If you don’t have the Java Runtime Environment installed jet, you need to do this first.Īs said before, Eclipse has excellent python support – but not out of the box, so we are going to install PyDev. So let’s start by downloading and installing Eclipse Classic from If you never used one, think of an IDE as your workshop, it’s a collection of tools as well as the place where you do and organize your coding work.Įclipse is one of the most popular – its Java based, open source, free to use and most importantly has excellent support for python. In order to get auto completion to work within PyDev, we are going to need a separate python interpreter – 2.6.4 to be exact. We will add some useful things on Cinema 4D-side later – for now let’s continue with the Eclipse setup… This will slow Cinema 4D down a bit, but enables you to monitor memory leaks. Place an empty text file named “c4d_debug.txt” into the root folder of your Cinema 4D copy.Get rid of all Cinema 4D plugins you don’t need for your development.
You get ‘nearly’ full access to the C++ API of Cinema 4D, don’t have to compile or worry much about platform dependencies, can easily find a ton of neat recipes and libraries out there… While python is great for quickly scripting workflow optimizing tools, prototype stuff or write generators and tags, is it suited for big, complex plugin development? This is going to be another Python/Cinema 4D related post.
It’s been a long time… how have you been?