In order to view created objects from all sides, we can move freely in 3D space in the Viewport. Various icons and shortcuts are available for this navigation, from which you can simply select the ones that seem intuitive to you. Navigation can be divided into the following actions:

These are the most common options for moving the camera's position in the Viewport:

• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and then hold down the 1 key together with the left mouse button. The camera can now be moved by moving the mouse.
• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and then hold down the alt key together with the middle mouse button or a clickable scroll wheel. Here, too, the camera can now be moved by moving the mouse.
• As an alternative to these techniques, you can also click and drag this Move Camera icon above the Viewport and move the camera.

The following video illustrates these options once again.

These are the most common options for controlling the camera's distance from objects:

• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and hold the 2 button together with the left mouse button. The zoom distance can now be adjusted by moving the mouse.
• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and hold the 1 button together with the right mouse button. The zoom distance can now be adjusted by moving the mouse.
• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and hold the alt key together with the right mouse button or the scroll wheel button. The zoom distance can now be adjusted by moving the mouse
• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and then use the scroll wheel of your mouse to adjust the zoom.
• As an alternative to these techniques, you can also hold down the left mouse button and place the mouse pointer on this Camera Scale icon above the Viewport and then adjust the zoom by moving the mouse.

These are the most common options for orbiting around objects on a circular path:

• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and hold the 3 button together with the left mouse button. The camera can now be rotated around the reference point by moving the mouse.
• Place the mouse pointer in the Viewport and hold the alt key together with the left mouse button. The camera can now be rotated around the reference point by moving the mouse.
• As an alternative to these techniques, you can also hold down the left mouse button and place the mouse pointer on this Orbiting Camera icon above the Viewport and then move the mouse around the center of the 3D view.

Especially during modeling, it is helpful to have more than one view open at the same time. For the same reason, technical drawings often contain different views of an object, e.g., from the front, from above and from the side. We can therefore also use several views simultaneously by clicking on the fourth icon on the right above the Viewport (marked in orange in the following image). This divides the existing view into four views. Each of these views can in turn be navigated individually using the techniques mentioned above. You can switch back to the single view by clicking on the Viewport icon again.

The type of view displayed can also be selected separately for each visible view in its Camera menu (see blue marking in the image above). The perspective displayed in each case can also be read in text form in the tip-left-hand corner of the Viewport (see red marking in the image above).

While navigating in a view, you may lose sight of an object. In such cases, first select the relevant object, then place the mouse pointer over the Viewport and then press the S button. The currently selected object will automatically be displayed centered in the respective view. You can find out how objects are selected in the following chapter.

It is not always helpful to only have objects displayed realistically. Especially during modeling, it is often helpful to see the inner structure of the objects and their actual geometry instead. In projects with a large number of objects, for example, it can also be helpful to reduce their display type and quality so that you can continue to move smoothly in the Viewport. Each view has its own Display menu, which can be used to activate different quality levels for the object display. Incidentally, this has nothing to do with the quality with which the objects are later displayed in the calculated image, but only with the display in the Viewports. The following images make this clearer:

• Gouraud Shadingis also the only mode capable of evaluating the effect of light objects in the scene and thus displaying objects under customized lighting. As can be seen in the image above, objects can be illuminated relatively realistically, e.g., by using colored light sources. If there are no custom light objects in the scene, a default light is used for the lighting. The display corresponds to that of the next mode, Quick Shading.

  
  

• Quick Shading can also display illuminated objects, but only a so-called default light is used, the color and intensity of which cannot be defined. Any Light objects present in the scene will be ignored in this mode. Nevertheless, this mode is very helpful and often sufficient, e.g., to inspect the surfaces of the objects during modeling.

  
  

• With Constant Shading, the inherent color of the objects will be displayed in constant brightness acros the entire surface. As no light sources will be evaluated here, the objects will appear very flatly shaded, although their shape remains unchanged, of course. This mode can be helpful in combination with the Wireframe settings, mainly to examine the structure of the objects, but also to obtain information about their coloration at the same time.

