Workflow improvements

Head's Up Display (HUD)
I was a bit apprehensive about the HUD to start with, not knowing what to expect. However it quickly grew on me and I really love it. The HUD is superb for animators allowing them to keep the parameters they are working on right there in the window. The HUD is pretty good for non-animators as well. Want to know how many polygons you have selected? Just enable the HUD polygon option and it's right there for you to see.

How often when you're modeling or drawing splines does the axis get in the way? If you're like me, it happens all the time. Just add the HUD element for the axis to the viewport. Clicking on the HUD element toggles the axis visible and hidden. Check out the isoline editing animated gif on page 4 which shows how isoline editing toggles on and off just by clicking on the HUD element.

Click on the image to view a short tutorial on using the HUD.(3.7mb Flash)

Mouse Centered Menu & Shortcut Hierarchies
Cinema 4D now has even more options to select tools. The first is the mouse centred menu where you press the "V" key on your keyboard and you get a ring of 8 menu headings similar to the most used tool menus from the interface. Each contains a sub menu of tools and commands. What's slick about this is that menu appears even on the screen of a dual monitor system and you only have Cinema 4D running on your main screen. The other new one is the shortcut hierarchy where you press 2 keys to select tools. It sort of works like this. Press say the "U" key and a menu of function commands and tools pop up. You then select the command or tool by pressing a second key from the list. In practice you quickly learn common 2 key shortcuts so for example to select the Loop selection tool, you quickly press U followed by the L key without even looking at the menu. The shortcuts are arranged logically so that Structure menu commands begin with the "M" key, Selection and Function commands begin with the "U" key etc.

All these options can become a bit overwhelming so you go with which method works best for you.

Mouse Centred Menu (V Key)		Shortcut Hierarchies

Tweak mode & Auto Switch Mode
With the tweak mode turned on, you can quickly fine-tune your model. Move a point here, a face there, and a edge slightly to the right all without changing modes. You simply click on what you need to tweak and move it. One word of warning with the tweak mode, make sure you go back to regular mode when you are done with it. I found that many modeling tools remain grayed out while tweak mode is on. If you didn't know that being in tweak mode was causing this, it might leave you scratching your head.

Similar to Tweak mode, Auto switch mode works when you're using the live selection tool. You can now jump from selecting point, polygons or edges without the extra step of having to change modes.

I must also mention highlighting. One of the first things you will notice when modeling is how polygons change color as the mouse pointer moves over them. This takes a day or two to get used to as it feel strange but once you're comfortable with it, I doubt you would want to go back to the old ways. In practice this makes for more precise selections so you can know before you click what is going to be selected.

Selections are highlighted in R9