Cinema 4D Layout Customization

1. Introduction to Layouts: What's up guys? This is Patrick Foley. Welcome to my Skillshare first official tutorial on here. It's going to be a pretty simple one, but nonetheless, very important. I'm going to be going through my layout, and how I construct my windows, and where I want them, and what each window does that I happen to use a lot because a lot of you guys have been asking me about it and I haven't been able to get back to everyone. What I will also do is upload the layout file to this project so you guys can follow along. But I will show you how to construct all this and it'll be easy to follow along all the tutorials next after this one. So hope you guys enjoyed this one and let's jump right into it. 2. Customizing Layout / Panels: So we just jumped in here to cinema 4-D. This is the startup layout, the default layout, in R18. You should probably be looking at something like this to follow along and we're just going to build up from here. What we first want to look at is this window right here. This is one of the most important windows is the Render Settings window. Before I continue, I just want to say that I'm actually not going to be going through what every button and every window does. I'm just kind of showing you basically how to build up your own layout and get it similar to mine. But I encourage you to kind of move these windows wherever you want so you can actually see what fits best for you and the way you make renders and what might be fastest for you. This is the Render Settings window. To move this where we want without a disappearing, all we have to do is this corner here and click and drag. I'm probably going to put this right here again, it does not matter where you put these windows. The next one we're going to look at is very important. Another panel, a lot of people think I use octane, this external rendering plug-in, but I don't. You can actually achieve pretty much the same effect by clicking "Panel", "new panel window", which brings up this little mini window here, which is very important, very useful to have multiple views and one view that's always rendering. I might show that in future videos, but this is how you get this on the layout. So you just again drag where you want. I like to keep this window fairly small because since this isn't octane and especially since a lot of you guys might not have crazy computers with a lot of speed. The smaller this window is, it's really just used to get a good idea of what it will look. So it doesn't have to be the most detailed or the biggest. Bigger this window is the longer it will take to render, just keep that in mind. This window might have to be smaller than a lot of others. But again, just like this window, you can customize the display. You can take the grid off, do whatever you want. If you don't like the grid there, actually don't like the grid there are a lot of the time, but for now we can keep it. So real quick, when you add a camera, obviously you click this button. As you can see, to step inside of the camera like you do regularly now that we have two windows. How do you adjust where the cameras and which one? The cameras actually inside. You'd actually click "View" and use as Render view and then you have the option to click this square. As you can see, these lines right here disappear and go. Once these lines is appear, you are in the camera. Wherever you move, now in this view, it'll move the camera. If you want to both of them to be inside, you would now click on this "View-port", uses render view, and then you can click here again, and you're actually inside the camera. So now when you move, they both move. But what's really nice is keeping this one actually inside and taking yourself out of the camera and this window and maybe hiding the camera, clicking on this dot twice. Whatever you're working on, you can work around, you can edit, do whatever you need to do. This is actually always fixed. When you have your interactive render region AK option R, once you have that on, it's literally like doing whatever you have to do and it's rendering in real time. If I wanted to create a material, notice I place it on top and it actually renders in real time. Of course we don't have any occlusion or global elimination on, but this tutorial is not really about that, it's about just customizing the layout. But again, that's how you get these things done and that's how I achieved the same octane effect in this workflow. Another panel usually like is having the material. Because I realized that when I kept double-clicking news materials and editing it, I didn't want to have the Render Settings window pop up and go all the time when I was going back and forth and I wondered, why wonder that with this too. I realized there's a way to edit the materials in this window in the attributes editor. But a lot of times that's, I like how this has the panel set this way. I like that. If moving that somewhere like here for me, worked. Maybe for you it doesn't and that's not what you want, but this is similar to kind of how my layout is. Again, one of my layouts might be here, certain things may be different and to get rid of tabs which you don't use a lot, right-click and close. It's as simple as that. So anything you don't use, there's no need for it to be there. Certain things that you do use put it there so it does not have anything to do with mine. As long as it works for you. 3. Managing Buttons: The other thing I want to go through is the buttons, so customizing button layout and changing that. To do that, all you would do is click Window, Customization and click Customize Palettes. You'll see right off the bat, this window pops up. You'll also notice that there's a little faint blue highlighting that pops up around these areas and on these areas. Literally, anyway you can imagine, you can edit these buttons, you can. Let's say I use the displacer a lot. But instead of going in here, and trying to let it displacer and going through the whole list every single time, I can literally click Displacer. See it here, and drag where I want. So that's there. You can also drag it on the right side. [inaudible] wherever you see fit. The cloner is what you use a lot. Again, it's just dragging it where it's visible so you don't have to things that are used a lot. You don't have to go through the whole list of settings and click these guys every single time you want them, especially if you're using a light, even objects like using a sphere, if you use a sphere lot versus a square. So you don't have to jump in there, drag it in their, infinite amount of buttons and things that you can do. You can totally do.That's how you can customize the buttons move, you can take away buttons that are already here. Move them wherever you want. 4. Saving Startups: All right, so another thing I want to go through is how to save a Startup layout and how to save a project. A particular type of setup already arranged for every time you open up Cinema 4D. I'll start with the first one. Let's say you build your own layout, and let's say you got Material Editor here. You drag it over here like we already did. Let's drag the Render Settings window and you are like, " I messed up." Or something like you take the main window auto play and everything's messed up and you don't know how to get back. Well, even though it's already on the Startup layout, you can click Startup again then it'll get you right back there. That's that. Let's say you got everything we wanted, you want to pre-simplify it, or it really doesn't matter for that matter. But let's say you're happy with this. So you go here, Window, Customization, Save a startup layout and that will set the particular layout to be the same every time you open up Cinema 4D. Now let's say you have a certain style, for some reason you wanted a sphere to be open every single time you opened up Cinema 4D. Or if you want a camera to be set up already in a certain position. Every time you want Cinema 4D to startup, you want this specific arrangement of objects and cameras open. What you would do is, you would go Save, Save As and you would go, navigate all the way to the Maxon folder in Cinema 4D, and you would title it as new. So new.c4D, save it in this folder and when you click "Save", like I already did, it'll open up this way every single time. I thought that was pretty useful because a lot of times when I open up certain Renders, there certain projects that I know I have an idea for. I like to have a certain style, camera already open so I don't have to go through the motions every single time that I create something. So I always think that's pretty useful and it comes in handy a lot of times and you can change it every so often. Different styles people go through on social media. So certain Startups could be useful for certain projects you got. 5. Saving Layouts: To save the layout, save where everything is, you just Save the Layout As. Now, every time you title it, let's say you title this Tutorial, you would click "Save", but since I already have these view, now anytime, you go to the Layout tab here, it'll be there. I'm just going to go back the startup. This is where we're originally at, but if I'd already saved that, it would've been right here. It looks like that's it for now. I appreciate you guys watching this. I can't wait for you guys to see the next tutorials because trust me, when I say they are jam-packed with all the stuff you've been asking for. I'll be releasing tutorials every week for at least the next month and probably more than one a week because I'm really trying to get you guys, especially the ones who are signing up for the the free two months using my personal link, you guys will really be able to get a big grasp on this for really free if you think about it. Because technically, you can cancel your membership whenever, but I think you'll see that once I start uploading these, you'll really want to stick around and learn all the stuff that I have to offer because there's too many things that you guys have asked me for that I just have not been able to get around to. This is the platform I feel comfortable with releasing all these projects and I'm able to give you the project files. I'm able to do all these things that I couldn't do on YouTube. Again, I appreciate you guys for taking the time and sticking around. So until next time, take it easy.