TP Partio

  • Compatibility Cinema 4d
    Please check exact version compatibility under the "COMPATIBILITY" tab below
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Quick Overview

TP Partio is a plugin for Cinema 4D that will let you cache Thinking Particle particles, write them to disk, share them with other applications and read them back. It will let you take a snapshot of a current frame of your simulation and let it continue from there. It'll let you play your sims backwards, while you can scrub through them on your timeline.
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TP Partio

Videos

TP Partio is a plugin for Cinema 4D R13 and above that will let you cache Thinking Particle particles, write them to disk, share them with other applications and read them back. It will let you take a snapshot of a current frame of your simulation and let it continue from there. It'll let you play your sims backwards, while you can scrub through them on your timeline.*

This functionality has been missing from Cinema 4D for some time now and it has been bugging me for a while. You can now finally scrub through your sims without having to re-simulate from frame zero. You could even cache cloner positions this way by way of a Matrix object. Or, the other way around, feed the cached particles into a cloner.

Quick Demo

Have a look at the full tutorial (under the Videos tab above) for an introduction on how to work with TP Partio.

TP Partio can be downloaded and tested for free. There's not limitation. However, if you decide to use TP Partio in production, and you find it saves you some time, or maybe even a lot of time, please consider paying for the plugin. After all, if it has saved you a few hours of your time, passing the equivalent of an hourly rate on to me still sounds like a fair deal, doesn't it?

TP Partio supports a number of storage formats, but for size and speed BGEO or PRT are recommended, unless you need another format to e.g. open particles in Maya or Realflow. Consider only bgeo, geo and prt to be tested though...  

Currently TP Partio only supports 64bit Cinema 4D R13 and above. Sorry. That may or may not change in a future version, no promises though.

I'm always happy to hear feedback and suggestions, so keep those coming!

TP Partio incorporates the partio library written and released by Disney Animation (http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/partio.html), adapted to work within Cinema 4D.

*It is also an early release, so as a bonus feature, it will occasionally crash too.  To all users experiencing problems, please send your current C4D version number as well as a problem description and which options were chosen in TP Partio, especially which file format. Currently BGEO and PRT are the recommended formats. You can email it here.

Quick Demo

Full Tutorial

Cinema 4D R14, R13

Current version: 0.15a3

  • 0.15a3 - 10.12.2012
    • Added R14 support
    • Added support for C4D Hyperfile, BHCLASSIC, HCLASSIC formats and spline modifier curves
    • Many bugs fixed
  • 0.14.2 - 14.05.2012
    • windows zlib.dll recompiled Note: YOU MUST REPLACE THE EXISTING ZLIB.DLL WITH THE NEW ONE
    • generator enabled/disabled tick is now honoured correctly
  • 0.14.1 - 14.05.2012
    • New: "Modify over time" curves will let you modify size, mass and scale of cached particles in realtime
    • memory leaks fixed
    • "magic number bug" fixed (bgeo files should now not stop loading suddenly)
  • 0.13.7 - 08.05.2012
    •  hopefully fixed the problem where reading files would just stop after a while
  • 0.13.6 - 03.05.2012
    • added support for Cinema 4Ds HyperFile format
    • this is not using Partio, but C4Ds internal functions
    • it is slow, but potentially more reliable