As already mentioned, the Wireframe modes can be combined with the Shading modes. To do this, simply select a mode under Shading that has the term (Lines) in its name, for example. The following image demonstrates the effect using the mode for Quick Shading (Lines) as an example.

• Wireframe: All polygons of the surfaces will be drawn. Polygons (polygonal surfaces) are often triangles or quad. When using primitives, such as a Sphere, a Cylinder or a Landscape object, the number of polygons can be defined via Segment values, in addition to other settings. For curved and organic shapes in particular, more polygons will also lead to more details and better visual quality. You can find out more about this in the following sections. The Wireframe display can help you to set the desired density of polygons, among other things.

  
  

• Isobats: This mode is only available for parametric objects and generators that also support this special display type. This also includes, for example, the properties already in use. This is not about displaying all polygons. Instead, only a reduced number of polygons will be displayed, but the arrangement of the surfaces can already be clearly seen. For example, the sphere in the image above still clearly shows that the polygon arrangement at the top and bottom of the sphere converges to pole points and that triangular polygons are used in these areas. Objects that do not support this display mode will be displayed as in Wireframe mode.

  
  

• Box: This is the only mode that actually changes the shape of the displayed objects. Only boxes are used for the display. However, their sizes and dimensions correspond to the maximum extension of the objects along the three spatial axes X, Y and Z. This is also referred to as a Bounding Box. This information can often be sufficient to estimate the position and size of the objects in space. Imagine, for example, a forest with complex trees. Not every tree has to be displayed with all its details. The position and size of placeholder bounding boxes is already sufficient to select a suitable viewing direction of the forest, for example. Due to the simplicity of this display, this mode is suitable for the simultaneous display of very many or very complex objects (with many polygons) without affecting the navigation speed in the Viewport.

If the representation of surfaces and their colors and shades of light are not important to you, you can also use the Hidden Lines or Lines Shading modes in combination with the Wireframe modes described above.

• Hidden Lines: Only the polygons whose front faces the Viewport remain visible.

  
  

• Lines: All polygons will be displayed. This creates the effect that the object appears like a wireframe model and you can look through the entire object unhindered. You can therefore also see the polygons that are actually on the otherwise hidden back or inside the object.

Whenever you want to edit objects, they must first be selected. You will find a description of two common methods here:

The primitives already discussed above (e.g., sphere, cube and cylinder), but also many other object types in Cinema 4D, have individual settings and parameters that can be used to control their appearance or behavior. Such settings are generally made available in the Attribute Manager (to be found at the bottom-right in the standard layout of Cinema 4D). To access these settings in the Attribute Manager, you only need to select the relevant object (see previous section Selecting Objects).

The same control elements are always used to conimage numerical values and options via the Attribute Manager. We will now take a look at these input fields and what operating options they offer:

We have already seen how navigation in the 3D space of the Viewports works and how the settings of basic parametric objects can be edited. This section therefore deals with moving, rotating and scaling objects. These actions can also be carried out both by entering numerical values and by working interactively with the mouse. Here you will find quick access to the topics discussed:

Let's first take a look at how coordinates are handled. For each selected object you will find a Coordinates tab in the Attribute Manager (see also the following image). The values for P.X, P.Y and P.Z represent the X, Y and Z components of the local object position. This means that these values indicate the position relative to a higher-level system. The term "higher-level system" refers to the axis system of the object that is one hierarchy level above the currently selected object in the Object Manager. For objects that are themselves at the top hierarchy level in the Object Manager (such as our cube in the following image), the local coordinates always refer to the World System (also known as the global system). This is represented in the Viewports by the large axis system. This is always visible, even if no objects have been created yet.

As you can see from the colored arrows in the image above, the three P values of the coordinates are made up of the distances along the X, Y and Z directions between the global world system and the object system of the cube. However, these values change if you group the cube under another object.

To create an object group, simply drag the an object in the Object Manager onto the name of another object there. This subordinates the dragged object (makes it a Child of the now Parent object). Such object groups and hierarchies are very helpful because, for example, any change in position or rotation of an object is automatically transferred to the subordinate objects. If a more complex model has been put together hierarchically from many individual objects, the entire object can simply be moved or rotated using the top-most object in this group, for example.

