Quote from RichardF on 5. February 2019, 23:59

It would be nice to have Prism support for C4D and AE. I don't work with them myself, so I don't have plans for that at the moment, but if someone else wants to try it I will help of course.

I was in contact with someone who could help with the AE support, but I'm not sure if that will happen.

In the next Prism update it will be simpler to create Prism plugins and integrations in other programs. But still, some programming experience would be necessary. Especially the After Effects integration would require some work since AE doesn't support Python and Prism is completely written in Python.

Quote from Tbone on 13. February 2019, 1:55

Hey Richard,

We've just started looking into Prism to replace our asset manager and it looks really great. Our studio uses C4D and we'd be very interested in having it supported.  Unfortunately we have no programming experience.

Have you had much interest in C4D and do you have a timeline for integrating it into Prism?

Thanks again for creating such a great tool.

Quote from RichardF on 13. February 2019, 23:43

Hey Tbone,

I wouldn't use the C4D integration myself, which is why I have no plans at the moment to develop this for free. Thanks for the feedback, but there is no timeline I can give you right now.

Quote from Japistos on 16. May 2019, 18:53

Hi Richard.

Seeing that this is my first post here, I must say thank you, thank you, thank you so much for writing and releasing an open source pipeline tool like this!

I've been playing around with Prism for a couple days and I love it, especially because it's Python which I've been wanting to learn.  I'm very new to programming and Python, apart from a bit of VEX and the odd python tutorial/course that I start and then forget, so this has been a great way for me to learn something useful. So far I've managed to modify the CreateProject ui and PrismSettings ui to add an input to specify a network project folder, which I've then added to a rightclick menu in the ProjectBrowser task menu, to send the actual .mp4 playblasts to the network server. Oh and a send to email link.

Anyway, the point being, I'm now feeling more brave and want to have a crack at making a C4D integration plugin. I'm hoping my story above illustrates my enthusiasm and either helps motivate you or someone with more knowledge, to spoon feed me a little and help me along my way. Haha.

As a first objective, I'd be happy to have Prism Browser recognize .C4D files. At least then if I'm diligent in naming my assets/scenes with your naming convention, they can show up in the browser.

How would I go about getting that to work?

Thanks in advance.

Quote from RichardF on 16. May 2019, 22:45

Hey Japistos,

that's really great that Prism motivated you to look into Python again and that you were able to modify some of the existing scripts.

A lot of people (including me) would be very grateful if you would write a C4D implementation. I'll try to help you as good as I can, but hopefully some people with more C4D experience can give some feedback too.

Letting the Project Browser recognize .c4d files is a good first step and shouldn't be very difficult. The only thing you need to do is to go in the Prism Settings in the Plugins tab. There you can create a new plugin for Cinema4D as an "App" plugin type. This will open the directory of the new plugin, where you can find a Prism_Cinema4D_Variables.py file. In this file you'll find the line:

self.sceneFormats = [".format"]

You can replace the .format with .c4d, save the file and reload the Prism plugins (or restart Prism). Then the Project Browser will recognize all .c4d files which are in a correct asset/shot folder if the filename contains 5/7 underscores.

Prism will load all app plugins and read the sceneFormats variable from them and displays them in the Project Browser. You can have look in the Maya or Houdini plugin to see which sceneformats Prism recognizes.

Let me know if you can get that to work 🙂

Quote from Byter on 17. May 2019, 1:00

Hi there!

I also managed to get there. But the right click menu, only allows me to restore c4d files from backup. I can't create new c4d files, with right click. I only managed to get here, because a project started, so I don't have any time for it. Only in late June I can continue.

(Off topic, but I really want to create a "Deck" integration down the line. Based on the Trello integration, which some posted here)

Quote from RichardF on 17. May 2019, 18:29

To see a Cinema4D file in the "Create empty scene" menu you need to create an empty C4D scenefile first. This file has to be in your current Prism project in /00_Pipeline/EmptyScenes. The filename should be something like: EmptyScene_Cinema4D.c4d. If you setup your Project Browser to recognize .c4d files then you will see the empty C4D scene in the rightclick menu.

What exactly do you mean with "Deck" integration? But every integration is welcome so let me know if you have any problems there 🙂

Quote from Japistos on 17. May 2019, 19:23

Byter, I found the create new version only showed up after I created a new project. I didn't show up after just restarting Prism Tray.

 

Thanks Richard, that was super easy, love how it prepares all the scripts for the new plugin.

So now I guess the next and biggest step is to work through the Prism_Cinema4D_Functions.py file? I've got the Houdini and 3ds Max ones open side by side as reference, I suppose I see what the def is looking for and then figure out how to call that using C4D python modules?

 

 

Quote from RichardF on 18. May 2019, 16:51

Quote from Japistos on 17. May 2019, 19:23

Byter, I found the create new version only showed up after I created a new project. I didn't show up after just restarting Prism Tray.

If you mean the "Create empty file" option, then I guess you put the empty c4d file in the Prism installation folder. (C:\Prism\ProjectFiles\EmptyScenes). This folder will be copied to new projects when you create them, but the Project Browser doesn't look into this folder. It only uses the empty scenes folder from the project.

 

Quote from Japistos on 17. May 2019, 19:23

So now I guess the next and biggest step is to work through the Prism_Cinema4D_Functions.py file? I've got the Houdini and 3ds Max ones open side by side as reference, I suppose I see what the def is looking for and then figure out how to call that using C4D python modules?

Yes, that will be the biggest part of writing the C4D integration. You don't need to implement all functions at once. You can do a few functions and if they work you can do the next few ones. Most of them are related to the State Manager (import, export, render...), but I would recommend to focus on opening the Project Browser first.

At first you should figure out how you can load startup python scripts when C4D launches. That can be very different in each DCC app, but you can have a look at how I did it for the other apps. For example Houdini executes the pythonrc.py file during startup. From this file I load the PrismInit.py file, which creates an instance of the PrismCore class. This class can be used when the application is running to launch the tools like the Project Browser. I guess it will work similar in C4D.

As a next step I would figure out how to create a Prism menu/shelf in C4D and then add the usual Prism commands to that menu. These menu commands only need to execute a single line of python code. Have a look at this file from the 3ds Max plugin to see how the Prism menu in 3ds Max works under the hood: 3dsMax\Integration\PrismMacros.mcr

You should be able to open the Project Browser without having to do a lot of work in the Prism_Cinema4D_Functions.py file.