• Introduction
• Interface
• Bodypaint 3
• Animation Controls
• Timeline
• Enhanced OpenGL
• Interactive Render Region (IRR)
• Character Animation / Mocca 3
• Layers / Layer Manager
• Object Manager
• Documentation
• Tutorials & Goodies
• Miscellaneous
• Conclusion

Layers / Layer Manager

Yippee, CINEMA 4D finally gets layers. If you're like me and came from a 3D application that had modelling layers, one of the first things that you went looking for was modelling layers. So while it's taken MAXON a while to implement layers, like most things they've done it's better and slicker. Not only do we get modelling layers for the Object Manager to better manage complex scenes the same layer system is used for both the Timeline and the Material Manager. The old Timeline layer system with its maximum 8 layers is gone as is Material Manager groups. All I can say is MAXON has done a first class job of implementing layers. They are easy to use and give you a lot of control. Combine layers with the other work flow enhancements really make upgrading to R10 very enticing. Anyway let's take a closer look at Layers and the Layer Browser. Below is the Layer Browser.

And here's how layers look in the Material Manager where I've grouped materials (Mini icons). You can view materials by layer if they have been assigned one or view all or if no layer assigned they appear in the no layers layer. This was very easy to set up. You can select all materials in the "No layer" layer or rectangle select or any other selection method and add them to a layer. Only layers assigned to materials will show up in the layer list.

Next up, here's how layers look in the Timeline. Here I'm also showing the filter that also allows limited control over layers. In the image I've used the filter to hide the "Hypernurbs" Layer. The Path Bar is visible and I've gone up one level so that materials and render settings are visible. I've disabled the "Show animated" option so that I'm getting all elements in the scene. Usually you would only want to see the animated elements. After setting up the filter you would hide the filter options and then the options you have chosen remain in effect.

Then finally layers in the Object Manager. You can see here I've docked the Layer Browser into the layout. This can be easily hidden by middle mouse button clicking on the 16 square dots or by CTRL left mouse button clicking (Cmd and mouse button click on a Mac) and then clicking to restore it. Here, I've put the animated layer and the tags layer into solo mode which hides all other layers. You can have one or more layers in solo mode. The Object Manager is then so much cleaner and easier to work with once you start hiding layers and using solo mode etc.

At the Cafe I've put together a 10 minute 30 second video tutorial on creating and using layers in the Object Manager. Using layers in the Material Manager and the Timeline is very similar to using layers in the Object Manager, so I've focussed just on layers in the Object Manager. (18.5mb).