The following image shows the calculation of these local coordinates for the grouped sphere, again separated by colored arrows for the X, Y and Z components of the position

However, the global world coordinates can also be displayed and edited for grouped objects. A separate Coordinate Manager is available for this, which you can open via a separate icon to the left of the Attribute Manager. This icon is highlighted in orange in the following image.
In the Coordinates Manager you will also find three columns with values, similar to the Coordinates section in the Attributes Manager. The left-hand column (marked blue in the following image) shows the X, Y and Z values of the position. The middle column shows the rotation angles, comparable to the R values in the middle column of the Attribute Manager. Using the menu highlighted in red in the image, you can now easily switch between displaying the local Object coordinates and the Global world coordinates.

To summarize, you can always use the relative object coordinates directly via the Attribute Manager and view and edit the global coordinates relating to the world system via the Coordinate Manager. In practical terms, this means that you can always position grouped objects relative to the parent object or in relation to the world system, for example.

There are three options for moving an object directly via the Viewport (Model mode in combination with the Move tool):

1. Place the mouse pointer anywhere over the Viewport and then hold down the left mouse button. The selected object can now be moved freely with the mouse.
2. If the mouse pointer is placed directly on one of the three object axes and then the left mouse button is held down, the object can only be moved along the clicked axis.
3. There are also colored triangular areas between the object axes. Clicking and holding on one of these areas will lock the axis with the color of the triangular area. The object can only be moved within a plane by the two other axes. Clicking on the red corner, for example, will lock the (red) X axis as the movement direction for the object and the object can only be moved in the direction of the Y and Z axes.

The numerical values displayed during the object movement represent the distance between the new and the original object position (see also the following image).

Similar to moving objects, you can also rotate objects directly with the mouse in the Viewport. To do this, activate the Rotate tool next to the Model mode and make sure that the object is also selected.

These options are available for rotating an object in the Viewport:

1. Place the mouse pointer outside the gray circle that is drawn around the position of the selected object. If you now hold the left mouse button and move the mouse, the object can be rotated around the current viewing direction.
2. If you place the mouse pointer within the grey circle but not on one of the colored bands, the object can be rotated freely by moving the mouse while holding down the left mouse button.
3. If you click on one of the colored bands and hold the mouse button there, the object can only be rotated along the clicked band by moving the mouse. A numerical value also appears to inform you of the change in the angle of rotation.

Parametric objects, such as the primitives, already offer handles in the Viewport so that the dimensions, for example, can be adjusted directly with the mouse. However, these handles are not available on all object types in Cinema 4D. In such cases, you can also use the Scale tool. If you use the Scale tool on a basic object, such as a cube, you can only ever use it to scale the object proportionally. To do this, place the mouse outside the object and hold down the left mouse button. The object can now be enlarged or reduced in size by moving the mouse.

However, other object types can also be scaled individually along the three spatial directions, e.g., by dragging an end point of the object axes with the mouse.

You have now learned how to rotate objects freely. You are also already familiar with the Coordinate Manager, which can also be used in World mode to use the global coordinates relating to the world system. This allows us, for example, to move an already rotated object precisely vertically upwards along the world Y axis by changing the Y value in its left-hand column in the Coordinate Manager.

The following video summarizes all the techniques discussed in this section that can be used to manipulate objects.

The sections above have already covered everything you need to call up simple shapes, select them, create groups, adjust primitives via parameters in the Attribute Manager or directly in the Viewport and position yourself freely in 3D space in order to select any desired perspective as the Viewport. This creates a solid foundation for you to start modeling and designing your own 3D worlds. However, before you dive into the numerous modeling functions, it is worth taking a look at the Asset Browser, where you will find many objects, materials and complete scenes ready for direct access.

Only by using a camera can we view 3D objects and 3D space in the Viewport or have them rendered as an image. For this reason, a so-called Default Camera is already available in a new, still empty scene, which you can move freely around the room. This has already been discussed in the section on Navigation. A Default Camera can therefore not be deleted and will always be available to you, e.g., for navigation in 3D space or later for image rendering.

