ftrack connect Cinema 4D

ftrack connect integration for MAXON Cinema 4D.

Introduction

The ftrack connect Cinema 4D plugin act as a bridge between the Cinema 4D and ftrack. With the plugin you can easily publish and import your files to ftrack.

Note

For the plugins to work you will need to have an ftrack account. Read more on how to get started here.

Getting started

Getting started with the Cinema 4D plugin is really easy, just follow this guide and you will be up and running in no time.

Requirements

The plugin requires Cinema 4D R17 or later and either Windows (7 or later with Internet Explorer 11 installed), or macOS (10.11 or newer).

1. Signup to ftrack (only for new users)

If you haven’t already got an ftrack account you can sign up for a 30 day free trial at our Sign up page.

2. Connect

Download and install ftrack Connect for your platform at Connect download page.

Open Connect and sign in with your company’s ftrack URL, e.g. <company-url>.ftrackapp.com.

Note

If this is the first time you use ftrack and Connect you will be asked to configure a Storage scenario to let ftrack now how to publish your files. See this article for more information.

3. Cinema 4D plugin

Download and install the Cinema 4D plugin by copying it to Cinema 4D’s plugin directory.

1. Download the Cinema 4D plugin from the ftrack Integrations page.

2. Extract the zip archive.

3. Copy the result folder into FTRACK_CONNECT_PLUGIN_PATH 3. Copy the plugin/ftrack directory in the plugin directory within Cinema 4D’s

preferences folder. You can find this directory from Cinema 4D by navigating to Edit –> Preferences –> Open preferences folder.

Finally, launch Cinema 4D (or restart it if you already have it open). Then open the ftrack dialog from the ftrack menu.

Cinema 4D

Publish your work

The publish feature lets you publish your work to ftrack so that it can be handed over to someone else or imported into another application.

Publishing in Cinema 4D will publish the active project as a copy so that you can continue working on your local copy. The project’s preview image will be used as the version’s thumbnail.

More information about publishing media can be found here.

Import published files

Geometry and scene files that have been published as versions in ftrack can be imported into Cinema 4D. When selecting import on a version you are presented with a list of available files that can be imported.

When a file is imported into Cinema 4D, an XRef object will be created and inserted into the active project, pointing to the version. The XRef object will have a ftrack tag with an f icon, so you can easily tell if it was imported from ftrack.

The Object Manager in Cinema 4D showing imported ftrack assets.

More information about importing published material can be found here.

Note

If a file is unavailable for import it means that it is not available in a storage that you are able to read from.

Using

These articles are describing generic workflows and may look and work slightly differently depending on which application you’re using.

Viewing your tasks

Staying up to date with your tasks and new assignments is essential for an easy collaboration. With the My tasks list you have easy access to your tasks and can change status, read notes and view what versions have been published to your tasks.

The my tasks page shows you all tasks that are assigned to you but not yet completed.

Feedback

Communication and feedback is an important part of the day-to-day work. From the plugin you have easy access to all your notes.

To read notes on your tasks, select a task from My tasks. You can also browse other parts of the project to read and reply to notes.

On the notes page you can communicate with your fellow colleagues using Notes.

To learn on how to publish your work, see the Publish media article.

Publish media

When you’re satisfied with your work and want to share it with your team you can choose to publish it.

Publishing something means that the material that you’re working will be saved and published as a Version to ftrack. This means that one or more files will be saved to disk or uploaded to ftrack where others can import and view them.

From the publish page you can choose to what you want to link your version to. It can be directly on a project, or if you work on something complex a folder, task or other object within a project.

You can also choose a type, if you want categorize what you’re publishing.

If are already versions published that matches your name and asset type, ftrack will automatically version up what you’ve published. So if there is already a Version named Overlay of type Upload, ftrack will create a new version of it; Overlay v002. This is great if you work iteratively with your team and collaborate.

See also

To learn more about where your files goes, please read this article.

Import published material

Importing published material into your application is easy. Simply navigate to the object that you want to import from, click on the Versions tab and locate your version. Now click import and ftrack will list all file Components that you can import.

