Open a scene to begin scouting.
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Left-drag orbits, right-drag pans, scroll dollies in and out.
Or fly: WASD moves with mouse-look, Q/E goes down/up, scroll or ,/. changes speed. Click or Esc to let go.
Double-click anything to set a target and turn on Target Lock (T). Framing stays on it while you move.
Frame something you like, then press + next to Cameras. The view is saved as a camera. Name it and add a few more from different angles.
C/V zooms the lens, J/K rolls it (L resets). 1–9 jumps between cameras; M shows them all at once (Multiview).
You can also treat each camera as a shot: Camera 1 is Shot 1, Camera 2 is Shot 2. Build a scene shot by shot instead of rigging a multicam shoot. Same tools either way.
Frame the opening image and press Add Mark (G). Fly to the closing image and add another. That's a move.
Press Play (Space) to watch it. Drag the diamonds on the timeline to retime; the Shot Duration box sets the overall length.
+ next to Characters places a human reference where you click. Scale them to calibrate the scene, and give them marks (G) to walk them.
+ next to Lights places a light the same way. Save looks as cues in Cue List, right-click a camera to hand it one, and add marks (G) to a selected light to animate it.
Open Edit Timeline (Y), double-click the strip to lay cameras down as clips, drag them around, B for the razor. Play it back (Space). That's your edit.
Save Scene writes one .zero file with everything in it, so the whole session comes back exactly as you left it.
File ▸ Export… renders offline at full quality: pick the source (a camera, the Edit Timeline, the Multiview grid or Program), 1080p or 4K, and the quality. It writes an MP4 with your audio on it.
Screenshot saves a still of the view you are looking at. Contact Sheet lays your saved frames out on one page. Blender Export writes the moves out as a Python script, to render 1:1 on your original scene file.
Scout is for collecting 16:9 lookbook frames with notes.
Direct is for cameras, moves, timelines, multiview, and contact-sheet frame saves.
File, at the top left, holds the whole app. Project has Import, Save Scene, Update Scene, Reset Scene, Undo and Redo. Export has Screenshot, Export…, Contact Sheet and Blender Export.
View opens the Edit Timeline or Program. Mode switches Scout and Direct. Detail drops a heavy scan to Half or Light so it stays smooth to fly.
Playback ▸ Cache pre-renders the move once and plays those frames back. Clear Cache appears beside it as soon as there is a cache to throw away.
On the desktop app, Open Intake starts the capture tool in its own window. A scene handed back from Intake opens in Direct with the Sun off.
The gear at the top right opens Settings. Scene sits on top: Crop boxes the scene in, Declutter thins stray splats out of a scan, Units switches Metric and Imperial.
Camera holds Aspect, Exposure, Contrast, White Balance, Saturation, Zoom Speed, Roll Speed, Boom Speed (Q/E), Pan/Tilt Speed, Virtual Camera Size, Virtual Cameras and Playback Dimming. Audio holds Volume.
Double-click an object to set a target and enable Target Lock, in the main view or any Multiview cell.
Right double-click sets a target and quickly moves closer to it.
T toggles Target Lock. Right-drag in mouse mode turns Target Lock off.
Double-click a character to lock onto them. Marks made while locked track them as they move.
WASD enters Game Mode.
Z toggles Game Mode without moving, for pan/tilt only.
Q/E moves down/up along the camera's own tilt. R/F booms straight up/down, whatever the tilt.
Click or Esc exits Game Mode.
Scroll or ,/. adjusts movement speed. It auto-scales to the scene, so flying feels the same in a room or a stadium.
Pan/Tilt Speed in Settings ▸ Camera sets how far the mouse pans and tilts the camera. Turn it up on a low-DPI mouse or a trackpad.
Tap ~ to cycle 3D → Top → Front → Side. Your perspective camera is untouched.
Hold ~ for the view compass: pick a direction, or jump with the arrow keys.
In a plan view, the Shave slider clips away ceilings and walls between you and the room.
C/V zooms lens out/in. Tune it with Zoom Speed in Settings ▸ Camera.
J/K rolls camera left/right. L resets roll.
X toggles the Virtual Cameras (camera markers in the 3D view).
Tab captures a lookbook frame in Scout Mode or a specific camera frame in Direct Mode.
Number keys 1–9 jump to matching cameras, or cut the Program to them when Program is open.
M toggles Multiview. N opens Program (the Program monitor above the Multiview grid).
Depth of Field is the third word on the camera's Target Lock line. Turn it on and Focus, Aperture and Lens open under it, for that camera alone.
With Depth of Field on, Ctrl + click in the viewer pulls focus to whatever is under the pointer. Hold Shift on the Focus slider for fine moves.
Use the + beside the Cameras heading to add a camera. It drops straight into naming.
