Adding Content to a Scene

Add content from the + button. Each element you add becomes an object in the scene, holding its visual content inside it. You can give each object its own anchor (how it attaches to the world), and style it in Asset Appearances, Asset Properties, and Materials. This page covers the content types themselves and their type-specific options (set in the object's Appearance → Model section).

The + (Insert) menu.

The Insert menu offers Container, 3D Model, Media, Primitive, and Portal to everyone; User Interface appears once your account has the UI-authoring entitlement.

Container

An empty grouping you fill with other content, or use to anchor several objects together as one unit.

Primitive

A basic shape – a horizontal or vertical plane, a box, or a sphere – with dimensions, and a corner radius on planes and boxes. Good for prototyping and placeholders.

3D Model

Your own 3D model, or a ready-made integrated asset.

• Custom model – pick a model from the asset library; the field shows a preview, file format, and size.
• Integrated asset – assets that ship with the editor (checkpoints, coin, star, ruby…), with optional colour tints; checkpoints can be set to start / finish / default. Handy starting points, especially for scavenger hunts.

Choosing the content kind – here an Integrated Asset and its built-in list.

Use USDZ for 3D

Scenery runs natively on Apple platforms and the WebXR viewer, all using USDZ. Prepare models, ShaderGraph materials, and particle systems in Reality Composer Pro and export as USDZ – one format that runs everywhere.

Media

An image or a video.

• Image – PNG (with transparency) or JPEG.
• Video comes in a few flavours:
  • Standard video (MP4 / MOV) – a flat rectangular screen.
  • Spatial (stereoscopic) video – a different image per eye for depth; the depth shows on headsets (it plays normally on mobile).
  • Transparent video – alpha-channel video (MOV, HEVC / H.265). Pairs beautifully with the Billboard alignment constraint for a character that always faces the user and reads as 3D. (These files can be large – compress with tools like Apple Compressor.)
  • HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) ProPart of the Pro plan and up – stream large or high-res video from a URL instead of uploading it (via manual input, below).
  • Immersive video ProPart of the Pro plan and up – 180°, 360°, and wide field-of-view video, plus Apple Immersive Video. On Apple Vision Pro these wrap around the viewer – a 360° clip surrounds you completely, 180° fills your forward view, and Apple Immersive Video places you inside the scene. Scenery recognizes an immersive source automatically and plays it natively; deliver it as an HLS stream, like other large video. (currently Apple Vision Pro only)

Whether an immersive video surrounds you or plays inside a window follows the Scene's immersion setting – a fully immersive Scene replaces your view with the video, while a windowed Scene keeps your surroundings and places the video alongside your other content. (Standard content can sit in front of a windowed immersive video, but not in front of a fully surrounding one.)

Media-specific options (in the object's Appearance → Model section): Shows Loading-Placeholder (a placeholder while a large asset loads), Autoplays and Loops (video only), Renders Double Sided (also draw the back face), Renders Immersively (blends the media softly into the surrounding space – especially nice with spatial video), a Corner Radius (rounds the media's corners, when not rendering immersively), and Volume for a video's audio.

Media options on a video object.

Load assets from your own URL

ProPart of the Pro plan and up Right-click an asset field → manual input to point at an asset URL on your own server. The asset is fetched at runtime (never uploaded to Scenery), sidestepping upload size limits and keeping confidential assets off our servers. The same works for HLS streams. (Note: file-sharing services like Drive/Dropbox block this by default; self-hosting works.)

Keep experiences small

Everything in an experience downloads on first open (then caches). Aim for a small total – roughly 30–50 MB for App Clip-delivered mobile experiences. For big or high-res video, prefer an HLS stream or a manual asset URL over uploading.

User Interface Beta

Build an interactive interface panel – buttons, labels, images, and other controls laid out in 2D, placed in the scene or pinned as a Screen Space overlay. Available with the UI-authoring entitlement, a select-access beta feature – contact us to join the beta.

Portal ProPart of the Pro plan and up

A portal world – a framed window into a self-contained little world that the user looks through, and can step into. You build the world inside the portal: add objects to it like any container, and give it its own environment. It's grouped under the object's Portal World section.

Portal-specific options:

• Background – a surrounding environment for the world, from an image or video, projected as Equirectangular or Cubemap (the two common 360° layouts).
• Lighting – the portal world's own environment lighting, independent of the main scene.
• Object Crossing – let the world's contents reach out through a chosen boundary – Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, or Bottom (or Disabled) – so an object can break the frame and poke into the room.
• Object Clipping – clip the contents at a chosen plane (same options), to keep the world neatly bounded by the portal opening.

Placing what you add

New content appears at the scene origin (where the axes meet). Move it with the gizmo by dragging an axis handle – X (red), Y (green), or Z (blue) – or type exact values in the object's transform.

Moving an object with the gizmo's X / Y / Z handles.