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Tell us what’s happening — steps to reproduce, browser, and OS help a lot. We don’t collect contact details, so we can’t reply, but we read everything you send.
Technical help for Orby in the browser — how lighting, exports, and file formats work, plus a place to report bugs when something breaks. Your models stay on your device; this page only sends what you type in the report form above.
File formats & loading
Orby is optimized for glTF / GLB and SVG extrusion. Other formats load via Three.js loaders but may need extra care for materials and scale.
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What should I use for AI-generated or game assets?
GLB is the best default — single file, PBR materials, animations, and extensions like transmission for glass. Export from Meshy, Tripo, Blender, etc. as glTF 2.0 when you can.
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SVG logos and flat artwork
Drop an SVG to extrude filled paths into 3D meshes. Use Object → SVG Extrude for depth, per-color layers, and surface presets. Complex strokes-only artwork may need cleanup in a vector editor first.
The UI for multi-depth and per-color extrude is still rough around the edges — not as polished as we'd like yet. If you poke at the layer and depth controls for a minute or two, you'll usually get the hang of it.
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Model looks tiny, huge, or off-center
Orby auto-frames on load. Use F to refocus, or transform tools (W / E / R) if you need manual placement. Some FBX/OBJ exports use different unit scales — zoom and framing usually recover a usable view.
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Materials look flat or wrong compared to another viewer
Check display mode (Shaded vs Unlit vs Clay). Shader Lab presets temporarily replace materials — turn them off to see the imported glTF look again. Marketplace assets often pack transparency into atlases; see Transparency & glass below.
HDRI & environment lighting
A 360° environment image lights the scene and drives reflections on metals, glass, and chrome looks.
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Built-in presets vs custom uploads
Presets ship as JPEG environments — graded and tuned for fast load and a small download. You can upload your own .jpg, .png, .hdr, or .exr: JPEGs behave like a finished sky; .hdr / .exr keep a wider brightness range so sun and windows can punch harder on metal and glass (lower Intensity and Exposure if it blows out).
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Layout and backdrop
Use a 2:1 equirectangular map. Render Backdrop draws the HDRI behind the scene; when off, only your background color shows but the HDRI still lights the model. Rotate the environment to change highlight direction; Blurriness softens reflections.
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Custom HDRI session limits
Custom uploads are session-only — they reset mood tints to neutral and are not saved in copied scene JSON. Re-upload after a refresh if you need the same file again.
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Shader Lab and HDRI
True Chrome and Glass follow the current HDRI (strength, rotation, blur). Animated Shader Lab presets (Flow Field, Plasma, etc.) can be frozen so they stop drifting while the rest of the scene still responds to the environment.
Exports
Exports render the current view and settings on your GPU. Heavy post-processing and high resolution increase time and memory use.
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PNG still (1× / 2×, transparency)
Matches the viewport grade and effects. 2× is sharper but slower and uses more memory. Transparency exports the alpha channel when enabled — hide the ground/base if you need a clean plate.
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Fisheye lens and PNG
Fisheye looks fine live but PNG export is not supported yet while the effect is on — you may see missing geometry, black patches, or a broken frame. Turn off Fisheye Lens in the Render panel, export PNG, then turn fisheye back on. MP4 video export still works with fisheye enabled.
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SVG vector (silhouette & flat color)
Vector exports trace the visible silhouette or flat fills — they are not a substitute for a 3D mesh export. Tune detail level if paths are too heavy or too coarse for your target app.
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GLB from SVG extrude
Available when the source was an imported SVG. Exported meshes use opaque GLB materials for predictable shading in other viewers and AR pipelines.
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Video (MP4 / PNG sequence)
Turntable or orbit camera paths; control length, spins, FPS, resolution, and encode quality. Encoding uses browser APIs — very long or 4K runs can fail on low memory; try shorter clips or lower resolution. PNG sequences download as a zip of numbered frames.
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Export failed or file won’t open
Note your browser and OS in a bug report. Safari and mobile GPUs can be stricter than desktop Chrome. Disable the heaviest effects temporarily, reduce export size, and close other heavy tabs before retrying.