The difference between this Default Camera and a separate Camera object is that a Camera object offers many more setting options and can also be animated, e.g., to create a tracking shot. In addition, Camera objects are actually also visible as objects in all 3D views and can be moved there like all other objects, e.g., directly with activated Model mode and the Move or Rotate tools. This section has already covered the basics of placing or rotating objects.

In the Camera menu of each view, you will also find a selection option for which camera should be used for this particular view. After all, only one camera can be used for a 3D view at a time.
In addition, you will always find the entry for the Default Camera in the same Camera menu of the view. This lets you switch off any previously used camera for viewing and you can work with the Standard camera again. In this way, a camera that has already been set appropriately can remain untouched if you want to move freely in the Viewport again in-between.

It is even easier to switch between the different cameras in your scene directly via the HUD (abbreviation for Head-Up Display), i.e., the text elements and menus shown in the view. You will find the name of the camera currently in use at the top of the perspective view by default. This is initially the Default Camera. The following images illustrate this.

As with the primitives, a Camera object also offers various settings in the Attribute Manager. For example, you can control the Focal Length or define a Background for the subsequent rendering, i.e., the image calculation. The following video demonstrates the creation and activation of a new camera for the Perspective viewport and the effect of different Focal Length values on the object display.
In general, you can see more of the scene with smaller focal lengths (larger aperture angle of the camera), but this can also lead to stronger optical distortions in the object representation, especially at the edges of the image. You may be familiar with this effect from wide-angle or even fisheye lenses in traditional photography.
Technical representations, on the other hand, benefit more from larger focal lengths, which minimize perspective distortion in the object representation. Normal focal lengths corresponding to human vision are in the range of 50 mm.

Any image formats can later be used for image or animation calculation. This setting also influences the aperture angle of the Camera objects and therefore the area that they can record. It is therefore helpful to make this setting as early as possible. You can find this resolution setting in the Render Settings, which you can open via the Render menu or via the corresponding icon at the top-right. As you can also see in the following video, you will find an Output menu with Width and Height settings in the Render Settings, which you can use, for example, to define the resolution required later for your calculated image or the animation video. You can also set resolutions, e.g., in centimeters with a dpi specification, or simply enter the desired resolution in pixels. A drop-down menu also provides access to the most common print, screen and video resolutions.
The render area defined by these resolution specifications is limited in the perspective view by darkened areas to the left and right or top and bottom. Only the part of the Viewport between these darkened areas is seen by the camera and can therefore be seen later in the calculated image. In the following video, these image borders are highlighted in red.

As with traditional photography or filming, the lighting of the objects to be depicted plays a major role. After all, we wouldn't be able to see anything without light. This also applies to the 3D space of a scene, which is initially just black. For this reason, a Default Light is always already present in an empty scene - in principle very similar to the Default Camera. This ensures that light always falls on the scene from the camera's point of view, similar to a headlamp or the clip-on flash of a compact camera. However, this standard light does not offer any creative setting options, e.g., to control the color and intensity of the emitted light or the calculation of shadows. The standard light is therefore really only intended for modeling and should then be replaced by real light source objects when assigning materials and placing the camera. When you create your first light object, the standard light will automatically be deactivated and is only used in the Quick Shading display mode of the respective views. The effect of the manually-created light sources can be examined directly in the views in Gouraud Shading mode. Here you can find an introduction to the Display modes.

Finally, the size and shape of the light sources also play a major role. Small light sources cast very hard shadows, for example, whereas large light sources can create soft shadows. With this in mind, the Area Light object is often a good choice for illuminating your objects, as it can be freely scaled and even take on different shapes. For example, a large surface will also emit more light onto the scene than a small one with otherwise identical settings. The surface light actually behaves like a brightly shining object and can therefore also be seen directly in the reflection of the surfaces if materials with reflective properties have been used. This means you can work with Area lights like a real photographer who uses softboxes or other light shapers on their flashes, for example. The following image shows this effect