The − deletes the selected camera.
Click a camera anywhere (except the show/hide dot) to view it. Drag to reorder.
Double-click a camera's name or its focal length to edit them inline.
Ctrl/Cmd + click camera rows or Multiview cells to select several at once. Esc clears. Tab saves a frame to every selected camera.
G adds a keyframe mark at the playhead. Marks are paced by camera travel, so the move holds one speed out of the gate.
Click a mark's diamond to open its editor: Linear flies straight through, Ease brakes in and out (In and Out set separately), Settle parks for a beat. Ease and Settle combine.
A settle shows a ghost diamond where the stop ends. Drag it to set the length, double-click it to remove it.
The same editor carries Smooth, Update to current view to re-stamp the pose, Update focus to stamp the focus distance and f-stop so playback racks focus between marks, and Delete mark.
Pan/Tilt only keys where the camera looks and nothing else: its position comes from the marks either side, it keeps whatever was at the center of your frame, and its timing is Linear.
Even Speed re-spaces your marks to one steady pace after you've dragged things around.
Convert to Path bakes the marks into an editable path and keeps the marks. Path Smoothness and Handle Density are the path's own dials.
On a baked path, a handle's Ease starts at Marks' 50%, the ease your marks already carry. The slider adds on top of it.
Ctrl/Cmd + click diamonds to build a selection, or drag a box across the mark band (Ctrl-drag works from anywhere on the timeline). Drag any selected mark and the whole group moves together.
Hold Shift while dragging a mark for fine timing. On a recorded path, Shift-drag a handle to slide it along the path.
The Motion band is the switch: Keyframes for marks, Path for a recorded move.
Space plays/stops the Direct timeline. Scrub, then press Space to play from the playhead.
In Path mode, Record Path captures a hand-flown move; drag its handle diamonds to retime, click one to edit.
Record Over re-flies a move you already have. Press it, the camera goes to the start, and Press Space to record appears. Space rolls the move while you fly on top of it with mouse-look, WASD, Q/E and J/K.
Space again stops the take, and it becomes this camera's path. Your marks are kept. Esc cancels while it is armed, before you press Space.
With Playback ▸ Cache built, the lens shows the lens the frames were made with and a small cached tag. Exposure, Saturation and Aspect grow the same tag, carrying the cached value, if you move them afterwards.
Shot Duration rescales the whole move; timings keep their proportions.
Delete removes the selected keyframe, character, light, or cut clip.
Ctrl+Z undoes, Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes.
Scroll over the timeline to zoom in/out, anchored at the cursor.
Shift + drag the timeline to pan left/right.
While playing zoomed in, the view scrolls to keep the playhead in sight.
Double-click the time readout to set the timeline length.
Y opens the Edit Timeline. In Program, cut between cameras while you play to record a cut list; it shows here as clips.
Drag clips to move, drag an edge to trim, drag a box to select several. Edges snap when they touch.
B is the razor: click a clip to split it at the cursor. Esc leaves razor mode.
Build by hand: double-click an empty spot to drop a clip of the current camera; select a clip and press 1–9 to change its camera (keeps in/out).
Play replays the edit; Export renders it. The full viewer follows the edit while it's open.
Export… (File menu) opens the export box: pick the source (camera, edit timeline, grid, Program), 1080p or 4K, the frame rate, and the quality, then render an MP4 offline with audio.
Format is what lands on disk. MP4 is H.264 with AAC audio, 20 Mbps at 1080p and 70 Mbps at 4K: the one that plays anywhere. ProRes (desktop app) writes a 10-bit ProRes 422 HQ .mov with uncompressed audio. Its 10 bits are real: the frame is read off the float master at 16 bits a channel and handed to the encoder that way, not an 8-bit picture put in a 10-bit box. EXR + WAV is the grading master: one half-float linear OpenEXR per frame plus audio.wav, zipped. ProRes and EXR render a single view, so they need the Camera or Edit timeline source.
Profile is the curve, and it carries no bit depth of its own: the format does. Rec.709 is the finished picture, the one the viewer is showing you. Flat log is the same frame on the ARRI LogC3 curve in Wide Gamut 3, for grading. As an MP4 it is 8-bit at 2.5x the bitrate, which buys latitude in the shadows and no more; as a ProRes it is a real 10-bit log off the same float master, which is the one to grade. The EXR sequence is deeper than either. Quality is lens samples per frame wherever Depth of Field is on: Draft 8, Standard 24, Fine 64. Standard and Fine also render a 1080p MP4 at double size and scale it down, which is why it comes back cleaner. Draft for a review pass, Standard to cut with, Fine for the one you finish.
