3D

The 3D viewport and the Outliner

The 3D viewport

Click the 3D button on the viewer bar, or press Tab over the viewer, to switch the viewer to 3D; the same again brings you back to 2D. The 2D viewer's Guides, Pause, Fit and 100% buttons are hidden while the 3D view shows.

What it shows: a root Scene (a Scene that no other Scene takes) and everything in it. The scene list on the viewer bar picks it:

• Auto (the default): the scene of the node you're viewing, else of the selected node.
• A root Scene by name: that one stays shown until you pick Auto again.

A comp whose objects aren't in any Scene shows them all together.

Navigation

Pick the style in Edit > Preferences > Interface > 3D navigation.

View presets: Alt+1 looks through a camera (the selected one, else the last one you looked through, else the first) and, pressed again, goes back to the free perspective view; Alt+2 top, Alt+3 front, Alt+4 right, Alt+5 bottom, Alt+6 back, Alt+7 left. The numeric keypad works too: 1 front (Ctrl+1 back), 3 right (Ctrl+3 left), 7 top (Ctrl+7 bottom), 5 switches between perspective and orthographic. The side views draw a grid in their own plane.

3D up axis sets the up axis to use when a file doesn't state one: Y (Maya, Houdini) or Z (Blender). Choosing a navigation style sets the matching axis, and a change applies at once. A new CameraTracker takes it as its up axis.

Cameras

The camera list on the viewer bar has Perspective, then every Camera3D, FocalFinder and CameraTracker, and New camera last: it makes a Camera3D seeing what the view sees.

• Looking through a camera shows its film gate, darkens what's outside it, and shows the viewer's guides (safe areas, aspect frames). Its image planes show too.
• Lock: moving the view leaves the camera unless Lock is on. With Lock on, your moves drive the Camera3D itself, one undo step per drag. Pressed in the free view, Lock looks through the scene's camera (the selected one, else the last, else the first) and locks it. Going back to Perspective turns it off. A file's or Blender's camera can't be driven: moving leaves it and Lock turns off. ~ (the key left of 1, on any layout) does the same as the button, with the 3D view focused or under the mouse.

Creating objects

• The Create strip: a column of buttons at the view's left edge: Card, Cube, Sphere, a light (its kinds in a little menu), Camera, a group (Scene), Material (onto the selected object), and + for the whole create menu.
• The create menu: Shift+A or a right click in the view. It has a search field, then Objects (Card, Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Torus), Lights (distant, point, spot, area, disk, dome), Cameras, a Scene (group), imports (ReadUSD, ReadSplat, ReadVDB, the point clouds), Material, RenderScene and WriteUSD.

A new object goes into the shown root Scene, on the ground where the view looks (a light above it, a camera seeing what the view sees), beside its Scene in the graph, selected, in one undo step.

Selecting and moving things

With Blender's keys, G, R and S start the move at once, following the mouse; A selects everything and Alt+A nothing.

• Selecting:
• Click an object, a file's prim, a splat set, a volume, a camera, a light or an image plane to select it. JOS's own objects pick anywhere on their surface.
• Shift+click adds to or removes from the selection.
• Drag on empty space to box-select (Shift+drag adds).
• Ctrl+A selects everything in view.
• Handles:
• Drag a handle's axis to work along that axis.
• The centre square moves in the view's plane, rotates around the view's axis, or scales evenly.
• L, or the World/Local button, switches between world and local axes.
• Hold V while moving to snap to vertices and points.
• Where your moves go: every drag is one undo step.
• Cards, primitives, cameras, lights, groups, splats and volumes change their own transform settings, in their group's space.
• A prim from a file gets a move stored on its ReadUSD the first time you move it, pivoting on the prim's centre. It animates like any setting.
• Several items: a move moves them all; a rotate or scale works on each around its own centre.
• Duplicate: Ctrl+D copies the selected objects in the same place, with their settings, animation and inputs (the same Material, the same image); drag the copy away. Alt+D makes an instance: any setting edited on one edits both, but each keeps its own place.

The viewport also draws camera frustums with their names, light icons, CameraTracker points, point clouds, splats and volumes, over a ground grid that fades towards the view's edges. Holdouts are cut out of the picture.

Here a box is selected with the Move tool: its handles show its three axes, the centre square and the plane squares. The Outliner beside the view lists the same scene:

The Outliner

Window > Outliner opens a tab next to Properties. It shows the tree of the scene shown in the 3D viewport, with a search field:

• the root Scene, its groups and objects, nested as in the graph, each group's objects in the order of the wires on its objects socket (drag a wire's end along that socket in the node editor to reorder them);
• under each ReadUSD, the prims of its file;
• the scene's Materials at the end.

Selecting a row selects its node in the graph and in the 3D view, and the other way round: the graph, the 3D view and the Outliner share one selection.

Organising the scene

• Move into a group: drag objects onto a group (or a row inside it). They keep their place in the world: their settings change to make up for the group's transform. Drag onto empty space to go back to the root Scene.
• Group: Ctrl+G groups the selected rows in a new Scene, nothing moving. (In the node editor, Ctrl+G still makes a Nest.)
• Materials: drag a Material row onto an object (it goes on its mat input) or onto a file's prim. Right-click a row for Material (None or any Material node).
• Create in a group: right-click a group for Create in (the create menu's entries, made inside it).
• Rename: F2 or the right-click menu renames an object's, a group's or a Material's node.
• Delete: Delete or Backspace removes the selected objects from the scene (a group's objects go to the group holding it, keeping their places) and hides the selected file prims.

Every change is one undo step. Things that can't follow a move into a group keep their place and the status bar says why: animated settings, a ReadUSD, or a camera or light under a scaled group.

Prim settings

• Nothing is written into the file: the settings are stored on the ReadUSD.
• Instances are marked "(instance)"; their contents aren't listed.
• Live link prims: prims that only exist through the Blender live link are shown in italics.

Object settings

A 3D object's settings, in Properties and inside the node alike, come in sections you can fold:

• Transform: translate, rotate, scale and pivot, uniform scale, the rotation and transform orders, and parent: pick a group to move the object into it, keeping its place.
• Object: what the type has of its own (rows and columns, a light's kind and brightness, a camera's lens and image planes).
• Material: the Material on it (a list of the comp's Material nodes; None disconnects it), New (a Material made for it) and Edit (the material editor on it).
• Render: visible, a light's shadows and light and shadow links.

The selection also feeds the Add and Remove buttons of a Light3D's linking lists, and the Material panel's Assign to selection.

Not yet

• Rotating several items around their common centre.
• Lasso selection.
• Collections and variants in the Outliner.
• A file prim's moves with key buttons in the settings.