User Manual

Settings

The Settings panel lets you set up various properties. It is accessed using the 'cog' button in the bottom left of the Editor (on the Toolbar).

Editor

These are personal preferences for the Editor.

Grid

You can set the number of divisions and the size of each division for the Grid that appears in the Editor scene.

Snap

This is the snap increment used when snapping is enabled.

Camera Clip

Here you can set the near and far clip planes for the Editor cameras.

Clear Color

This is the clear color of the Editor cameras.

Icon Size

This is the size of the icons that appear over various components inside the 3D viewport. Set this to 0 if you don't want to see icons at all.

Local Server

This is the URL where all the scripts are going to be loaded from, when launching the Application with Launch Local.

Locale

The locale that you can preview in the Editor and when you Launch your application. This is only visible to you not other members of your team. This is used when you have enabled Localization for Text Elements and when you use Localized Assets.

Physics Settings

Physics settings affect the simulation of all the rigid body components in your scene.

Enable

If this is enabled then the 3D physics library will be included in your Application.

Gravity

Gravity is the acceleration applied every frame to all rigid bodies in your scene. By default, it is set to -9.8 meters per second per second, which essentially approximates Earth's gravity. If you are making a game in space, you might want to set this to 0, 0, 0 (zero g).

Rendering

Rendering settings affect various graphics related properties.

Ambient Color

The color of the scene's ambient light source. PlayCanvas allows you to create directional, point and spot lights. These lights account for direct light that falls on objects. But in reality, light actually bounces around the environment and we call this indirect light. A global ambient light is a crude approximation of this and allows you to set a light source that appears to shine from all directions. The global ambient color is multiplied with the Ambient property of a Phong Material to add a contribution to the final color of an object.

Note, if you are using a Skybox and Physical Materials the Ambient Color has no effect.

Skybox

The Skybox is a cubemap asset that is rendered behind your 3D scene. This lets your use a set of 6 2D images to display the distant world beyond the 3D models in your scene.

To add a skybox, create a cubemap asset and then assign it to the cubemap slot in the settings panel.

Note, if you are using a Prefiltered Cubemap, the skybox will be used as the default environment map for all Physical materials.

Skybox Intensity

This is a slider that controls the intensity or brightness of the skybox. The value can range from 0 (totally black) to 32 (brightest).

Skybox Mip

When using a Prefiltered Skybox, you can select the skybox mip that you want to display. Each mip is a more blurred version of the original Skybox. You can use this to show a more blurred / abstract version of your original Skybox for example for artistic purposes.

Tonemapping

Tonemapping is the process of compressing High Dynamic Range (HDR) colors into limited Low Dynamic Range (e.g. into visible monitor output values). There are two options for tone mapping.

Linear tone mapping is active by default, it's simply (color * exposure). You can tweak exposure to make quick changes to brightness. Note that it's not just simple brightness à la Photoshop because your input can be HDR. e.g. If you have a light source with intensity = 8, it will still be quite bright (4) after exposure = 0.5. So, all visible things won't just fade out linearly.

Filmic tone mapping is a good choice in high-contrast environments, like scenes lit by bright Sun, or interiors with bright lights being close to walls/ceiling. It will nicely remap out-of-range super bright values to something more perceptually realistic (our eyes and film do tone mapping as well, we don't see physically linear values). Well, ask any photographer: nobody likes to leave extremely bright spots as well as pitch black spots on a photo. Filmic tone mapping gives you nice abilities to get rid of such spots.

Exposure

The exposure value tweaks the overall brightness of the scene.

Gamma Correction

Computer screens are set up to output not physically linear, but perceptually linear (sRGB) signal. However, for correct appearance when performing lighting calculations, color textures must be converted to physically linear space, and then the fully lit image must be fit again into sRGB. Rendering with gamma correction enabled reduces the number of ugly, overly saturated highlights and better preserves color after lighting, and it's generally recommended that this be enabled in your scene. The following image shows a simple scene with a sphere. On the left the scene has been gamma corrected while on the right, the scene is uncorrected.

