This is a camera Frustum object and it’s meant to be used as a field object in Cinema 4D. It’s a bit experimental since it’s not truly field object. Basically it’s just a polygon object shaped as a quadrilateral frustum. Polygon object’s points are connected to match linked camera’s view frustum with Python Tag. There’s a couple settings to change: Distance of near plane and far plane, also option to adjust width and height padding.
Drop Camera Frustum object to effector’s field list and set the ‘Mode’ to ‘Volume’ to make it work as designed.
Hawkeye plug-in for Cinema 4D is an useful tool that creates many different guides to help user to make better compositions. If Cinema 4D’s default composition helpers are not enough for you, this plug-in will give you many more options.
All Hawkeye guides are spline objects! I completely rewrote the plug-in (10.09.2023). Now all guides are drawn straight in to the viewport. No more splines, but the old legacy version is available too.
Features:
Many different composition helpers
Border
Crosshair, cross, diagonal cross
Rule of thirds, golden section
Dynamic symmetry
Different diagonals
Harmonious triangles
Basic shapes A, V, diamond
Grid lines (horizontal and vertical separated)
Supports also editor camera
Option to restrict guides to global, editor camera, custom cameras and linked cameras (New in v1.3.1)
Linked cameras list supports camera objects, but also null and selection objects to collect cameras
Four (4) customizable safe guides
Four (4) customizable custom area guides, set corner point positions in render resolution space (New in v1.3.1)
Four (4) customizable custom line guides (New in v1.3.1)
Option to use custom aspect ratio, guides and safe areas scales correctly with the custom aspect ratio
Option to scale guides uniformly
Option to change guides colors and opacity and fill background (New in v1.3.1)
Updated 10/09/2023
> Complete rewrite! Plug-in draws now guides to the viewport, no splines anymore!
> Many new features, like custom guides
NB. The new Hawkeye plug-in will broke the old version, so if you have projects where you used the old version, delete the old Hawkeye object and insert the new version!
Sometimes I have thought that would it be cool if you could make custom shelf tools in Cinema 4D and use those as any native tool. Whether it be object, generator, effector, field or whatever. By a shelf tool I mean that there’s a clickable icon in the toolbar that loads the asset. And all without the hassle to create a proper Python plug-in for such simple tool.
Place the module to “C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Roaming\MAXON\{CINEMA 4D VERSION}\python39\libs\”
Create the asset file somewhere. It it’s recommended to use c4d file format.
Customize the template code below and save it to “C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Roaming\MAXON\{CINEMA 4D VERSION}\library\scripts”. Name the file as you want but the extension has to be “.py” (Python file).
Create an icon for the script 64×64 pixel resolution tif-format, with transparent background. Name it same as the python script (only the extension is different) and place it also in the scripts folder.
Run/restart Cinema 4D and now you are ready to use your new shelf tool!
Shelf tool template script:
"""
Name-US: Asset's Name
Description-US: Asset's Description
"""
# Libraries
import ar_shelf_tool as st
# Functions
def main():
# File path of the asset, change this, very important!
assetPath = ""
# Import the asset
st.Import(path=assetPath, # Asset path
icon=__file__, # Icon path
color=None, # Color in c4d.Vector() format
matsOnly=False) # If 'True' imports only materials from asset file
# Execute main()
if __name__=='__main__':
main()
Replace “Asset’s Name” with a proper asset name. This is the name of the script that will be displayed in Cinema 4D.
Replace “Asset’s Desciprtion” with a proper description. This will be showed as a tooltip when mouse hovers over the script icon.
Replace “assetPath” with the absolute file path of the c4d-file you want to load. Use forward slashes (“/”) instead of backward slashes (“\”) in the file path.
If you don’t want that script changes the assets’s icon, change “icon=iconPath” in the code to “icon=None”.
The script automatically recognizes the asset’s type, for example: if it’s an effector it puts it in selected MoGraph Generators like normally using effectors and so on. The script also works with key modifiers as Cinema 4D by default works when creating a new object.
N.B. Shelf tool script loads ONLY the first object of the c4d document! If you have multiple objects, group everything under one null object! This is very important!
If you want to make shelf tools for my Python Effectors, you can find some icons here: AR_Utility_Icons
Updated 06/05/2022
> Updated ar_shelf_tool.py module in Github, so template script is now a bit cleaner
Finally I have updated AR_Scripts for Cinema 4D R25 (and S26) and Python 3.9.1. These updated scripts can be found on my Github. Check them out!
I have added many nice scripts and removed some buggy and deprecated ones. I have now moved to work with R25 (and now with new S26) and this means that I’m not writing scripts nor tools for the older Cinema 4D versions and Python 2. For now I’m keeping old scripts in “AR_Scripts_1.0.16_R21_Deprecated” folder on Github for those who uses older C4D’s.
