What the studio does automatically
How the piece is centred, grounded and framed
A file arrives in whatever coordinates its author used — a ring three metres from the origin, a building drawn in millimetres, a car whose floor is at negative forty. None of that reaches the render. On load the piece is centred, stood on the floor and framed by the camera, and every later change keeps it there. Here is what that means and how to use it.
Centred and grounded
The model is moved so that its centre is on the vertical axis and its lowest point sits on the floor at zero. This is what makes a shadow fall under it and a mirror floor reflect it from the right place. It is done to the whole file at once, so the parts keep their arrangement — nothing inside the piece moves relative to anything else.
Re-grounded when the pose changes
Tipping a ring 35° toward the camera, or laying it flat, rotates it about its base — and rotating about the base moves the lowest point. After every pose change the piece is dropped or lifted until it touches the floor again, so it never floats or sinks. The camera and its target follow the piece's centre by the same amount, so the view you set stays aimed at it, just re-aimed.
Framed to its size
Re-frame — the F key, or the button — places the camera at a distance computed from the piece's bounding radius and the lens, with a little room around it, keeping the direction you were already looking from. It animates there over half a second. It does not change the angle; it changes how far away, so that the whole piece fits. After loading, after a pose change, after a zoom that went too far: F.
- Centre on the vertical axis, base on the floor
- Every pose change re-grounds it
- F fits the camera to the piece from where you are
- Zoom limits scale with the piece — you cannot lose it
Why the zoom range comes from the model
How close and how far you can zoom is set as a multiple of the piece's radius, not in fixed units, so a ring and a house have the same feel on the slider and neither can be zoomed so far the piece disappears. The zoom slider's track is logarithmic for the same reason — the useful near range would otherwise sit in the first two per cent of the track.
The one thing it will not do
It will not guess which way is up. A pendant modelled lying down arrives lying down. The Upright pose and the ring-angle slider set orientation; F then frames it. Everything here happens on your own machine: the file is converted and rendered in the browser through your GPU and is never uploaded, so an unreleased design stays unreleased.
Questions
My model is off-centre or floating. How do I fix it?
Press F to re-frame. If it still looks off, change the pose once and back — every pose change re-grounds the piece on the floor and re-centres the camera's target.
Does re-frame change my camera angle?
No. It keeps the direction you are looking from and sets the distance so the whole piece fits. The angle presets and dragging set direction; F sets fit.
Why can I not zoom out further?
The zoom range is set from the piece's size — far enough to see it small, never so far it vanishes. It is the same range for a ring and a building, relative to each.
Free · runs in your browser · your file is never uploaded