Transparency & glass
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Flicker, sorting, or “see-through” layers
Real-time engines sort draw calls — not every triangle. When many transparent surfaces share one mesh/material, order artifacts are common in WebGL/Three.js, especially on marketplace downloads with blended atlases.
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What to try in Orby
Under Mesh → Advanced, try Transparency Mode and Stabilize Layered Transparency. These change draw order but cannot fix assets where unrelated surfaces were baked into one blended material.
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Transmission / refractive glass in glTF
Thin glass often uses KHR_materials_transmission. When present, it reads from the file’s material properties rather than global scene overrides.
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Further reading
SVG extrude
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Controls
Depth sets global extrusion; Angle controls normal smoothing; Flip Direction inverts front/back; Color Override replaces fill colors; per-color depth/position rows tune layered logos.
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Scene JSON
SVG extrude settings are included when you copy/paste scene settings in the app. They are not stored on this support page — only in your local session.
Performance
Orby is a real-time GPU renderer. Frame cost comes from your mesh complexity, shadow maps, screen-space effects, and how many full-quality passes you stack — not just sliders in one panel.
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High-poly meshes
Triangle count matters before any effect is turned on. Dense photogrammetry, CAD exports, and AI meshes with heavy subdivision can choke integrated GPUs and older laptops even at rest. If orbit feels sticky with effects off, try a decimated export, hide optional parts in the source file, or use Clay / Unlit while framing, then switch back to Shaded for the final look.
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Shadow-casting 3-point lights
Under Lights → Shadows, enabling Cast Shadows makes the key, fill, and rim spotlights render shadow maps every frame. That is powerful for product shots but expensive — especially with soft shadows and when multiple lights cast at once. Per-light shadow toggles add up quickly.
Shadow Quality (Low → Ultra) sets shadow map resolution and filtering. Ultra uses very large maps and softer PCF — beautiful on desktop, brutal on low-end hardware. Start at Medium; only go High or Ultra when you are polishing a still or export.
On the HDRI panel, Receive Shadows + AO adds a ground catcher under the model so contact shadows and occlusion read on the backdrop. Turn it off when you do not need floor contact — it is extra geometry and compositing work each frame.
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Ambient occlusion
FX → Ambient Occlusion runs screen-space AO (N8AO) as an extra post pass. It deepens creases and ground contact but costs GPU time on top of bloom, depth of field, and shadows. It is off by default for a reason. If the toggle stays disabled, check Render → Quality → Render Quality — the Low tier forces AO off to save performance (your saved settings return when you move back to Medium or Ultra).
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Ultra settings (global and per-effect)
Render → Quality → Render Quality → Ultra is the top tier: higher device pixel ratio (sharper internal resolution), full-resolution bloom, and no automatic shutoff of depth of field, bloom, AO, or FXAA. Medium lowers pixel ratio and runs bloom at half resolution; Low goes further and disables several heavy passes entirely while keeping your slider values saved.
Several FX blocks also have their own Quality → Ultra (depth of field, bloom, anamorphic bloom, lens flare). Stacking Render Quality Ultra with multiple per-effect Ultra modes is the fastest way to tank frame rate — fine for a hero frame, rough for live orbiting on a weak GPU.
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Lens flare
FX → Lens Flare simulates glare and streaks from bright areas in the scene. On lower-spec machines it can drag performance noticeably, especially at Quality → Ultra (the default). Try Optimized first, or disable flare while working and enable it only for the final PNG or video export.
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Cheaper vs heavier color & post effects
Light: exposure, contrast, saturation, tint, temperature, fade, luminance tone curve. Medium: vignette, clarity, sharpness, Fresnel. Heavy: depth of field, bloom, lens dirt, film grain, chromatic aberration, FXAA, histogram/auto-exposure — plus AO and lens flare when enabled. Turning an effect on is usually the biggest step; cranking intensity changes the look more than the cost.
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Practical recovery checklist
If Orby feels slow: set Render Quality to Medium or Low; disable Cast Shadows or drop shadow quality; turn off AO, lens flare, DOF, and bloom; shrink the browser window; avoid 2× PNG export on a struggling GPU. Re-enable one cinematic layer at a time when you are close to final.
Scene settings
Copy/paste scene JSON from the app to save lighting, camera, effects, tone curve, Look Filter selection, and panel toggles. Paste on the landing page or via the in-app loader. Settings are local to your browser — they are not uploaded to Orby servers.
Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms you will see in Orby, in exports, and in 3D forums. The in-app Information tab has a short preview — this is the expanded reference.
File formats & 3D basics
- 3D interchange
- Moving 3D data between apps (Blender → game engine → web viewer). No format is perfect — scale, materials, and lighting intent often change on export. That is normal, not necessarily a bug.
- glTF / GLB
- The modern open standard for real-time 3D on the web. glTF is the format; GLB is the single-file binary version; a .gltf file is often JSON plus separate textures. Orby is built around glTF 2.0 — best support for PBR materials, animations, and extensions like glass transmission.
- OBJ
- An older mesh format — Wavefront OBJ — geometry and basic materials only. No PBR, no animations. Fine for simple shapes; expect to tune materials manually in Orby.
- FBX
- Autodesk’s FBX exchange format, common in games and DCC tools. Loads in Orby but export quality varies — embedded textures, scale, and material setup depend on the source app.
- STL
- A triangle-only STL format used for 3D printing and CAD. No color or PBR — Orby shows it as a neutral solid mesh.
- USD / USDZ
- Pixar’s Universal Scene Description — used in film pipelines and Apple AR. Basic loading support; complex USD features may not translate fully.
- SVG
- Scalable Vector Graphics — flat 2D artwork (logos, icons). Orby can extrude filled paths into 3D meshes.
- Mesh
- The 3D surface of a model — a polygon mesh made of vertices (points), edges, and triangular faces. What you see when wireframe is off.
- Polygon / triangle
- The flat faces that make up a mesh. More triangles = more detail but heavier on your GPU. High-poly scans and dense AI exports can slow orbit even before effects are on.
- Vertex
- A vertex — a point in 3D space. Meshes connect vertices with edges to form faces.
- Normal
- The direction a surface “faces” — a surface normal used for lighting. Smooth normals blend across edges (soft highlights); hard normals stay faceted (crisp edges).
- UV map
- How 2D texture images wrap onto 3D surfaces — UV mapping is like unfolding a cardboard box into a flat pattern. Bad or missing UVs can make textures look stretched or wrong.
- Animation
- Keyframed motion stored in the file (bones, morphs, object transforms). glTF/GLB animations play in Orby’s timeline when present — see computer animation.
Materials & textures
- PBR (Physically Based Rendering)
- A physically based rendering material model that mimics real-world light behavior using sliders like metalness and roughness instead of hand-painted fake highlights. Most modern 3D (games, AI tools, glTF) uses PBR.
- Material
- The surface recipe for a mesh — color, shininess, metal, glow, transparency. One file can contain many materials (body, glass, tires, etc.).
- Texture / texture map
- A 2D image applied to a mesh via texture mapping (skin, rust, labels). Different map types drive different material properties — not just color.
- Albedo / base color
- The flat color or diffuse texture of a surface before lighting — albedo is what you would see under even white light, without shadows baked in.
- Metalness
- How metallic a surface reads (0 = plastic or paint, 1 = chrome or steel). Controls whether reflections dominate the look.
- Roughness
- Surface micro-scatter (0 = mirror-smooth, 1 = chalky matte). A chrome ball is low roughness; concrete is high.
- Emissive
- Self-lit glow on a material — neon signs, screens, sci-fi trim. Adds light-looking color without necessarily casting shadows on other objects.
- Normal map
- A texture that fakes small surface bumps and dents without extra geometry — normal mapping. Toggle normal maps under material options for Shaded and Clay modes.
- Transmission / KHR_materials_transmission
- glTF’s extension for refractive glass — light passes through the surface with realistic refraction. Thin panes in proper glTF files use this instead of simple transparency.
- Transparency / alpha
- See-through surfaces (windows, hair cards, foliage). Real-time engines struggle when many transparent layers share one material — see Transparency & glass.
- Alpha mode (OPAQUE, MASK, BLEND)
- glTF rules for cutouts vs fades. OPAQUE = solid; MASK = hard cutout (chain-link, leaves); BLEND = soft partial transparency (glass, fog) — hardest to render correctly in real time.
