A rig is the set your 3D models stand in: the lights, the backdrop and the environment. Without one, a model floats in empty space lit by three fixed lights nobody can move. With one, you place it on a real surface, light it the way you’d light a product, and every 3D layer in the project is lit by the same rig.
The rig is a project singleton, like the camera layer — one rig, one set.
Add a rig
Scene ▾ → Scene Rig, in the timeline toolbar (the button reads Camera until the project has a rig). The rig lands on its own channel, pinned directly under the camera, so the set and the lens read as one block at the top of the stack. A rig is only meaningful through a camera, so adding one to a project that has no camera yet adds both.
The row is labelled Rig and is drawn like the camera row — shorter, muted, not draggable. Delete the clip or the channel to remove it.
Choosing Scene Rig again selects the existing singleton instead of creating a second set. The renderer can resolve several rig clips over time, but the current editor intentionally authors one project rig.
The playhead never turns the lights off
A camera clip’s neutral state is “no move”, which is harmless. A rig clip’s neutral state would be “no lights” — every model black. So while the playhead sits outside every rig clip, the nearest rig still lights the scene, and a project with no rig at all keeps the historical three-light default.
Nothing goes dark because of where the playhead is.
Presets
Select the rig clip and the right panel opens the Rig inspector, which starts with a preset grid. A preset sets the whole set — backdrop, lights and environment — in one click, never a fragment.
| Preset | Set |
|---|---|
| Three-Point Portrait | The exact legacy default: key, fill and rim, no backdrop. Pick this to match a project made before rigs existed. |
| Studio Room | Warm key over a light cyclorama, interior environment |
| Product Softbox | A wide soft spot overhead, tight white cyc, shadowed |
| Top-Down Product | Overhead spot onto a disc, for flat-lay style shots |
| Rim-Lit Dark | Two cool/warm rims against a near-black backdrop |
| Neon Two-Tone | Cyan and magenta keys, dark reflective floor |
| Sunset Window | Low warm sun plus sky light, warm cyc |
| Overcast Exterior | Sky-dominant, soft, a plain ground plane |
| Warehouse | Interior box with a high skylight key |
| Turntable | Even four-light setup inside a cylinder — for orbits |
Lights
Up to eight lights, of five kinds:
| Kind | Use |
|---|---|
| Directional | The sun, or a big distant source. Direction matters, distance doesn’t. |
| Point | A bare bulb. Falls off with distance. |
| Spot | A cone with a soft edge. The only kind with an adjustable cone angle. |
| Ambient | A flat lift everywhere. No direction, no shadows. |
| Sky | Two colours — one from above, one bounced from the ground. |
Each light is placed by azimuth, elevation and distance rather than by X/Y/Z, because that is how lighting is actually described — “key 40° camera-left, a bit above”. It also means a light stays aimed at your subject for free, and survives a change of composition size.
The dial
The dial at the top of a light’s card is a plan view of the set, read like a map:
- Up is away from you. A puck at 12 o’clock is a light behind the subject; at 6 o’clock it is between the subject and the camera. 3 o’clock is camera-right.
- Centre is straight overhead. The dashed ring is the horizon — inside it the light is above the set, outside it is below. The rim is straight underneath.
Drag the puck to set azimuth and elevation together, or type the numbers. A light below the horizon draws as a hollow puck, so you can see at a glance that it is under-lighting.
Switching a light off
The ☾ button dims a light to nothing but keeps it in the rig. That is deliberate: adding or removing a light changes a compiled shader constant, so every material in the scene recompiles and the preview stalls. Switching off costs nothing.
In the 3D view
The cube button on a light’s row opens the 3D view and hands that light the move gizmo. Drag it and the position is converted back into azimuth / elevation / distance — the marker is never the source of truth, so a bad drag is visible immediately rather than drifting. Click any other light’s marker in the view to switch to it.
World View uses the same Exposure → ACES → sRGB display transform as the camera preview and exported render. Orbiting changes the viewpoint, not the apparent power of the lights: a surface seen from the same camera angle has the same brightness in both views.
Once the rig has keyframes, dragging that gizmo writes Azimuth, Elevation and Distance keys at the playhead instead of changing the resting light. This is the same auto-key rule used by animated layers and cameras.
Cyclorama
The backdrop the set stands on. Nine shapes:
| Shape | What it is |
|---|---|
| Cyclorama | A floor curving up into a back wall with no seam — the default, and what a real photographic cyc is |
| Floor | A flat rectangular ground plane |
| Disc | A round ground plane, for turntable and top-down shots |
| Wall | A single flat backdrop, no floor |
| Corner | An infinity corner: floor, back wall and one side wall, all filleted together |
| Room | An inward-facing box — floor and four walls, open at the top so the camera can tilt up |
| Cylinder | A round floor with a wall wrapping all the way round |
| Dome | A hemisphere over a round floor |
| None | No backdrop; the rig carries only lights |
Every one of these is real geometry, so the camera can orbit it, models cast onto it and it occludes what passes behind it.
