Viewport

Preview and inspect node output in a viewer panel.

What it does

Viewport is a dedicated interactive view onto anything flowing through the graph: shapes, images, geometry, collections, volumes, or materials. It renders inline on the canvas and also opens in a dockable panel, with its own pan/zoom and camera state that persists between sessions.

Connect a Tool node to the Tool input and, while this viewport is hovered or focused, the tool receives clicks and drags for interactive editing, the same interaction model as the main viewport.

When to use it

ParameterTypeDefault
inputAnyCollection(AttributedCollection { col...
toolOneOf([Collection])
cameraOneOf([Camera3D])
modeString"2D"
show_gridBooleantrue
camera_stateString""

Gotchas

With nothing wired into Input, Viewport shows the full scene, the same as the app's main viewport.

Wire more than one thing into Input and all of them display together as a group, not just the last connection.

Camera is optional. Left disconnected, Viewport uses its own interactive camera; connect one to render from a specific, graph-driven point of view.

Mode switches the whole interaction style, not only the camera: 2D gives pan/zoom, 3D gives orbit/pan/dolly. Use 3D for geometry and volumes, 2D for images and flat shapes.

Worked example

  1. Add a Viewport and wire the node to inspect into its Input.

  2. Set Mode to 3D for geometry or a volume, or leave it at 2D for images and flat shapes.

  3. Toggle Show Grid off if the grid is distracting against the content.

  4. Connect a Tool node into Tool, then click into the viewport panel to edit interactively.

  5. Take the Render output downstream for the viewport's rendered image.

See also

Subgraph · Scene Pick · Rasters (images)