The scene viewport
A scene page shows its scene in the viewport, between the hierarchy and the inspector. This page covers moving around in it, selecting entities and moving them.
Moving the camera
Section titled “Moving the camera”| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Right mouse button, held | Look around |
| W, A, S, D (right button held) | Fly forward, left, back and right |
| Q, E (right button held) | Fly down and up |
| Left Shift (while flying) | Fly faster |
| Alt + left drag | Orbit around the point the camera looks at |
| Middle drag | Pan |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom toward the point the camera looks at, never past it |
| F | Frame the selection |
| Numpad 5 or O | Switch between perspective and orthographic |
| Tab | Capture the mouse for flying without holding a button; Escape releases it |
The W, A, S, D, Q and E keys fly the camera only while the right button is held (or the mouse is captured with Tab). Otherwise W, E and R switch the gizmo, as below.
F frames the selected entities and their children, gliding the camera to them. Double-clicking an entity in the hierarchy does the same for that entity.
The axis tripod in the top right corner shows the camera’s orientation. Click one of its axes to look along it: the top and bottom views look straight down and up.
While you zoom, the bottom left corner shows the distance to the point you zoom toward, the size of a grid cell and a scale bar.
Each scene remembers its camera, so a scene opens where you left it.
Orthographic views
Section titled “Orthographic views”An orthographic view draws without perspective: everything keeps its size however far away it is, and parallel lines stay parallel. It suits lining things up on a plan, a front or a side.
Switch with Numpad 5 or O, the square at the centre of the axis tripod, or Scene > Orthographic. The label under the tripod says which view is on: Persp or Ortho. Switching keeps what is in view, and the camera moves, zooms, pans, orbits and frames the same way in both.
Clicking an axis on the tripod also turns the view orthographic, and looking or orbiting away turns it back to perspective. A view you switch by hand stays as it is. To keep axis views in perspective, clear Axis views are orthographic in Preferences, on the Appearance tab.
An orthographic view also shows what lies a little behind the camera, as far back as the view is tall, so a view tipped down shows the ground below it; anything further behind is left out.
Every effect works in an orthographic view as in perspective: ambient occlusion, antialiasing, screen-space reflections and global illumination, the sky and the rest.
The scene remembers which view it was in, with its camera.
Selecting
Section titled “Selecting”- Click an entity in the viewport to select it. Lights, cameras and empty entities can be clicked at their position too.
- Ctrl+click adds an entity to the selection, or removes it.
- Drag from empty space to draw a rectangle: everything inside it is selected when you release. Ctrl+drag adds what is inside to the selection.
- Click empty space to clear the selection.
The hierarchy selects one entity at a time: click a row, or move through it with the arrow keys.
The gizmo
Section titled “The gizmo”The gizmo moves, turns and scales the selected entity. When several are selected, it works on the first one you selected.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| W | Move |
| E | Rotate |
| R | Scale |
| X | Switch between world and local space |
| Ctrl (while dragging) | Snap |
| V (while dragging) | Snap to a vertex |
The same modes are on the viewport toolbar. A new scene page starts in Move, in world space. Scale always works in the entity’s local space.
Snapping steps the drag in increments of 1 unit when moving, 15 degrees when rotating and 0.25 when scaling. The steps count from where the drag started, not from a world grid. Vertex Snap on the toolbar turns vertex snapping on for every move, without holding V.
Each drag is one step to undo (Ctrl+Z).
The toolbar
Section titled “The toolbar”From left to right, the viewport toolbar holds:
- Move, Rotate and Scale, and the World or Local space switch.
- Vertex Snap.
- Overlays: the grid (on, on the ground plane by default, or on the XY or YZ plane), entity markers (off by default; the selected entity always shows its own), level of detail colours, colliders and the frame rate. The scene remembers these.
- Post: turns post effects off for this view only (bloom, ambient occlusion, reflections, antialiasing and others), to see what each one adds. These are not saved.
- Debug: shows one part of the image instead of the final picture: albedo, normals, roughness, metallic, the shadow cascades, the light clusters, or overbright and invalid pixels.
- Tools for terrain, vegetation and splines, when the scene has a use for them.
- Animation, which opens the animation panel.
- Play, Pause and Stop on the right, which simulate the scene in place. While it simulates, the scene cannot be edited, and Stop puts it back as it was.
Editing entities
Section titled “Editing entities”| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+D | Duplicate the selected entity |
| Delete | Delete the selected entity |
| F2 | Rename the entity in the hierarchy |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y | Redo |
| Ctrl+S | Save |
| Ctrl+Shift+P | The command palette, to find any command by name |
| F12 | Save a screenshot of the editor window |
Duplicate and Delete act on the first selected entity. Copy, Paste and Paste as Child are in the Scene > Entity menu and on the hierarchy’s right-click menu, which also creates children and prefabs.
In the hierarchy, drag an entity onto another to make it a child; it keeps its place in the world. Drop it on the edge between two rows to reorder it.
To hide an entity, clear Active at the top of its inspector.
Every shortcut can be changed in Preferences, on the Shortcuts tab.