Sizes are multiples of the composition height, not pixels. A set built at 1080p is correct at 4K with no adjustment — the proportions are what you authored, not the pixel count. The defaults are sized to the frame, so the set’s edges, corners and curves are inside the shot rather than off it.
The set’s floor sits below the subject, and Position Y moves it from there.
Model layers default to Fit → Rig floor → Place on set. The renderer measures the model’s real bounds after fit, rotation and scale and rests its lowest point on this floor, so devices with different authored pivots do not float. Choose Free on a model when it should fly or be positioned independently of the set.
Curve is how tightly the floor sweeps up into the wall, as a fraction of the set’s height. 0 is a hard corner; 0.35 is the studio default.
A cyclorama is solid
It writes real depth, so layers behind it are cut by its surface rather than painted over. That’s what makes a model stand on it instead of in front of it.
If you want a rig purely for its lights, set Shape → None. The rig then draws nothing at all.
Shadows
Set Shadows → Real shadows and tick Cast shadow on the lights that should throw one. A model then casts a true shadow — the shape of the object, moving as the light moves — onto the cyclorama and onto the other models.
Two things are capped on purpose:
- Max casters. Each casting light re-renders the whole set from that light, every frame. Two is usually a key and a rim; more rarely reads and always costs.
- The cyclorama catches but does not throw. A backdrop casting into its own shadow map produces self-shadowing on its curve and nothing useful. Catch shadows on the cyclorama is on by default; casting is not offered.
Contact only keeps the cheap soft blob under each model, which is enough for a plain product shot and costs nothing.
Saving your own rig
Set the lights, backdrop and environment the way you want them, type a name under the preset grid and press Save. It joins the grid with your other rigs. Shift-click one of your own to delete it.
What gets saved is the rig exactly as it will be applied, so a saved rig can never come back subtly different from the one you set up.
Environment
An HDRI environment lights the scene with a photographed room instead of individual lamps. It is what makes metal and glass look real — reflections need something to reflect.
Source is one of:
- Preset — ten maps that ship with the app and work offline.
- Custom file — upload your own
.hdror.exr(up to 50 MB). Keep it at 2k or below; the cost of preparing a map scales with its resolution and a bigger one does not look better on a soft reflection. - None — lights only.
Intensity, Exposure and the three rotation axes are live: they change how the frame is rendered without re-preparing the map, so they animate freely. Changing the source re-prepares the map, which is why it cannot be animated.
Rotating the environment is the fastest way to move a reflection or a highlight without touching a single light.
Animating the rig
Click the small stopwatch beside any supported light, cyclorama or environment field. The field is added to RIG KEYFRAMES, seeded with its current value at 0% and 100%, and the builder opens on that exact property. A green stopwatch means the property is controlled by its track; edit its values in the builder.
You can also open RIG KEYFRAMES first and use Add Property. Every animatable property of the set is grouped per light:
| Group | Animatable |
|---|---|
| Each light | Intensity, Azimuth, Elevation, Distance, Colour — plus Cone Angle and Penumbra on a spot |
| Cyclorama | Position X/Y/Z, Rotate X/Y/Z, Scale, Opacity, Colour |
| Environment | Intensity, Exposure, Rotate X/Y/Z |
Keying a light’s azimuth from 0 to 360 across the clip sweeps the highlight — and its shadow — all the way round the subject.
New tracks always start from the value already authored in the rig. For example, promoting a light whose intensity is 2.2 creates two 2.2 keys; enabling animation does not make the light jump to a generic default.
What can’t be animated, and why
These are refused because each one is a rebuild rather than a value, and animating it would rebuild every frame:
| Not animatable | What it would cost |
|---|---|
| A light’s kind, or adding / removing one | Recompiles every material in the scene |
| Cast shadow and shadow resolution | Resizes a render target |
| Cyclorama shape and size | Rebuilds the geometry |
| Environment source | Re-prepares the whole map |
Switch a light off with ☾ and animate its intensity instead — the effect is the same and it costs nothing.
How it fits with 3D models
A rig replaces the per-model lights, environment and exposure on every 3D model layer in the project. Each model keeps its own contact-shadow setting, screen artwork, material and animation.
With no rig layer, every model keeps the lights on its own panel, exactly as before. Adding a rig is additive — it never changes a project until you add one.
Where to go next
- 3D Model Layers — the objects that stand in the rig
- Camera Layer — including the Camera Rig, a parametric orbit / crane / spiral move
- Keyframe Builder
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