Cinema 4D – CS tools, what are they, where to get them

CS Tools is one of the best plugins for Cinema 4D that adds special effects, special controls, special lighting with the hidden complexity, buried in the pre-built tool for you. It’s hard to say how much it would take to create all of these yourself or how much it would cost to buy them at a Cinema 4D store. Fortunately, CS tools are free. Free to download, with free tutorials and lots of free scene files from a variety of sites.

So where do you get the free CS tools for installation? There are several places, but one of my favorites that keeps up with tutorials and scene files and lots of other filmmaking tools is Nick Campbell’s site, like the ‘greyscale gorilla’. These tools are also available on author Chris Smith’s site, ‘CirclesofDelusion’ or can be easily found elsewhere via a Google search.

There are really only a few steps to installing CS Tools, most of it creating a menu so you can access these tools like you would any other Cinema 4D feature and save any new settings you create. After downloading the tools, you need to put them in the library, objects folder. On my system this is “C:Program FilesMaxonCinema 4D R12libraryobject”. Put the contents of the downloaded zip file, all CS tools, C4D type files in this directory. There is a document included in the download that details the installation path with other notes and a brief explanation of the individual tools.

After downloading the tools, you need another publicly available plugin to enhance your menu capability, the ‘OLX’ plugin from ‘Biomekk’.

The ‘Biomekk’ sites describe their plugin:

“OLX is a Cinema 4D plugin that replaces and extends the functionality of Cinema’s built-in object library. OLX not only supports submenus, but also supports separate libraries for documents, scenes, objects, materials, render settings, layouts, help files and keyboard shortcuts. .”

The fun part about Cinema 4D plugins is that it copies the source of the plugin, copies it to the plugins directory for Cinema 4D, and then restarts it. There is no code compilation, no special configuration to make it compatible with different versions. Download the version that matches your operating system (ie Mac, Win 32, or Win 64), copy it to the Cinema 4D plugins directory, and restart the application. That’s it.

Once you have downloaded the ‘Biomekk’ menu code, copied it to the appropriate Cinema plugins directory and restarted Cinema 4D, you will see the new ‘OLX’ menu options in your ‘Plugins’ menu with the top menu options listed under Cinema 4D.

Now open the ‘OLX:Settings’ menu option, the first one listed in the new ‘OLX’ menu; and set the location of the object library entries. The default setting is ‘C:Program FilesMAXONCINEMA 4D R12libraryobject’ on Windows 7 and Cinema 4D version 12.0.

Here we have told the ‘OLX’ menu systems where the ‘CS Tools’ are located. Now we want a menu option, a menu icon that will allow you to open and access the tools. Also use the ‘OLX’ menu for this.

One of the features introduced to you early in your Cinema 4D experience is the ability to customize your interface. Most tool sets, menu bar sets have a small highlight bar at the top that you can “attach” with your mouse and drag. There may be a set of menus you want to work with a lot, so you pull it out of its pool and just plug it into your work interface wherever it’s convenient.

We want to extract one of the ‘OLX’ menu options to add to the custom menu we’re creating, so first, open ‘Plugins->OLX’, attach to the highlight bar at the top of the menu options, drag this set menu outside where you can see all the options offered. Right-click on this set of menus and choose ‘Edit Palettes’. With the menu options highlighted in blue, choose ‘OLX: Merge Documents’, drag this icon onto your icon menu next to your ‘Globe’ content browser. You will now see a new menu icon at the top, the ‘CS Tools’ icon.

You have just customized your Cinema 4D menu system! Run the ‘Edit Palettes’ command again to close and ‘deselect’ them. Not only have you customized your menu system, but when you click on the ‘CS Tools’ icon you just created, you’ll see all the ‘CS Tools’ presented to you.

Now that you’ve customized your Cinema 4D layout, you want to be sure and save it. In the top menu options, select ‘Window->Layout->Save Layout As’ and enter a meaningful name, like ‘CS Tools’ for example. If nothing else has changed, it will save the standard workspace layout you normally work with in Cinema 4D plus the new additional menu option that introduces you to your new CS tools. When you launch Cinema 4D, the top left menu icon, ‘change layout’ brings up all the predefined layouts, such as standard, animation, modeling, and now, your new custom menu: ‘CS Tools’.

Pretty cool, right? Now let’s start using the tools!