Transforms & materials

Select a node and the editor gives you a transform gizmo plus one-click pivot tools; select a mesh and the Material tab edits its surface. Regular transforms and material edits are non-destructive and undoable — one gizmo drag or one slider release is one undo step — and are stored in the project file. Geometry that you explicitly bake is the exception described below.

Transforms#

Pick the tool from the header segmented group (select / move / rotate / scale) or with a pane key while the editor viewport is focused: Q or V select, T move, R rotate, S scale. The gizmo attaches to the selected object.

• Space — the GLOBAL / LOCAL toggle switches the gizmo between world and local orientation.
• Snapping — the Snap toggle turns on grid snapping: 0.1 m translate, 15° rotate, 0.1× scale. Hold Shift while dragging to invert the current snap state (snap-on becomes free, free becomes snapped).

Numeric Position / Rotation° / Scale fields live in the inspector's Object tab and stay in sync with the gizmo both ways. The tab also has a Reset transform button that drops the node's edits and restores its imported pose.

Pivot tools (Model Tools)#

Run these from the command palette; each is a single undo step:

• Center to origin — moves the object so its bounding-box centre sits on the world origin.
• Drop to ground — drops the object so its lowest point rests on y = 0.
• Rescale to real-world height — uniformly scales the object so its world height matches a target in metres (default 1.8 m), then re-grounds it.
• Bake transforms into geometry — bakes the mesh's transform into its geometry (positions + normals) and resets the transform to identity.

Bake is for individual non-skinned meshes only. Skinned meshes and groups are skipped with a message. Baked geometry can be undone during the current session, but it is not restored when you reopen an editor project. Export a GLB before closing if you need to keep the baked result.

Materials#

The inspector's Material tab edits a mesh's MeshStandardMaterial. If a mesh uses a non-standard material type, the tab says so and the surface controls are unavailable.

Surface controls#

• Base color (sRGB)
• metalness and roughness (0–1 sliders)
• emissive color and intensity (0–4)
• opacity (0–1) and a transparent toggle
• side — Front / Back / Double
• shading — Smooth / Flat

A drag on a slider or colour picker updates the live material for feedback and commits one undo step on release.

Texture maps#

Five slots are editable: base color, normal, roughness, metalness, and emissive. Each slot shows its current state (imported / replaced / removed), and you can Replace it from a PNG, JPEG, or WebP file (up to 16 MB) or Remove it. A replacement image is embedded in the edit as a data URL, so the project stays self-contained across reloads.

Vertex-color warning. When a mesh uses vertex colors (COLOR_0), its base color is multiplied with those colors. A non-white base color can therefore darken or tint the whole mesh. The panel shows a warning when this applies.

Per-zone recolour (configurator assets)#

A configurator asset can expose named material zones such as body, trim, or glass. The Material tab gathers those zones into a Material zones list even when you have selected the parent group. Choose a zone to recolour just that part of the asset.

If the asset was inserted from the library with a declared palette, a Palette variant picker appears above the zone controls, applying a whole declared variant across the source's zones in one undoable step. See Configurator packs: swapping material zones for the pack side of this.

Next#

Stack geometry operations with The modifier stack, or ship the result via Optimizing & exporting GLBs.