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Chris Schmidt’s Favorite Cinema 4D Tips and Shortcuts 59 Comments

This video is full of Chris Schmidt’s favorite tips, tricks, and workflow enhancements for Cinema 4D! Add your favorite tips to the comments.

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59 Comments

  2. Ricky

    Thanks for this Chris :) I love shortcuts, can dramatically speed up the workflow!
    ALT+G it’s always been fundamental to me, not only to make groups but by using is as a “folder” so that everything is stored in a clean way and all is in the right place.

    Reply

  3. Ravian

    Nice tips&tricks video Chris, I really like to drop to floor plugin ;D Thx for that, ‘ve been craving for that since I started using C4D.

    ~Rav

    Reply

  6. Guido

    Nice one Chris! I apreciate workflow tutorials with shortcuts and handy plugins. They never cover those in the manual!

    Reply

  9. cronosuno

    Really thanks! will save a lot of time!! I’ll begin creating my own pallets now!

    just one question, can you assign a shortcut to a command like: Delete track_animation_rigth click from an animated property?? it would be really really useful..

    thanks for the tips!

    Reply

  10. Sean McNulty

    Another good tip I picked up somewhere is that C4D understands metric and imperial measurements and can convert between them.

    For instance by default I have my measurements set to centimetres, but if you type ’1 ft’ it understands and converts to 30.48 cm.

    Reply

  11. Jason

    These tutorials are all informative, but I would love to see some “Real World” example tutorials.

    Reply

    • Omar Gonzáles Díaz

      Yeap! Animation of characters would be great! I dont know anything about that ;(

      Reply

    • al

      i agree i really enjoyed the light bulb tutorial based off of a mtv ident, long one, but a great one!

      Reply

  12. Oliver

    Man, just killer tipps. I love it, thanx a lot for sharing.

    Is there a way to export my custom c4d settings (shortcuts, workspace, etc.) and import/use it on a different machine (e.g. agency jobs in house)?

    Reply

    • Sean McNulty

      Go to Window > Customisation > Save Layout As…

      The layout will be saved as a .l4d file that can be opened on any machine

      Reply

  13. AKEman

    You can deselect a Selection tag by cmd/ctrl + clicking on the tag. It’s faster since otherwise you’ll have to select the object again (like Chris did). It saves you seconds and minutes and hours :)

    Reply

  14. rovino

    CS – whooot! Tuesdays are fun again!

    Listening to your tutorials we can hear the energy and enjoyment you get from working with this software.. its addictive.

    Reset PSR = FTW… that has got to be one of the best nuggets of information I’ve ever gleamed from any tutorial in the history of tutorials, evah. I’m telling everyone I know even, my mailman.

    Reply

  15. douwe

    some more essential Object Manager Icons for me :
    - Delete ( Bin Icon)
    - Current State to Object
    - Connect Objects and Delete
    - Show all Open Projects
    - Add Xpresso / Protection / Restriction Tag ( takes a script to set up : )

    main(doc, op)
    {
    var cTag = AllocTag(Texpresso);
    op->InsertTag(cTag);
    cTag->SetBit(BIT_ATAG);
    doc->AddUndo(UNDO_TAG_NEW, cTag);
    }

    If you’re looking for the Icons ; you can find them ready-for-use in the Images Folder of the Python SDK ( maxon.net/?en/?support/?plugin-cafe.html )

    d

    Reply

  16. Godmil

    Brilliant tips, thanks so much.
    I want to get brutal with my main pallet, like instead of having a drop down for all the selection types, I just want to have the live selection and rectangle selection… I’ve added those, but I have no idea how to delete the one I don’t want. Any suggestions?

    Reply

    • Chris Schmidt

      Double click any icon while in ” edit pallet” mode!

      Reply

      • Godmil

        Brilliant, Thanks so much. Can’t believe I’ve been using C4D professionally for 2 years now, and never organised my tools.

        Reply

  19. Adam

    I keep a Null Object button at the top of my pallets, next to the trusty scroll to fist active. There as well for creating nulls free of hierarchy.

    Some one posted a tip in the modelling tutorial last time that I did not know thats super handy, cmd (or crate) and dragging a face extrudes it; realllllly handy.

    Reply

  20. Adam

    Oh i have a question, this would speed me massively. Is there a duplicate object command?

    Scrolling to first active them command dragging it to duplicate it is a right pain (and I usually drop it into the wrong hierarchy). would be good to just keep moving in the editor window.

