Today we are going to talk about some of the best free Cinema 4D plugins, which can help you to do different tasks throughout your creative process. We’ve put together this list that can make you more creative and more productive. These Plugins are not organized in any particular order, with that being said, let’s get started.
What these free Cinema 4D plugins have as advantages beyond being budget friendly?
Cinema 4D is a very powerful software as it is, but the good thing is that you can extend its potential even further. This is where plugins and scripts will come in handy: as the name suggests, you’ll be able to add them to the core software in order to append additional functionalities. This can be very helpful to help you achieve more in a timely manner, and even perform in a more productive way.
Before listing these amazing 15 plugins and scripts, you can know more about Cinema 4D and what is used for. Besides, there are multiple Cinema 4D plugin categories; here we will mention some of them that you can discover in more details:
- C4D plugins for modeling.
- C4D plugins for animation.
- C4D plugins for architecture.
- C4D plugins for rendering.
However, in this article we collect scripts and plugins for different purposes. They all have one factor in common; they are completely free of charge.
15. Spline Guide
Spline Guide is a free plugin created by César Vonc who has always amazed us with his great tools for Cinema 4D. It allows you to control hair objects by aligning them along splines dynamically and easily, you just need to create splines in the shape and arrangement that you want then you align the hair object to them, with some controls for how the hair is influenced.
Spline Guide is really a very good plugin when it comes to creating things such as ropes, braids or any type of fiber weaving with only some easy steps and few clicks.
You can download it for free from Code Vonc.
Link: http://code.vonc.fr/?a=58&l=an
14. CV-Dynamic Connector
The CV-Dynamic Connector allows you to connect and stick objects together with hinges and springs to create realistic chains, necklaces, and folds. It takes the size and dimensions of your objects into account and places hinges exactly between objects. Without this plugin, the process is usually more complicated and takes a lot of work, now it can be accomplished with only few clicks.
CV-Dynamic connector is a free tool but it requires a Cineversity subscription, anyone who has an R21 subscription also has a subscription to Cineversity.
Link: https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/cv-dynamic_connector
13. Insydium Plugin Bridge
Since Cinema 4D R20 and above have substantial changes and improvements to their core, many of third-party plugins for R19 and below are no longer compatible with the software. That is why Insydium company has created a Bridge plugin that can load plugins from R12 to R19 and enable them to work in Cinema 4D latest versions (R20-S24). Yet, not all plugins can work even after using the bridge tool, here is a list of Insydium Bridge Compatible Plugins:
- People in Motion; Parametric Toolkit and PhotoMatch by Rodenburg Verlags Shop.
- Paint and Stick by aescripts + aeplugins.
- Noise Deformer and Spline Noise Deformer by Michael Welter.
- ZBlur2 by BioMekk.
- All Cactus Dan’s plugins except for FBX importer.
- RipTide Pro by Spankis Prop Shop.
- TRUE Symmetry by Nebu, and Shawn Foster.
The Insydium Plugin Bridge is available for free but you need first to register and be a part of Insydium community to get it.
Link: https://insydium.ltd/products/bridge/register-for-bridge/
12. 4D Paint
4D paint is a free projection painting plugin for Cinema 4D that allows users to paint directly onto 3D models on C4D viewport using stamps and stencils. The plugin also includes many features such as 4D paint brushes; material view to work with materials and bodypaint layers in a Photoshop-style way; layer view; content view; texture view; vertex paint brush to let you paint smoothly over millions of polygons with no delays; SVG importer; vector graphics system for creating animated materials and much more.
Link: https://www.plugins4d.com/4dpaint
11. Screw Generator
As a modeler, no matter how many types of screws you have, you will always find yourself in a need of a unique and a specific one that you don’t have. For this reason, Fuchs & Vogel 3D animation and visualization company has created a free Xpresso driven tool called “Screw Generator” that can allow you to switch between different screw heads, size and different detail levels. It includes 7 main screws presets that you can further customize in various ways and then add them to any of your models to give them more details.
The Screw Generator for Cinema 4D is freely available on Fuchs & Vogel’s website.
