Object transforms and view navigation

Orbit and select#

Choose Orbit (O or V) in Render Preview. Drag to orbit, right-drag to pan, and scroll to zoom. A click selects an object without moving it. Click empty space to clear the selection. Hold Shift while dragging to select an area. The same camera and selection gestures work in Transform, away from its handles.

Replace, Add and Remove set the operation for clicks and area selection. In Transform these controls, Select all, Clear and Frame are in the selection-count menu. Keyboard toggle/remove modifiers override the chosen operation. Escape cancels an unfinished area selection.

Area selection intersects projected geometry bounds, including objects behind other objects. Hidden, locked and disconnected objects are excluded. Geometry Tree and Render Preview share their selection. Tree Shift-click selects a row range; Command/Ctrl-click toggles rows. Select groups through the tree. Scene lights can also be picked by their visible viewport symbols.

Universal transform gizmo#

Choose Transform or press W, E or R. Selecting an object automatically shows all supported handles together; there is no gizmo visibility switch and no separate operation toolbar.

The planar pads constrain movement to two axes without changing the third. They follow World/Local axes and snap each moving coordinate independently. Pads viewed edge-on are hidden until you orbit to a usable angle.

X is coral red, Y teal and Z blue. Arrows and rotation arcs face the camera’s side of each axis. Move arrow tips are separated from the smaller inner scale boxes. Hover and the active handle turn yellow; other handles hide during a drag. The live readout shows translation, a scale multiplier, or rotation in degrees. Yellow object-aligned selection bounds use a slim 1.5-pixel outline. The compact Transform Axis dropdown offers World and Local to change move/rotation orientation; axis scaling follows the object's local axes.

The pivot is the visible geometry center, including offset imported 3DM meshes and blocks. A multiple selection uses a shared center: move, rotate and uniformly scale all selected roots together. A selected child of a selected parent is carried only once. Group scale is uniform, avoiding shear when selected objects have different orientations. Geometry Properties retains source-local units, while preview normalization remains intact.

The drag baseline, pivot, axis and plane are fixed when the handle is pressed. Live redraws do not change the calculation. Near end-on move/scale axes and edge-on rotation planes use a screen-drag fallback to keep the gesture responsive. Releasing commits the entire selection as one Undo/Redo edit. A stationary click creates no edit. Escape, pointer cancellation, losing window focus, changing selection/tools/documents, or hiding the preview restores the whole selection.

Enable the magnet for standard snapping, or hold Ctrl/Command while dragging a handle. The standard increments come from Pivot Control: by default, 0.1 preview unit, 15 degrees, and 0.1 scale multiplier. Alt/Option uses coarse steps (5 times the configured increment). Press Shift after starting a handle drag for fine steps (one tenth of the configured increment). Shift takes precedence when combined with other modifiers. Holding Shift before dragging still starts area selection. Scale increments are measured from the original multiplier of 1, keeping custom snap values stable.

Object Selection → Relative transforms remains available for numeric offsets, rotations and scale multipliers in each object's parent coordinates. Those numeric controls act around individual origins, unlike the shared viewport pivot.

Transform a scene light#

For a Spot, Directional or Rectangle Area light using Aim at target, the preview transform controls offer Position and Target. Choose Target to place the gizmo at its aim point, then use an arrow or planar pad. The light responds during the drag; Escape restores its previous aim and release creates one Undo step. Target coordinates remain relative to the light’s parent.

Lights expose move handles. Rotation is available for Hemisphere lights and for Spot/Directional/Area lights using rotation aiming. Target editing has move handles only. Generic scale handles are omitted for lights and selections containing light descendants. Change an Area light’s actual Width and Height in its properties. No material controls appear for lights.

Light Paint and camera navigation#

Light Paint (L) keeps the same orbit, pan and zoom controls. Hold Shift to place or adjust the selected HDR light. Method chooses Reflection, Surface normal, Rim, Shade or Shadow; Gesture chooses Place, Move relative, Rotate, Scale, Free scale or Brightness. Alt/Option during supported scaling gestures preserves estimated radiance. Orbit and Light Paint have no transform gizmo controls.

Views and projection#

The bottom-right view controller provides X, −X, Y, −Y, Z and −Z views. Axis labels are compact; hovering gently enlarges and brightens the axis color with an opaque fill. Keyboard focus has a separate gold outline. Its Persp / Ortho button changes projection while preserving target framing within camera limits. Both this button and View and projection use the same camera setting; the menu retains its projection options. Show view controller hides or shows the widget.

