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The basics: #1 The Cinema 4D Interface

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Welcome to the first tutorial in our the basicsseries. This series of tutorials is designed to teach you the extreme basics of Cinema 4D and is a great way to learn Cinema 4D for everyone that has never used Cinema 4D before. In this tutorial we will cover the Cinema 4D interface, we will go through all basic menus and button explaining what they are and how to use them. Lets start by opening Cinema 4D, depending on the version of C4D you are using the interface should look something like this:

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As you can see I have devided the Cinema 4D (or C4D) screen into different sections, I will now explain what these sections are.

1 The Cinema 4D File menu

Almost all functions and things you can do with Cinema 4D can be access from these menus. However, there are many useful shortcuts that will save more time than using these menus.

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2 The Shortcut Buttons.

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These buttons will help you access the things you will often use in Cinema 4D quickly, without having to go Modeling a car using blueprints (145,044) through the huge amount of menus in the upper menu. Setting up a scene with HDRI Lighting (90,452) Creating a ball bearing using arrays (73,396)
1. Undo 2. Redo 3. Live Selection Tool 4. Move Tool, move your object around 5. Scale Tool, used to scale the selected object in x, y and z direction 6. Rotate Tool 7. Restrict to X Axis 8. Restrict to y Axis 9. Restrict to z Axis 10. Use World/Object coordinate system 11. Render Active View, this quickly renders your scene so you can check how it looks 12. Render in Picture Viewer 13. Open Render Settings
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14. Add a Cube object (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more primitives) 15. Spline Drawing Tool (Hold downto get a drop down menu where you can select more Splines) 16. Add a HyperNURBS object (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more NURBS) 17. Add an Array Object (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more object holders) 18. Add a Light Object (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more light objects) 19. Add a Bend Deformation (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more Deformations) 20. Add an emitter Object (Hold down to get a drop down menu where you can select more emitters) 21. Selection Filter 22. Filter, hide and unhide things from view 23. Object browser, allows you to quickly load materials / previous projects

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You will learn more about these tools as we go on. For now, just make sure you know the names of each of them. You can also access all of these options from the Cinema 4D File Menu (1), however, these buttons are often faster.

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1. Click to convert back to the default layout, or hold to load alternate layouts. 2. Make the current object editable so it can be altered, you can also press con your keyboard 3. Enable Model Tool, you will now be able to move both your objects and the axis in your current view 4. Enable Object Axis Tool, you can now only move your axis around, your objects will stay at there current location. 5. Point Tool, allows you to select the different points on a object, so you can edit them. 6. Edge Tool, allows you to select the different edges on a object, so you can edit them. 7. Polygon Tool, allows you to select the different polygons on a object, so you can edit them. 8. Mode Tool, changes modes, hold to select different modes. For example in Auto Switch mode C4D will switch between point, edge and polygon tools automatically. 9. Texture Tool 10. Texture Axis Tool 11. Object Tool

4 View controls

These Control the current view. They are as follows:

1. Move: hold this and move the mouse to move up/down or strafe left/right. 2. Zoom: Hold the zoom button and move your mouse to zoom in or out of selected object, you can also use your mouse scrollbar for this 3. Rotate: Hold and rotate your mouse to move around the selected object 4. Window: Click this to switch from 1 view mode (for example the (x,y) plane), to the 4 way view, showing all 2d planes and the general 3d view.

You might have an hard time moving around your objects at first, but once you got these under control you will love it and use it often. Practice, practice practice!

5 Object Manager

In the Object Manager everything in your current scene will be listed, for example objects, lights and floors. With the object manager you can delete, nest, modify, select and do almost anything with your objects. By dragging a material onto your objects the material will be added here, so you can edit and delete it when needed.

6 Attribute Manager
From here you can change the different attributes of your selected object. For example when you have selected a cube, here you can change the size, name and much more. Which attributes are available here depends strongly on the selected items. As you can see on your left I have selected a Light Object, in the attribute manager you can change the light settings, such as do you want shadows, how strong should the light be, what color etc. You can use the tabs on top to flip between different pages with options, dont feel scared, you will probably never used most of them!