The alignment of most light sources plays a major role, as the light is usually emitted in the direction of the Z-axis of the light source object. There is a practical function for always aligning light sources precisely to the objects that are to be illuminated. To do this, first call up the desired light source and make sure that it is selected (e.g., by clicking on its name in the Object Manager). Then select the Use Camera/Selected Object as Camera command in the Cameras menu of the perspective view. As a result, the currently selected light source will behave like a camera and we can see directly in the Viewport what the light source "sees", i.e., where its Z-axis is pointing. You can use the usual navigation icons or keyboard shortcuts for navigation to see the object from the perspective of the light source as it should be illuminated.
If you are satisfied with this, exit this special navigation mode again by calling up Cameras/Default Camera or by activating an existing Camera object for this view (e.g., in the Cameras menu of the Viewport and selecting the corresponding camera under Use Camera). For all basic information on creating and activating cameras, please refer to this section.

The Interactive Progressive Renderer (abbreviated to IPR) can be used to realistically assess all the effects of a light source. This lets you view all lighting and material effects in near-final quality directly in the Viewports. This is particularly helpful thanks to Redshift's direct GPU support, as it lets you view changes to the light source or objects in near real-time, for example.
You can start and stop the IPR directly in the Viewport by selecting Start IPR in the Redshift menu there. The display updates automatically when changes are made and becomes more refined the longer you stop making changes. The following video summarizes these steps for creating and aligning a light source, as well as test rendering with the IPR.

Of course, you are free to place any number of light sources in the scene to illuminate your objects. However, there are also tried and tested lighting techniques from traditional photography, for example, that you can adopt. You will often find the following terms for certain types of light:

• The Key light: This is the main light source for your scene. In real environments, for example, this is often the sun or the strongest light source indoors. This light source defines the main direction from which your objects are to be illuminated and therefore also, for example, the direction of the most visible shadow cast. The main light is often placed to the side of the camera so that the objects do not appear too flatly lit, but show variations in brightness on their surfaces. One side of the objects therefore appears brighter than the other.
• The Fill light: The main light alone will not be able to reach all surfaces and areas. A weaker fill light is often placed opposite the main light so that these areas can also be recognized and are not completely in shadow. Imagine its effect as light from the main light source shining past the object and possibly hitting a wall that reflects this light in a weakened form onto the opposite side of the object.
• Backlight or Rim light: To achieve a more dramatic silhouette of the subject, a light source can be placed directly behind the subject as seen by the camera. This light therefore only grazes the object and leads to a very narrow, bright outer edge of the object, which can provide more contrast to the background.

Schematics such as this naturally only serve as a basis for lighting. For example, you can also use several light sources as fill lights or even omit a group of these lights completely, depending on the complexity of your scene and the effect you want to achieve. The colors of the light sources also play a major role. You will find a wealth of literature on color theory and color perception. Generally speaking, there are virtually no light sources that emit perfectly white light. Each light source has a specific light temperature, which can be read off the packaging of light sources as a Kelvin value, for example. In general, we tend to associate warmer light colors with natural light (e.g., sunlight or a flame) and colder light colors with artificial light sources (e.g., neon tubes or LED spotlights).
The following video demonstrates the use of a basic light setup to illuminate the image as described above. You can also load this scene yourself for your own lighting experiments by clicking on this icon. This is a zipped file that you have to unzip before loading it into Cinema 4D.

For a precise simulation of the position of the sun, you can also use an Expression. Expressions are small auxiliary functions that you can assign to individual objects, e.g., to automatically control their behavior. Especially for the simulation of realistic sun positions, there is also a Sun Expression that you can call up by right-clicking on the RS Sun object or by calling it up in the Tags menu of the Object Manager in the Render Tags category. In the Sun Expression settings, for example, you can select specific longitudes and latitudes or a location at which the position of the sun is to be simulated. The date and, of course, the exact time can also be defined. The sun will automatically be positioned correctly. The North direction is assumed to be in the direction of the Z-axis of the parent RS Sky object. This means that you also have the option of rotating the RS Sky object around its Y-axis in order to individually adjust the north direction of the sun position simulation to the current position and rotation of your 3D building, for example. The following video shows the principle of sun positioning using Sun Expression.