Link: https://www.fuchsundvogel.de/blog/2015-02-17-screw-generator
10. Hot4D Ocean Generator
Hot4D by Drew Whitehouse is an ocean and wave generator plugin for Cinema 4D, It allows you to generate an ocean surface on objects within C4D.
This plugin contains different settings that control wind speed, wave height, choppiness and other generating foam settings. With Hot4D plugin you will be able to create very realistic renders.
Link: https://www.valkaari.com/?product=hot4d
9. Gelatine: making objects “flabby”
Gelatine is a free plugin created by Code Vonc, it has a lot of options that allow you to create flabby and elastic effects; work with multiple objects; set handle points and specify which parts of the object should wobble and which one should be stiffer. It has also many other settings that you can control such as the deformer intensity, the internal and external radius falloff, the elasticity of the object, the absorption value and angle, and much more.
Link: https://code.vonc.fr/?a=71
8. HoRope
HoRope by Pasha Ho is a free and open-source Python script-based plugin that generates setup for creating and animating dynamic ropes. You just need to create a rope object, place the spline under the HoRope object, and adjust the settings. You can also make it editable so you use it with Cinema 4D’s dynamic system.
Link: https://github.com/pashaho/HoRope
7. ArrowMaker: old
ArrowMaker is another free plugin for Cinema 4D that as you can tell from its name generates an arrow shape in the form of a spline primitive. The created shape can be modified to create many other different arrow types, then used in a “Sweep Nurbs” or “Extrude” to generate a mesh.
Link: https://microbion.co.uk/graphics/c4d/arrow.htm
6. Cactus Dan’s CD Tools
Cactus Dan’s CD tools are one of the most popular sets of plugins for character rigging within Cinema 4D. These tools were created by Daniel K. Libisch. Now, the CD tools legacy is carried on by Insydium company, you can use their plugin bridge tool to load the CD tools in the latest versions of Cinema 4D.
Link: https://insydium.ltd/community/cd-tools/
5. Alpha Pixel Drop to Floor
This free plugin is a one-click solution for aligning objects on the same floor, you can do so by selecting an object and dropping its lowest point to the top of the work plane. You can select any polygon, primitive, generator, deformer, and any other object. Drop to floor has been tested and updated to work with Cinema 4D R14 to R23 release.
Link: https://www.alphapixel.net/drop-to-floor/
4. Net Creator
NetCreator is an open-source Cinema 4D plugin for generating objects inside C4D. It has a user-friendly interface, you can easily generate splines on one object or between two objects.
This handy tool has many useful features, it supports polygonal objects, thinking particles and MoGraph objects; it has distance and visibility control which allows you to randomly remove points that are used to generate splines; you can also use the “Propagation for VertexMap” feature to get an animating vertex map for other purposes in Cinema 4D. There are many other features to be discovered and they are really worth giving a shot.
Link: https://github.com/LewisOrton/NetCreator/releases/tag/v1.1.1
3. Divider
Divider is a Cinema 4D fragmentation plugin developed by Aleksei Karpik. This free tool can help you to create procedural subdivisions on polygon meshes and make a modular Mondrian-style topology. You can also create looping animations and loop with just a few steps. Divider plugin supports R16+ versions.
Link: https://gumroad.com/l/VeCmP
2. Motion drop
If you are a motion graphics artist then Motion drop from mymotiongraphics.tv is one of the good tools you need to take a look at. It is a free and useful plugin for motion artists. Motion drop will allow you to create organic cartoon drops and sweeping lines. Actually, with minimum efforts you can create up to 6 drops that can randomly move around each other with an organic feel. You can also change their overall Radius and length, their speed, and the seed of their generators which gives you endless animation possibilities.
The available free version can be used for commercial purposes only if you notice the author and ask for his approval.
Link: https://mymotiongraphics.tv/motiondrop/
1. Umami
Umami is a Python driven Cinema 4D plugin developed by Tomas Sinkunas. This free and easy tool is used for generating random parametric splines only with some simple steps, all you need to do is to define a random seed, a number of segments, and splines, and then you drop a profile spline -it can be any kind of spline as much as it is a closed one- to get your Umami spline. There are other settings that you can play with such as randomness of points and random position and rotation of splines.
