View Panel¶

The View Panel is the big region in the middle of the window. Every placement on the canvas renders there in real time, and every authoring tool draws into it. It is the GPU-composited heart of the Designer.

View Panel showing a Mesh3D placement with Textured + Lit shading and the orbit gizmo

Action	Mouse	Keyboard alternative
Pan	Middle-click drag (or hold Space + drag)	Arrow keys (with Hand tool active)
Zoom	Mouse wheel	`+` / `-`
Orbit (3D scenes)	Alt + middle-click drag	Numpad 4 / 6 / 8 / 2
Frame Selected	Click to select, then `F`	`View > Frame Selected`
Frame All	`A`	`View > Frame All`
Reset zoom	`1`	`View > Reset Zoom`

The orbit gizmo lives in the upper-right corner; clicking any face of the cube snaps the camera to that view (Top / Front / Right / Back / Left / Bottom). Hold Alt while clicking a face to flip 180°.

Shading modes¶

Press a digit key or use View > …:

Key	Mode	What it shows
4	Wireframe	Edges only
5	Smooth Shaded	Lit with a default headlight, no textures
6	Textured	Albedo only, no lighting
7	Textured + Lit	Full PBR with directional lights, normal maps, shadows
8	Wireframe on Shaded	Combination for topology review

For 2D-only skins the mode is "Textured + Lit" by default (still makes sense for shadowed UI panels) and you can ignore the orbit gizmo.

HUD¶

Press 0 (zero) or View > Toggle HUD to show the on-canvas heads- up display: frame number, FPS, current tool, current snap state. Toggle off for screenshots.

Grid¶

View > Toggle Grid shows a 10-pixel grid overlay. Holding Ctrl while dragging snaps movement to the grid; you can change snap size in File > Preferences > Snapping.

Multiple views¶

Drag the small + in the View Panel's top-right corner to open a second viewport split. Up to four splits supported; useful for seeing Top + Side + Perspective + Front while modeling. Right-click a split's title bar to set its camera (Persp, Top, etc.).

Recording from the View Panel¶

File > Export > PNG captures the current frame at the project's render resolution. Run > Preview Skin renders to a separate borderless window so the chrome of the Designer is excluded from the capture.

For full animations the framework's elysium.render.Recorder (used in the Butterfly Banner tutorial) captures any window output to mp4 or gif.

DPI¶

The View Panel honors your monitor's DPI. On a 2x Retina display the rendered placements look as crisp as the underlying mesh allows; on a 1x display the framework's wgpu compositor uses sub- pixel rasterization to soften aliasing. Multi-monitor moves recompute the surface automatically.