System - Live

Enabled

When enabled, Redshift Live will present your scene in a temporary state without waiting for all shaders and textures to finish processing, this allows you to get visual feedback more quickly at the expense of visual accuracy. The scene will update automatically as each remaining shader and texture finishes processing in the background until the entire scene is fully processed and up to date. During this time, you can still navigate through and interact with your scene.

Asynchronous Asset Streaming accomplished this in two ways, by temporarily using a clay shader for any material that has yet to be compiled and by temporarily using a low resolution dummy texture until the high resolution texture is compressed and displayed.

When disabled, Redshift Live will wait until all shaders and textures are processed before updating the render view.

Verbosity

Controls how much detail is show in the 3d app's script/console window that pertains to Redshift rendering from the following options:

• Errors and Warnings (default) - Only show errors and warnings in the 3d app's script/console window, the most critical things for quickly being notified about problems with the scene.
• Detailed Info - Show more detailed information in the 3d app's script/console window.
• Debug - Show all messages, the most detailed information, in the 3d app's script/console window.

Diagnostic Messages

When enabled, it prints even more detailed information to the Redshift log. This is useful for debugging a problematic scene and sharing the results with Redshift developers on the forums as outlined in the Bug Reporting thread.

Log IPR Messages

When enabled, messages are printed to the Redshift Log file during Interactive IPR Rendering. This is enabled by default.

Scene/Geometry Issues

When enabled, it alerts the user via the log file to invalid geometry and other issues found in the scene so the issues can be fixed. 

Only valid geometry is rendered.

Abort on License Failure

When enabled, it aborts rendering when Redshift licensing fails. 

Abort on Missing Resources

When enabled, it aborts rendering when the scene is missing resources like textures and other external references.

Display Behavior

Controls when the Redshift Feedback Display is automatically popped open on screen from the following options:

• Always - Always show the Feedback Display with each render. 
• Errors and Warnings (default) - Only show the Feedback Display when errors and / or warnings are found.
• Errors Only - Only show the Feedback Display when errors are found.
• Never - Never automatically pop up the Feedback Display.

Show Feedback Display 

A button to open the Redshift Feedback Display

Mode

Controls how physical units are handled by Redshift from the following options:

Project Settings

Redshift is fully unit aware, using the same parameters defined by Cinema 4D's Project Scale found in the Scene Settings. Lights that use physical units and shading effects based on physical phenomena like subsurface scattering behave realistically and are managed automatically. Redshift manages proxy export and import based on scene units, so you can transfer an asset built in Houdini in meters to Cinema 4D in centimeters without hassle. This is the default and recommended setting for best results and ease of use.

Cinema 4D's Project Scale defines how the numerical values stored in the scene are interpreted, effectively changing the scale of the scene and the intensity of the lights. However, please note, some parameters scale while others do not when changing the Project Scale.

• What doesn't scale:
  • Parameters with fixed units that define physical phenomena like Transmission Depth
  • Lights that use physical Units like Lumens or Watts
  • A parameter driven by a Unit Conversion node in "Fixed" mode
• What scales:
  • Lights that use the Unit type "Image"
  • Parameters that use scene units for driving artistic effects like an Ambient Occlusion's Max Distance
  • A parameter driven by a Unit Conversion node in "Scene Units" mode

Custom

Redshift uses a legacy form of scene unit management. Requiring more manual intervention when converting to scenes of different scales and managing parameters like Photometric Units to Meter Scale and cd/m^2 Factor.

Disabled

Redshift uses the oldest form of scene unit management. Unit settings are ignored and changes to Cinema 4D's Project Scale have no impact on rendering.

Image Units Scale

Scales the intensity of lights that use the "Image" unit type. The "Image" unit is used to represent lights in an artistic way, not strictly based on a physically accurate light unit, because of this the intensity can be scaled here. The default values are chosen for the most familiar results in each DCC.

Export Units

The export units options allows you to adjust the effective scale of your scene based off of the current Project Scale setting as defined in Cinema 4D's Project Settings.

