Navigation
Shoppers looking at a 3D product rarely find the good bits on their own. They spin it once, see the outside, and move on. Navigation is how you take them to the parts worth seeing.
The section has two lists - Points of Interest and Focals - and both can be reordered, cloned and named. A third sub-section, Camera motion, sets how the camera travels whenever either of them moves it.
Points of interest
A marker on the model that a shopper can click. Clicking it flies the camera smoothly to a view you chose, with the motion set under Camera motion.
Use them for the things you would point at if the shopper were standing next to you. The dovetail joint that shows the work is real. The reinforced stitching. The port on the back nobody expects to be there.
A marker is described by three sets of XYZ coordinates, and these fields are the real control:
- Position is where the marker sits on the model.
- Camera Target is what the camera looks at once it arrives.
- Camera Position is where the camera flies to.
Click into any of the three and the matching handle appears in the 3D view, so you can drag it and watch the numbers follow. Dragging is the quick way to get close; typing is how you make two markers agree exactly, or nudge one by a known amount. While a marker is selected, a Focus point of interest camera button appears over the 3D view and flies the editor camera to that marker's view, which is the honest way to judge the shot before a shopper sees it.
Markers can be styled - colour, size, the pulse that draws the eye, the label's text and background - and a style can be copied onto the others so a set stays consistent. They can also be conditional, appearing only when the option they relate to is chosen. There is no point marking the walnut grain when the shopper is looking at oak.
A marker can additionally carry transform variants, which move it when a condition matches. That saves duplicating a marker just because the feature it points at slides along with a size change. Only the position moves; the camera view stays as authored.
Give each marker a name. It is what the shopper sees on the label, what the Logic section lists when you target it, and one of the strings you can translate for the languages you sell in.
The camera motion is deliberate rather than instant, because a jump is disorienting while a move keeps people oriented. Clicking the same marker twice does not restart the flight - if the camera is already there, it stays put.
Focals
A focal is the same camera move without a marker. Instead of waiting to be clicked, it fires by itself when a condition becomes true.
The shopper switches to the engraved version, and the camera comes round to show the engraving. They choose the extended frame, and the view pulls back so they can see the whole thing.
This is one of the most effective things in the tool, because it answers a question the shopper has not asked yet. They change an option, and rather than hunting for what changed, they are shown.
A focal has a Camera Position and a Camera Target, edited exactly like a marker's, with the same handles in the 3D view. Selecting one puts a Preview focal button over the 3D view that flies the editor camera to the view it would use.
Triggers
Focals fire on a transition rather than continuously, so a focal only moves the camera at the moment its condition becomes true, not repeatedly while it stays true.
The alternative is Fly when these controls change, where you name one or more controls and the focal fires whenever any of their values changes at all. This is the way to react to something like a free text field, where there is no fixed value to match on. If you also set a condition, it gates the change trigger rather than replacing it: the control has to change and the condition has to hold.
If several focals could fire at once, the first in the list wins, so order matters.
Dynamic framing
A focal's camera view is a pair of fixed coordinates, which is a problem for a product that changes size. Frame a 120 cm bench nicely and the 240 cm version runs off both edges of the screen.
Tick Fit to models and the focal becomes dynamic. When it fires, it keeps the direction you authored - the angle the product is seen from - but recomputes where the camera sits and what it looks at, so the tracked geometry fills the frame at whatever size it currently is.
You then choose what it should frame:
- Models to frame picks whole models.
- Parts to frame (glTF nodes) picks individual parts inside a model, once you have parsed that model's structure. The two selections add together.
- Leave both empty and it frames the whole scene.
Only visible geometry counts. A part switched off by a condition, or a whole model hidden by its variant rules, does not take part in the measurement. That is what lets one focal serve every version of a product: if a bracket exists as three copies, one per frame length, list all three under Parts to frame and the focal frames whichever copy is currently shown. Without this you would need a focal per frame length, each with its own condition.
The measurement is taken at the moment the focal fires: if a transform variant is moving something with an animated transition at that instant, the focal frames where it started, not where it is going. For anything a focal tracks, an instant transition gives the correct shot.
