Overview
On set, a snoot is a hood you mount on a light to control its throw. Instead of lighting the whole room, you get a defined shape landing exactly where you pointed it.
Snoot does the same thing in Cinema 4D. Mount it on a Redshift, Arnold or Octane area light and it builds a hood in front of that light, sized to match, with the visibility flags and the material already set up. You get full control over length, radius and shape, which is everything you need for the hard, graphic cuts of light that are everywhere right now.
There are two ways in, and both are one click:
Have a light already? Select any supported area light and run Snoot. The hood mounts on that light.
Starting from nothing? Run Snoot with nothing selected and it builds the whole rig for you: an aimed controller null, an area light configured for your active renderer, and the snoot already on it.
It mounts on the light as a child, not as a separate mesh you have to keep aligned. Resize the light and the snoot rebuilds itself to fit.
Requirements / Compatibility
Cinema 4D 2023 through 2026, macOS or Windows.
One of these render engines, installed and set as the active renderer: Redshift, Arnold (C4DtoA), or Octane.
An active Greyscalegorilla or Everything Bundle subscription.
Supported light types:
Renderer | Light | Shapes |
Redshift | RS Light, type Area | Quad, Disc |
Arnold | Arnold Light | Quad, Disk |
Octane | Cinema 4D Light with an Octane Light tag, type Area | Rectangle, Disc |
Spot, point, infinite and dome lights are not supported. A snoot only means something on an area source.
Installation
We ship through Cargo, Greyscalegorilla's app, so there is no hand-placing of files.
What you need:
A Greyscalegorilla or Everything Bundle subscription.
Cargo installed. Grab it at greyscalegorilla.com/cargo and sign in with your Greyscalegorilla account.
Cinema 4D 2023 through 2026.
Steps:
Open Cargo and close Cinema 4D if it is running.
Click the Connector icon in the lower-left of Cargo, choose Connect Software, pick Cinema 4D, then select your version.
Click Install Connector, then open Cinema 4D once to activate your license. If you already use the Connector to send assets, skip this, the same Connector handles tools.
Back in Cargo, go to the Tool page and click Install on this tool.
Restart Cinema 4D. The tool is ready.
Updating: when a new version is out, an Update button appears on the tool card in Cargo. Click it, then restart Cinema 4D.
Quick Start
Set your active renderer to Redshift, Arnold or Octane.
Select an area light in the Object Manager.
Go to the Greyscalegorilla menu and choose Snoot.
A Snoot object appears as a child of your light and is selected for you.
In the Attribute Manager, drag Length out and pull Size X and Size Y down. Watch the throw tighten into a defined shape.
No light in the scene yet? Skip step 2. Run Snoot with nothing selected and it will offer to build a correctly configured area light for your renderer, on a pre-angled controller null, with the snoot already attached.
Adding a snoot to an existing light
Select the light and run Greyscalegorilla > Snoot. Snoot inserts itself as a child of that light and sets up everything around it:
A visibility tag so the hood does not appear in reflections, shadows or ambient occlusion.
A material named "Snoot Material", white on the inside and black on the outside, so it bounces light forward and blocks it from the sides. It shows up in the Material Manager like any other material.
A Display tag that draws the hood as wireframe isoparms, so it never blocks your view of the scene.
A Protection tag so the hood stays locked to its light and cannot be dragged around by accident.
The light also gets folded up in the Object Manager to keep things tidy.
Creating a light and a snoot together
Run Greyscalegorilla > Snoot with nothing selected. Snoot asks whether you want it to create an area light too. Say yes and you get:
A null named "Area Light Controller", pre-rotated to a 45 degree three-quarter angle and displayed as a small cube. Move and rotate this to aim the light.
An area light under it, set back 350 units, configured for your active renderer.
A Snoot object under the light, ready to shape.
Controlling length, radius and shape
Select the Snoot object. Four orange handles appear in the viewport, and they stay visible even when the object is not selected so you can always grab them.
The handle running out along the light's axis sets Length. Longer hood, tighter and more directional throw. This is the strongest control you have.
The two handles at the mouth set the radius of the opening, Size X and Size Y. Smaller opening, tighter throw. Pull them independently and a circle becomes a slot.
The handle on the corner diagonal sets Roundness, the shape of a rectangular opening. Drag it toward the center to go from hard square corners to fully filleted.
Every handle has a matching slider in the Attribute Manager if you would rather type a number.
Cutting light
The trendy look is a hard-edged cut of light laid across a wall, a floor or a product. To get it:
Aim the light so it rakes across the surface rather than facing it head on.
Push Length up. This is what buys you the hard edge.
Pull one of the size controls way down and leave the other wide. A long, thin opening is what makes the shape read as a cut rather than a blob.
Leave Roundness at 0 for a hard graphic edge, or ease it up a little to soften just the corners.
On Redshift and Arnold, pull the light's own Spread down. That narrows the emission before it ever hits the snoot and is the quickest way to tighten a cut further without changing anything you have already shaped.
Matching the light's size
Click Match Light Size to copy the light's dimensions into Size X and Size Y. That gives you a straight hood rather than a taper, which is useful as a starting point before you narrow the mouth, or when you want a barn-door effect that crops the light without changing how far it throws.
Hiding the snoot from camera
Every snoot gets a native visibility tag for your renderer when it is created, so this is handled with your engine's own controls rather than anything bolted on. Secondary rays, shadow receiving, self-shadows, and ambient occlusion are already switched off, which is why the hood never turns up in a reflection or throws a shadow of its own.