Frame rate is what the file is written at: 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 60, or a number you type. It starts on 23.976. The two broadcast rates are written exactly, as 24000/1001 and 30000/1001, so an edit suite conforms them with no drift. The app's own drawing rate is a separate thing and lives in Settings ▸ Scene.
In DaVinci Resolve: set the timeline to the frame rate and the resolution you exported. The MP4 is written with Rec.709 primaries at video levels, so leave the clip's Input Color Space on Rec.709, and do the same for a Rec.709 ProRes. Set a Flat log clip to ARRI LogC3 in Arri Wide Gamut 3, and EXR frames to Linear in Rec.709. MP4 and ProRes carry their audio; the EXR zip's audio.wav goes on its own track.
In a Program + grid export, the live camera's cell wears a small red tally light, just like a broadcast truck.
Blender Export writes your camera move as a Python script: this camera, all cameras, or the Program cut.
Screenshot (File menu) saves a still of the current view.
Camera Plot (under the camera list) prints a top-down floor plan: every camera as a true-lens wedge, with paths, characters, and a scale bar.
It opens on the dark Sheet; switch it to Light to print. Base sets how the scan itself prints (Off, Points, Ink, Color), and Contrast, Density and Exposure tune that.
Declutter starts at 0% and clears scan speckle. Slice takes a horizontal slab, Crop boxes the drawing, Draw picks what prints over it, Scale sets the grid, Throw sets how far the wedges reach.
Save, New Save and Delete keep versions of a sheet. Once you have an edit, Multiview and Edit Timeline appear on the transport.
Share Link mints an encrypted link so operators can open the plot on their phones. Export PNG and Export Video write the sheet out.
The + in Characters adds a person. Click a spot to place them; the Size % doubles as your scale check.
Select a character and the Motion card drives them: marks, Convert to Path, smoothing: the same tools as cameras.
Every Lights control explains itself on hover: edges resize, the ball aims, Alt pans/tilts, Shift slides the whole light.
Ctrl + click lights to gather a set, then save that look as a cue in the Cue List. Right-click a camera row to hand it a cue.
Haze at the bottom of any light's card is a click-word: click it to put haze in the air for the whole scene, and the slider beside it sets how thick it is. Lift under it is the light the haze itself carries: turn it up to make a hazy scene read with no light in it. Local sets how uneven the haze is, from one even thickness to patches of thicker and thinner air.
Settings ▸ Scene ▸ Crop opens a box with a pair of handles per axis. Slide them in and anything outside the box stops drawing. Nothing is removed from the file.
Every view, capture and export sees the crop, and so does the Camera Plot. It works on a scan and on a GLB.
Hold Shift before you press a handle for a fine drag, double-click a handle to put it back where it started, and Reset opens the whole box out again.
States sits under Lights in Direct mode, when a scene arrives from Intake carrying more than one version of the room.
Region states are checkboxes, so any set of them can be live at once, up to eight. Current shows the scene as saved, with every state hidden.
Cameras and characters stay put while you switch, so one shot can be checked against every look.
Share Scene creates an encrypted room: send the link and the password separately. The server never sees your scene.
Roles decide who can edit; everyone else follows along. Click a name to watch their camera first-person.
Save Scene saves a bundled .zero file with the GLB and metadata.
Import opens a GLB, glTF + external files, a splat, a saved .zero scene (.framefinder files still open), or an audio file for the timeline. Importing a scene starts a fresh session.
Update Scene swaps the 3D file but keeps your cameras, moves, and characters. Re-import an edited file at the same scale and origin.
The app autosaves as you work. Reload Last File brings the whole session back, audio included.
Drop an .mp3 / .wav into the app (or open one through Import). A waveform lays under the timeline for scoring your blocking; volume lives in Settings ▸ Audio.
Scout lookbooks export the Scout frame order. Direct contact sheets export saved frames per camera; Contact Sheet lives in the File menu, under Export.
Double-click any slider to reset it to its default.
Hold Shift before you press a slider for a fine drag. It stays fine until you let go.
Hover anything: nearly every control explains itself in a tooltip.
This will clear all cameras, reload the app, and reopen the last GLB from scratch.
Builds a Blender Python script. Import your original scene file into Blender, run the script, and render 1:1 with path-traced lighting. Which camera(s)?
Name this Scout contact sheet. This title appears at the top of the page and in the exported filename.
Create a live room. Anyone with the link and the password can join and see this scene. The password is the encryption key. It never reaches the server, so share it separately and keep it safe (it can't be recovered).
Share the link and password through separate channels. Both are required to join.
Enter the room password you were given (shared separately from the link).
Name this scene. Save Scene creates one bundled .zero file, the scene plus your cameras, characters, and settings.
Scan with your phone's camera. Keep the phone on the same WiFi as this computer (or use the phone's hotspot). Then point it where you want the shot and tap Recenter.