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Place digital assets and edit the scene

Learn how to place and edit assets in real-world space to compose your AR experience.

Place assets

You can start placing content in the scene after you set the surface anchor. If you want to go back one step and learn how to find a reliable surface to place assets, see Setting a surface anchor. Once the anchor is placed, you can import assets in the space.

View and manage assets using scene graph

Adobe Aero’s scene graph interface lets you view and manage scene assets. You can rename, delete, or lock assets, and toggle visibility.

To open the scene graph in Edit mode, tap the icon on the lower right corner.

The following preferences appear in the scene graph window:

  • Lock: Prevents you from editing multiple assets that are placed next to each other. Assets are in unlock mode by default. To lock or unlock the ability to edit an asset, select the asset and tap the lock  icon. 
  • Visibility: Lets you toggle visibility of an asset. Assets are visible by default. To hide or unhide an asset, select the asset and tap the eye  icon. 

Select assets

Multi-select objects in the scene

Single object

Tap on an object to select it. A selected object is highlighted and a surface guide is drawn under it.

If you turn the camera away from the selected object, an arrow will direct you back to the object.

Multi-select

Tap on the overflow menu to enter multi-select mode. Then, tap on all the objects to select them. Multi-selected objects can also be grouped using the Group tool.

Deselect

Tap on the screen outside the bounding box of the selected object.

Move, scale, and rotate

There are two ways to select and interact with objects in the scene:

Object manipulation type

Action

Behavior

Direct manipulation

Select one of more objects using the actions to edit your scene.

  • Move: Drag with a single finger to move the asset in any direction across the surface.
  • Rotate: Use two of your fingers at an equal distance in a twisting gesture to rotate the asset.
  • Scale: Pinch or expand two of your fingers to scale the asset.

Precision manipulation

Select an object and tap on the individual tool icons to move, scale, or rotate.

  • Panels appear for each tool. Use the sliders or the text box to enter precise numbers to place the assets.

The following preferences appear in the Scale window:

  • Autoscale adjusts the asset size automatically to fit into the screen view. 20.0 centimeters is the default value. However, you can change the default modifier or chose to turn off Autoscale in the settings menu.
  • Original size lets you change the asset size to the original dimension as read in the asset source file.
  • Lock lets you fix the aspect ratio of the scale settings. This option is turned ON by default.

When you select move, scale, or rotate tools from the window, a visual 3D gizmo appears.

The gizmo handles are color-coded to represent the axis they correspond to:

  • Red for the x-axis
  • Green for the y-axis
  • Blue for the z-axis

Use the gizmo handles for the following options:

Options

Actions

Move

Tap the Pivot handle to move the object along an axis. 

Scale

Drag the square handles to scale the object image. The scale is uniform if the corresponding lock button is enbaled in the Rotate panel.

Rotate

Drag the circle-shaped handles to rotate the object.

To learn how to work with 3D Gizmo on desktop, see Workspace basics.

Edit actions

Select the asset and choose any of these edit actions:

  • Cut: Copies the object to the clipboard and then deletes it.
  • Copy: Copies the object to the clipboard.
  • Paste: Pastes an object stored on the clipboard.
  • Duplicate: Create a copy of the selected asset.
  • Group: Organize multiple selected assets into groups.
  • Ungrooup: Separates a group into individual objects.
  • Delete: Delete the selected asset.
  • Rename: Edit to save the name of the selected asset.
  • Replace: Replace the selected asset.

What's next?

Now you know how to place assets in the scene. After you place your assets, go ahead and add interactivity to the objects.

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