3D mode shows the stage in three dimensions, “through the audience’s eyes”: fixtures stand in their places, beams of light shine out of them, pools fall on the floor, and a light haze fills the air for depth. It’s the best way to judge how your program looks from the outside.
📍 Where: visualizer → 3D button (top-right corner).
Navigating the scene (with the mouse):
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Orbit the camera around the scene | Drag with the left button |
| Zoom in / out | Mouse wheel |
| Pan the view | Drag with the right button |
💡 The camera angle you set is kept while the program runs: switch to 2D and back to 3D (or go to LIVE and return) and the camera stays where you left it. The starting angle comes back the next time you launch the program.
What you see:
- The floor with its grid and the truss above the stage — spatial reference points.
- Fixtures as bodies that look like the real thing: a PAR can, a moving head on its yoke, a strobe panel, a bar, a laser, a scanner, a derby. The sizes come from real models, so a fixture next to the truss looks the right size against it. On moving heads the head turns according to its position. Floor fixtures stand right on the floor, hung ones hang under the truss, and a fixture on a stand gets the stand itself — a tripod with a pole.
- Light beams — cones in the right colour and brightness, with a gobo if one is selected.
- A light haze so the beams read in three dimensions (like real smoke in the room).
- Fog machines — with a body and a nozzle that puffs out clouds of smoke. They have no beam: a fog machine does not shine. On models with built-in LEDs (Fog Fury Jett, Chauvet Geyser and the like) those LEDs colour the smoke itself, so a coloured cloud rises above the machine. Light bars with a built-in fogger (Equinox Gigabar) stay ordinary fixtures with beams — the program tells the two cases apart from the fixture profile on its own.
💡 Fog fills the room gradually. While a fog machine runs, the air in 3D grows denser: the far side of the room sinks away softly and the beams read far more clearly — which is exactly why fog is used on a real stage. After you switch it off the haze does not vanish at once but disperses over roughly half a minute, just like in life. You can start the fog with the “Smoke” button in Live, including its auto mode. The clouds stay where they were released, even if you move the machine around the plan.
💡 Tip: clicking a fixture in 3D selects it — handy for finding one fixture in a busy picture.
💡 Fixtures are always visible, even when dark: the body shows through as an even grey silhouette, so you can click a fixture in a dark scene too. The “Bodies” button (left of the 3D/2D switch) strengthens that lighting and additionally labels each fixture with its type and DMX address, so you can tell who is who without opening the Patch.
💡 Tip: 3D shows the result of your work in scenes, chases and Live in real time — run the program and watch the light move.
💡 Heads turn at a realistic speed. In 3D a moving head does not jump to a new position instantly; it takes about as long as the real fixture: the speed is derived from the axis travel set in the Patch (for example, a 540° Pan takes roughly 3 seconds). Pan and tilt are limited separately, so fixtures with short axis travel move noticeably faster than big heads.
Hence a practical rule: if in a fast chase the beam cannot reach its position and “smears” past the intended pattern, the real fixture will not make it either. Either give the step more time (slower tempo or more beats per step) or reduce the size of the movement. Fast chases work better with instant things — colour, gobo, brightness and strobe — while movement is best kept broad and smooth. The DMX signal sent to the fixtures is unaffected: exact values still go out.
💡 Fixture optics are visible in the preview. If a fixture has Zoom, Focus, Frost or Prism channels, 3D shows them working:
| Channel | What you see in 3D |
|---|---|
| Zoom | The beam narrows and widens, and the pool on the floor follows it |
| Focus | The edge of the pool becomes crisp or blurred |
| Frost | The beam softens and widens slightly — like real frost glass |
| Prism | The beam splits into several diverging beams — a fan, as in real life; a separate prism rotation channel spins the fan around |
| Gobo rotation | The pattern inside the pool spins in the direction and at the speed set by the gobo rotation channel. A fixture without such a channel keeps the pattern still — there is physically nothing to spin it, and it only travels along with the head |
The program recognises these channels by itself, even when the fixture profile stores them under the generic “Macro” type — which is how they arrive in almost every profile of the built-in library. If a fixture still does not respond, set the correct channel type in the Patch.
💡 The prism fan is drawn at full detail only. Every extra beam is another glowing cone in the frame, so on weak machines and large rigs (when the program lowers detail for the sake of smoothness) the prism falls back to the cheap picture: one beam and a floor pool with petals. It looks poorer, but the preview does not start stuttering mid-work. The mode is set by “3D quality” (see below): “Max” always keeps the fan, “Auto” decides from measured smoothness, “Eco” keeps the cheap picture.
💡 Prism and gobo work together: if a gobo is in the beam, the fan multiplies that pattern — exactly like a real prism.
💡 As long as you have not touched such a fader, the picture stays as it was — the program does not treat an untouched focus as defocused. In 2D you see zoom and frost (beam width); focus and prism cannot be judged from above, so they are not drawn there.
💡 The glowing ring around the lens (“Strips”, “Aura”, “Halo”) is shown in 3D as well: once the ring channel is mapped in the Patch, the ring glows in its own colour around the lens and faces wherever the head points. It does not depend on the fixture’s brightness — just like on real fixtures, where the ring stays lit even with the shutter closed.
Picture settings. The visualizer settings button opens the sliders and switches:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Venue brightness | How brightly the floor, grid, trusses, walls and fixture bodies are lit. Beams and pools are unaffected |
| Fixture brightness | Overall light power in the preview: lenses, beams, pools. A view calibration, not the Master Dimmer |
| Light pool size | How wide the pools land on the floor. 100% is the calculated size: the pool is exactly what the fixture’s beam gives from this height and at this angle. The slider is for taste and for a tight venue |
| Fixture size | How large the bodies themselves are drawn. 100% is real size (a PAR is 25 cm). On a big stage a fixture honestly takes about ten screen pixels — raise the slider to see what stands where. Only the bodies grow, the light is unchanged |
| Glow | Soft halo around bright beams and lenses. “Auto” checks the graphics card by itself |
| 3D quality | “Auto” measures smoothness and lowers or restores detail on its own; “Max” and “Eco” fix the mode by hand |
| Show walls | Translucent room walls: light that misses the stage shows up on them. Turn it off for an open venue |
All of these are preview-only: they change neither DMX, nor scenes, nor the real light, and they are not stored in the project (they are remembered on this computer). Each fixture also has its own “Brightness in the visualizer” correction in the Patch, in case one model looks brighter or dimmer than its neighbours.
💡 Overexposure is tamed automatically. Light adds up as it does in real life, so a dozen fixtures aimed at one spot easily wash the picture out. The preview measures the brightest place on stage and gently closes the “aperture” for the whole frame at once — the show stays readable, and the signal sent to the fixtures is unaffected.
⚠️ Note: the 3D preview loads the computer more than 2D (it is a full three-dimensional scene). On weak machines with many fixtures it may run less smoothly — then 2D is more convenient for laying the rig out.
