Taking Shortcuts in C4D

One of my favorite things about working in Cinema 4D from Maxon is how you can make it your own. With access to all of the keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, and layouts, you can fine tune the program to work better with your daily workflow. In college I learned how to model and animate in Maya. Then my first job out of college was a C4D house and anyone that’s tried to make that switch knows the growing pains. Below is a handy app translation guide.

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Credit: Autodesk. View the full PDF here.

Using this chart, I brought back some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts from Maya without overwriting important C4D tools that I might use in the future. This brings us to the most important Cinema 4D shortcut of them all:


Customize Commands (Shift + F12)

The best shortcut is the one that helps you make more shortcuts. This is where you can search through all the C4D commands by name, or by shortcut keys. All you have to do is select the command you want, and type your new key(s) into the shortcut box at the bottom.


If you choose a keystroke that is already assigned to another command, Cinema will warn you before replacing the keystroke.



Keep in mind that after you make your changes to the keyboard shortcuts, they will not be saved until you save the current scene you’re working on. Once you do, it will update the shortcuttable.res file in your prefs folder. A quick way to navigate to this folder is through your Preferences window in C4D.

There you’ll find shortcuttable.res in the prefs folder. With that file it’s easy to save your commands when upgrading to a new version of Cinema 4D or to keep your commands consistent across multiple computers.













My Favorite Shortcuts

Now that I’ve explained how and why to customize, I’m going to share some of my custom shortcuts. Some of these are from the Maya switchover but most are from a repeated need for a quick one-button command in a specific project.
  • Content Browser (Shift + F11): I use this so much to grab objects or textures from GSG plugins or my content library.
  • Rectangle Selection (Q): This is mostly for those Maya users who come into C4D and hate the live selection tool. This overwrites the Create New Key command but I’ve set that to S because of Maya habits.
  • Frame Selection (F): I use this so much that it needs to be somewhere in reach of my left hand. Just personal preference. Note, this overwrites Cinema’s command to Goto Previous Frame but…
  • Goto Previous Frame, Goto Next Frame (Page up, Page down): This is to keep consistency across C4D and After Effects.
  • Toggle active view (Spacebar): Just like Maya
  • Grow / Shrink Selection (<,>): Super useful when modeling and working in point mode.
  • Add Null Object (Command + Shift + N): Nulls are great, they deserve a shortcut.
  • Scroll to first active (Command + Shift + F): Comes in handy when you have a complicated scene with lots of objects. Just click one in the viewport, execute your command, and boom there it is in the objects window.
  • Select Texture Tags/Objects (Command + Shift + T): Came about from one specific project with a particularly messy TurboSquid model.
  • Drop To Floor (Command + Down): Drop to Floor is a super useful plugin that drops the lowest point of an object to 0 on the Y-axis.
  • Reset PSR (Command + 0): I use this every day. Perfect for bringing an object to 0,0,0.

These are just a few of the changes I’ve made to increase the speed of my own workflow based on the commands I use the most. These definitely won’t work for everyone and I encourage animators to update their shortcuts regularly whenever they find a need. If there any shortcuts that you have made that you think make C4D easier, please share them in the comments section below.