This month is about control — the kind that used to mean leaving your scene for a "real" 3D app. A new one-click Dolly Zoom, a much bigger set library, the ability to reach into a model and toggle a single part, color you can push end to end, and an AutoDrive that finally drives the camera itself. Here's everything new on the stage.
Dolly Zoom, in one click
The "Vertigo" shot — where the subject stays locked in frame while the world stretches behind it — has always been fiddly, because it's really two moves at once: the lens zooms in as the camera pulls back (or the reverse). On ClayStage it's now a single button.
Open a camera's AutoDrive, click Dolly Zoom, and pick your subject in the viewport. Focal length and position arm together — and from then on you only touch the focal start and end. The camera dollies for you, automatically, to hold the subject the same size while the background warps. Set two numbers, press play, get the shot.
A bigger, sharper set: Stages & cyc walls
The old "Platforms" section is now Stages — and it grew up. Pedestals, steps, arches and block sets live alongside ready-made display sets, so you can drop in a full mini-environment instead of building one riser at a time.
The cyclorama library got two new room-scale backdrops — a Quarter Dome and a Corner cyc — that render single-sided, so they're see-through from the front and below the way a real sweep behaves. Pick a wall, place your set in front of it, and you've got a studio.
Control, right down to the part
Multi-part models are no longer all-or-nothing:
- Per-part visibility. Expand a model in the Scene panel and use the eye toggle to show or hide individual parts — perfect for modular pieces like ducts, cables, or pipes. Hidden parts drop out of the render too.
- Pull a part out of its group. The "Pull out" button now moves a part into its own standalone object instead of duplicating it — and the eye toggle brings it back.
- Live Chamfer. Primitives get a Chamfer slider in the inspector, so you can round an edge to taste without rebuilding the shape.
We also reworked the Move tool around a dedicated centre handle that drags an object across the ground and settles it cleanly onto whatever's beneath it — plus individual scale handles on each axis.
Color, end to end
Two new pairs of sliders put the whole frame's color in your hands. HDRI Hue & Saturation recolors the environment lighting and backdrop when an HDRI is loaded; Material Hue & Saturation tints any applied material right from the inspector. Warm the room, cool the product, shift a whole palette — without re-rendering from scratch.
AutoDrive grew up
AutoDrive is our keyframeless way to animate: give a property a start, an end, a range and a feel, and it does the in-betweens. This month it reaches further:
- Camera orbit. Point a camera at an object and it circles — animate distance, orbit rotation, pitch and roll, and play.
- Gobo motion. Light patterns can sweep, tilt and travel; capture a start and end pose and AutoDrive moves between them.
- Capture & Match. "Capture start / end" grabs a live framing in one click, and "Match timeline" spans a move across the whole clip.
Style any render — then animate it
Render Animation can now use any of your past renders as the style reference, not just your most recent one. Find the look you liked three shots ago, point the next animation at it, and turn the still into video.
Bring your own assets
On Creator and up, you can upload your custom assets — your own models, characters, clothing and poses — and they live in your library next to the curated ones. Teams get pooled credits and seats so a whole studio can work from the same stage.
That's the June update. We build in public and ship often, so this blog is where we'll walk through what's new each time — what it does, and why we made it. Thanks for being on the stage.