Reference Cinema 4D Basic Features BodyPaint 3D Color Manager
Function available in CINEMA 4D Prime, Visualize, Broadcast, Studio & BodyPaint 3D

Color Presets (Swatch)

Color preset organization. All presets are located as a library in the "Library / Browser" folder in your user directory.

You can use this manager to access preset colors or patterns including any you have created and saved.

Managing the presets (moving, deleting) can be done here as well as in the Content Browser. In the end, however, all presets will be loaded in a library in the Content Browser.

We recommend you use the presets in the following way: whenever you have a color or pattern that you might want to use again, save it as a color preset. When painting, have the 3D view (including the object to be painted) in one window and the Color manager in another. Choose a brush, click on a color preset (click on the top left preview in the Color manager to display the presets) and paint in the 3D view. When you want to change the pattern, double-click a new preset and paint again. If you work in this way, you will move frequently and swiftly between the two windows and your object should be painted in minimal time. Presets can be re-arranged via drag & drop.

Ctrl+click (Windows) or Command-click (macOS) on a color preset to define it as the background color.

Context Menu

Right-clicking on an element will open a context menu with the following (not yet described) options:

Rename...

Lets you rename the element.

Show in Content Browser

Opens the Content Browser and displays the corresponding element.

Delete

Take a guess at what this does …

File

New Library...

Creates a new Preset Library. This library can easily be passed onto and imported by other users.

New Group...

You can add any number of folders to organize your presets. The folder will be added to the selected element.

Import BodyPaint 3D Presets...

Use this command to import color presets from BodyPaint 3D Release 2.5 or earlier. These previous vesions did not use the Content Browser to manage colors.

A dialog window will open when this command is selected. Next, navigate to your old BodyPaint 3D directory, open the prefs folder and load the bodypaint_colors.b3d file. The presets will then be converted to a Content Browser library. This library can then be found in its default location in the user folder (library / browser / bodypaintuser.lib4d).

Export Selection...

Exports the selected elements (as "*.lib4d" library). This can be done with individual colors or entire directories. These directories can in turn be imported via the Import BodyPaint Presets command.

Group

If you choose All Presets, all color presets are displayed.

If you choose a different group from the list, only the presets belonging to the group are displayed.

View

As List

If this option is enabled, the icons are displayed as a vertical list and their names are specified.

As Icon

If this option is enabled, the icons are displayed in rows and columns instead of as a vertical list. The names of the presets are not shown in this mode.

Small Icons
Medium Icons
Large Icons

Choose the size of the icons: small, medium or large.

You can drag-and-drop to change the order of the icons.