Documentation & Tutorials
Learn how to install and use the Poliigon Cinema 4D Plugin.
Cinema 4D Plugin Docs
Create more in Cinema 4D
The Cinema 4D plugin puts 4,000+ models, materials and HDRIs at your fingertips. Search, download and import without leaving Cinema 4D.
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For Cinema 4D 2025-2023, updated 14 March 2025
3 Reasons to use our Cinema 4D Plugin
#1: No more browser
The power to search, download and import Poliigon assets from inside Cinema 4D.
#2: One-click import
Say goodbye to tedious setups and complicated import settings. This plugin does it for you in one-click.
#3: Try before you buy
Aren’t sure if the texture is right? Click the preview icon on any texture to see it temporarily applied to the selected object.
Poliigon Cinema 4D Plugin Changelog
Friday, March 14, 2025
v1.1.1
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4, 2025 (OSX/Windows)
- Critical bugfix for some users facing issues in v1.12.0:
- Some individual and team accounts may have faced difficulty logging into the plugin, or loading the grid if already logged in
- Some users may have had trouble downloading assets due to a displayed “Purchase” message on the grid, even if on an unlimited plan.
- Resolved an issue with model importing which could impact undo handling of the Poliigon tag
- Fixed TypeError which could occur when importing models after opening older project files
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
v1.1.0
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4, 2025 (OSX/Windows)
- New feature: In-app account changes
- Several website-only account management features are now available from the plugin, such as resuming or upgrading your plan
- Ran out of downloads or getting low? Directly upgrade to the next available plan using your payment method on file. Users who upgrade in app are clearly shown the details of their current plan, the proposed new plan, and any immediate and future charges.
- Opening links from the plugin will automatically log you into the website with the same account
- Fixes
- Cleanup of account data when logging out and back in - some edge cases remain so you may still benefit from restarting the software when changing users
- Fixed a python conflict which could have interfered with running the plugin’s operators from a console
- Improved fallback handling when encountering bad asset data structures
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
v1.0.0
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4, 2025 (OSX/Windows)
- New features
- Added a Poliigon object tag to easily adjust any asset after the initial import
- Simply click on or select the Poliigon tag on any applicable object, then easily change settings such as the applied resolution, HDRI rotation, and displacement settings
- This includes changing resolution for all asset types, adjusting the texture unwrap size, displacement settings for materials, and rotation for HDRIs
- Works for all currently supported render engines. For more details of the functionality supported, see the documentation here
- Introduced the Imported Assets tab to easily find assets found in the open document
- Added a Poliigon object tag to easily adjust any asset after the initial import
- Fixes
- Fixed: Downloading additional resolutions from the dropdown quick menu would instead apply a local size, if a local download existed with different map settings in preferences
- Fixed: Multiple consecutive imports of a model would cause an error
- Fixed: Texture imports now properly offer the option to import with relative paths
Monday, December 16, 2024
v0.12.1
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.0, 2024.4, (OSX/Windows)
- This patch is not user-impacting
- Removes unnecessary double error reporting in one scenario, and adds a missing view signal
Monday, November 18, 2024
v0.12.0
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4 (OSX/Windows)
- Improvements
- Added a large detail viewer
- View all (image) preview renders for an asset
- See additional technical information about the asset, such as physical texture size and maps supported
- Purchase and download any resolution from this dialogue, or quickly open the folder location
- Added an imported tab
- To complement the Online Assets and My Assets view, this lets you quickly see - and select - assets already found in the open document
- Use the quick menu to the right of each asset to also find a handy select button, which (for relevant asset types/render engines), will select all objects matching that asset.
- Added Map selection preferences
- From preferences, which you can open via the gear icon, you can now adjust default map settings similar to the website
- This allows you to enable or disable optional maps like BaseColorOpacity, as well as specify the per map extension to download and require for importing
- The first time you use the plugin, your website download settings will be used as the default - changing settings thereafter on the website will not change plugin settings, and plugin setting changes do not affect your online download settings.
- Be aware: updating map preferences may require re-downloading missing maps/extensions before being able to import local assets again
- Improved communication for unlimited users who exceed the Fair Use Policy, learn more here
- The asset balance is now visualized again for free users with a non-zero balance
- Added a large detail viewer
- Fixes
- Fixed issue where sometimes the plugin would load the second instead of first texture map variant
- Fixed search not being reset upon logout
- Ensuring transmission is used over translucency if both maps are found
- Fixing the way mask / alpha standalone maps are loaded into shaders for Octane
- Fixed a type error for Arnold renderer
- Fixed issue where sometimes the plugin would load the second instead of first texture map variant
- Several minor fixes in error handling
- Improved reliability of applying watermarked PBR previews
Friday, October 18, 2024
v0.11.0
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4, 2025 (OSX/Windows)
- Support for Poliigon Unlimited plans
- These plans let you download an unlimited number of Textures, Models, and HDRIs from Poliigon with no credits or download limits, learn more here
- If you cancel your unlimited plan, the plugin will no longer allow you to re-import premium assets; this does not impact assets downloaded using packs or a plan with a monthly asset balance
- Improved onboarding experience
- Users will see one-time popups when purchasing their first asset, to raise awareness of available user settings
- Users will see a one-time popup the first time they perform a pbr watermark preview (by pressing the eye icon over an asset), to clarify what this means
- Renamed the 1-click purchase setting to be Show Purchase Confirmation, which if enabled gives the user an extra chance to confirm a purchase before the asset balance is used
- Reworked the account tab to be simpler
- Fixes:
- Cancelled downloads no longer hang, which could happen if cancellation was pressed quickly before the download was started
- Safer and more reliable addon shutdown handling
- Improved the error reporting system so we can better identify and solve errors occurring in background threads
Wednesday, Sept 18, 2024
v0.10.0 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4, 2025 (OSX/Windows)
- Introducing support for Physical
- The Physical render engine is now supported for importing materials, models, and HDRIs
- All material workflows are supported except for Translucency, for which Physical provides limited options. Users are recommended to manually tweak materials where translucency if necessary.
