Documentation

Materials & lighting

Physically-based materials lit by a real environment, previewed live in the viewport rather than guessed at and re-rendered.

The Material Editor

Press M, or open it from the ribbon. Materials are physically based — the same model real-time engines use — so what you set here is what arrives when you export.

Assign a material by selecting an object and applying it from the editor. Materials are shared: change one and every object using it updates.

Environment and image-based lighting

Open the Environment window from the ribbon. The studio opens with Neutral Studio loaded, which both lights the scene and is drawn behind your model.

Image-based lighting means the environment itself is the light source, which is why materials look plausible immediately without setting up lamps. You can load a different HDRI, or turn the visible background off while keeping its lighting contribution.

Lights

Add lights from the Create tab. The Light Explorer lists every light in the scene in one place, so you can adjust them together rather than hunting through the Scene Explorer.

Lights support photometric settings and IES profiles — real-world intensity and beam shapes, if you need them to match a specification.

Shading modes

Key	Mode	Shows
F2	Wireframe	Edges only
F3	Shaded	Surfaces, no edges
F4	Edged	Surfaces with edges drawn on top

Separately, the render style dropdown switches between the flat preview rig and Realistic, which uses the environment lighting.

Cameras

Add a camera from the Create tab, then press C to look through the selected one. Press C again to return to the free viewport.