Composition Display Settings

A composition is shown in two windows at once: in the Mapping field — as a flat image on the fixtures, and in the 3D View — on the objects of the three-dimensional scene. The image in both windows is the same, but it can look very different: it is affected by the toggles in the Mapping window's toolbar, the items of the View menu, the scene's glow settings, and the type of beam each fixture is drawn with. This article collects everything that controls this display, and what to check if the composition is not visible.

What You Actually See

An open composition is calculated continuously: the program combines the effects of all layouts and produces an image the size of the mapping working field — one frame per playback tick.

In the Mapping window this image is drawn across the entire field, and each fixture lights up with the color that falls on its location. These are exactly the colors that are sent to the fixtures over Art-Net and that end up in the cue file on export, so mapping is not an approximate illustration but exactly what the fixtures will receive.
In the 3D View window the same image is applied to the scene objects: each object takes its color from the mapping fixture it is linked to. The shape of the structure, the position of the fixtures in space, and the beam type are strictly 3D matters. An object without a link does not light up, and it has no effect at all on the signal — it is only a preview.

Hence a simple rule: if there is no image on the mapping, the problem is with the composition, effects, or layouts; if everything is fine on the mapping but the 3D is empty, the problem is with the scene — links, visibility, or the fixture display settings.

Composition in the Mapping Window

The "Fixtures" and "Effects" Toggles

There are two checkboxes on the right side of the Mapping window's toolbar. Both are on by default, their state switches on the fly, and it does not spoil the composition image.

Checkbox	What happens when it's off
Effects	The composition image disappears from the field — the fill drawn by the effects. The fixtures themselves keep glowing with their own colors. This is convenient for arranging and patching fixtures: nothing is blinding, yet the animation is still visible pixel by pixel
Fixtures	The fixtures themselves disappear from the field: pixel dots, spline lines, address labels. What remains is the pure composition image — easier to evaluate as a whole, without being distracted by the markup

For more on field display modes, see Display Modes.

What Is Drawn Over the Fixtures

The View → 2D Mapping menu controls the markup overlaid on the field. None of these items affect the signal or the export — they are only visual hints.

Item	What it shows
Show Splines	Spline lines are always visible, not only when the spline is selected
Show Fixture Universes	The universe number next to the fixture
Show Pixel Numbers	Sequential pixel numbers along the spline — so you can see from which end the animation runs
Show Fixture Multi-Addresses	Full fixture addressing on ports where several universes are assigned to a port
Show Pixel Grid	A one-pixel grid of the working field. It only appears at sufficient zoom: at the overview scale it would turn into a solid fill and is not drawn
Coordinates, Scale, Frames Per Second (FPS)	Info fields in the corner of the window: cursor position in field pixels, current zoom, and refresh rate

The size of the address labels is set separately — in the Properties window (Settings → Properties), General tab, Fixture Address Size parameter. On dense splines the labels overlap, and reducing them is often more useful than turning them off entirely.

Field and Zoom

The composition is drawn strictly within the boundaries of the mapping working field. A fixture placed outside the field's boundary is visible on the mapping but does not participate in the animation and stays dark — this is the first thing to check if "one distant row" isn't working.

The field size is changed with the Main Layout Size button on the General tab of the Settings window (see Settings). The Z key fits the whole field into the window, the mouse wheel changes the zoom.

Composition in the 3D View

For the composition to appear in the three-dimensional scene, every object needs to be assigned a fixture from the mapping. How this is done manually, with the Auto button, and with the magic transfer buttons is covered in detail in Linking 2D and 3D. Without a link, an object stays dark no matter how many effects are playing in the composition.

What else determines the appearance of a scene with a composition:

Glow and Intensity in the Lighting group — the halo around bright pixels. Without it the scene looks like a set of tiny dots; with it, like a night shot of illumination.
Object Color in the Colors group — the overall brightness of the geometry. Reduce it and the model becomes a dark silhouette on which only the composition's light remains. This is a common technique for showing an animation to a client.
Background Texture — a panorama of an evening or night sky behind the scene.

All three groups of settings open up if you deselect all scene objects; they are covered in Background and Camera Settings.

