Cinema 4D Tip: Purge orphan points with Cinema 4D Optimize

Stray points accumulate after deletes, Booleans, CAD/FBX imports, and generator conversions; they slow rigs, deformers, and renderers. Clean them fast with Cinema 4D’s Optimize command and keep your meshes production‑ready. If you need a C4D license or upgrade, check NOVEDGE.

Why this matters

• Performance: fewer components mean quicker deformations, MoGraph updates, and Redshift tessellation/displacement.
• Stability: removes orphan vertices that can corrupt selections, weights, or cause odd shading and viewport highlights.
• Export hygiene: prevents “loose vertices” warnings in FBX/Alembic/USD pipelines and reduces file size.
• Clean lookdev: lean topology bakes and unwraps more predictably.

When to run Optimize

• Right after importing CAD/FBX/OBJ or converting Volumes/Voronoi/Booleans to polygons.
• After heavy polygon edits or deletes that likely left behind isolated points.
• Before binding rigs, caching simulations, UV unwrapping, or exporting to DCC/game engines.

How to remove unused points (safe pass)

• Make the object editable if needed (C) so it’s a Polygon Object.
• Select one or multiple polygon objects in the Object Manager.
• Go to Mesh > Commands > Optimize.
• In the Attribute Manager:
  • Enable Remove Unused Points.
  • Set Tolerance to 0 to avoid welding anything—this purges orphans only.
• Apply and verify the point count drops appropriately.

Welding duplicates (optional, second pass)

• If you also need to merge coincident points (e.g., post-Boolean seams), run Optimize again with a small Tolerance.
• Guideline:
  • Use scene-appropriate values (e.g., 0.01–0.1 in centimeters scenes; scale down for millimeters).
  • Start low, test, undo if seams fuse unintentionally.

Best practices

• Batch it: multi-select objects and run Optimize once; it processes each selection.
• Keep it reversible: duplicate critical assets or use incremental saves before welding.
• Protect intended splits: if you only want to purge orphans, keep Tolerance at 0 so hard edges/gaps remain intact.
• Combine wisely: after Connect Objects + Delete, an Optimize pass cleans leftover doubles for watertight meshes.
• Pipeline check: run Optimize before exporting to Unreal, Unity, or Maya to avoid surplus vertices and reduce file sizes.

Quick QA

• Red flags: unexpected shading changes after Optimize usually mean Tolerance was too high—Undo and retry lower.
• Counts: watch point/polygon counts in the HUD or Object Manager to confirm reductions.
• UVs: purging unused points won’t harm UVs; cautious welding with tiny tolerances preserves seams.

Keeping geometry lean is a small habit with outsized returns for rigging, simulations, and rendering. For professional licensing, plugins, and upgrades, explore NOVEDGE, and browse Maxon solutions at NOVEDGE | Maxon.