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.

Image

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.

Show Picture

Here you can temporarily switch a background picture on or off.

Mode

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.

Offset X[-∞..+∞]

Offset Y[-∞..+∞]

Size X[-∞..+∞]

Size Y[-∞..+∞]

Here you can move or scale the background picture horizontally or vertically.

Rotation[-∞..+∞°]

This parameter allows you to rotate the background picture.

Transparency[0..99%]

Defines the transparency of the background picture.

Alpha Mode

If the background picture has an alpha channel you can use this setting to specify how the alpha channel should be evaluated.

None

The alpha channel is ignored.

Normal

Uses the alpha channel to mask (i.e. hide) parts of the picture.

Inverted

Same as Normal except swaps around which parts are masked and which are displayed.