Scene basics

The Scene tab is a 3D model of your venue: the surfaces you project onto and the projectors aimed at them. This page covers moving around the scene, adding to it, and the settings that apply to the whole scene.

Build the scene to match the room. Put each projector where the real one hangs, aimed the same way with the same throw ratio, and each surface where the real object stands. When the model matches the room, the projected image matches too, and alignment comes down to small corrections.

What is on screen

Area	What it holds
Viewport (center)	The 3D view: surfaces, projector bodies and their throw cones
Mode toolbar (top center, floating)	From left to right: + Add, the modes, Add to selection (touch screens only), the gizmo tools, World / Local, the snap magnet, the display buttons, PJ View and the camera button
Properties panel (left)	Settings for whatever is selected: a surface, a projector or the scene itself. A media, cuelist or Material node selected in the scene graph shows its details here too, including a Material's mapping
Scene graph (bottom)	The tree of everything in the scene. Press G to show or hide it

Press \ to collapse the Properties panel and give the viewport the full width.

On a phone, the Scene is for viewing: looking around, selecting, and following someone's view. The toolbar keeps only the display buttons, PJ View and the camera button. Tap a projector, a surface or a scene graph node to select it and see its properties, which are read-only on a phone, in portrait or landscape. To add, move, rotate or warp anything, use a tablet or a computer.

Moving the camera

The camera orbits around a pivot point. These controls work anywhere over the viewport, in every mode.

Input	Action
Left-drag	Orbit around the point you pressed on
Middle-drag	Zoom toward the point you pressed on. Drag right or down to move in, left or up to pull back, as in TouchDesigner
Right-drag	Pan. The view slides the way you drag, relative to where the camera looks: looking down at the floor, it slides across the floor
Scroll wheel	Zoom toward what is under the cursor
F	Frame the selection. In a view such as Top or Left, frame everything

On a touch screen:

Touch	Action
One-finger drag	Orbit around the point you touched
Pinch	Zoom toward the point between your fingers
Two-finger drag	Pan
Tap	Select

A few details:

• Orbit turns around what you grab. Press on an object and the view rotates around that point, marked with a crosshair while you hold the button. On empty space, it rotates around the current pivot.
• Zoom heads for what you point at. Middle-drag on an object, or scroll with the cursor over it, and the camera moves toward that point, which stays under the cursor. Over empty space, it moves toward the current pivot.
• The cursor hides while you navigate. During a pan or zoom, the pointer wraps around at the edge of the screen, so you can keep dragging.
• Orbit stops short of vertical. You can look almost straight down or up, but the view never flips over.
• Zoom has limits. The camera stays between 1 and 200 units from the pivot, whether you use the wheel, a middle-drag or a pinch.
• Right-drag pans; a right-click opens the scene menu. If the pointer moves more than a few pixels while the button is down, it's a pan and the menu stays closed. See The scene menu.
• Your viewpoint is saved. The camera is where you left it the next time you open the Scene tab, even after a reload.

Perspective and orthographic

The camera button, at the right end of the toolbar after PJ View, switches between two ways of drawing the scene:

• Perspective draws the scene as your eye sees it, with distant things smaller.
• Orthographic has no perspective, so sizes and parallel lines stay true. This helps when you're lining things up.

Click the button to switch. What you were looking at stays the same size on screen.

The ▾ beside the button opens a menu with the same two choices, six views (Top, Front, Right, Bottom, Back and Left) and the Field of view.

Choosing a view flies the camera around to look straight at that side of the scene and switches to Orthographic. Front looks from the front of the scene; Top looks straight down, with the front at the bottom of the screen. The first time you use a view, it frames everything in the scene: every surface, and every projector with its throw cone. Click the camera button to go back to Perspective.

Each view remembers how you left it: pan or zoom in Top, and Top comes back that way next time, even after a reload. Views are saved per project, for you, on every device you sign in on. Orbiting takes you out of the view without changing what it saved. To reset a view, press F in it with the pointer over the viewport.