Installing

Note

Unless you are doing any modifications, there should be no need to build the extension yourself.

Building from source

You can also build manually from the source for more control. First obtain a copy of the source by either downloading the zipball or cloning the public repository:

git clone git@bitbucket.org:ftrack/ftrack-connect-cinema-4d.git

Obtain ftrack-connect-spark and build the distribution files.

Set the required environment variables. Set the environment variable FTRACK_CONNECT_SPARK_DIST_DIR to the directory contining the distribution files for ftrack-connect-spark.

set the environment variable FTRACK_CONNECT_CINEMA_4D_PLUGIN_DIR to the installation directory for ftrack-connectc-cinema-4d, e.g.: /Users/john/Library/Preferences/MAXON/CINEMA 4D R17_89538A46/plugins/ftrack.

Build the plugin (Will build the plugin and dependencies in build/plugin):

python setup.py build_plugin

Install the plugin (Copy built files to Cinema 4D’s plugin directory):

python setup.py install_plugin

Building documentation from source

To build the documentation from source:

python setup.py build_sphinx

Then view in your browser:

file:///path/to/ftrack-connect-cinema-4d/build/doc/html/index.html

Running tests against the source

With a copy of the source it is also possible to run the unit tests:

python setup.py test

Dependencies

• Python >= 2.6, < 3

Additional For building

• Sphinx >= 1.2.2, < 2

• sphinx_rtd_theme >= 0.1.6, < 1

Additional For testing

• Pytest >= 2.3.5

Troubleshooting

Viewing logs

You can view logs from inside Cinema 4D by opening Script -> Console. Errors and activity is also stored on disk in the following directory, in a file named ftrack_connect_cinema_4d.log.

OS X

~/Library/Application Support/ftrack-connect/log

Windows

C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Local Settings\ftrack\ftrack-connect\log

Linux

~/.local/share/ftrack-connect/log

Known issues

The plugin is not able to communicate with locally hosted ftrack servers running HTTP when using Cinema 4D R18 (SP0 or SP1) and macOS 10.11 or newer. Using R17 or R18 SP2 should work.

Release and migration notes

Find out information about what has changed between versions and any important migration notes to be aware of when switching to a new version.

Release Notes

0.2.0

7 September 2021

• fixed

  DiscoverUpdate hook to application launcher.

• changed

  Update code to run on python 3.7

Warning

From this version the support for ftrack-connect 1.X is dropped, and only ftrack-conenct 2.0 will be supported up to the integration EOL.

0.1.5

12 October 2017

• fixed

  PublishOnly the default “Upload” asset type can be selected before erasing the text.

• fixed

  PublishPublish times out after 30 seconds.

0.1.4

28 June 2017

• fixed

  API version is incompatible with ftrack server version 3.5.

• fixed

  PublishThreading issues caused publishes to fail.

0.1.2

14 July 2016

• fixed

  PublishThe published component has no file type if the project has not been saved yet.

0.1.1

14 June 2016

• fixed

  PublishSession not reset when publish fails, making it impossible to try again.

0.1.0

7 June 2016

• new

  Initial release of the ftrack plugin for Cinema 4D.

  Instantly access project management: Gain a simplified overview of your assigned tasks from the ftrack panel. You can browse and drill down to any project available in ftrack, making design-based project management a breeze.

  Dive into details: Easily access task information, notes and published files. Import tracked files from ftrack or share notes.

  Publish your work online: Publish your work to ftrack’s cloud platform directly from supported applications. ftrack supports a broad range of storage options, including your own file system.

• new

  PublishPublish the active Cinema 4D project file to ftrack as a new version.

• new

  ImportImport Cinema 4D projects and other files from ftrack as XRef objects.

Migration notes

No migration notes required at this time.

Glossary

Asset Version

A specific version of data for an asset. Can contain multiple components.

Component

A container to hold any type of data (such as a file or file sequence).

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page

Copyright and license

Copyright (c) 2015 ftrack

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this work except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License in the LICENSE.txt file, or at:

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.