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spedler

Ex Member

sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
04/12/10 at 11:14:49

Hi everyone,

I've been working on an sIBL loader plugin for C4D and I thought I'd share a preliminary screen shot of the interface. Later on (next day or so) I'll post a very early version of the plugin with sIBL set browser capability. The attached jpeg what it looks like so far.

There's a lot of work to do yet - so far, the plugin only allows you to browse the sIBL sets, and doesn't do anything else with them - but it's a start. The intention is to have a plugin which is PC and Mac compatible from C4D R10 onwards.

Any comments on the interface so far? It needs some refinement but I think most of the info is there.

Regards,

Steve

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screencap1.jpg (Attachment deleted)

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ksiksu Ex Member	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #1 - 04/12/10 at 11:21:55 thats pretty cool, nice to see someone working on a c4d sibl version, thanks
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Kel Solaar Moderator Offline Curious Apprentice Posts: 1117	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #2 - 04/12/10 at 15:39:58 Nice ! KS
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Blochi Administrator Offline Posts: 1726 Hollywood	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #3 - 04/12/10 at 20:59:31 Hey, that's pretty awesome. For browsing it turned out the most used view is a thumbnail browser view. Better prepare for that early, in my script it turned out to be tricky when all the rest is already done...
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Kel Solaar Moderator Offline Curious Apprentice Posts: 1117	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #4 - 04/13/10 at 00:07:57 Thing that could'nt be done easily with XSI, hence the fact I did sIBL_GUI first KS
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spedler

Ex Member

Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
Reply #5 - 04/13/10 at 08:44:21

Thanks folks. A thumbnail browser... yes, that's a good idea. I'll take a look at it, but I'm not sure how simple it will be to implement. Still, best to look at it now, in the early stages, as you say.

The interface as it stands is working quite well now, so I'm hoping to upload a preliminary version very soon. It won't do anything except act as a browser, but with luck it'll prove robust enough that I can progress to implementing the actual IBL set up

Steve

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Kel Solaar Moderator Offline Curious Apprentice Posts: 1117	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #6 - 04/13/10 at 16:00:10 Cool Did you had a look at Py4d ? Do you know if it bind the whole C++ Api ? I would be curious to know what possibility / constraints it has against COFEE / C++ ? KS
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spedler

Ex Member

Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
Reply #7 - 04/13/10 at 17:31:03

Okay, well that didn't prove as difficult as I thought it might, got a graphical browser working now as the attachment shows. That was good advice, thanks.

Re Py4D, I haven't looked at this much. I don't think it binds the whole API yet (though I could be wrong, I haven't really looked at it). It may well bind more of the C++ API than COFFEE does, eventually. As you know, Maxon have just bought it from the developer, so there will be a lot of further development, I expect. I'm sure it will be more capable than COFFEE and I suspect it will become the de facto scripting language for C4D, possibly with further COFFEE development being quietly dropped.

Steve

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screencap2.jpg (Attachment deleted)

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Blochi

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Posts: 1726
Hollywood

Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
Reply #8 - 04/13/10 at 18:16:53

Wow, you're moving at light speed! Awesome!

Another thing to keep in mind: We're in the process of opening up some things, namely allowing multiple entries for the items in a sIBL set. Multiple lights instead of just one key light are the first step (the Factory Catwalk is an example set).

In the next revision we'll include backplates with camera registration, and that will really call for multiple instances.

Just so you know, keep your data structures extensible. I cornered myself in the Lightwave script, and I will have to rewrite a whole bunch of things to allow for that.... You have the chance to keep it extensible from the beginning.

Blochi

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spedler

Ex Member

Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
Reply #9 - 04/13/10 at 19:08:48

Thanks. Yes, I'm quietly ignoring multiple lights at present, but I hope they will be in the final version. The data structure should be sufficiently extensible, the main problem of course is that there's no way of knowing how many lights are in the set until you read it, so allocating storage space for the light data in advance isn't possible. Unless you kludge it by assuming there will never be more than n lights in any set (which I hate doing because there will inevitably be one which breaks that rule).

Steve

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spedler

Ex Member

Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D
Reply #10 - 04/14/10 at 14:43:10

As promised, here is a very preliminary version of the loader for C4D. At the moment it's just a browser; it doesn't actually set anything up in the scene.

To try this you'll need C4D R11 or higher (the final version is intended to run on R10 or later) and a PC. I will be doing a Mac conversion when it gets to a more usable state.

Please do read the readme.txt file in the archive. It's full of awful warnings about not risking this plugin when working on something you would prefer not to lose.

I'd be grateful for any comments and/or bug reports. I'm going to leave the interface for now, so that people have a chance to play with it, and get on with making it do something useful

Regards,

Steve

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sIBLLoader.zip (Attachment deleted)

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bob groothuis Ex Member	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #11 - 04/15/10 at 18:14:38 Hello Steve, Awesome work! Many thanks for helping making sIBL sets workable for Cinema4D! Greetings Bob
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spedler Ex Member	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #12 - 04/15/10 at 19:40:29 Thanks Bob. I've got a semi-working version now which sets up the bitmaps and creates a sun light. A few more enhancements to that and I'll upload an actual functional version. Steve
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Kel Solaar Moderator Offline Curious Apprentice Posts: 1117	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #13 - 04/15/10 at 20:08:18 Good to see the advance ! Keep up the good work KS
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Pixeltroll Full Member Offline I love HDR :-) C4D, Rhino and my job Posts: 16 Germany	Re: sIBL Loader for Cinema 4D Reply #14 - 04/19/10 at 11:50:03 Looks grate
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