What is left is primary visibility, whether the camera sees the hood itself. Leave it on, and the black outside is visible in the shot, which reads correctly if the light is in frame. Turn it off and the hood disappears from camera while still doing its job on the light.
There are two ways to switch it:
Visible In Render, on the Snoot object itself. Fastest, and it is right there with the shape controls.
The visibility tag, if you would rather work in your renderer's own parameters. Click the tag on the Snoot object and turn off the primary visibility option:
Renderer | Tag | Option to turn off |
Redshift | RS Object tag | Primary Ray Visible |
Arnold | Arnold Parameters tag | Camera |
Octane | Octane Object tag | Camera Visibility |
One thing to watch: the sync only runs one way. Toggling Visible In Render writes to the tag, but editing the tag by hand does not update the checkbox. If you turn the tag off directly, the checkbox still reads on, and the next time you touch it your manual change gets overwritten. Pick one and stay with it.
Stamping it down for a render farm
Snoot is a generator, so the hood only exists while the plugin is loaded. If you are sending the scene somewhere that does not have Snoot installed, a render farm or a collaborator without a Greyscalegorilla subscription, stamp it down first.
Select the Snoot object.
Press C on the keyboard, or right-click and choose Make Editable.
You get plain polygon geometry sitting in the same place, with the material and the visibility tag still on it. It renders identically and needs nothing installed to work.
Two things to know before you do it:
It is a one-way trip. The live link to the light is gone, and so are Length, Size X, Size Y and Roundness. Resizing the light will not update it anymore.
Duplicate the Snoot object first and switch the copy off, or stamp down a copy of the whole scene and keep your working file live. That way you still have something to adjust when a note comes back.
Settings / Parameter Reference
All sizes are in Cinema 4D scene units, centimeters by default.
Control | What it does | Default | Range |
Size X | Radius of the opening across | 50 | 0.1 to 1000 |
Size Y | Radius of the opening up and down | 50 | 0.1 to 1000 |
Length | How far the hood extends from the light | 100 | 10 to 1000 |
Roundness | Shape of a rectangular opening. 0 is hard square corners, 1 is fully filleted | 0 | 0 to 1 |
Match Light Size | Copies the light's size into Size X and Size Y |
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Visible In Render | Whether the camera sees the hood | On |
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Notes:
Roundness only applies to quad and rectangular lights. On a disk light the opening is already an ellipse, so the control does nothing and the handle is hidden.
Dragging the Length handle stops at 50, a little higher than the slider's minimum of 10.
Match Light Size does not currently work on Octane lights. Type the values in by hand there. The generated shape is still correct either way.
Tips
The tighter the opening relative to the light, the harder the edge of the cut. For a soft falloff keep the opening wide and the length short.
Uneven Size X and Size Y gives you a slot of light. That is the shape behind most of the cuts you are seeing right now, and it is great for raking across a surface to bring out texture.
Length is the strongest control. Doubling it does more to tighten the throw than halving the opening.
Redshift and Arnold users, use Spread too. Both engines have a Spread parameter on their area lights that narrows how wide the light emits before it ever reaches the snoot. Dial Spread down and the cut gets tighter and cleaner without you touching Length or the opening. It is the best partner to Snoot for chasing a really controlled cut, and it costs you nothing in the shape you have already built. Octane area lights have no direct equivalent.
The light is still just a light. Snoot does not take it over. Intensity, color, temperature, samples, falloff, Spread, exposure, all of it stays right where it always was and you can change any of it at any point. Snoot only controls the shape of what gets out.
The hood is a normal loft underneath, so the material in the Material Manager is yours to edit. Warming up the white inside face tints the light.
Move the light, not the snoot. It is protected and parented on purpose, so aiming the light aims the snoot with it.
Change the light's size and the snoot rebuilds to match. You do not need to touch it.
Troubleshooting
The Snoot object is there but nothing is generated.
The snoot only builds geometry when it is a direct child of a supported light. Check the Object Manager. If it got dragged out, or under a null, or under a light type that is not supported, drag it back directly under the light.
"The selected object is not a supported light type."
Snoot works on Redshift, Arnold and Octane area lights only. On Redshift make sure the light type is Area with a Quad or Disc shape. On Arnold make sure the light type is Quad or Disk. On Octane make sure it is a standard Cinema 4D Light set to Area with an Octane Light tag on it.
"The currently active renderer is not supported."
The active renderer needs to be Redshift, Arnold or Octane. Change it in Render Settings and run Snoot again.
"The active renderer does not match the light type. No material will be created."
You have, for example, an Arnold light in a scene set to render with Redshift. The snoot itself is still created and still works, it just does not get a material because there is no correct one to build. Either switch the renderer to match the light or assign a material yourself.
The hood shows up in a reflection or casts a shadow.
Check that the visibility tag is still on the Snoot object. It gets added when the command runs, and the flags only apply while it is there. If it was deleted, the quickest fix is to delete the snoot and run the command again.
Match Light Size does nothing.
On Octane lights this is a known gap. Read the size off the light and type it into Size X and Size Y by hand.
I installed it in Cargo but I do not see it in Cinema 4D.
Give Cinema 4D a full restart. Newly installed tools only appear on a fresh launch. Snoot lives in the Greyscalegorilla menu, not the Extensions menu.