Photometric Units to Meter Scale

Certain features of Redshift such as photographic exposure, physical sun/sky and IES light support require knowledge of the "units to meter" and "candela to square meter" settings. It's important to set these values correctly, otherwise lighting coming from physical light sources might appear too dim or too bright.

If you're working with centimeters (i.e. 1 world unit is 1 centimeter), the units to meter scale should be set to 100. That's because, in this case, 100 world units means 100cm, which means 1 meter. If you're working with meters, then it should be set to 1, because 1 world unit means 1 meter.

cd/m^2 Factor

Photographic exposure, IES lights and the physical sky/sun use the cd/m^2 (candela to square meter) setting. Please make sure to attach a photographic exposure lens shader when using IES lights and physical sun/sky, otherwise your lighting will appear too bright or too dim.

Lens Effect Camera

This option allows you to provide a single Redshift Camera tag and use its settings for all cameras in the scene.

This is provided as a backwards compatibility option to match the look of older scenes that made use of this feature.

Instance Optimizations

When enabled - by default, it forces Redshift to use an improved instancing algorithm that cuts down on scene traversal time.

This option should only be disabled if you suspect you have encountered a bug regarding Redshift rendering instances in C4D.

Non-Inverse-Square Light Decay

When enabled - by default, it forces Redshift to employ a hack exclusively for lights that have linear or no decay ( non-physically correct decay)  in order to make this kind of decay look ‘nicer’ when the surface that is being lit is very close to the light source, but it is not actually correct.

When this hack is disabled, the fall-off can get darker when the distance from the light is less than 1 unit, which is actually mathematically correct.

Standard Material Conversion

This setting controls how Redshift interprets Cinema 4D Standard Materials.

• Native (default) - The latest and most advanced support for C4D Standard Materials.
• Architectural (legacy) - Uses the deprecated Redshift Architectural shader as the base for C4D Standard Material conversion.
• Material (legacy) - Uses an older version of C4D Standard Material conversion with the Redshift Material as the base.

Standard Sky Conversion

When enabled, it forces Redshift to use an outdated technique for converting a Cinema 4D Sky object and treating it as a Redshift Dome light.

When disabled, Redshift uses the latest technique for converting a Cinema 4D Sky object and treats it as a Redshift Environment shader.

Standard Ambient Occlusion Emulation

When enabled, it forces Redshift to emulate the ambient occlusion effect of a C4D Standard Material.

Time Behavior

When enabled, Redshift uses an old version of time management.

When disabled - by default, Redshift uses a new version of time management that enables new features like the looping functionality in a Maxon Noise shader.

Automatic Displacement

When enabled - by default, a material that uses a Displacement shader is displaced automatically. Note, you still need enough geometric detail to properly support displacement via subdivisions or tessellation.

When disabled, Displacement must be set up manually with an Object tag.

GI Conserve Reflection Energy for Photon Caustics

Conserve Reflection Energy (CRE) is a Global Illumination feature that approximates the look of caustics by simulating very soft bounces of light. While the CRE effect looks nice without caustics, when rendering with caustics the effect is redundant and decreases the contrast provided by actual caustics.

When enabled and rendering with Photon Caustics, Conserve Reflection Energy is enabled resulting in a less accurate render by simulating fake caustics and real caustics at the same time.

When disabled and rendering with Photon Caustics, Conserve Reflection Energy is disabled resulting in a more accurate render where only real caustics are used.

GI CRE for Photon Caustics: Enabled Old behavior	Disabled New behavior

Area Light Visibility

When disabled, by default, area and dome lights are less dependent on their camera visibility offering more control over scene lighting. For example, a light can be invisible to camera rays (Camera contribution 0) and still visible in transmissive refractions.

When enabled, lights revert to their visibility behavior in 2025.2 and older. When a light is invisible to camera rays it is also invisible to transmissive rays.

Material Processing Mode

• Single (Legacy) - Disables material stacking, only the top most material will render regardless of opacity.

• Stacked - Enables material stacking, materials below the top most material can be seen underneath if the materials on top use opacity or transmission.

Material: Bottom	Top
Material Processing: Single (Legacy)	Stacked

Texture Streaming VRAM Budget

The percentage of VRAM that can be allocated for texture streaming.