# Move the camera

After this you'll be moving the camera around the scene like you've worked in 3D before. The viewport is where you'll spend most of your time, and the controls are not what your hands are going to guess if you came from Blender, Maya, or Unreal. Sort it out now and the rest of Build mode falls into place.

![Empty Compose-mode shot with the orbit / pan / zoom gesture overlay visible as dotted arcs during the drag motion](/files/neWNV5tsQJu8cES6Cov6)

## What's getting in the way

The first reach is muscle memory from another DCC. Right-click-orbit, middle-mouse-pan, scroll-zoom – your hands try Blender's bindings first, and Intangible doesn't fully match. On a trackpad, zoom feels imprecise without a modifier. And the camera-mode split is doing real work in the background that the UI doesn't shout about: there's the **scene camera** you're moving around now to build, and there's the **shot camera** you'll set up later in Compose mode for the framings that get rendered. Two cameras, one viewport.

Direct quote from the user-testing notes that captures the moment: *"Moving the camera felt like a chore."* If your hands feel that, you're not alone, and it's the next ten minutes of this page.

## How to do it

For the scene camera in Build mode:

1. **Orbit.** Hold the right mouse button and drag, or hold `Option` (⌥ on Mac, `Alt` on Windows) and drag with the left button.
2. **Pan.** Hold the middle mouse button and drag, or hold `Shift` and the left button.
3. **Zoom.** Scroll wheel for fine zoom; `Cmd`+scroll for faster steps. On a trackpad, two-finger scroll. Pinch-to-zoom maps to the same control – hold `Cmd` while pinching to slow the rate, which is the trackpad fix the testers were asking for.
4. **Frame an object.** Click the object, then press `F`. The camera moves to fill the frame with it. Use this any time you've zoomed past where you meant to and lost the scene.
5. **Frame everything.** Click empty space first to deselect, then `F`. The camera pulls back to fit the entire scene in view.

For larger sets – a city populator, a tropical-forest populator, anywhere you'd be navigating across hundreds of meters – nudge the camera speed in **Settings → Graphics → Camera Sensitivity**. The default is tuned for a single set the size of a living room, and it feels syrupy on bigger environments.

## Common mistakes

* **The mode switcher quietly changes the camera.** Each mode has slightly different camera affordances – Compose swaps the right mouse button to a fine-tune crane. If your shortcuts stop working, check which mode the toolbar is highlighting.
* **`F` does nothing on an empty scene.** Frame is a no-op when nothing is selected and the scene is empty. Drop one object, then try.
* **Trackpad zoom feels twitchy until you find the modifier.** The trackpad gesture is treated as a continuous scroll, which is fast by default. Hold `Cmd` to slow it.

## Related

* [The three modes](/overview/concepts/the-three-modes.md)
* [Compose mode camera controls](/compose/camera-controls.md)
* [Keyboard shortcuts](/overview/reference/keyboard-shortcuts.md)
* [Working with objects](/build/working-with-objects.md) – the next step once you can move the camera.
* [Selection and grouping](/build/selection-and-grouping.md) – multi-select once you have things to select.
* [Build mode](/build/build.md) – the section landing page for the rest of the art-department workflow.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://help.intangible.ai/overview/get-started/viewport-navigation.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.