Preferences & layouts

Preferences

The Preferences (full prefs/ tree) item carries your whole prefs folder: every general preference (units, the home screen switch and the rest live in Cinema 4D.prf), keyboard shortcuts, most third-party plugin settings, asset path settings, and your startup layout.

A launched new version already has a prefs folder, so the migrator merges into it. Anything it replaces is backed up first — see Safety & undo.

Left behind on purpose:

• symbolcache and cache — the new version builds its own.
• Interface colour schemes (*.col) on a major-version migration. A colour scheme from one major version can paint parts of the next one’s interface in the wrong colours; leaving it out gives you the new version’s own theme. Within the same year they are carried.
• Cinema 4D’s MCP Adapter token and audit log, which belong to a single install. Your own MCP overrides are carried.

Paths inside your preferences

Cinema 4D’s preferences store some paths into the version’s own folders — the default scene, Team Render, plugin preset folders. Copied as they are, those would still point at the old version, and would break the day you remove it. So after copying, the migrator repoints them at the new version’s folders. The Preview lists this as a patch_prefs action, “repoint n path(s) from the old install to the new one”.

If a path sits somewhere it can’t be rewritten safely, the Preview shows a warning naming the preferences file. Re-set that path in Preferences after migrating.

The startup layout

Your startup layout — the one Cinema 4D opens with — travels with Preferences. To start the new version on its own default layout instead, untick Include my startup layout (the layout Cinema 4D opens with) on the Preferences card.

Saved layouts

Saved layouts carries the layouts you saved by name (library/layout). They show up in the new version’s Layout menu to switch to; nothing opens with them.

New buttons in your old layouts

A new major version adds, moves and replaces commands in its built-in layouts. On a major-version migration (2026 → 2027, say), C4D Migrator merges those changes into your layouts — the startup layout and each saved one:

• It works out which built-in layout yours started from, compares that layout in the old and the new version, and applies Maxon’s changes (new buttons, replaced ones) to your layout.
• Everything you changed yourself stays as you had it.
• A change it can’t place safely is skipped and your layout keeps what you had there.
• A layout that didn’t start from a built-in one, or can’t be read, is carried exactly as it was.

The Preview lists each merged layout as a merge_layout action, for example “merged with 2027’s Standard: 6 change(s) added, 1 left as you had it”.

Your unmerged startup layout also comes across, as Startup layout from <version> in the Layout menu — so if the merged one isn’t right, your exact old layout is one click away. And the new version’s own default layout is always in the Layout menu too.

Within the same major version (2026.2 → 2026.3, say) layouts are carried as they are.