The toggles in the View → 3D View menu remove unwanted elements from the frame: Show Grid (G key) — the floor markup, Auxiliary 3D Objects (F4) — camera and projection icons, Model Wireframe (F3) — draws the geometry as an outline, Show 3D GIF Bounds (F5) — the frame of the future preview. The grid and auxiliary objects are usually turned off before shooting a preview or showing it to a client.

Remember that visibility works both ways: an object disappears from the scene both when its checkbox is off in the 3D Objects window, and when the visibility of the linked fixture is off in the Fixtures window.

A composition can also be shown in 3D without any links — with a Projection object. It projects the composition's image onto the scene objects like a real projector and is useful when you need to show video mapping rather than pixels: see Creating a Projection and Projection Settings.

GIF preview and video rendering capture exactly what is visible in the 3D View window, together with the glow, background, and the selected view. So it's worth setting up the display on the same camera that will later be used to shoot the preview (see GIF Preview Settings).

How a Fixture Glows: "Display Settings"

How the light source itself looks in 3D is governed by the Display Settings section in the Properties window of a 3D fixture or spline. Its main parameter is Fixture Beam Type; the set of the remaining fields depends on the chosen type.

Beam Type	How it looks	Parameters
Pixel	A glowing point with no beam — what's needed for strips, garlands, pixel bars, and most projects in general	Pixel Width, Pixel Height, Pixel Length
Spot	A cone of light from the fixture: this is how narrow-beam spotlights and wash from a distant point are shown	Angle — the full opening angle of the cone in degrees, Height — how far the beam reaches
Linear	A wide fan of light: a linear fixture washing a wall	Length — how far the light reaches, Angle — how wide it opens, Depth — the thickness of the fan

All three types have pixel dimensions: they set the size of the glowing point itself in the scene. Pixels that are too large on a dense spline merge into a solid stripe, and ones that are too small get lost at overview scale — this is adjusted by eye to fit the object's scale.

Display can be configured in two places, and the difference between them matters:

In the "Properties" window of a selected object. Changes apply to the selected 3D objects. This is how you adjust a single fixture or a row of fixtures without touching the rest of the project.
In the Fixture Library, "3D Preview" section. Here the beam type and its parameters are set for the fixture type as a whole. After the library is saved, the settings propagate to all fixtures of that type in the project — including ones whose beam you already adjusted manually. So it's best to finalize the fixture type in the library first, and make point edits in 3D afterward.

The beam type comes together with the fixture: change a fixture's type in the library, and the linked 3D object will pick up the new beam and its dimensions.

Smoothness of the Image

The rate at which both windows and composition previews are redrawn is set by the FPS on Mapping Preview parameter on the Memory & Performance tab of the Settings window. The default is 60.

This is the on-screen refresh rate, not the composition's frame rate: it has no effect on exported files or on Art-Net output. It only makes sense to lower it on a weak computer — the preview will become noticeably choppier. If compositions with video and sequences are stuttering, it's not lowering the FPS that helps but the sequence cache on the same tab (see Settings).

If the Composition Isn't Visible

First, on the mapping:

Is the composition open? A single click on the card only selects it — a double click opens it (see Compositions).
Is the composition playing? Start and stop — with the Spacebar. If playback is stopped, you're seeing the frame the time cursor is on.
Is the Effects checkbox in the Mapping window's toolbar enabled?
Does the composition have an effect, and does the current moment fall within its duration on the timeline?
Is the effect on a layout that covers the fixtures you need? An effect is only drawn within its own layout (see Creating and Editing Layouts).
Aren't the fixtures placed outside the working field's boundaries?

If everything is fine on the mapping but the 3D is empty:

Does the object have a link assigned? In the 3D Objects window its Mapping column should be filled in, and a single fixture shouldn't be named No Fixture.
Is visibility enabled — both for the object in the 3D Objects list and for the linked fixture in the Fixtures window?
Aren't the pixel dimensions set to zero — such a fixture is invisible in the scene.
Isn't the light removed by scene settings: Glow turned off, or Object Color reduced to zero.
Splines without a link are drawn as a gray line and are only shown when Auxiliary 3D Objects (F4) is enabled — check this box if whole lines have "disappeared."
Hasn't the object ended up outside the camera's visibility bounds (Camera group, From and To parameters) — see Background and Camera Settings.