- Fixes
- Refactor in how downloads are handled, with this update downloads should be more stable and more likely to complete with fewer timeout errors
- Improved handling of displacement setup for Redshift to reduce shading artifacts. Displacement is completely disabled by default in the Redshift Object tag, but is made easy for the user to enable with the override already set up.
- File logs are now disabled, which caused permission errors for some users
- Forward compatibility fixes for upcoming features
- Updated the url for the website pricing page
Friday, July 12, 2024
v0.9.1 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4 (OSX/Windows)
- Fixes
- Ensuring displacement textures in the .tiff format are recognized and loaded
Monday, July 9, 2024
v0.9.0 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.0, 2024.4 (OSX/Windows)
- Improvements
- Supporting the new convention for Poliigon textures
- This is specifically for texture files named like: Poliigon_AssetName_8422_...
- All assets will have multiple resolutions, saved into size-based subfolders e.g. 1K
- Support for 512 and 256 pixel width assets, which may exist for some fine detail textures
- Pre-existing textures over time will be migrated to this new format, including multiple sizes
- Download and importing is limited to jpg, but we will be expanding extension preferences in the future
- Show display name in the grid
- Automatically save Material X (mtlx) files to disk when downloading textures in the new convention
- These files are not used for importing, but may be in the future as the convention is increasingly adopted
- Improved the popup for render engine not supported, so it more clearly indicates the currently active render engine (often Standard or Physical, which is not supported)
- Supporting the new convention for Poliigon textures
- Fixes
- Corrected the colorspaces for AO, Fuzz, and Alphamasked maps
- Fixed minor label bleeding during thumbnail loading
- Improved undo behavior for textures, though V-Ray texture imports still require multiple undo-presses
Friday, June 7, 2024
v0.8.0 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4 (OSX/Windows)
- Improvements
- Providing forward compatible looking changes for upcoming asset downloads
- Critical Fix:
- We resolved a critical bug which led to the extension interface not loading. This could have happened if you used the plugin between ~May 28th and 31st, due to wrong API data being cached to disk and causing the plugin to fail the next time C4D opened.
- Simply updating should resolve this problem, be sure to restart after the install
- Fixes
- Improved HDRI loading when there are user manipulated sky objects
- The correct minimum plugin version is now defined, C4D 2023
- Improves the loading and assignments of materials for some model assets
- Improved importing model assets with variants, such that each variant correctly gets its own unique material instance
- Fixed plugin not registering if Redshift is missing
- Non user impacting change: Swapped to a self-hosted reporting backend and included active render engine in reports, for users who opt into sharing error/usage details
Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024
v0.7.2 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024.4 (OSX/Windows)
- Improvements
- Indicate assets purchased but not-yet local with a gray checkmark, so that local assets with a green checkmark are easier to identify
- Added signal to remotely inform how an initiated download completed, so we may better monitor and improve asset download reliability
- Improved readme installation instructions contained inside the plugin download
- Fixes
- Resolved issues with loading and rendering materials in Octane
- Resolved importing issues in C4D 2024.4, which would potentially cause incorrect material loading in V-Ray and Arnold due to new user C4D render preferences
- Resolved issue where notification header area could be rendered as a black bar
- Resolved an error which could occur when displaying total asset balance
- Resolved not downloading next closest resolution if the given asset being downloaded doesn't have a resolution exactly matching the one specified in plugin preferences
- Resolved issue where sometimes asset URLs would not open correctly
- Resolved issue where sometimes using the top-right refresh button could corrupt some data
Thursday, Mar 21, 2024
v0.7.1 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on 2023, 2024 (OSX/Windows)
- Improvements
- Integrate checks for update with one-click update installation. Next time an update is available, users will be notified in the header of the plugin with a link to the changelogs as well.
- Fixes
- Fixed loading materials onto some model assets like PlantMonstera001, which would sometimes result in unhandled errors. Note: Some older model assets such as this Monstera may still have inconsistently rotated meshes, we are working to resolve these issues through asset updates.
- More stable handling of missing thumbnails on server. Previously, a missing thumbnail could have rendered the UI much slower or even caused crashing, now it will gracefully move past the asset with any problems, and better yet, fall back to downloading the next best thumbnail.
Thursday March 13, 2024
v0.7.0 - Cinema 4D beta
Supports Cinema 4D 2023+, tested on OSX/Windows 2023 and 2024
- New features
- In addition to Redshift, fully implemented Octane, Redshift, V-Ray, and Arnold support
- In addition to textures, implemented HDRI and Model importing support
- The plugin now uses FBX to avoid re-downloads when changing render engine. Importing models from c4d files is currently not supported, as shader layouts are outdated and not using the metalness workflow yet.
- Improved call to action when encountering purchasing issues
- Fixes
- Reduction of button flicker
- Pre-existing alpha features:
- Purchase, download, and import assets with Redshift
- Browse and navigate all assets on the website
- View your account information and plan
- Open assets on the website or reveal their local location
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