Installation
Copy the folder called messiahC4D from your messiah installation folder to Cinema 4D's plugins directory. At this point the contents of your messiahC4D folder should be the messiahC4D.cdl  plug-in file and a "res" folder.  Later this folder will also contain the config file for the plug-in, and will be named messiahC4D.cfg.

The first time you start Cinema 4D after installing messiahC4D, you will be prompted to locate your messiah executable. You will only need to do this once. NOTE: never move your messiah executable or the messiahHOST.dll file from the directory in which they were installed.

Deformation
In order to deform an object with messiah in Cinema 4D the following steps must be taken:

figure 1

1)  Create a new messiahC4D Deform plugin object (figure 1).
2)  Parent that plug-in object to the object you wish to deform (figure 2)
3)  Apply the messiah:deform Tag to the object you wish to deform (figure 2)

figure 2

Transformation
By nature, deforming an object incurs a certain amount of overhead as each point in the object needs to be updated, for this reason it is more desirable to alter an object's motion only if you do not intend to distort its shape. To do this you simply apply the messiah:xform Expression Tag to the object (figure 3)

figure 3

messiahC4D Dialog
This dialog (figure 4) is where you will configure the messiahC4D plug-in.  This is also where you launch messiah's interface.

figure 4

Scale Factor
The default grid size in Cinema 4D is different than that of messiah. For example, if you were to create a default cube in Cinema 4D, it would span 100 units in each direction. In messiah a default cube will only span 1 unit in each direction, though both will take up about the same screen space in their respective apps. To get around this you can scale your Cinema 4D objects down as they are passed to messiah, and scale back up when they are passed back. You do this by adjusting the Scale Factor in the messiahC4D Dialog. The default value of 0.01 will scale that 100 unit cube from Cinema 4D down to a 1 unit cube in messiah. Note that Scale Factor is global, meaning it affects all connected objects. When objects are connected with the messiah:xform Expression Tag, their translation is also scaled by the Scale Factor to keep their motions proportional to their size.

Path to messiahStudio.exe
In order to run, messiahC4D needs to know where your messiah executable is located.  When you start Cinema 4D for the first time after installing messiahC4D you will be asked to locate your messiah executable.  That path will then show up in this field. You may change the location whenever you want, but you will need to restart Cinema 4D for the change to take effect.

If any of the following conditions are true then messiahC4D will fail to load correctly and the plug-in will not work:

1)  The path to the messiah executable is incorrect
2)  The messiahHOST.dll file has been moved from the installation directory
3)  The messiah*.exe file has been moved from the installation directory

Known Issues
Cinema 4D is a program with a very unique design quite different from that of the other host applications supported by messiah. Because of this there are some issues that the user should be aware of:

1)  You cannot merge one Cinema 4D scene with another when they both contain objects that are connected to messiah.
2)  You can only have one Cinema 4D document open at a time that contains a connection to messiah.
3)  When you close the Cinema 4D document you must manually clear the messiah scene, this will not happen automatically.

Cinema 4D is a trademark of MAXON Computer GmbH