3D Visualizer
See your show before you rig it.
Program the Show Before You Arrive
DMXDesktop includes a fully integrated 3D lighting visualizer built directly into the console software. Patch your fixtures, place them on the stage, and see your cues and effects instantly. No extra software, no network configuration, and no additional license - just a visualizer designed for programming your show.
Patch a Fixture. See It Instantly.
When you patch a fixture in DMXDesktop, it appears in the visualizer automatically. There's no separate application to launch, no network protocol to configure, and no synchronization step. Move a fader and the light responds immediately. Trigger a cue and you see it in real time.
Browse and Manage Your Fixtures
The fixture panel gives you a clear overview of every light in your rig. Fixtures are classified automatically based on their channel capabilities and rendered as the appropriate archetype - moving heads, PARs, pixel bars, spiders, derbys, and more. Over 15 fixture archetypes are supported and detected automatically from your patch.
Position and Configure Every Light
Select any fixture and use the 3D gizmo to drag it into position. The inspector panel lets you fine-tune placement, rotation, and fixture-specific properties. Set the style, adjust orientation, and get your rig looking exactly like the real venue - all before you arrive.
Build Your Stage in Minutes
Create a stage layout using drag-and-drop objects including truss, platforms, speakers, DJ tables, screens, curtains, and barriers. Add instruments, microphones, and human figures to provide scale reference. Multiple layouts can be saved for different venues or rig configurations.
Manage Your Scene
The stage objects panel lets you see and organize everything you've placed - platforms, screens, crowds, DJ tables, monitors, and more. Save complete scene layouts and switch between them for different venues or show configurations.
Fine-Tune the Environment
Adjust haze density, ambient lighting, and camera angles to match your venue conditions. The scene settings panel gives you control over the visual environment so what you see on screen reflects what you'll see on stage.
Lighting That Behaves Like Real Lighting
The visualizer renders lighting behavior accurately so programming decisions translate to the real stage. RGB and CMY color mixing, gobo projection with real textures, prism beam multiplication, strobe and shutter effects, zoom and beam spread, and per-pixel rendering for pixel fixtures. Beam cones interact with configurable haze density and produce visible aerial effects and floor hits.
Gobos Project Onto Whatever the Beam Hits
Gobo projection has been rewritten. Gobos used to be painted onto a flat disc lying on the floor, so a single surface had to stand in for the whole beam: a gobo aimed at a wall showed nothing or smeared a flat copy across the floor behind it, and the pattern flipped between upright and flat as a moving head swept past 45 degrees. Every fixture with a gobo now projects it properly, so corners work and the pattern keystones the way real light does.
The throw is bounded by the first surface the beam meets, so a gobo aimed at a backdrop no longer carries through onto the floor beyond it, and it fades off rather than ending on a hard ring. Prism renders in the projected gobo, not only in the cone. Frost softens the beam edge and defocuses the gobo with it, instead of blurring the cone and leaving a sharp pattern inside a soft beam. Zoom respects the fixture's real beam angle. And a static gobo fixture such as a rotogobo, which has a gobo wheel but no pan and tilt, finally produces a light pool: there is now a Gobo Projector visual style, chosen automatically and selectable by hand in the inspector.
How many fixtures can project a gobo at once follows your Quality preset, and DMXDesktop lowers that ceiling further on modest graphics hardware, so the feature costs nothing on a machine that cannot afford it.
Light Lands Where Light Would Land
Beams stop at walls instead of carrying through them. Gigbar and moving-bar sub-heads project their own light pools rather than borrowing one from the parent fixture. Performers standing on the stage are lit by the rig like anything else in the scene. And impact discs are placed only on architecture, so a pool no longer appears on a prop or a truss where the light does not actually land.
Truss You Can Build a Rig Out Of
The straight truss emitted only horizontal rungs, so it read as a ladder, and there was no way to turn a corner. It is now properly braced, in box or triangular profile, and it has become a family: corners at any angle from 30 to 150 degrees, bending flat or vertically, three-way and four-way junctions, and arcs up to a full circle. Pieces arrive lying flat rather than standing on end.
Truss also snaps end to end. Drag a piece near another and let go, and the nearest open ends mate up, as long as they are already roughly facing each other. That last condition is deliberate: it will not invent an alignment you did not ask for.
Sharper Edges Everywhere Else
Group and Ungroup are buttons
Grouping stage objects was Ctrl+G only, hinted at by a line that disappeared as soon as you had one group. Both are proper buttons now, and object rows take Ctrl+click to multi-select, the way fixture rows always have.