Distance
A fitted focal lands where the framed parts just fill the view, with a small margin. Distance scales that: 1 is the tight fit, 2 puts the camera twice as far away, 0.7 crops in closer (however small the value, the camera stops just outside the framed parts rather than entering them). Because it is relative to the framed geometry rather than a fixed number of metres, one value looks right at every size the product can take - a focal that stands "one and a half times back" from a rail does so whether the rail is 60 cm or 2 m long.
Camera direction
By default a fitted focal keeps the angle you authored with its Camera Position and Camera Target, and only recomputes distance and target. Set Camera direction to Shopper's current view and it keeps the angle the shopper is looking from instead: the camera stays where they turned it and only moves in or out to frame the part. This is the gentler behaviour when a shopper is already examining the product and changes an option - the view does not swing round on them - and it pairs well with Distance. If there is no live camera to read (it always exists in Play and on the storefront), the authored angle is used.
In edit mode, Preview focal frames every copy of a listed part, because edit mode shows all geometry regardless of conditions. Press Play to see the focal frame only what the shopper sees.
Camera transition
A focal normally travels with the shared motion set under Camera motion. Tick Override the shared camera motion to give this one focal its own Duration and Easing - a slow, gentle reveal for the option that changes the whole product, a quick snap for a detail a shopper toggles often. The override is stored in full, so a focal that says "2000 ms" keeps saying it even if you later shorten the shared motion. Untick it and the focal follows the shared motion again; the values you typed are kept in the form but no longer used.
Camera motion
Every camera flight the configurator makes - a fired focal, a clicked point of interest, and the fly home when a Reset button restores the defaults - shares one motion, set here.
Duration (ms) is the flight time in milliseconds. The default, 2000, is the two-second flight every configurator has always used, so an existing scene moves exactly as before until you change it. 0 jumps to the view with no animation at all, which is what you want for a "compare A / B" pair of focals where the motion would only get in the way. The upper limit is one minute.
Easing is the curve the motion follows between its start and its end. The names come from the bitbybit math library, and each is built from two parts:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ease In | starts gently and speeds up - the camera leaves the current view softly |
| Ease Out | starts fast and slows into the destination - the arrival is soft |
| Ease In-out | both - the classic camera glide; Ease In-out Cubic is the default |
| Sine, Quad, Cubic, Quart, Quint, Expo, Circ | how pronounced the curve is, from the mildest (Sine) to the sharpest (Expo). Circ is close to Quart with a rounder end |
| Back | overshoots the destination slightly and settles back - a little "pull in" at the end |
| Elastic | overshoots and springs a few times before settling |
| Bounce | arrives like a dropped ball, bouncing on the destination |
The last three are effects, not glides. They can be delightful on a product that is playful and irritating on one that is not. Try them in Play with the real duration before deciding, because a bounce that reads as fun over 600 ms reads as broken over 3 s.
Preview focal in edit mode uses the focal's real duration and easing, so you can judge the motion without pressing Play. Clicking a marker in edit mode does not, because markers do not fly in edit mode at all - see below.
The shared motion and a focal's override are both saved in the scene configuration under navigation.cameraTransition and focals[].transition, as durationMs and easing, if you edit the JSON directly. Leaving them out means the built-in two-second motion.
The one flight this motion does not govern is the Camera controls element's: its zoom buttons and axis handles take a short 350 ms move of their own, because a click on a button should answer quickly, and the element can be given its own duration and easing. Those controls, together with the pointer switches under Scene > Camera, are also how you give shoppers a way to move the camera once the default dragging is switched off.
Both are edit-time invisible
In edit mode, markers and focals do not behave as they will for a shopper, because conditions are not applied while you are working. Markers appear regardless of their conditions so you can position them, and focals never fire.
Press Play to see them work properly. Edit Mode and Play lists which behaviours apply where.
If a marker or a focal handle seems to be missing in the editor, check the debug panel: the eye button in the top right of the 3D view toggles Show debug info, and its Debug geometry group has a separate checkbox for the camera, lights, points of interest, focals and decals. Turning one off hides the editing aids for that kind, which is useful when they crowd the model and confusing when you have forgotten you did it.
Use fewer than you want to
Three well-chosen points of interest beat twelve. The purpose is to direct attention, and a model covered in markers directs nothing.
The same restraint applies to focals. A camera that moves on every single option becomes seasickness, while one that moves for the two or three choices that genuinely change the product feels considered.