Get Started

Start from a template

Skip the blank viewport: clone a polished, ready-made scene into your account (already personalized with your name and photo), then reshape or publish it.

Open in the interactive manual →

The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.

You do not have to build from nothing. 3dCMS ships a small gallery of finished scenes (a design pitch page, and more over time) that you can clone into your own account with one click. Your copy opens already personalized: your name, your email, and your profile photo are baked into the right places, so it reads as yours the moment it loads.

Two kinds of "template," briefly This page is about the scene gallery: whole, polished scenes you clone as a personal copy. That is different from the neighborhood layouts (Blank, Gallery, Plaza, Garden, Arcade) you pick when creating a site under Settings ▸ Sites; those just seed empty pages in a 3D shape.

Where you'll see it

Before you even sign up. The gallery has a public home at /templates: browse it with no account, and picking a card drops you straight into the sandbox editor with that template loaded. No sign-in stands between the card and the scene; you only meet one if you decide to save or publish, and your work comes with you when you do.
On your first visit. Right after you accept the terms, the onboarding screen asks "How do you want to start?" and shows the gallery. Pick a card, or choose Start with a blank scene. Blank is always there.
Any time later. Open File ▸ New. The New scene dialog is a single Websites section: one grid of picture cards that leads with Blank canvas and is followed by the gallery templates.
Whenever a scene is empty. A small card appears over the viewport ("Your scene is empty") and its lead button is Start from a template, which opens the same gallery. (Add an object sits beneath it, as does the ＋ tile, which does the same thing.) It shows in the signed-out sandbox too, which is where a first, empty viewport is most likely to be somebody's first sight of the editor.

Every template also has its own page Each template in the gallery has a public page of its own at /templates/<name>: what the template is for, what you'd change, and a Walk through it button that loads a live, walkable copy of the real published demo right in the page. Useful for deciding between two starters before you clone either. The preview loads only when you press the button, so the page itself stays light.

The five starters

Five small, publish-ready starters lead the gallery. Each is a complete scene with generic placeholder content you swap for your own, framed by an entry camera and light on the scene-weight meter:

Hello World, the smallest complete scene 3dCMS can make: a slowly spinning globe whose continents are drawn from the word hello, with a greeting beside it. Four nodes in all: the entry camera, the textured globe with a slow spin animation, and two lines of web text. Use it as a warm-up, or as a quick end-to-end check that publishing and sharing work.
Profile Card, a link-in-bio card: an avatar, your name and tagline, and a row of link buttons.
Product Showcase, a hero object on a pedestal that visitors can tap to inspect in 3D, for a product or a portfolio piece.
Gallery Wall, a row of framed photo slots you replace with your own pictures. Click a photo, then pick from Choose from your images at the top of Properties; anything you've uploaded to your Asset Library is in that list.
Event Invite, a "You're invited" scene with the event details and an RSVP button.

They are ordinary gallery templates, so Use this template copies one into your account exactly like any other card. See the next section. Prefer to start from nothing? The Blank canvas card at the head of the grid opens an empty scene with no pages, and you add objects yourself.

What "Use this template" does

Clicking a card while signed in makes a deep copy of that scene on the server and saves it to your account as a fresh source scene. It is genuinely yours:

Personalized. The template's author name, email, and avatar are replaced with yours. Your photo resolves from your Google account picture, or a Gravatar for your email, or a generated initials badge if neither exists.
Self-contained. Every image, model, and material the template uses is re-copied into your own asset library, so editing or deleting them never touches the original.
Yours to change. The copy opens in the editor ready to reshape (move things, swap copy, add pages) and publish whenever you like.
Frozen at copy time. If the template's author later improves the master, your copy is untouched: you get the template as it was the moment you clicked. Your copy is also just a normal scene, never a template itself.

Cloning replaces the current scene in the editor From File ▸ New, using a template loads your fresh copy in place and clears undo history, so save the scene you have open first if you want to keep it. From the first-run screen there is nothing to lose, so it just opens the copy.

With no account, a template just opens In the sandbox there is no account to copy into, so a template is loaded straight into the editor instead: nothing is written to the server, and the URL and reload marker are repointed at it so refreshing lands you back in the right scene. Where the signed-in clone would put your name it shows a stand-in ("Your Name") instead, and where your photo would go it shows a drawn silhouette captioned YOUR PHOTO, so the slot says whose face belongs in it rather than showing you the template author's. Both catch-up steps happen when you sign in and the scene is adopted: the assets are re-copied into your new library, and the stand-ins become your real name, email, and photo.

Once your copy is open, the rest of the manual applies as usual: tour the editor, learn the core concepts, and publish when it's ready.

‹ PreviousTry it without an account Next ›The editor at a glance

Spotted something off, or want a topic covered? Email hello@3dcms.info.