Orbit 3D manual
Orbit 3D is a Mac app for modeling and rendering scenes in the style of 1990s computer graphics, such as chrome logos, ray traced landscapes and the look of late 1990s console games. If you are new to 3D, start with the five tutorials below.
Start here
Work through these in order. Each one ends with a saved file.
- Put your name in chrome. Render a word as a chrome logo and save it as a PNG file.
- Look around a scene and change its era. Learn the camera and the views on a finished example, then try each render look on it.
- Build a spiky sculpture on a checkered floor. Add objects, reshape them with deformers and give them materials and lights.
- Make a landscape at dusk. Roll a landscape with water, then set a low sun and haze.
- Make a looping ocean GIF. Loop Studio is the part of Orbit that makes animations. Here it turns a sea into a GIF that repeats without a visible jump.
After those, continue with Drill a hole through a block, a tutorial on precise modeling. You place a rod by typing exact numbers and cut a hole through a block with it. Then Make a tentacle ball turns a sphere into a creature by drawing tentacles out of its surface.
Make something specific
If you already know 3D
Orbit for experienced 3D users explains the axes and scale of a scene and how shading and the ray tracer work. It also names the common 3D features Orbit does not have, such as UV unwrapping and node materials. The reference section describes the controls. Start with The window, which names each part of the screen. The settings of each kind of object are in Object types, and the look of a render comes from the controls in Render settings. For keys, see Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, and for menu items and palette commands, Menus and palette commands.
Guides
Getting around
Move the camera and change viewsThe camera in Orbit looks at one point in the scene and circles around it. With the mouse and a few keys you swing it around that point and move it closer or farther away
Select objectsClick an object in the viewport, or its row in the OBJECTS list on the right, to select it, and hold Shift, or Command in the list, to select more than one. The selection
Move, rotate and scale objectsSelect an object and drag the handles of the gizmo to move it, turn it or change its size, or type exact numbers for it in the INSPECTOR . The TRANSFORM menu in the toolb
Save camera anglesA camera snapshot keeps a view of the scene so that a keystroke or a click brings the camera back to it. A scene holds up to nine snapshots, and saving the scene stores t
Organize a sceneAs a scene fills up, you can rename objects, gather them into groups that move as one, lock them against accidental drags and hide the ones in the way. With several objec
Run any command by nameThe command palette runs an Orbit command when you type part of its name. From the keyboard it reaches commands in the toolbar menus, the sheets and the panels, and it ap
Making objects
Add objectsNew objects come from the ADD OBJECT menu in the toolbar, from the column of buttons along the left edge of the window or from a right-click in the viewport. The menu and
Draw shapes with the penWith the pen you draw freehand lines in the viewport and turn them into an object. One line becomes a tube that follows it. Two or more lines become a loft, a thin curved
Make 3D textA TEXT object turns a word into solid letters with depth. You type the word, pick a font installed on your Mac and set the size of the letters and how deep they go. You c
Shape a lathe, extrusion or tube with curvesA LATHE , an EXTRUDE and a SPLINE TUBE each take their shape from a curve. In the CURVE EDITOR you can redraw the outline of a lathe or an extrusion, or trace a photo for
Bend, twist and melt objects with deformersA deformer reshapes an object by a rule, such as twisting it, bending it or letting its base sag and spread. The object keeps its own settings underneath, and each deform
Push and pull a shape by handTwo deformers let you shape an object directly in the viewport. MAGNET PULL raises bumps or presses dents where you drag on the surface. CAGE surrounds the object with a
Combine and cut objects with booleansThe BOOLEAN menu joins overlapping objects into one, cuts one object out of another or keeps only the part where objects overlap. SPLIT cuts a single object into two halv
Edit a mesh point by pointAfter you make an object editable, you can drag its points, edges and faces by hand, pull new shapes out of its faces and cut new edges into it. Each tool and setting has
Repeat objects with arraysAn array fills the scene with copies of one object. The copies can be scattered at random around it, set out in a grid, a ring or a line, spread over a terrain or strung
Grow plantsA GROWTH object is a plant that Orbit grows from the branching rules of a species and a random seed. You pick one of nine species, shape it with a few sliders and reroll
Terrain, water and sky
Build a terrainPick the kind of land a terrain grows from, such as mountains or rolling hills, and reroll it until the shape fits the scene. Sliders set its height and width. TERRAIN SH
