Cineversity

Apologies, new to C4D, I’m coming from MODO and in MODO I had a plugin that would strip out any and all scene and environment lighting, which of course would leave you with a black scene when rendered. But it was very helpful in placing lights and looking at renders… is there an easy way to do this in C4D, I only ask because I don’t see a default environment or light in the objects list upon opening a new scene? Also, is there an easy way to toggle on and off the workspace grid?

XiComputer / windows 10 / C4D 24 /

Hi chris,

The Default light is invisible to the Object Manager. You can, however, switch it off.
Render Settings> Options> Default Light.

My suggestion, use the Layer Browser and place your lights on one or more Layer, so you can switch them off with a click.

In the Object manager, you can filter objects. It is the funnel in the right upper corner. (Not my suggestion; As you might have some lights off and they would switch on, at the moment, you switch on all lights again.)

If you have several lights selected, you can also use the
Main Menu> Select> Selection Filter> Create Selection Object
https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s24/en-us/Default.htm#html/OSELECTION.html

This places all selected objects in a list and can be activated later on. This list can be changed at any time.

If you name these lights wisely, the Object manager offers a search via names.

Last but not least, my favorite, set the rendering to Multi-Pass and use the Separate Lights option.
With this, you get a render for every single light, if you will.
Or, you use in the Lights panel the General> Separate light option and get only passes for those.

I have excluded Takes here as it seems not a good fit, but who knows what your workflow requires.

The workspace grid is optional. Please have a look into the editor View> Filter, (roughly in the middle of the fly out window)

All the best