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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; those just seed empty pages in a 3D shape.

Where you'll see it

  • 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 leads with a "Start from a template" row above the neighborhood layouts.

What "Use this template" does

Clicking a card 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.
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.

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.

Spotted something off, or want a topic covered? Email buck.rackley@gmail.com.