Back
This allows you to place a background picture in a planar view for use as a modeling aid. For example, suppose you are building a model of a car — you can load scale diagrams of the car into the top, right and front views and use the diagrams to help you model the car accurately. The picture will be zoomed automatically when you zoom the view.
Click the three dots button and use the file selector that opens to choose the background picture. Any bitmap format recognized by Cinema 4D can be loaded.
You can also place a background image via drag & drop from your computer’s desktop directly onto a viewport.
Here you can temporarily switch a background picture on or off.
These modes define how the pixels of an image loaded into the background will be used to generate new pixels when the image is scaled. Next sharpens edges and Linear will blur.
Ensures that the background picture will keep its original proportions when scaled.
Here you can move or scale the background picture horizontally or vertically.
This parameter allows you to rotate the background picture.
Defines the transparency of the background picture.
If the background picture has an alpha channel you can use this setting to specify how the alpha channel should be evaluated.
The alpha channel is ignored.
Uses the alpha channel to mask (i.e. hide) parts of the picture.
Same as Normal except swaps around which parts are masked and which are displayed.
World Grid
This is where you define the properties of the world grid.
With this option you can switch to the behavior of the world grid. This option is only available for reasons of compatibility. If enabled, an automatic world grid will be used in all views and guidelines will be displayed and hidden automatically when a view is zoomed in/out.
Grid Spacing is the distance between grid lines.
Lines enables you to choose the total number of grid lines (stretching over the X axis and Z axis); the default value is 100. When you choose a higher value, the grid will extend further towards the horizon. This setting is only relevant in the perspective views.
Major Lines Every nth[1..2147483647]
The grid contains major interval lines that stand out from the others by their darker color. With this option you can choose how often these interval lines should occur.
With this option you always get an optimal grid width on the screen, independently of the chosen grid spacing. This applies to the 2D viewports only. Use the drop-down list to choose the factors for the dynamic grid.
If you select None, the grid is not dynamic and the grid spacing (with its default value of 100) remains constant, no matter how much you zoom.
But if you select, say, 1 … 10, the grid is adjusted in steps of 10 as you zoom. If you zoom in and the spacing becomes too wide for the view, Cinema 4D switches automatically to a grid spacing of 10. If you zoom in nearer still, it is changed to 1. If you zoom out from the default grid and the grid width of 100 becomes too dense for clarity, it is first switched to a grid spacing of 1000 and then higher still as necessary should you zoom out further. There are no restrictions up or down.
Selecting 1 … 5 … 10 means that grid widths of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, etc. can be achieved, whereas selecting 1 … 2 … 5 … 10 means that values such as 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and so on, are possible.