Gamma Correction

To find out more about gamma correction, read this GPU Gems chapter.

Fog

The Fog Type property can be used to control an approximation of an ambient fog in your scene. Here is an example of fog being enabled:

The types available are as follows:

Color

The color of the fog. This color is blended with a surface's color more as the fog fades in.

Start Distance

The distance in scene units from the viewpoint from where the fog starts to fade in.

End Distance

The distance in scene units from the viewpoint from where the fog reaches a maximum. Any objects beyond this distance will be rendered with the fog color.

Fog Density

The fog density controls the rate at which fog fades in for Exp and Exp2 fog types. Larger values cause fog to fade in more quickly. Fog density must be a positive number.

Resolution

Control the width and height of your Application. You can also set the resolution mode to one of the following values:

Fill Mode

Fill mode controls the sizing behavior of the canvas. You can set one of the following values:

Device Pixel Ratio

When enabled the canvas resolution will be calculated including the device pixel ratio.

Transparent Canvas

Enable alpha-blending on the main canvas element.

Preserve Drawing Buffer

Use the preserveDrawingBuffer option when creating the WebGL context.

Layers

Manage rendering layers and their render order. You can find out more about layers here.

Audio

Use Legacy Audio

Enable the legacy audio components. Use this only for compatibility with old projects as it has been deprecated.

Lightmapping

Lightmapping Settings

Size Multiplier

Scene-wide multiplier applied to all lightmap sizes.

Max Resolution

The maximum texture size available for generated lightmap textures.

Mode

Scene-wide mode for lightmap baking, with the following options:

Filter

Enables bilateral filter on Runtime Baked Lightmaps.

Range

A range parameter of the bilateral filter. Larger values apply more widespread blur.

Smoothness

A spatial parameter of the bilateral filter. Larger values blur colors that are less similar.

Ambient Bake

Enables baking of Environment Light.

Samples

The number of samples that are used to bake the ambient light into the lightmap.

Sphere Part

The amount of the sphere that is used to bake environment light.

Occlusion Brightness

The brightness of the baked ambient occlusion.

Occlusion Contrast

The contrast of the baked ambient occlusion.

Batch Groups

Here you can create and manage Batch Groups for the Project. You can assign Model components and Element components to Batch Groups and the engine will attempt to reduce draw calls by merging the mesh instances of objects in the same group together. See more on Batching here.

Loading Screen (Available for ORG users only)

Here you can set the script that creates the loading screen of you application. To create a new loading screen script click Create Default. See more information about custom loading screens here.

External Scripts

Here you can specify the URLs of external scripts you would like to include in your application. These URLs are added as <script> tags in the main HTML page of the application before any other script is loaded.

Input

Here you can enable or disable various input devices for your application.

Localization

Here you can specify JSON Assets that contain localization data. Assets in this list will automatically be parsed for localization data when loaded. These are used to localized your Text Elements.

You can click CREATE NEW ASSET to create a new localization asset. You can then add data to that asset for the desired locale.

Read more about localization here.

Asset Tasks

Auto-run

Run the asset pipeline automatically when an asset is uploaded.

Textures POT (power-of-two)

When a texture is imported resize it to be the nearest power of two.

Create Atlases

When a new image is uploaded it will be created as a Texture Atlas instead of a Texture.

If an asset is updated with a new version, search for related assets (such as materials and textures) that were created from the original asset outside of the asset's folder. Otherwise, only check inside the current folder for related assets.

Overwrite Model

When importing a scene (e.g. an FBX) this setting decides whether the model file is overwritten with a new version imported from the scene.

Overwrite Animation

When importing a scene (e.g. an FBX) this setting decides whether animation files are overwritten with a new version imported from the scene.

Overwrite Material

When importing a scene (e.g. an FBX) this setting decides whether material files are overwritten with a new version imported from the scene.

Overwrite Texture

When importing a scene (e.g. an FBX) this setting decides whether texture files are overwritten with a new version imported from the scene.