    Reply

  21. Fabian

    Great Tut! :)

    I assigned shortcuts to the selection-modes, wich is really powerful once you get used to it. “Optemize” is another function wich should have a short cut in my opinion! ;) …oh and don’t forget the “chess”-button, always helpful for boring working-houres. ;D

    Cheers, Fabian

    Reply

    • Adam

      stupid optimise button. Should not need to press it! (apart from actually when optimising). Why would I ever want invisible points for geometry I have removed (well there are some reallllllly niche ideas in my head but also utterly pointless).

      The other time i use optimize is the attach the ends of cylinder to the actually cylinder, now thats a strange one….

      Reply

      • Fabian

        Jepp, optimize shouldn’t be necessary, but well it unfortunately is. :/
        I hope Maxon is improving the general modelling-workflow even further in the next releases. With R13 they defenitly did some steps in the right direction imo. :)

        Reply

  22. dacian

    Thanks a lot! Very useful.

    Could you please make a video explaining the tools that Cinema has for exact measurements?
    For example to measure distances between objects, align or position objects in relation to other objects or points.
    I’m aware of some of the tools that are available for this but I can’t really understand them clearly.

    Reply

  24. Sebastiaan

    My custom Shortcuts I think everyone should use (as of R11.5 on MacOSX):
    - 1: enable 3d snapping
    - 2: disable snapping
    - 3: render view
    - Shift+C: Select all children
    - Shift+D: Connect and Delete
    - Shift+1: Model tool
    - Shift+2: Axis tool
    - Shift+3: point mode
    - Shift+4: edge mode
    - Shift+5: polygon mode
    - ctrl+S: Set Selection

    I use these all the time in conjunction with the provided shortcuts. It gets really annoying sometimes to watch a colleague work while not using any shortcuts at all… Work faster dammit! Faster!

    Reply

  25. n49o7

    If you customize your layout, make sure you don’t include the Content Browser (as a tab for example). Including it in the Startup Layout results in very long startup times.

    Reply

  26. Admin

    Thx for the excellent tips, Chris. I got 2 additional questions:

    1) How can i remove single customized icons from my layout?

    2) Is there a way to save some materials in my startup layout?

    Reply

    • Sebastiaan

      1) double click on them (r13) or drag them to a new palette and close that one. Then save your layout.
      2) make a scene with your default settings for options and any materials/ objects and save it as either new.c4d or template.c4d into the user folder. New is for each new document. Template for the startup scene.

      Reply

  27. Zeb

    Wow Chris u’re my hero ! How could I live without drop to floor !! Very nice tips ! Thanks again and again… ;-)

    Reply

  29. Marc

    Please note that the R12 camera display names are different to R13. Can someone clarify this for R12?

    Reply

  30. Saz

    Another tip. If you have the Drop to floor plugin it would be much easier to use if you assign it a shortcut, may be alt+F which is free by default.

    Reply

  31. Mariusz

    What a great and usefull tips. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge.

    Reply

  32. Adam

    thanks Chris!!
    very helpful. love the Rest PSR. every time I bring in AI artwork i have to set it back to zero.

    Reply

  33. Adam

    alt+Q and alt+W are what fu*cking dreams are made of!

    Reply

  34. Kay

    Hi Nick and Chris! These are extremely helpful little tricks! By the way: Does anyone know if it’s possible to make one of these buttons out of a tag? I would love to have a quick little button to add a protecting-tag onto a object in the object manager.

    Reply

    • Kay

      Oh! I forgot: what I noticed, when I opened the R13 version: Where is the modelling layout?

      Reply

  35. ken

    “alt Q” for the light is not working on my iMac with wireless keyboard.

    Reply

  38. Alexander

    What s the name of the plugin you are using o „zero out” the objects in Cinema, the one with the „0 PSR” icon ? It looks really useful.

    Reply

  39. Richie Henson

    Is it possible to add explanatory notes/comments to objects in the Objects Menu? This would be useful when someone else takes over your job and needs to know exactly what is going on with each object.

    Reply

    • Moritz

      You can use the doodle function (Help->Show Help..) or cleaner:
      Select the object, choose in the ‘User Data’ tab ‘Add User Data…’,
      set the ‘Data Type…’ to String and the ‘Interface…’ to Multi-Line String.
      If you want, you can also add this to the editor view panel by right clicking on the new
      data an choosing ‘Add to HUD’. You can place it while holding Ctrl.
      You also can animate this text to get different comments on different parts of the animation.

      Reply

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Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.