- Atlas
- Multiple small textures packed into one texture atlas to save draw calls. Common in game assets — can cause transparency sorting headaches when unrelated surfaces share one blended sheet.
- Subsurface / translucency
- Subsurface scattering — light passing through a thin surface (wax, skin, leaves). Orby has a translucency toggle for compatible PBR materials — distinct from glass transmission.
Lighting & environment
- HDRI / environment map
- A 360° high-dynamic-range image that wraps around the scene. It lights the model and drives reflections on metal and glass — like placing your object inside a photographed room or sky.
- Image-based lighting (IBL)
- Using an environment image as the main light source instead of (or blended with) manual lights — image-based lighting. Orby’s HDRI presets and custom uploads work this way.
- Equirectangular
- The standard 2:1 equirectangular panorama layout for HDRI files — width is twice the height. Custom environment uploads should use this aspect ratio.
- HDR / EXR vs JPEG environment
- .hdr and .exr store a wide brightness range (bright sun, deep shadows) — powerful but can blow out if intensity is too high. JPEG environments are pre-graded “finished” skies — what Orby’s built-in presets use for fast load and predictable look.
- Exposure
- Overall scene brightness — like adjusting camera exposure. Works with the histogram to avoid crushed blacks or blown highlights.
- 3-point lighting
- A classic three-point lighting setup: key (main light), fill (softens shadows), rim (edge separation from background), plus ambient (overall base level). Orby exposes each as a controllable spotlight.
- Render Backdrop
- When on, the HDRI is visible behind the model. When off, you see a solid background color — but the HDRI still lights and reflects on the mesh.
- Shadow map
- A depth texture the GPU uses to cast shadows from spotlights — shadow mapping. Enabling shadows on multiple 3-point lights is realistic but expensive — see Performance.
- PCF (shadow filtering)
- Softening of shadow edges — percentage-closer filtering. Higher shadow quality in Orby uses larger maps and softer filtering — prettier, heavier on the GPU.
- Ground catcher / Receive Shadows + AO
- An invisible floor under the model that catches contact shadows and ambient occlusion from the HDRI panel — helps products “sit” on a surface.
Camera & transforms
- Orbit
- Rotating the camera around the model — click-drag on the canvas. The default way to inspect a mesh.
- Pan
- Sliding the view sideways or up/down without changing angle — right-click drag.
- Dolly / zoom
- Moving closer or farther from the model — scroll wheel or pinch. Orby adjusts field of view at extremes for a cinematic feel.
- FOV (field of view)
- How wide the camera lens feels — field of view: low FOV = telephoto (flat, compressed); high FOV = wide-angle (dramatic perspective). Under Camera controls.
- Framing / Focus (F)
- Auto-centers and sizes the model in view. Use after load or when a mesh looks tiny, huge, or off-screen.
- Auto Orbit
- The camera slowly spins around the model on its own — good for previews, turntables, and presentations. Press Esc to stop.
- Transform / gizmo
- On-screen handles to move, rotate, or scale the model. W translate, E rotate, R scale, Q exit back to select/orbit.
- Depth of field (DOF)
- Camera-style blur — depth of field keeps the subject sharp and softens background (or foreground). A post effect under FX; heavier on performance at high quality.
- Bokeh
- The shape and quality of out-of-focus highlights in depth of field — bokeh. Orby simulates lens blur in the DOF pass.
Display modes
- Shaded
- Default — full lighting, PBR materials, environment reflections. What you want for final looks.
- Unlit
- Textures and colors without lighting math — flat, even, illustration-like. Useful to check albedo or debug texture issues.
- Clay
- Single-color matte render — ignores textures, shows form and lighting only. Good for checking shape and silhouette.
- Wireframe
- Shows the triangle structure of the mesh — wireframe view. Can replace the view or overlay on top of Shaded/Unlit/Clay.
Post-processing & color
- Post-processing
- Image effects applied after the 3D scene is rendered — post-processing covers bloom, grain, color grade, and more. Think of it as a photo filter stack on the final frame.
- Bloom
- A soft glow bleeding from bright areas — windows, specular hits, emissive parts. “Selective” bloom targets bright pixels rather than the whole image.
- Film grain
- Adds fine film grain texture for a cinematic or analog feel.
