The scene is the large empty space containing all the visual elements you design. The Scene Node in the explorer logically represents the scene. It contains the properties for basic functionality and appearance of the empty space surrounding the scene objects, and for the behavior of the scene as a whole.
Managing the properties of the scene
If you click the Scene node in the explorer (always at the top of the list of nodes), or if you click any empty space in the scene viewer, then you have selected the scene. Its properties will be shown on the right.
The scene node is the first node at the top of the explorer. It cannot be duplicated or deleted.
Scene Node Properties
Property | Options |
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Name |
The name of the scene. |
Background |
If you don’t select "environment" as your background, then your scene has no lights. You’ll need to create mesh lights or global lights, or use materials with an emissive color, to see any meshes within your scene. |
Environment |
A set of images that seamlessly stitch together into an “environment map” to give the appearance of a world around your meshes. Environments also contain light sources that match the images, so light seems to come from the light sources (e.g., lightbulbs or sun or fireplace) visible in the map. Pick from one of the pre-defined environments available, or upload your own environment. |
Environment Lighting Intensity |
Control how brightly the light sources of the selected environment illuminate your meshes. |
Environment Rotation |
Turn the environment map left or right (without moving any objects within the scene). This parameter is in degrees: it expects a number ranging from 0-360, but numbers outside that range are accepted and interpreted. |
Environment Blur |
Control how sharply the environment appears behind your meshes. Usually the environment has some blur applied to guide the viewer’s attention to your product. |
Ambient Color |
Specify the color of ambient light in the scene, regardless of background. |
Visual Options | |
Optimize Scene |
On (the default) ensures the scene runs smoothly with a high frame rate, which may sacrifice texture quality on some slower machines. Turning off this feature maintains higher-quality textures, which could result in low frame rates and jerky animations for some users. Most users prefer faster performance, even when using a slower device such as a low-power cell phone. |
Enable Hover Effects |
When the user’s cursor is over any interactive mesh, should that mesh be highlighted with a hover effect? A mesh is considered interactive when it has an interaction Snap block applied, such as “On click” or “add draggable”. A hover effect is a colored edge that surrounds the mesh, customizable by the edge parameters below. |
Enable Entering Fullscreen | Show the fullscreen icon to users. When clicked, the scene can fill the screen. This is useful for kiosks or presentations.![]() |
Texture Sampling Mode |
Select from different ways textures are applied to meshes, ranging from faster rendering to more realistic textures.
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Post in Viewer |
Post-processing effects are optional enhancements applied after the meshes are calculated and the scene is about to be shown to the user.
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Render Mode in Viewer |
How will your customer view the scene? Choose from the same list of render modes available in the scene designer. Learn more about render modes shown in the scene toolbar. |
Display Edge Color Display Edge Width Display Edge Tolerance |
If hover effects are enabled above, these settings control that hover effect.
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Grid Options | |
Display Grid in Viewer |
Show your customer a 2D grid, similar to the one you see in the scene designer. |
Display Axes in Viewer |
Show your customer the same colorful X, Y, and Z axes that you see in the scene designer. |
Grid Size |
Adjust the overall size of the grid. |
Grid Step Unit Size |
Define how large one square unit of the grid would be. |
Grid Major Step Interval |
If your grid is large, define a major step to highlight every 5th line, or every 10th line. By default, this is zero (no major steps are shown). |
Grid Normal |
When "display grid in viewer" is on, this describes which axis would point away from the grid plane.The other two axes would define the grid plane. |
Dimensions | |
Scalar per scene unit |
A scene unit is one square shown in the grid. This defaults to 1. Specify any multiplier here to adjust the scale of the grid. |
Unit |
Add a text description of the scene units. The default is “m”. |
Loading Experience |
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Default Viewpoint |
When the scene first renders for your customer, which viewpoint will they be looking through? (If you have no viewpoints defined, this option is not shown.) |
Experience |
As the scene loads, what visual indicator should be used to give your customer a sense of activity and progress?
“None” is appropriate only in some integration situations. Providing no visual indicator of progress can cause your customers to think something is wrong and they may refresh the page, slowing the experience even more. |
XR Augmented Reality | |
Enable AR |
Some devices, like cell phones with cameras, support augmented reality or virtual reality (AR or VR, often referred to in the general term XR). If you would like to offer your product to your customer in augmented reality, leave this box checked. When enabled...
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Allow Scaling |
Some devices can determine the size and distance of real-world objects, like tables or rooms, in AR mode. These devices can automatically scale the scene so your product appears life-size. |
Units per Meter |
How many scene units (defined above) fit into one meter in XR reality? By default, since scene units are themselves 1m, this defaults to 1. If your scene units were in inches, you could try 39.37 scene units per meter. |
Add Shadows Estimate Lighting |
Some devices can determine the location of real-world light sources. If your scene is being displayed by such a device, you can…
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Metadata | |
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Metadata is a flexible key/value dictionary you can add to the scene object. |
Connectors | |
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Connectors can be applied not only to any mesh in a scene, but also to the entire scene itself. This is useful when nesting scenes. A nested scene with a connector can be dragged and dropped in the parent scene, with the connector defining how the meshes in the nested scene are positioned and rotated within the parent scene. Learn more about connectors. |