Become A Cinema 4D Pro

Discover how to boost your skills and master pro the software with our 15 expert tips

Cinema 4D is one of those 3D applications that has grown over the years to cater to users of all different kinds, from shader builders and texture artists to motion graphics and simulation experts, character modellers and animators. It’s a vast and capable tool, but that comes with a learning curve and although it’s one of the friendlier applications, you’ll need to put some time in to master all it offers.

With that in mind we talked to the large, thriving community to discover the best ways to get the most out of the software, and have compiled this collection of tips that will give you a leg up the learning ladder, boosting your skills to make you more productive so you can concentrate on being creative.

01 ACCESS ANYTHING

As a Cinema 4D user myself I’ll kick things off with my favourite top tip for any situation. Cinema 4D has a multitude of options, menus, tools and tags. Memorising them all is a big task, so while you get working on that there is a simple way to access just about anything in Cinema 4D. Hold Shift and C. A little pop-up input field will appear at your cursor. Start trying the command you want and anything that has the characters you typed will appear in a list. Select it and hit enter. You’re done. Rob Redman

02 CONSOLIDATE TAKES

Takes are a great way of quickly working through look development in one scene file. Being able to change a model’s position, materials and visibility on a take-by-take basis to iterate ideas is extremely handy. I’ll often end up with 5-7 takes as I work through ideas and looks.

To consolidate all these takes down once a look’s approved, select the take you want, then select everything in the Object Manager. Right-click and select Remove from All Takes. This moves all the changes in that take to the main take. Delete your other takes to tidy up a move into production. Jason Poley