Quickstart: your first scene
From a blank viewport to a published, shareable 3D page in about five minutes. Eight small steps, no prior 3D experience required.
Open in the interactive manual →The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.
Let's build something real and put it on the internet. This whole tour takes about five minutes and uses nothing but the editor's defaults. We'll make a tiny still-life (a couple of objects on the ground) and publish it.
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Open the editor and sign in
Go to 3dcms.info (that's the 3dCMS home page) and click Start creating (or Log in, top right, if you already have an account). Sign in, then choose a template or a blank scene. The big area in the middle is your viewport, the live 3D window.
Once you're signed in, the bare
3dcms.info/address opens the editor directly, so either URL works from then on. (To look at the home page again while signed in, add?home=1.) -
Get comfortable moving the camera
Before you touch anything, learn to look around. It's the one thing that trips up newcomers:
- Orbit: hold Alt and drag with the left mouse button.
- Pan: hold Alt and drag with the middle mouse button.
- Zoom: scroll the mouse wheel anytime, or hold Alt and drag with the right mouse button.
On a touch screen, one finger orbits and two fingers pan/pinch. (Why Alt? Because a plain left-drag is reserved for selecting objects.)
Rather not learn a modifier yet? The Tools rail has three camera buttons: Tumble, Pan, and Dolly. Click one and a plain drag in the viewport does that instead. More →
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Add your first object
Open the Create menu in the top bar and pick Box (it's under Primitives). A cube drops into the scene and is automatically selected: you'll see a colored outline around it.
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Move it around
Press W to grab the Move tool. Three colored arrows (the gizmo) appear on the cube. Drag one to slide it along that axis. Press E to rotate and R to scale. Made a mess? Ctrl+Z undoes anything.
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Give it a material
Open the Windows menu and choose Materials. In the Starter Library, click a preset, say Gold Leaf or Ocean Glass. It applies to your selected cube instantly. That's the whole materials story for now; there's a full node graph waiting when you want it.
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Add a friend and arrange
From Create, add a Sphere. Move it next to the cube. Want a copy of something? Select it and press D to duplicate. Press F at any time to frame (re-center the camera on) your selection. Your scene is already lit: 3dCMS gives every scene a real sun and sky automatically.
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Preview it like a visitor
Open File ▸ Preview. This drops you into the consumer view, the same fullscreen, touch-friendly experience your visitors get. Orbit around, then click Open editor to come back.
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Publish to the web
Click Publish: it's the one highlighted button at the right of the menu bar (on a phone it's a pill over the viewport), and Ctrl+Shift+P opens the same dialog. Give it a name (like "My First Scene") and click Publish. 3dCMS builds the page and copies a shareable link to your clipboard. Paste it anywhere: it's a real, public URL that works for anyone, no login required.
What just happened
You created scene nodes, transformed them, assigned a material, previewed the consumer view, and published a static, crawlable page. That's the entire core loop of 3dCMS in miniature. Everything else in this manual is depth on top of those moves.