You can see the GPU warming up
Shader compilation reports real progress during warm-up instead of an indeterminate wait, compiles in parallel, and warns you if a shader has to compile part way through a session.
One bad colour no longer blacks out the rig
A single bad colour value could take the whole 3D view dark. It cannot any more.
A hidden fixture is properly hidden
Hiding a fixture now takes it out of every world-space calculation rather than merely not drawing it, so it no longer affects the scene around it.
Every fixture paints light
On a larger rig, some fixtures could light no surface at all, and nudging the beam angle slider by a single degree could make pools appear and disappear. Both are fixed.
The add-on stays enabled offline
The 3D Visualizer add-on no longer switches itself off when the machine has no internet connection.
Video on a screen renders, and is lit like a screen
A video placed on a screen object showed as a flat green panel on every NVIDIA machine, at every quality preset, while the same file played correctly in the pop-out Video Display. It renders properly now. Once it did, a plain video was being lit as though it were a still photograph, so it looked dull beside an NDI feed on the same object. Both are fixed.
PAR clusters cast light again
A pixel bar re-styled as a PAR Cluster lit the room but painted no pool underneath it. A plain pixel bar having no pool is correct; a cluster of PAR-like heads should behave like PARs. Three other pixel styles had the same omission.
Screens go dark with the lights
A Fade to black on silence switch on the Video tab takes the same silence decision the lighting engine makes, so a video wall and a rig reach black on the same edge. It applies to screen objects in the 3D view and the pop-out Video Display alike.
Milkdrop Visuals on the Screen Source
Milkdrop-compatible presets, powered by Butterchurn, can render on the screen source inside the 3D view, so the video wall in your visualizer shows what the video wall in the room is going to show.
See Milkdrop visualsFixture Archetypes, Not Fixture Libraries
Instead of modelling thousands of individual fixture models, the DMXDesktop visualizer uses fixture archetypes that represent how lights behave. A moving head behaves like a moving head. A pixel bar behaves like a pixel bar. A derby behaves like a multi-beam effect.
This approach covers the vast majority of real fixtures while keeping the system fast, automatic, and easy to maintain. Fixtures appear in the visualizer automatically based on their channel capabilities - no model downloads or manual configuration required.
Built for Real Shows
The visualizer focuses on what lighting operators actually need: seeing beam movement, color looks, gobo effects, and pixel mapping before load-in day.
System Requirements & Quality Settings
The 3D Visualizer renders your rig live as you program. Two simple controls let it scale from a backup laptop to a workstation: a Quality preset (Low / Medium / High) and a Shadows toggle. Quality settings only affect the preview - your DMX output to real fixtures is never affected.
Quality presets
Low
Keeps the visualizer smooth on integrated graphics, older laptops, or modest hardware. Edges look slightly jaggy and beams a touch faceted. Use this if you see stutter or hear the fan working hard.
Medium (default)
Sharp on Retina and 4K displays, smooth edges, standard beam detail. Tuned for typical modern laptops with a discrete GPU. The right starting point for most users.
High
60 fps target, smoother beams, tighter ground impacts, and shadows on by default. Pick this if you have a discrete GPU and you want the cleanest look during programming sessions.
Both settings save per-layout, so a programming layout can run on High while a "lights-up at the venue" reference layout uses Low. Changes are instant - no restart needed.
The Quality preset also decides how many fixtures can project a real gobo at the same time, with more allowed at higher presets. On modest graphics hardware DMXDesktop lowers that ceiling on its own rather than asking for more than the machine can give.
Shadows
Shadows make beams visibly cut around trusses, stage objects, and walls - great for programming and promo screenshots. They cost frame rate (roughly 30-50% on weaker GPUs), so leave off if you're already at the frame limit and turn on when you've got headroom.
Suggested machines
Match the machine to how you'll use the visualizer. Apple silicon punches above its weight - even an M1 handles Medium comfortably; M2 and M3 handle High + Shadows well.
| Setting | Works on | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Low preset | Integrated graphics, 8 GB RAM, any modern CPU | Older laptops, backup or venue machines |
| Medium preset | Discrete GPU with 4 GB VRAM, 16 GB RAM, 6-core CPU | Most users |
| High preset + Shadows | Discrete GPU with 6 GB+ VRAM (RTX 3060 / RX 6600 / Apple M2+), 16 GB RAM, 8-core CPU | Studio programming and promo screenshots |
Visualizer quality never affects your show
DMX output to your fixtures is independent of the preview's frame rate. You can pick any quality preset - or even close the visualizer entirely - and the show keeps running.
See Your Show Before You Rig It
The 3D Visualizer is included with DMXDesktop Pro at no additional cost.
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