7 Animation Manger
From here you can manage your animations, we wont go into detail about this here.

8 Material Manager

In the Material Manager you can open or create materials and shaders. All the materials you have loaded into your current project are listed here, double click on one to edit it. You can apply the materials listed here onto your objects by dragging them onto the object inside the object viewer or the object manager.

9 Coordinate Manager

The Coordinate manager allows you to precisely place, modify and rotate your objects. For example you want to move the center of your object to the coordinates (x=100, y=-100, z=400), you can do this in the coordinate manager! Thats all for now, I hope you now understand the layout of Cinema 4D better, when you are just starting you will get lost looking for options many times, but dont worry you can always go back to this tutorial to see where you can find certain tools. My advice is to just play around with Cinema 4D, check out every option yourself to see how they work and where you can use them for, thats in my opinion the best way to quickly learn C4D. And dont be discouraged, you will probably never use most of the functions that Cinema 4D has anyway!

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32 Comments
joyoge designers' bookmark February 15, 2009 nice information thank you

amir February 16, 2009 thanks for starting i hope ASAP this site be the best one

Jasper February 16, 2009 I have already written the next 2 lessons and I will write 2 more. (I will publish one every week) If you want a certain subject to be discussed in the the basicsseries please let me know. After that I will start working on some more advanced tutorials!

brian March 2, 2009 MORE TUTORIALS PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!

amir March 11, 2009 hello dude we are still waiting for more tutorial. (( can you please let us know how we can design water splash with c4d and also i like to know more about v-ray Thank you

Rowan April 12, 2009 Thanks a million for your time and dedication.

saigee May 9, 2009 im new to cinema 4,,this is very helpful.. thks a lot

Fouko May 31, 2009 Thanks a lot for your job, great

buttprobe June 1, 2009 thanks somuch for sharing this starter tutorial, i need to learn it from the very beginning

Giorgio June 8, 2009 What happened to the other issuesS!! we want moree please theyre just excellent

sensu June 22, 2009 THNXS aLOT.this really helful^_^

Richie July 30, 2009 This is a great tutorial, thanks. Im restarting with my Cinema4D, havent touched it for almost a year now, so this tutorial was really coming handy.

Pointless August 13, 2009 Wow this is great! Thanks!!

mat August 26, 2009 very precise tutorial

Mas Wid September 2, 2009 Thank you so much for the elaborate starting points. It is indeed very helpful for newbie like me.

Bruno

October 21, 2009 Thanks God I found this site! Keep it up!!!

Kasule David October 30, 2009 Its great and good please more tuts Thanks

imacro November 2, 2009 thank you so much, but please help with this, i cant find the file menu. how to display it please?

GreatguyfromUAE November 8, 2009 Wow, brilliant thanks!!!!!!!!!! Awesome work, +++++++

sandeep November 28, 2009 sir i nee Cinema 4D software pls help me

Magix December 7, 2009 @Jasper Please make tut about shortcuts, or any faster workflow in c4d. ty

ravi December 8, 2009 Iam new to cinema 4 d,,this is very helpful , Thanks

Peter Ancona December 26, 2009 Thank you for explaining the screen step by step.All I am used to getting is some guy flying his mouse around at warp 10,and then telling you how EASY it is to use.

Merijn January 1, 2010 @Jasper I would love to see a tutorial where you create a render from start to finish of a simple object. Just pick something really basic like a cardboard box with the lid folded open and write a tutorial about the steps required. - modeling the box - unwrapping the box

- creating the materials and textures for a good looking box and apply them to the model (show me everything, not just to slap a texture on the box but all the details to get me a nice, dirty ,scratched up box) - set up the lighting to properly display the box - simple rendering techniques, for instance rendering the box against a nice white display background with a shadow Theres so many generic tutorials showing really specific topics when all people need is one basic tutorial on how to create something from start to finish. Frankly Im far more interested in learning how to create a simple thing like a low poly airplane or a box and learning how to get it done from start to finish than to say create a fancy car using a blueprint. Show me how to do that and I can apply the same knowledge to any number of projects, then Im ready to dive into the specific stuff.

Norris Hall January 12, 2010 Great Job of explaining the layout. Clear and precise

Nimal January 23, 2010 Its very worth tutorial, I learned something on this. I am new to cinema 4D, trying to learn something for my motion works. cheers!!

Sean February 28, 2010 Thanks!

tongbj March 8, 2010 thank you its useful

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