Field of view runs from 15° to 100° and defaults to 50°. Wider shows more of the scene; narrower flattens it, like a longer lens. The camera moves in or out as you change it, so what you were looking at keeps its size. Reset returns to 50°. The slider is grayed out in Orthographic, which has no field of view.

Orbit, pan, zoom, F and Home work the same way in both. Your camera settings are saved for you on every device you sign in on.

Framing with F

F points the camera at something and moves in to fit it:

Selection	F frames
A projector	The projector and its full throw cone
A surface	The surface
Nothing	The active surface

In one of the camera menu's views, such as Top or Front, F frames everything, whatever is selected, and resets that view.

F works only while the pointer is over the viewport, and not while you're looking through a projector.

Tip

Lost? Right-click empty space in the viewport and choose Home. It frames the active surface, which usually gets you back.

Adding projectors and surfaces

Click + Add at the left end of the toolbar to open a grid of everything you can add:

Tile	What it adds
Projector	A projector. Pick its make and model first, or enter it by hand: see Adding a projector
Plane, Box, Pyramid, Cylinder, Cone, Sphere, Dome, Curved screen, Disc	A surface of that shape: see Built-in shapes
3D file…	A surface from a model file on your computer: OBJ, FBX, glTF or GLB. The file uploads to Assets, and the surface appears when the upload finishes
Selection Set, under On a Surface	A selection set for the selected projector on the selected surface, holding every point the projector lights, named after the projector. If there are several surfaces and none is selected, pick a Surface · Projector pair from the list. Grayed out, with the reason, until the scene has a projector and a surface. See Several materials on one surface
Material, under On a Surface	Another material, mapped UV across the whole surface and selected. It goes on the scene's only surface, or on the one you pick from a list. Its mapping and limit are in its Properties. Grayed out, with the reason, until a surface has room for one
Cuelist, under Cues	An empty cuelist, named with the next free Cuelist N, as Add Cuelist in the scene graph and + on the Cue tab do
From Assets	A surface from a 3D model already in Assets, one tile per model. With none, it reads Upload a 3D file or add one in Assets

The same grid opens from Add when you right-click or long-press empty space in the viewport, and when you right-click the Scene node or empty space in the scene graph. Added from the viewport, a new item lands where you clicked: on the surface under the pointer, or on the floor. Added from + Add or the scene graph, it lands in the middle of your view.

Each new item gets its own name (Plane 1, Plane 2, Projector 3; a model takes its own name, such as Stage, then Stage 2). It's placed clear of the others and selected, ready to move. Ctrl+Z undoes one add at a time.

+ Add is grayed out while no project is open, and it isn't shown on a phone.

The scene menu

Right-click anywhere in the viewport, or long-press on a touch screen, for two actions that are always there:

Item	What it does
Home	Frames the active surface
Refresh stream	Restarts the live video drawn on your surfaces, if it has stopped updating

On empty space, Add appears above them and opens the grid described above; what you add lands where you clicked. On a surface, Duplicate and Delete appear above Add. On a projector body or its label, View, Projector Settings, Duplicate and Delete appear above Home instead: see Duplicating and deleting.

Deleting

Select the projectors and surfaces you want to remove, then press Del or Backspace with the pointer anywhere in the Scene tab or the scene graph. You can also right-click one of them, in the viewport or the scene graph, and choose Delete. If it's one of several selected, the item reads Delete 3 items (or 3 projectors, 3 surfaces) and removes them all. Delete Selection in the command palette (/) does the same.

• Deleting projectors asks for confirmation; deleting only surfaces doesn't.
• One Ctrl+Z restores everything a delete removed, each in its place in the list. A restored surface comes back without its selection sets or saved warp.
• The keys don't delete while you're typing in a field or while a menu or dialog is open.
• Anything another operator is working on is skipped, and a message names who has it: Deleted 1 of 2 — Floor is held by Dana. See Locks.
• You can't delete from a phone.