Sculpt a terrain by handIn the TERRAIN EDITOR you paint on a map of the terrain seen from above to raise hills, dig hollows, soften bumps and level plateaus. Filters work on the whole terrain at
Add water and choose its wavesWater in Orbit is a flat sheet that reaches to the horizon. You set its height and pick its waves from the WAVE GALLERY , and its material decides the color and how clear
Set the sky, sun, fog and cloudsThe environment of a scene is the sky and its colors, the sun, clouds, fog, a floor that stretches to the horizon and an optional picture behind it all. You pick a ready
Make a night skyA night scene starts from a dark sky with stars and a moon. It then needs a dim light to stand in for moonlight, and it can take the glow and lens flares from the render
Make things move in the windOne wind blows through the whole scene. It bends and sways plants, drifts clouds and fog banks and carries glowing motes downwind, and water can take its direction. You s
Add fireflies and glowing motesGlowing motes are small points of light that drift upward and flicker, like fireflies or sparks. A plant can carry them in its branches, and an EMITTER object releases th
Materials and light
Apply and edit materialsA material sets the color and highlights of a surface, how much of the scene it mirrors and how much light passes through it. A card in the MATERIALS strip gives the sele
Put an image on an objectYou can wrap a picture from a PNG, JPEG or TIFF file around an object, such as a label on a can or a poster on a flat board, and place it so that one copy covers the obje
Save your own presetsA material or a sky you have built can be saved as a preset, which then sits beside the presets that come with Orbit and is applied from its card like any of them. Your p
Light a sceneA lighting preset swaps the lights of a scene for a ready set. You can also add point, spot and area lights one at a time, aim them at objects and set their color, bright
Rendering and export
Choose a render lookA render look sets how Orbit shades surfaces in the finished picture, how soft its shadows are, how many colors it holds and whether it has grain and smoothed edges. Orbi
Render and save an imageEXPORT RENDER traces the current camera view at the size you choose, with shadows, reflections and the render look, and saves it as a PNG, JPEG or TIFF file.
Preview the render while you workThe Material view puts reflections of the sky on reflective objects in the viewport. The LIVE preview adds a small traced picture in a corner of the viewport with shadows
Frame the shotTurn on RENDER FRAME to outline in the viewport the part of the scene that EXPORT RENDER will draw. Everything outside the outline is dimmed, so you can place the camera
Export a turntableA turntable is a short animation in which the camera travels once around the scene. Orbit saves it as an MP4 video, a GIF or a folder of PNG frames, and the last frame le
Export a wireframe drawingTurn on WIREFRAME MODE in RENDER SETTINGS and the next render draws each object as the lines along its edges, in one color over a flat background. The result saves as a s
Prepare renders for video and social mediaPIXEL SCALE enlarges a finished render by ×2 , ×3 , ×4 or ×6 , turning each pixel into a solid square block. At ×1 the render keeps its size. The blocks help dither and o
Loop Studio
Animate a setting with a laneA lane makes one setting of an object, a light or the sky rise and fall again and again while a loop plays. Lanes are added in Loop Studio, where each one takes the shape
Make a loop without a jumpA loop exported from Orbit plays over and over. When every lane ends where it began and the water repeats exactly, the join between the last frame and the first does not
Export a loopOrbit renders each frame of a loop in full and saves the result as an animated GIF, an MP4 video or a folder of numbered PNG pictures. You pick the shape of the frame, a
Files and purchases
Save, open and recover scenesSave the open scene as a .orbit file and open it again later from the File menu, from Finder or from the list of recent scenes. If Orbit quits unexpectedly with unsaved c
Start from an example or the Scene WizardOpen one of the six finished scenes that come with Orbit, or have the Scene Wizard build a landscape or a 3D logo from a few choices. Either way the result is a complete
Import and export objectsBring objects into the open scene from an Orbit object file ( .orbitobj ) or a Wavefront OBJ file ( .obj ), the common format of other 3D programs. With the full version,
Buy the full versionBuy the full version from inside Orbit through the Mac App Store, or restore a purchase on another Mac. The full version removes the watermark from pictures and turns on
Report a problemWhen Orbit crashes or does something wrong, save its activity log as one text file and send it with a short description of what happened. The file shows which version of
Concepts
How Orbit builds objectsOrbit builds an object in layers. It starts as a primitive, a shape the program generates from settings you can change. Deformers reshape it and ORGANIC can round it off.