All of the scripts should work with Windows and MacOS machines. There’s currently 91 scripts, many with multiple actions (via keyboard modifier) and new scripts are coming depending how lazy I’m.
More and more I have to deliver different versions from the project. One for television one for web, social media, and so on. Many times the aspect ratio and the resolution varies quite much. That’s why I created this simple but useful asset to help me to see how one render looks in different aspect ratios.
Note that the aspect ratio guide should be placed under the camera object.
Some calculations in Pythonish pseudocode:
doc = c4d.documents.GetActiveDocument()
temp_height = distance_from_camera * math.tan((camera_fov_ver * 0.5)) * 2.0
temp_width = distance_from_camera * math.tan((camera_fov_hor * 0.5)) * 2.0
guide_position_x = temp_width * film_offset_x
guide_position_y = temp_height * film_offset_y * -1
old_aspect_ratio = resolution_width / resolution_height # Calculate aspect ratio
if old_aspect_ratio > new_aspect_ratio: # If old aspect ratio is bigger than new aspect ratio
guide_width = temp_height * new_aspect_ratio
guide_height = temp_height
elif old_aspect_ratio < new_aspect_ratio: # If old aspect ratio is smaller than new aspect ratio
guide_width = temp_width
guide_height = temp_height / new_ar
else: # If old and new aspect ratios are same
guide_width = temp_height
guide_height = temp_width
This is nothing special, just an old Python Generator asset practice that I found lying around. Its only purpose is to show index numbers. Mainly created to show polygon object’s polygon, edge, and point numbers. Because sometimes you have to know the specific index number and instead of searching it in ‘Structure’ tab this is faster. Under the hood this Python Generator is just a basic matrix object with Display mode turned to ‘Index’.
Last but not least you need the function that returns some kind of string that the token outputs:
def MyFunction(data):
return "myString" # Replace this with your more advanced script
Here is my collection of custom tokens that might be useful.
Tokens included:
Date Year Full (2021) – Token: $YYYY
Date Year Short (21) – Token: $YY
Date Month (01) – Token: $MM
Date Day (16) – Token: $DD
Date Hour (18) – Token: $hh
Date Minute (42) – Token: $mm
Date Second (10) – Token: $ss
PC Name (String) – Token: $pcname
Username (String) – Token: $pcuser
Render Engine (Redshift) – Token: $renderer
Project version – Token: $ver (Parses version number of the project name)
Object Name – Token: $objname (Returns name of the first object in the object manager)
N.B. Many of these tokens are now already included in newer Cinema 4D versions! When using custom tokens beaware that you are not trying to overwrite existing tokens.
Updated 02/09/2021
> Added two new tokens
> Fixed render engine name token
Place the folder in the zip file to Cinema 4D’s plug-in folder. ar_tokens_v1.0.2.zip
This is a very handy plug-in for Cinema 4D. It helps exporting Redshift Proxy files different ways. It works like the default Redshift Proxy File Exporter but this plug-in gives some additional features.
Extra features:
Export all or selected objects to separate files
Option to create folders for objects
Open export folder in explorer while exporting
Monitor exporting process in status bar
Installation:
Place Redshift Proxy Exporter plug-in to your appdata plug-in folder to make it work properly (avoid permission errors), since plug-in has to write and read the settings file.
If you close the dialog with “Close” button, the plug-in will remeber the last used settings, if you close it with the cross button, the plug-in does not save the settings.
Updated 21/02/2021 (v0.0.2)
> File/folder path input field. Now you can export to network locations much easier. Creates missing folders automatically when you modify path string
> Option to export proxies without frame number suffix in file names.
Updated 28/02/2021 (v0.0.3)
> Support for Cinema 4D R23
> Bug fixes
Updated 21/04/2023 (v1.0.0)
> Semantic versioning and refreshing icons
Hawkeye (v1.0) is an effect plug-in for Adobe After Effects (currently only for Microsoft Windows) that helps you to create beautiful and dynamic letterboxes and composition guides super easily.
Plug-in supports 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit colors.
Letterboxes includes 37 favorite aspect ratio presets including cinemascopes and custom mode let’s you define almost infinite amount of different aspect ratios.
Guides section has many different options to choose beautiful and useful compositing guides including: Center lines, rule of thirds, golden ratio, different sets of dynamic symmetry rectangle, harmonious triangles, harmonic armature, diagonals and many more. You can layer multiple guides top of each other by duplicating the Hawkeye effect.
Custom grid section let’s you determine your own custom grid that fits perfectly to your source footages dimensions.
License is prepertual and you can install the plug-in to two personal workstations. Once you purhace the product, you will get lifetime free updates!
Installation:
Put the downloaded aex file to the following folder:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects [version]\Support Files\Plug-ins
Once the After Effects is opened, the plug-in can be found here Effect->Aturtur->Hawkeye
Tested with:
Adobe After Effects 2019 (v16.1.3)
Adobe After Effects CC 2020 (v17.0.6)