- Chromatic aberration (CA)
- Slight color fringing at frame edges — chromatic aberration mimics cheap or vintage camera lenses.
- Lens flare
- Streaks and ghosts from bright light sources in frame — lens flare is decorative and can cost performance on low-end GPUs.
- Lens dirt
- Simulated smudges on a virtual camera lens — subtle atmosphere, not literal dirt on your screen.
- Vignette
- Darkening toward the corners of the frame — vignetting draws the eye to the center.
- FXAA
- Fast approximate anti-aliasing — smooths jagged edges on high-contrast geometry. A small performance cost.
- Tonemapping / ACES
- Maps HDR scene brightness into viewable range on your monitor — tone mapping is like a film print curve. Orby uses ACES Filmic for a cinematic rolloff in highlights.
- Color grading
- Creative adjustments after render — color grading covers contrast, saturation, tint, temperature, shadows and highlights. Orby’s Camera → Color & Tone block.
- Histogram
- A histogram of brightness in the current frame. Helps spot crushed shadows or overexposed clipping — turns orange/red when highlights blow out.
- Auto exposure
- Automatically adjusts brightness to match scene content — handy for varied HDRIs; turn off for manual, repeatable grades.
- Luminance tone curve
- A draggable curve that remaps dark, mid, and bright tones before other color adjustments — lift blacks, punch mids, roll off highlights. Saved in scene settings.
- LUT (lookup table)
- A precomputed lookup table that maps input brightness to output — Orby bakes the tone curve into a 256-step LUT for smooth, efficient grading.
- Fresnel
- Edge-brightening based on viewing angle — named after the Fresnel equations for how reflectivity changes at glancing angles. A stylized rim-glow effect in Orby, not physical glass.
- Ambient occlusion (AO)
- Darkening in crevices and contact points where light is occluded — ambient occlusion. Orby’s screen-space AO (N8AO) is an extra post pass — deepens detail but costs GPU time.
- Clarity / sharpness
- Local contrast and edge enhancement — “clarity” punches mid-tone detail; “sharpness” adds fine edge definition. Medium GPU cost.
Orby features
- Shader Lab
- Stylized material presets (chrome, glass, animated FX) that temporarily replace your imported materials. Turn off to restore the original glTF look.
- Look Filter Presets
- One-tap style combos under Camera — color grade, curve, bloom, grain, CA, and more applied together. None resets those defaults.
- Scene settings / .orby JSON
- Copy-paste text that saves your full setup — lights, camera, FX, curve, Look Filter, panel toggles. Local to your browser; not uploaded to servers.
- SVG extrude
- Converts flat SVG fill shapes into 3D geometry with depth, per-color layers, and export to GLB. See SVG extrude.
- Turntable export
- Renders the model spinning over time — MP4 video or numbered PNG sequence in a zip. Control spins, duration, FPS, and resolution.
- Render Quality
- Global performance tier (Low / Medium / Ultra) — changes internal resolution, bloom resolution, and which heavy passes stay enabled.
- ColorChecker
- A reference ColorChecker chart mesh you can drop into the scene to sanity-check white balance and exposure against known swatches.
- Client-side
- Everything runs in your browser tab — models are not uploaded to Orby servers. Close the tab and the session data is gone.
Technical foundations
- WebGL
- The browser API that lets web pages draw 3D on your GPU — WebGL. Orby, Three.js, and most web viewers depend on it.
- Three.js
- The open-source JavaScript 3D library Orby builds on — loaders, materials, lights, and render pipeline. See Three.js on Wikipedia.
- GPU
- Your graphics processing unit — does the heavy lifting for real-time 3D. Integrated laptop GPUs struggle sooner than desktop cards when effects and shadow maps stack up.
- Draw call
- One batch of geometry sent to the GPU per frame. Transparent materials and multi-mesh scenes increase sorting complexity — a root cause of transparency artifacts.
- Frame rate (FPS)
- How many images per second the viewer renders — frame rate: 60 feels smooth; heavy scenes may drop lower on weak hardware.
- Pixel ratio / device pixel ratio
- How sharp the internal render is vs your screen — higher = pixel density, crisper but slower. Render Quality Ultra uses a higher ratio.
Privacy reminder
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