Official documentation of the Megascans Plugin for Cinema 4D 

Overview

The Megascans Plugin for Cinema 4D allows you to connect Quixel Bridge and Cinema 4D, giving you a one-click solution for importing your Megascans, Mixer and custom assets straight into Cinema 4D within seconds.

This tool relies on Bridge’s robust architecture to give you the best asset management experience, and Cinema 4D’s python implementation to create materials, textures, LOD setup and geometry automatically, giving you extremely fast imports on the go. 

Physical/StandardSupported renderers:

• Redshift
• Arnold
• Octane

The plugin can auto-detect current renderer and uses the shaders/materials relevant to that renderer. The plugin is automatically started when Cinema 4D is launched and closed when Cinema 4D is closed. 

Installation

Please make sure the Cinema 4D is closed before proceeding with installation.

1. Open Bridge, then in the Downloaded section click on the asset you want to export. You should see the Export Settings side panel below:
   
2. Set the “Export To” dropdown to “Cinema 4D” and then click on “Download Plugin”. This should take less than a minute.
   

   Once the download is done you’ll see a confirmation message in Bridge and the plugin will be installed automatically.

3. Start Cinema 4D and you should now see a “Megascans Livelink” option in the “Plugins” menu there:
   

User Interface

When you click on the Megascans Livelink option in the Plugins menu in Cinema 4D, it will open the following window:

1. Use EXRs when available - By checking this box the plugin will use EXR displacement files if they are available.
2. Apply Material to Selection - When checked, the plugin will automatically apply the material to currently selected objects inside Cinema 4D. The plugin will also add tags to the selected objects according to the current renderer e.g. Redshift Object Tag.
3. Enable Displacement - This option specifies whether or not to setup displacement and to import the displacement map. Please keep in mind that Displacement is turned off for the following renderers even if the displacement map is imported:
   1. Redshift - Geometry Override is turned off by default since there are no displacement settings that fit every asset. If you want to use it then click on Redshift Object, go to geometry tab and check the Override property.
   2. Octane - Displacement is turned off by default since there are no displacement settings that fit every asset and Octane also has some issues with overlapping UVs. Otoy is aware of the situation and they are working on a fix. If you would still like to use the displacement with Octane then open up the material in the material editor window and check the Displacement node.

Exporting assets to Cinema 4D

To export an asset to Cinema 4D all you have to do is export it from Quixel Bridge via the Export Settings panel:

Make sure you’ve set the “Export To” to Cinema 4D before you export. You can also tweak your export settings, like texture format, LODs, mesh format (FBX or OBJ), etc.

As soon as you click on “Export” in Bridge (while Cinema 4D is running) your asset should pop up in the scene:
 

Custom Installation

If the current installation process in Bridge isn’t suitable for your pipeline, you can download the plugin manually as follows.

1. Download the link from here

   WINDOWS   |   MAC

2. Extract the .zip file.
3. Save your work and close Cinema 4D.
4. Copy the megascans_livelink folder to [Cinema 4D Installation path]/plugins/ directory.
5. Re-launch Cinema 4D and you are done.
6. In Bridge, on Export Settings, select Custom Socket Export. In the Select Port field set the port to 24420

You should now be all set to export assets from Bridge to Cinema 4D.