Use Frame selected or F in Orbit/Transform to frame the combined selection. Shift + F resets the camera. The two-row control strip stays above the image at minimum width, in landscape, floating, detached and full screen. Auto-rotate is available in Orbit.

Protected objects and limits#

Locked branches and hidden/disconnected objects have no active handles. Non-uniformly scaled parents, mirrored or sheared source matrices, and zero scales require a compatible parent or numeric properties. The transform status explains unsupported selections. Shared viewport scaling is uniform; per-axis group deformation, CAD extrusion, duplicate-on-drag and mesh-component editing are not included.

Bounds are calculated from visible geometry vertices in the selected object’s local frame, then transformed with that object; editor guides do not enlarge them. Static bounds are cached and vertex edits invalidate the cache. Animated/skinned meshes are recalculated. Selection outlines, light guides and gizmos are omitted from Export Preview and Export HDRi; HDRi exports contain the lighting environment only.

Inspect faces#

Choose Faces in the display dropdown. Cyan marks front-facing surfaces, red back-facing surfaces, and magenta vertex normals opposing surface winding. This diagnostic bypasses preview effects and does not repair normals or prove a mesh is manifold. Returning to Rendered restores saved materials and rendering settings.

See Materials and Geometry, Render Preview and keyboard shortcuts.

Large geometry trees#

For more than 250 objects, click Load geometry hierarchy when needed, or search for a name. The tree displays 80 rows per page and linked block contents begin collapsed. All model geometry remains in the viewport; paging changes only the list. Selecting an object reveals its page after the tree has been loaded. See performance.

Frame and reliable gesture commits#

Geometry Tree rows offer Frame beside the material icon and in the right-click menu. Object Properties also offers Frame. It frames that object's visible geometry even if it was not the previously active selection.

Move, Rotate and Scale retain the last solved transform while a gesture is active and commit it before clearing the temporary property preview. Equivalent scene refreshes no longer cancel a drag; visual scene updates wait until the gesture completes. A pointer release outside the canvas is also handled. Escape, cancellation, changed selection and actual conflicting object edits retain their cancel behavior.

Choose a selection display#

In Preferences → Selection → Viewport selection, choose Bounding boxes or Silhouette outlines; the preview updates immediately. Boxes remain the default and use less GPU work. Selection display is independent of transform-tool availability, so locked or complex instances can still be highlighted.

Silhouettes follow visible geometry. Adjacent selected objects retain a border between their visible regions; occluded surfaces are not shown through other objects. A completely occluded selected object can be inspected through the selection lists or framed from its properties. Light guides retain their existing box/guide treatment. Translucent surfaces act as solid surfaces for selection visibility; this does not change their rendered material.

Silhouette work runs only for an active selection and dirty viewport frames. Its additional mask is limited to 1,536 pixels on the longest edge. This is a viewport overlay and is excluded from snapshots and HDR exports.

Pivot Control module#

In Advance Usage Mode, the Pivot Control button in the Transform toolbar opens its Scene Settings module. Enable Advanced pivot and choose Selection center, Selection bottom, Active object origin, or Custom world position. A custom pivot accepts X, Y and Z coordinates. Rotation and scaling use that anchor; source mesh coordinates are not rewritten.

Handle size adjusts the transform control. Move, rotation and scale have independent snap increments; enable the magnet or hold Alt/Option to use snapping. Disable Advanced pivot to return to the normal centered transform. The module has a separate feature entitlement boundary for future packaging; it does not introduce subscriptions or billing.

Selection appearance#

Open Preferences → Selection to choose Bounding boxes or Silhouette outlines, selection color, 0.1–3 px line thickness, and optional fill. Fill uses the selection color at 60% opacity by default; adjust it from 5–90%. Front-facing box edges are shown by default; enable Show back edges to display the entire box. Silhouettes remain depth-tested against the scene and use full drawing-buffer resolution with fractional edge coverage. The live Sculpture sample uses the same selection rendering implementation as the viewport, fills its preview rectangle and can be orbited before saving. Its separate WebGL context exists only while the Selection tab is open and is released on leaving it. These overlays are omitted from exported images and videos.

The compact view controller centers its axis diagram below the projection label. Floor-grid coverage follows the camera in perspective and orthographic views, with a radial fade instead of a visible square edge. World-aligned grid spacing coarsens as lines become too dense on screen; camera zoom does not change world-axis size.

Grid spacing and floor height follow visible scene objects when the scene changes, including added or resized geometry. Hidden objects, helper overlays and Dynamic Ground are excluded from this sizing. Camera coverage still expands to avoid a square cutoff; zoom does not redefine the underlying world spacing.