3D Connexion
The 3D Mouse functions under either 32-bit or 64-bit Windows or macOS (corresponding drivers must, of course, be installed).
The 3D Mouse (previously referred to as "Spacemouse") is a special 3D peripheral device that offers six directions of movement. Cinema 4D uses the 3DxWare driver to operate the 3D Mouse. This driver is included with the 3D Mouse. It is important that this driver be installed before starting Cinema 4D. Otherwise the 3D Mouse will not function correctly with Cinema 4D.
If this setting is not active, the 3D Mouse will not be recognized. This can be useful if you decide not to use the 3D Mouse, e.g., if you want to avoid bumping it and thus moving the camera.
Activate this setting to keep the camera angles and object angles as small as possible. This prevents oblique angles of the H/P/B angles if the camera or object rotate several times around a single axis. Of course this option can also be left deactivated if the aforementioned effect is desired (e.g., during an animation).
All3D Mouse data entries with regard to the camera system are interpreted, i.e., if a rotation around the vertical axis is entered, a rotation relative to the vertical axis will be carried out. the 3D Mouse can be used in three different modes:
- Navigate: The camera will be rotated around the axis of the active selection.
- Fly: The camera will rotate around itself.
- Move: The active objects (except for the active camera) will be translated and rotated. In all three modes, Translation and Rotation can be activated, limited and modified independent of one another.
Activates or deactivates the translation of the camera or object. The speed can be adjusted using the corresponding slider.
Inverts the effect of the slider.
Use these settings to turn the translation on a specific axis on or off. This is useful if you want the translation to take place on a specific plane or along a specific axis.
Use this setting to define the coordinate system within which the restriction of axis should take place. Cam is the active camera coordinate system, Axis is the coordinate system of the active selection and World is the world coordinate system.
Activates or deactivates the rotation of the camera or object. The speed can be adjusted using the corresponding slider.
Inverts the effect of the slider.
Use these settings to turn rotations around a given axis on or off.
Use these settings to define the coordinate system within which the axis restriction should take place.
For example, if you want to restrict movement to the XZ-plane and the camera should only rotate to the left or right, activate the X, Z and H settings and deactivate the Y, P and P settings. Set the coordinate system for the axis restriction for Translation and Rotation both to World.
Don’t forget that the speed of translation in the Navigate and Move modes depends on the camera’s distance from the active object axis. The closer the camera is to the object axis, the slower the translation speed will be. If, for example, you are in Navigate mode and have just selected the scene camera, the distance will be close to zero, thus causing the translation speed to be very slow.
The following four commands are available for the 3D Mouse in the main menu:
-
: Switches the 3D Mouse’s Activate setting on or off. -
: Switches the 3D Mouse to Navigate mode. -
: Switches the 3D Mouse to Fly mode. -
: Switches the 3D Mouse to Move mode.
These commands can also be assigned a keyboard shortcut in the Customize Commands Manager. You can even use the 3DxWare driver to assign mouse button commands to the 3D Mouse, with which the above-mentioned commands can be executed.