By default, the Redshift renderer is used in Cinema 4D for image calculation. This has also automatically activated the simulation of diffuse light. This refers to the light that is exchanged between surfaces by reflection. By making clever use of objects, you can use this effect for an even more realistic light simulation and save on light source objects if necessary. When displaying objects, for example, you can often place simple basic shapes such as planes or polygons near the object so that the light that would otherwise shine past the main object is reflected back onto the main object by these surfaces. If you now also assign individual colors to these auxiliary objects, the reflected light can also be colored, which can provide even more realistic lighting. To do this, select the auxiliary layer, for example, and display the Basic settings for this object in the Attribute Manager. You will also find an option for the Display Color. Select Custom to set any color using the color field below. The brighter the selected color, the greater the proportion of light that can be reflected by the object.
Finally, you can also assign an RS Object Tag to these auxiliary objects from the Render Tags category via the Tags menu of the Object Manager and activate the Overwrite option in the Visibility tab.
Then switch off at least the Cast Shadows and Primary Ray Visible options in the area below. As a result, this auxiliary object layer remains invisible to the camera during image calculation and no longer casts shadows on the objects in its vicinity, but can continue to act as a reflector for the indirect light. The Secondary Ray Visible options and the Global Illumination options area a little further down on this settings page are responsible for this. Global Illumination (GI) describes the diffuse light reflected by surfaces.

The following video demonstrates the configuration of such an auxiliary layer and the effect this can have on the lighting of an object. Here we again use the scene with the human head, which you can also load yourself via a link a little further up in this section.

By double-clicking on the name of a material, which can be seen to the right of the small preview area in the Material Manager, it can be edited so that you can better distinguish between the materials later. Clicking on the small preview area of a material selects it and displays its settings in the Attribute Manager. This can also be seen in the image above. In the Basic setting section, you will find many helpful settings for defining a material. Let's take a brief look at the most important ones:

You can set the Color of the surface in the Base group. Simply click on the color field or click on the small arrow to the left of the color field to display the typical color sliders. The Weight value generally controls how much influence a setting category has on the overall result. In the case of color, you can often stay at a value of 1, which corresponds to 100%.
In this category, the Metalness value is also interesting, because metals reflect more light and reveal less of their surface color. You can therefore use the Metalness value to mix continuously between a plastic and a metal, for example. The following video shows the effect when the Metalness value is moved between 0 and 1.

The next section is called Reflection and controls the intensity, color and quality of the reflections on the surface. The calculation is based on the IOR value, which stands for Index of Refraction, i.e., the physical refractive value of the material. This value can also be taken from corresponding tables with refractive values, for example, which you can find on the Internet. However, it is often sufficient to memorize a few common values and then adjust them slightly, if necessary. Air, for example, has an IOR of 1, water has an IOR of 1.333 and glass has an IOR of approximately 1.5. With even higher values, the effect of metallic reflective surfaces can be enhanced. The following video shows an example of the effect of IOR values between 1 and 4 on the calculation of the mirroring.

Roughness is also an important setting, as it can be used to adjust the perfection of the surface. The smaller the Roughness value, the smoother and more polished the surface will appear. At higher values, the surface will appear rather matt, as shown in the following video.

The next frequently-used manu is for the Transmission of the material. This can ultimately be used to adjust the transparency and scattering of light within the material. This effect is not visible by default, as the Weight value of this category is set to 0. The following video demonstrates what happens when this Weight value changes between 0 and 1. The material becomes translucent and refracts the light according to the IOR setting that we have just used in the Reflection settings.

All other setting categories of the material also function according to the same principles. For example, you can also make a material glow if you increase the Weight value in the Emission settings. The material will practically become a light source for your scene. A material for a neon tube, for example, could also be created in this way.
Nevertheless, so far we have only dealt with uniform properties. But what if a surface should show an image or a pattern, for example? In these cases, it makes sense to switch to the Node Editor for further processing of the material. To do this, double-click on the preview image of the material in the Material Manager.