Duplicating

Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) and drag the gizmo to copy the selection. The copies go where you release, and the originals stay put. This works with Move, Rotate and Scale, so Alt-dragging a rotation ring makes a rotated copy. With several items selected, they're all copied and move together. The copies are selected afterwards, and one Ctrl+Z removes them all.

• Start the drag on the gizmo. A drag that starts on a projector body or a surface orbits the camera, as it does without Alt.
• An Alt-click without a drag does nothing.
• Before October 2026, this was Ctrl. A Ctrl-drag (Cmd on a Mac) now moves the selection with image lock reversed, and a Ctrl-click still adds to or removes from the selection.

You can also right-click a projector or a surface, in the viewport or the scene graph, and choose Duplicate, or press Ctrl+D. The copies appear half a meter above the originals. If it's one of several selected, the item reads Duplicate 3 items and copies them all.

• A copy is named after its original: Screen copy, then Screen copy 2.
• A surface's copy keeps its model, media, position, rotation, scale, pivot and visibility. It starts unwarped and without selection sets; the sculpted warp and the sets stay with the original.
• A projector's copy keeps its lens and image settings. See Duplicating and deleting for what it leaves behind.
• You can copy something another operator is working on. The original doesn't change, and the copy is yours.
• You can't duplicate from a phone.

Modes

The four mode buttons, after + Add in the toolbar, set what a click in the viewport does. Camera controls work the same in every mode.

Mode	Key	What a click does
Object	V	Selects a surface or a projector and attaches a transform gizmo
Point Select	E	Picks points on the surface, ready for warping
Warp	W	Drags the selected points to reshape the surface
Map	U	Places the selected Material's picture on its surface: drag the border's corners to scale it, its sides to stretch it, or its inside to move it. Selecting a Material in the scene graph turns Map on, and the previous tool returns once no Material is selected. Grayed out until a Material is selected

Use Object mode to build the scene: see Surfaces and models and Projectors. Point Select and Warp sculpt the surface, as covered in 3D surface warping. Map places media on a surface: see The Map tool.

Display modes

The four display buttons after the gizmo tools change how surfaces are drawn in your view. Switching them doesn't change the scene or what the projectors show.

Button	Shows
Mesh	Each model's geometry: its points, its edges and a flat shaded fill. While Mesh is on, the ▾ beside it switches each of these and X-ray on or off and sets their colors
UV	Your media on each surface, laid out by the surface's own texture coordinates
Lux	A false-color heatmap of the light falling on each surface
Beams	Where each projector's light lands on the surface, including overlaps and shadows. It was called Projection before October 2026

With Lux or Beams on, a Blend button appears beside them. It shows the light after each projector's Moonblend layer and switches Moonblend on the projectors as well: see Beams.

PJ View looks through the selected projector, as P does. Press it again, or P or Esc, to return to the scene camera. The camera flies there and back in under a second; if your system is set to reduce motion, it cuts instead. The projectors and the grid fade out as you go in and fade back once you've left the lens. The camera button comes last.

Toolbar settings survive a reload. The display mode, the Mesh settings, World / Local and snapping follow your account to every device. The tool, Add to selection and PJ View are saved per device. Blend belongs to the project and is the same for everyone.

View modes covers what each mode is for and when to trust it.

Scene properties

With nothing selected, the Properties panel shows the settings for the whole scene, under the heading Scene. Click empty space in the viewport to deselect everything and return to them.

Name

The scene's name, shared with everyone in the project.

Units

What one scene unit stands for: Meters, Feet or Centimeters.

Warning

Changing Units doesn't convert anything. Positions, sizes and distances keep their values: a surface 8 units wide stays 8 units wide. Choose your unit before you start measuring, and treat it as a label that tells everyone on the project what the numbers mean.

Meters is the default and suits most venues: throw distances and surface sizes come out as comfortable one- and two-digit numbers.

