Viewing Your Scene

The Viewer’s 3D Mode

Open a Viewer and use V to switch to 3D mode - or select the view you want from the dropdown menu at the top right corner of the Viewer window.

The “built-in” views give you different perspectives on your 3D scene. You can quickly switch between the views by pressing the keyboard shortcuts for right view (X), left view (Shift+X), top view (C), bottom (Shift+C), front (Z), back (Shift+Z), and three-quarter perspective (V).

3D Viewer Toolbars

The 3D Viewer toolbars allow quick access to various viewport options.

• Look Through Camera / 3D Camera View

You can look through Cameras and Lights in your stage to be able to see their angles and reposition them. See Look Through Camera to learn more.

• Display Options

This dropdown allows you to customize what you see in the Viewer.

• Selection Style / Selection Tools

These tools are for selecting objects in the Viewer. See Selection in the 3D Viewer.

• Transform Tools

These tools are for transforming objects in the Viewer. See Using Transform Tools.

• Display option toggle buttons

These buttons are for quickly turning on and off different elements in the Viewer.

Viewer Node

The Viewer node Properties 3D View tab also has a variety of settings to determine how 3D scenes are shown in the viewport.

This includes:

• Display: Toggle the display of grids, headlamp, geometry, lights, and materials on and off, as well as change the geometry surface display, purposes, subdiv, and grid positions.

• Advanced 3D View Settings: Settings related to clipping and skew.

• Soft Selection: Enable Soft Select and use the graph to do face and vertex selection in an organic way.

• Renderer Settings: To learn more about render delegates and Hydra, see Hydra in the 3D Viewer.

See the Viewer node page to see all the controls in detail.

Navigate in the 3D Viewer

• Dolly: Press Alt and middle-mouse-button drag.

• Pan: Press Alt and left-mouse-button drag.

• Tilt: Press Ctrl/Cmd and left-mouse-button drag.

• Spin: Press Ctrl/Cmd and left-mouse-button drag.

• Roll: Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift and left-mouse-button drag.

• Fit the scene: Press F to fit the entire 3D scene within the Viewer.

Change 3D Viewer Navigation Preferences

Open the Preferences dialog (Shift+S), and select Panels > Viewer Handles.

Make the desired changes to the 3D bg and fg colors.

From the 3D control type dropdown menu, select the navigation control scheme you want to use (Nuke, Maya, Houdini, Lightwave, or Modo).

Click OK.

Note: The 3D control type also affects the mouse button assignments for panning and zooming in the node graph and 2D Viewers.