Try it without an account
The whole editor runs at /try with no sign-in. Your scene lives in this browser until you decide to keep it. Then signing in carries it into your account.
Open in the interactive manual →The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.
You can build a real scene before you tell 3dCMS anything about yourself. Go to 3dcms.info/try and the editor opens with no sign-in screen in front of it: the same viewport, the same menus, the same Properties panel a paying author uses.
/try?template=<id>), and the sign-in screen carries an "Or try the editor first" link. You do not have to arrive by any particular door: /try on its own gives you an empty scene.Nothing stands in front of the viewport
The sandbox is deliberately dialog-free. The first-run welcome card and the camera-controls prompt a signed-in first-timer sees are both held back here, because a modal over the thing you came to look at is a poor greeting for somebody still deciding.
Arriving at bare /try is not a bare grid, though. The scene starts with only its Preview Camera, so the small "Your scene is empty" card sits over the viewport with Start from a template as its lead button (the same gallery that File ▸ New shows, reachable with no account) and Add an object beneath it. It disappears the moment the scene has anything in it, and comes back if you empty it again.
Your scene lives in this browser
There is no server row behind a sandbox scene. It is autosaved to this browser's local storage (with an IndexedDB fallback for big scenes), which means it survives a reload and a closed tab, and does not survive clearing site data, a different browser, or another device. A standing strip along the bottom of the viewport says so and never goes away. That is deliberate, because the person who needs the warning is the one who has been building for twenty minutes and stopped reading the chrome.
/try in the same browser as your real, unsaved scene leaves that scene byte-for-byte alone.What works with no account
Nearly everything. Add primitives and 3D text, move things with the gizmos, do real polygon modeling, build material graphs with the built-in textures, place lights, scatter particles, lay out pages, undo and redo, and File ▸ Preview the whole thing as a visitor would see it.
- The shared model library. The Asset Library opens on the Shared tab, the public library of models anyone can place. Your own tabs (All, Trash) are simply empty, because you have no library yet.
- Templates. File ▸ New lists the real gallery and loads a template straight into the sandbox, no copy-into-an-account step. A name typed in that dialog is kept, and becomes the scene's name later.
What asks you to sign in
A handful of things genuinely need somebody to belong to. Each one raises a small dialog that names what you tried, says why that particular thing needs an account, and offers Keep building: nothing is a dead button, and nothing fails with a bare error.
| Action | Why |
|---|---|
| Save / Open / Rename a scene | A saved scene needs somewhere to live that isn't this browser. |
| Publish | A published page is a public URL: it needs an owner, and someone who can take it down. |
| Uploading a file to the asset library, or a custom LUT | An upload is stored on our servers against a storage quota. The built-in grades and textures all work without one. |
| Importing your own model (GLB or OBJ) | An imported model belongs in your asset library, so scenes can reference it instead of each one carrying the whole file. It asks up front rather than embedding a big file into a sandbox scene that couldn't be kept afterwards. |
| Settings ▸ Sites, and the server-side Deployment export | A site is a public address; the export writes to the server. |
| The Assistant | It edits through your account, and its usage is billed to somebody. It asks before the turn starts, and your typed message stays in the box. |
Found a bug while trying it? Help ▸ Report a bug still works in the sandbox: it opens an email to hello@3dcms.info instead of posting to the server. Screenshots can't ride an email, so that control is hidden rather than silently dropping your file.
Keeping what you built
Press Sign in & keep it in the banner (or the button in any of those prompts) and 3dCMS remembers that you left in order to come back. Sign in (Google or an emailed link, whichever you prefer) and on return your scene is saved into your account as a fresh source scene and reopened.
- The assets come with it. A sandbox scene points at models from the shared library, so adopting it copies each one into your own library first. Your first scene is never one stranger's un-share away from holes. If something genuinely couldn't be copied (a model that was taken down while you were building, say), the saved-it notice tells you how many are missing rather than claiming everything came across. The scene is still saved either way.
- The trip is safe to take slowly. The marker that says "I am coming back for this" is good for 24 hours and rides along even if your sign-in link arrives in a different tab. A scene big enough to have overflowed into IndexedDB can crowd that little marker out of storage; if it does, recent sandbox work is picked up on its own autosave stamp under the same 24-hour rule, so the visitor who built the most is not the one who loses it.
- A browser that stores nothing says so. If site data is blocked outright, in a locked-down webview or under "block all cookies", there are no sandbox bytes to come back for, and pressing the button would be the thing that ends the scene. It explains that instead of navigating, and points you at allowing site data for
3dcms.infoor taking a copy first with File ▸ Export scene JSON. - Nothing is deleted until it's saved. The sandbox copy is cleared only after the save succeeds: a failed adopt leaves the only copy exactly where it was.
Ready to go through the loop properly? The quickstart takes you from an empty viewport to a published link.