Cinema 4D Tip: Maintain scene scale to prevent floating‑point precision errors

Tiny scene scales can quietly introduce floating‑point precision errors in Cinema 4D. Keep your numbers healthy and your results stable with these practical guidelines.

• Work in human-friendly numbers: aim for most dimensions to live between 1 and 10,000 units (e.g., 0.1–100 m, 1–10,000 mm). Avoid values like 0.0001 or 1e-7 on object size or transform components.
• Set Units early: Project Settings (Cmd/Ctrl + D) > Units. If your subject is millimetric, switch to mm so you don’t model 0.05 cm when you can model 50 mm.
• Scale the project, not just objects: use Edit > Scale Project to rescale geometry, animation, dynamics, and scene-wide tolerances consistently. This prevents mixed scales and broken caches.
• Stay near the origin: keep critical geometry within a few thousand units of 0,0,0. Large world offsets magnify precision issues. Use the Axis Center tool and Reset PSR to re-center workflows.
• Viewport clipping: in the Editor Viewport, set Options > View Clipping to Small or Tiny when working with miniature subjects. For cameras, enable and tighten Near/Far clipping if needed to prevent pop‑outs.
• Adjust tolerances to scale:
  • Booleans: set “Tolerance” and “Single Object” thoughtfully; tiny gaps equal big trouble at micro scales.
  • Bevel/Chamfer: use realistic radii; avoid radii approaching zero relative to polygon size.
  • Snapping/Grid: reduce grid spacing and snap increments to match your unit choice.
• Simulations:
  • Bullet (Rigid/Soft): keep objects roughly 10–1,000 units in size. If smaller, Scale Project up 10–100x, then lower Gravity to retain physical behavior, and increase Substeps/Iterations.
  • Unified Simulation (Cloth/Soft Bodies): adjust Scene Scale in Project Settings and raise Substeps for micro details; clear caches after any scale change.
  • Hair/Grooms: match Root/Tip radii and forces to scene units; re-cache after scaling.
• Materials and displacement:
  • Keep displacement heights expressed in scene units; extremely tiny heights can quantize on 8/16‑bit maps—prefer 32‑bit EXR when detail is sub‑millimetric.
  • Noise/Procedurals: scale patterns to object size; micro-noise on micro-objects can alias.
• Animation and rigs:
  • Avoid microscopic controller ranges; normalize rig distances or parent under a scaled Null.
  • Use Freeze Transform for clean local values; tiny pre-transforms can cause F‑Curve stair‑stepping.
• Export safely: when sending to DCCs/game engines, confirm export scale factors (FBX, USD, Alembic). Keep unit consistency end‑to‑end to prevent micro or mega scaling on import.

Quick rescue checklist when a scene is “too tiny” already:

• Measure a known part, decide a target scale, then run Edit > Scale Project (10–1000x).
• Update gravity/forces, solver substeps, and thickness values proportionally.
• Clear and rebuild caches: Simulation, Hair, MoGraph, Cloth, Alembic/Volume caches.
• Revisit Boolean/Bevel tolerances and snapping increments.
• Set View Clipping to Small/Tiny and reframe near the origin.

Pro tip: save a template with preferred Units, grid/snapping presets, viewport clipping, and default simulation substeps tuned to your typical scale—then start every project from that template.

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