As can be seen in the image above, the Standard Material actually consists of two Nodes. The left Node provides the settings that we have already seen in the Attribute Manager. The right Node collects this information and compiles the complete material for use in our scene. Nodes, i.e., the elements that you see in the middle section of the Node Editor, communicate with each other via connections that link their inputs and outputs. You can already see a connection between the out color output of the Standard Material and the Surface input of the Output Node.
For example, to load a texture, i.e., an image, into our material, we need to use a Texture Node. You can find this either by entering Texture in the search bar at the top of the Asset Browser or in the Texture category, as shown in the image above. Double-click on the Texture entry in this group to add the Node to your material. You can then hide the Asset Browser again using the icon.

To replace one of the color properties on the Standard material with a texture, draw a connecting line between the output of the Texture Node and the corresponding input on the Standard Material Node. This is indicated by the red arrow in the image. If you have made a mistake with the connection, you can delete it at any time by double-clicking on the connection line. In the example above, the Texture Node was linked to the Color of the surface from the Base settings of the material. If you now select the Texture Node by clicking on it, you can see its settings in the right-hand section of the Node Editor. Next to the Path field, you will find a folder icon which, when clicked, will display an open dialog box that you can use to load the desired image.

But what happens if the desired property of the standard material is not visible as a connection on the Node? This is not a problem, either, as each property can also be activated as an input on the Node. To do this, select the Node of the Standard Material to display its settings in the right-hand section of the Node Editor and scroll to the color value that you want to replace with a texture.

As you can see in the image above, there are small circles behind the names of the settings. Ctrl-clicking on such a circle automatically creates the input on the Node that corresponds to this parameter. In this example, the input for the Color of the Reflection has been added and could now also be linked to a Texture Node, for example.

If, for example, you are looking for a parametric pattern generator with which you can create structures without having to load images, you can also search for the Maxon Noise Node or the Tile Node in the Asset Browser. Simply enter the initial letters of these names in the top search bar of the Asset Browser until the desired Nodes are listed and add them to your material by double-clicking on them.
The Maxon Noise provides many different noise patterns if, for example, you need irregular noise on a surface and the Tile Node offers various regular patterns such as horizontal lines, tile patterns or circles.

So much for the basics of material creation via the Attribute Manager or the Node Editor. Of course, there are many more functions to discover here, as there are many specialized Nodes available to create your individual material. Further links can be found in the following dialog box.

Once the material has been conimaged, it only needs to be assigned to the corresponding object. You can often do this simply by dragging and dropping the material from the Material Manager onto the corresponding object entry in the Object Manager. A Material tag will be created on the object, which can also be used to set the type of material projection, for example. For example, you can wrap a material around an object in a cylindrical or spherical shape or assign it as a surface, e.g., if the material contains an image with text or a logo that should be placed on the object as undistorted as possible. Imagine the material as a printed foil in which you wrap the object. Many of these projection types also support the Edit Texture mode, which lets you place a material directly on the object using the normal Move, Rotate and Scale tools in the Viewports.
Simply follow the links below if you would like to learn more about these topics. The following video summarizes the opening of the Material Manager, the creation of a new material and the assignment of this material to an object. Finally, you can also see the Material Tag behind the object in the Object Manager and its settings in the Attribute Manager with the Projection menu.

As the following image shows, set the desired resolution for Width and Height in the Output section. However, as already explained in the section on cameras, these settings should be made early on, as this can also change the camera's aperture angle and therefore what is captured by the camera. In the worst case, you would have to check the position of the camera again if you subsequently changed the render resolution - especially if the aspect ratio of the required image format changed.

In the next step, switch to the Save settings and select the file format for saving the finished image via the Format setting under Regularl Image. You can define the name and storage location for the image file by clicking on the small folder icon behind the File field (see also red marking in the following image).

If you think that you need to adjust the quality of the rendering, e.g., because there is still too much visible noise in the finished image, you can open the Render Settings again and take a look at the Redshift settings. You will find defined quality levels for Bucket Quality between Low, Medium, High and Very High. The time required to complete the rendering will increase accordingly. It can therefore often be useful to use intermediate values, e.g., between Medium and High. To do this, simply open the arrow to the left of the Bucket Quality to access the Threshold value. Each time you click on the fixed quality levels, you can see which Threshold value is applied for each one. The smaller the Threshold value, the finer and longer the calculation.