The viewport, the preview and the renderThe viewport, the large view you work in, redraws as you drag the camera and shows no shadows. A small ray traced copy of the same view, the LIVE preview, redraws in a co
The era looksEach of Orbit's five render looks copies the pictures of one kind of 1990s software. RAY '95 and TERRA '96 follow the desktop ray tracers and landscape programs of the mi
How loops workA loop in Orbit is a stretch of time, 2 to 60 seconds long, that starts again from the beginning each time it ends. When the loop ends, everything that moves has to be ba
The free and full versionsThe free version of Orbit 3D never expires. Its pictures carry a watermark and it cannot export objects as geometry. Nothing else is limited. The full version is a single
Orbit for experienced 3D usersOrbit is a parametric modeler with a CPU ray tracer. It shades with the Phong and Blinn-Phong models, projects image textures onto objects and saves 8-bit images. It has
Reference
The windowOrbit 3D works in one main window, which holds one scene. From top to bottom it has the mode tabs, the toolbar, a middle row and the dock. The middle row holds the column
Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gesturesMenu shortcuts such as ⌘S work in Orbit 3D even while you type in a field. The other keys of the main window do nothing while the cursor is in a text field, such as the n
Menus and palette commandsOrbit's commands sit in the menu bar, in the menus of the toolbar, in the menus that open with a right-click and in the command palette, which opens with ⌘K . Keys with n
Object typesEach type in the ADD OBJECT menu has settings of its own. They appear in the INSPECTOR , on the right of the window, when one object of that type is selected with a click
DeformersEach deformer reshapes the whole object it is added to. The ADD DEFORMER menu offers 26 of them in three groups, INTERACTIVE , VERTEX and TOPOLOGY . It sits in the DEFORM
Mesh editing toolsIn poly edit mode you change an editable mesh point by point. To start, select a SPHERE , BOX , CYLINDER , CONE , TORUS , PLATONIC , TEXT or GROWTH object, a pen loft of
Array settingsThe ARRAY section repeats the selected object in a pattern. It is the last section of the INSPECTOR when one object is selected, and each MODE adds controls of its own. W
Material settings and presetsEvery object except an emitter carries its own material, and the MATERIAL BROWSER holds its settings and the presets. Press M to open the browser, or click BROWSE at the
Environment settings and presetsThe ENVIRONMENT BROWSER holds the sky, clouds, night sky, sun, ground plane, wind, fog and background picture of a scene, along with the presets that set all of them in o
Terrain settings, brushes and filtersA selected terrain has five sections of its own in the INSPECTOR , TERRAIN , HEIGHTFIELD , NOISE , TERRAIN SHADING and EDITOR , above ORGANIC , SHADING and TRANSFORM . ED
Render settingsThe RENDER SETTINGS sheet holds every control of the render look. Its six sections are PRESET , SHADING , OUTPUT , WIREFRAME , EFFECTS and PERFORMANCE . To open it, click
Export settingsEXPORT RENDER , near the right end of the toolbar, renders a still image and saves it as a PNG, JPEG or TIFF file. EXPORT TURNTABLE saves the camera circling the scene as
Loop Studio controlsLoop Studio is the layout for animating settings and for playing and exporting loops. Click LOOP STUDIO at the top left of the window to open it, and SCENE beside it to r
App settingsSETTINGS holds Orbit's preferences for the viewport grid and background, the readouts drawn over the viewport, camera speed, the lights a new scene starts with and hover
File typesOrbit saves scenes, objects and presets in four formats of its own and exchanges meshes with other 3D software as Wavefront OBJ. It also writes pictures, animations and a
What undo coversUndo reverses changes to the objects, lights, groups, environment and Loop Studio lanes of a scene. Press ⌘Z to go back one step; Orbit keeps the last 50. Camera moves, t
GlossaryThe manual uses Orbit's own names for many of its tools and ideas, such as render look, lane and NO POP , and general 3D words like mesh, normal and dither. Where a topic
Troubleshooting
Modeling problemsEach section below starts from a problem you can see while building a scene, such as an object that will not move, a scene that is off screen, a grayed BOOLEAN menu or an
Render problemsProblems with how Orbit draws, previews and renders a scene are listed here by what you see, such as chrome that looks gray in the viewport or marks on a saved image.
Loop and video problemsUse these sections when scenery stays still in Loop Studio, a loop jumps where it repeats, a lane changes nothing or an exported GIF or video looks wrong.
File and purchase problemsThe problems on this page include scene files that will not open, the offer to recover unsaved work, a grayed EXPORT menu, a watermark that stays after you buy the full v