Background

The color behind everything in the viewport, set with a color swatch, with its hex value beside it. It's a viewing preference only and is never projected.

A dark background is best for judging a projection, because it's closest to how a dark room looks. Lighten it only when you need to see the edges of dark geometry.

In the scene graph, right-click the Scene node and open Background for five presets: Dark, Charcoal, Midnight, Black and Gray.

Grid

A switch that shows or hides the floor grid, and a Size field that appears while the grid is on.

The grid has one square per unit, so a Size of 20 gives a 20 × 20 area of 1-unit squares. Use it as a quick scale check: if a surface you know is 8 m wide spans two squares, your scene isn't in meters.

The Scene node's right-click menu in the scene graph has the same controls: Show Grid / Hide Grid, and a Grid Size submenu with 10, 20, 40 and 100.

Note

The grid is hidden while you look through a projector, since a real projector doesn't show it. It comes back when you leave that view.

Selecting things

In Object mode, a click in the viewport selects what is under the cursor:

• Click a projector body or its name label to select the projector. Hovering over either highlights its throw cone. The label is drawn on top of everything, so clicking it selects its projector even when a surface or another projector is behind it. Dragging from a label orbits the view.
• Click a surface to select it.
• Click empty space to deselect everything and remove the gizmo.
• Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on macOS) a projector or a surface to add it to the selection or remove it.
• Shift-click a projector or a surface to add it to the selection. Shift never removes anything.
• With Ctrl or Shift held, clicking empty space changes nothing.

Touch screens have no Ctrl key, so the toolbar has an Add to selection button (two boxes, one checked) after the mode buttons. While it's on, each tap on a projector or a surface adds it to the selection or removes it, in the viewport and the scene graph alike. A tap on empty space then changes nothing; turn the button off to deselect with a tap. Gizmo drags still work while it's on. It stays on, even after a reload, until you turn it off. With a mouse, use Ctrl and Shift instead.

Projectors and surfaces can be selected together. A selected projector lights up and its name label gets a white outline; a selected surface gets a white box around it. Anything another operator is working on shows in orange. With several selected, World shows one gizmo at their center and Local shows one on each; either way, dragging moves, rotates or scales them all. See Several at once.

Selection is shared across the Properties panel, the scene graph, the projector cards and the projector selector in the top bar: select a projector anywhere and it's selected everywhere.

Tip

A projector behind a surface won't steal a click meant for the surface. Moonshine picks whichever is closer to the camera, so you can click a surface even when projectors surround it.

Press Esc to step back out, one level per press: first deselect everything, then drop the active warp point, then leave the projector view.

Several at once

With several projectors and surfaces selected:

• Drag the gizmo to move them all by the same amount. One Ctrl+Z puts them all back. Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drag to move copies instead: see Duplicating.
• Move, Rotate and Scale (the toolbar buttons, or M, R and S) set what the gizmo does. Scale is grayed out until a surface is selected.
• Rotating and scaling follow the World / Local button beside the tools: a globe for World, a gizmo for Local. Press O to switch. Moonshine remembers your choice.
  • World, the default, shows one gizmo at the center of the selection, on the world axes. The selection rotates and scales as one rigid group around that point, and the gizmo stays there after a rotation.
  • Local shows a gizmo on each selected item, on its own axes. Drag any of them and each item rotates or scales by the same amount around its own pivot, with its gizmo following it.
• Scaling applies to surfaces only, since a projector has no scale. In World, a projector's position still spreads out or draws in with the group.
• F frames them all, and Esc deselects them all.
• The Properties panel shows the settings they have in common, under a heading such as 2 projectors, 1 surface: Position and Rotation for a mix, plus the lens settings if they're all projectors, or Scale if they're all surfaces. A shared value is shown; where values differ, the field shows —. Type or scrub a value to apply it to all of them, each kept within its own lens limits. One Ctrl+Z undoes it for all of them.

