Octane Decal Importer for Cinema 4D

Octane for Cinema4D finaly supports decals as a seperate object.

However it's quite tideous having to import each and every image textures into the node graph, connect it to appropritate slots and maybe add any extra nodes to tweak the colors and intensity of those textures.

It's a nightmare when you dont know what you want and want to quickly tryout bunch of different decals to see which looks the best. So I made this script which takes the path of material directory as input and creates an octane decale object from the available texture maps.

All the functionality is listed below in detail.

Or you can skip to the Installation part which is also dead simple.

Don't forget to checkout Notes section aswell.

Features

• Takes material/decal directory path as input.
• Supports selective texture maps imports or uses the available texture maps automatically by default.
• Can use the name of directory as decal object name.
• Automatically matches the size/ratio of decal object to the resolution of image textures
• Adds float texture as input for unavailable texture maps.
• Adds Color Correction Node and Gradient Nodes to Diffuse and Info maps respectively.

Limitations

1. You still have manully setup the octane's "Decal Texture" nodes in the active PBR material you want to use Decal Obects with.(This will also be automated in the upcoming v2 update, buyers will be notified via email)
   

Installation

1. Place the octane_decal_importer.py script file at your prefered location (C4D's default User Scripts folder works the best).
2. Run Cinema 4D
3. Open Script Manager: Extensions > Script Manager (Shift + F11)
4. Open the script file from the location: File > Open Script... (Ctrl + O)
5. Save Script (Ctrl + S) so that C4D registers it as user script if you use a custom location.
6. Add shortcut to your C4D startup layout for easy access.
   

Notes

• Althought the script runs fine even with the selective texture imports I'll suggest to stick with 'Auto' mode unless you really need to.
• I am using displacement map for the bump input, as that is what I found looks the best to me.
• When using decals in a material with displacement you will see some artefact, thats not due to the script. that's just due to the overlaping of decal object and the polygonal object. I'll advice to not use displacement when using decals.
• The texture slots in decal object are reserved to the following texture maps for the sake of consistency.

  Texture 1 -> Diffuse
  Texture 2 -> Roughness
  Texture 3 -> Specular
  Texture 4 -> Bump

• I have not included any kind of proper error handling, so if you encounter any error you can let me know about it. I'll try to fix it in a future patch.
• I have also provided some extra scripts for fellow programmers.

  objDesc_retriever.py:
      Run this on any active object to the ID's of its parameters in console.
  
  objShader_retriever.py:
      Run this on any object/material to get the IDs of nodes/shaders connected to it.

License Agreement

This code is for personal and commercial use only.
Redistribution or resale is prohibited.

This is my first ever python script I wrote for Cinema 4D.

So if something doesn't work please contact me before giving a bad review, I can fix the issue in a patch update for everyone.

Thanks for supporting, it's motivates me to write even bigger scripts for this amazing software!

Jigar.