tags, tagging operations and anything orbiting around such topics.

The tagging paradigm we've decided to adopt in this board replaces the need for sub-categories and makes contributors' life easier when it comes to posting a new support topic (due to the limited number of main categories). The reverse side of this easy-to-go approach is that without topics being properly tagged searching for things could get harder and harder resulting in a weak knowledge-base.

For this reason, once more please make up your mind on tags and read the following topics:

• "Read Before Posting" on Cinema 4D;
• "Read Before Posting" on Melange;
• "Read Before Posting" on General programming and plugins discussions .

As you could have already experienced, every category in this forum has its own whitelist of tags that can be updated from time to time and that should help the visitor making himself comfortable with them. Since the whitelists aren't set in stone as well as the single tags are not, we'd like to hear from you about the tags that you'd consider relevant, those that might be purged or, finally, which tags should be moved/copied in which category.

Although we decided, after a long discussion, for these tags and tag whitelists trying to get ourselves in your shoes, feel free to contribute to this discussion with comments or questions and we'll be glad to answer and lead all together to a better tagging system.

Cheers,
    MAXON SDK Team

Dear Developer Community,

now, that Cinema 4D R20 has been announced, MAXON is planning an event in Frankfurt am Main on November 1st and 2nd, 2018. Due to the rather large changes inside of the SDK's, we are thinking about having a DevKitchen in parallel to this event.

The DevKitchen would be a one day event with several presentations targeted at plugin developers. Currently we have the following topics in mind:

• MAXON API - General Concepts
• MAXON API - Basic Tools
• Demo: R19 Plugin Project to R20 Plugin Project
• Python in R20
• R20 Features and their APIs

These topics are not set in stone, yet. If you are interested in other topics or have specific topics for discussions, please let us know.

We may also have the option for a second day, probably used for hands-on workshops, if there's enough interest.

Of course the SDK Team will be there almost entirely, so there's also the possibility for additional Q&A and extensive discussions.

DevKitchen itself is free and as a DevKitchen attendee you will also get free access to the entire surrounding event, including free lunch and drinks.

In order for DevKitchen to happen, we would need roughly 15 pre-registrations until September, 28th. Please send such via email: sdk_support@maxon.net

There's another interesting option: As a plugin developer you might want to present your plugins at the event or even do a talk or presentation. If this sounds interesting to you, please contact us for further discussion.

Looking forward to meeting you,
your SDK Team