An item another operator is working on stays selected and shows in orange. Your changes skip it and say so: Moved 2 of 3 — Projector C is held by Dana, or in the Properties panel, Projector C is held by Dana: changes skip it. See Locks.

Pivots

A pivot is the point something rotates and scales around. Every projector and surface has one, at its own origin until you move it.

Press L, or click the pivot button after Move, Rotate and Scale, to use the pivot tool. The gizmo then moves the pivot and leaves the projector or surface where it is. Rotate or scale it afterwards and it turns around the new pivot. Press M, R or S, or click their buttons, to go back; clicking the pivot button again returns to Move.

• One item selected, or several in Local: each pivot moves by the same amount, along that item's own axes, and is saved with the project. One Ctrl+Z puts them back.
• Several in World: the single gizmo is the selection's shared pivot, at the center until you move it. It isn't saved: it lasts while you keep that selection and returns to the center when you select something else.

A surface's pivot is also its Pivot Offset in the Properties panel, and a surface's Position is the position of its pivot. Moving a surface's pivot changes its Position and leaves the surface where it is. A projector's Position is always where the projector is, wherever its pivot is.

Snapping

Click the magnet after the World / Local button, or press N, to turn snapping on or off. With snapping and Step on, every gizmo drag moves in whole steps. Set the step on the Step row of the menu under the ▾ beside the magnet. It shows the step for the tool in use:

Tool	Step in	Default
Move	Scene units, as set in Units	0.1
Rotate	Degrees	15°
Scale	Scale	0.1
Pivot tool	Scene units	0.1

Type a step and press Enter (the menu stays open), or middle-drag the field for the value ladder. Each tool keeps its own step. The steps and the magnet are saved for you on every device you sign in on.

• Steps count from where the drag began. A projector at 3.14 m moved with a 0.1 step goes to 3.24, 3.34 and so on; a rotation with 15° steps turns 15°, 30°, 45° from where it started. Several selected keep their layout: as one group in World, or each by the same amount in Local. The selection's pivot moves with them.
• Moves follow the gizmo's axes: the world's in World, the item's own in Local. Rotations snap around whichever ring you drag.
• Scale steps the surface's own scale. With a 0.1 step, a surface at 2.0 goes to 2.1, 2.2. Dragged from the center, all three axes keep their proportions.
• Shift still slows the drag, so steps come further apart under your hand. One Ctrl+Z undoes a whole drag, snapped or not.

Snapping to points and edges

While the magnet is on, the ▾ beside it opens a menu of what drags snap to. You can tick any combination. The menu stays open until you click elsewhere or press Esc.

Item	Snaps to	Default
Step (grid icon)	Whole steps, as above. Its field is on the same row and is grayed out while Step is off	On
Points (dots on a triangle)	Corners and other vertices of surfaces	On
Edges (a triangle with one bold side)	The nearest point on a surface's own edges: its outline, such as a plane's four sides, and its sharp folds, such as a box's edges. Not the lines between points inside a surface	Off

When you move a projector, a surface or a pivot and the gizmo's center comes within about 10 pixels on screen of a vertex or edge of any visible surface, it lands exactly on it. A ring marks the spot until you release. Points take priority over edges, and both over steps.

• Move puts the item's pivot on the point: its origin, unless you've moved its pivot. With several selected, it's the group's pivot in World, or the one you're dragging in Local, and the rest move by the same amount. A surface never snaps to itself.
• The pivot tool can also snap to the selected surface's own corners, so placing a pivot on a corner takes one drag.
• In Warp, a dragged point snaps to other surfaces' points and edges, to points on its own surface that aren't moving, or by whole Move steps along its arrow. The surrounding points follow as usual.
• Rotate and Scale snap by steps only.

Step, Points and Edges have no keyboard shortcuts. Phones have no gizmo, so there's no magnet either.

Where to go next

• Surfaces and models: add the geometry you project onto
• Projectors: add projectors and match them to your hardware
• The scene graph: the tree view of everything in the scene
• Outputs: send each projector's render to a physical display