What undo covers
Undo 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, the view mode and render settings are not part of undo.
A button click, a drag or a brush stroke is usually one step. Undoing a step also restores the selection you had before the change, but a change of selection records no step.
Changes that undo reverses
| Area | Changes |
|---|---|
| Objects and lights | Adding, duplicating, deleting, moving, rotating, scaling, renaming, locking, hiding and showing. Applying a LIGHTING preset. |
| Shape | An object's settings in the INSPECTOR, deformers, ORGANIC, booleans, splits, MAKE EDITABLE, poly edit, sculpt strokes, cage points, metaball blobs and spine points |
| Text and profiles | Typing and font choices in EDIT TEXT, COMMIT in DRAW SECTION and DONE in the CURVE EDITOR |
| Materials and water | Presets from the MATERIALS strip or the MATERIAL BROWSER, ROLL, the settings in the browser and wave presets from the WAVE GALLERY |
| Environment | Sky presets, ROLL and the settings in the ENVIRONMENT BROWSER |
| Terrain | Brush strokes and APPLY in the TERRAIN EDITOR, REROLL and the terrain settings in the INSPECTOR |
| Groups | Grouping, ungrouping, DISSOLVE GROUP and the group's LOCK |
| Loop Studio | Adding and removing lanes, changing their settings and curve points, LOOP and FRAMING |
| Imports | Each imported file, as one step |
| Pen | LOFT |
| SCENE WIZARD | Opening it from a menu or the WELCOME sheet, as one step. Rolls add no steps. |
Changes that undo does not reverse
| Change | Notes |
|---|---|
Camera moves, including F, the views 1 to 4, ORBIT and the camera sliders | Save a camera snapshot of any angle you want to return to. |
| Saving, updating, renaming and deleting camera snapshots | These mark the scene as unsaved, and saving the scene keeps them. |
| The view mode, such as Wireframe or Material | Click the icon of the mode you had. |
| ISOLATE | Press I to end it. |
| The render look and the other render settings | Orbit keeps them in its preferences, apart from any scene. |
| SETTINGS | These are Orbit's preferences too. |
| Saving, renaming, moving and deleting material and environment presets | Each acts on the preset file at once. A deleted preset is removed from the Mac, not moved to the Trash. |
Changes undone with the previous step
| Change | Where |
|---|---|
| The settings of a light, apart from its name | The INSPECTOR, with a light selected |
| COLOR | The INSPECTOR, with a group selected |
| ENABLE | The TERRA PAIRS WITH FOG banner in RENDER SETTINGS |
| SNAP and ⚡ SNAP ALL | Loop Studio |
Undo treats each of these as part of the change recorded before it. Pressing ⌘Z for that change also reverses them. Moving or aiming a light with the gizmo records a step as usual.
None of these changes marks the scene as unsaved. If one is all you change after saving, Orbit does not ask about unsaved changes when you close the window or quit, so press ⌘S again to keep it.
The Scene Wizard
Opening the SCENE WIZARD from NEW ▸ SCENE WIZARD…, from File ▸ New from Scene Wizard… (⇧⌘N) or from the TYPE YOUR NAME and SCENE WIZARD cards on the WELCOME sheet records one step and then clears the stage. Each roll replaces the scene without adding a step.
CANCEL and the close button of the panel undo that step, which restores the scene you had before the wizard. Right after ACCEPT, one ⌘Z brings it back too. Undo cannot return to a roll you cancel, but rolling its seed again with the same choices rebuilds it.
A change you make while the wizard is open, such as giving one of its objects a new material, records a step too. CANCEL then undoes only your last change, and ⌘Z steps back from there to the scene you had before the wizard.
When ⌘Z does nothing
⌘Z has no effect during a drag in the viewport or once no steps are left. While the cursor is in a text field such as the name field in the INSPECTOR, ⌘Z acts on the field; click in the viewport to use it on the scene again.
Inside the CURVE EDITOR, the undo and redo buttons at its top right step through a separate history, kept while the editor is open. Closing it with DONE adds the whole edit to the scene as one step.
Undo and saving
Starting a new scene with ⌘N or NEW ▸ NEW SCENE, opening a scene, opening an example and recovering work after a crash each clear the history. Nothing before that point can be undone, and the scene file does not store the history either. An import keeps the history and adds one step.
If you undo a change after saving, the file still holds that change. Orbit does not count the undo as an unsaved change and will not ask about it when you quit. Save again to keep the undone version.
Related: Save, open and recover scenes, Save camera angles, Start from an example or the Scene Wizard and Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures.