Lighting & Environments

Gantry uses image-based lighting (IBL) to illuminate models in the viewport. The environment provides both the light source and optional background. Choosing the right environment makes it much easier to evaluate materials and surface quality.

Opening the Environment Picker

Click the Environment button (the landscape icon) in the toolbar. A popover appears with a grid of environment presets and controls for adjusting how the environment is applied.

Choosing an Environment

Click any preset thumbnail to apply it immediately. The viewport updates in real time. Gantry includes a set of built-in environments covering neutral studio, outdoor, and high-contrast lighting conditions.

Environment Controls

Exposure

The exposure slider adjusts the overall brightness of the environment light. The range is -3 to +3 stops. Use negative values for darker, more moody lighting; positive values to simulate brighter outdoor conditions.

Rotation

The rotation slider spins the environment map around the Y axis from 0 to 359 degrees. Rotating the environment changes the direction of highlights and shadows, which is useful for evaluating how a material responds to light from different angles.

Soft Reflections

The Soft Reflections toggle switches between a sharp and a pre-blurred version of the environment map. Soft reflections reduce high-frequency specular detail, which can be useful for evaluating diffuse material properties without distracting sharp reflections.

Use as Background

The Use Environment as Background toggle shows or hides the environment image behind the model. When disabled, the viewport uses the solid background colour set in Settings instead.

Loading Custom Environments

Click Load Custom HDR/EXR at the bottom of the environment picker to import your own environment map. Both HDR (.hdr) and OpenEXR (.exr) formats are supported.

Imported environments appear in the picker alongside the built-in presets and persist between sessions. To remove a custom environment, right-click its thumbnail and choose Remove.

Evaluating Materials

For the most accurate material review, try multiple environments — a neutral grey studio for checking base colour, a high-contrast map for evaluating reflections, and an outdoor map to simulate deployment conditions.

Viewport Background Colour

When Use Environment as Background is off, the viewport shows a solid background colour. You can customise this colour — including separate colours for light and dark mode — in Settings - Appearance.

Environments are for preview only

The chosen environment is not embedded in the exported file. When you export, only the model geometry, materials, and textures are written. The environment choice affects only the Gantry viewport.