Quick tour

A five-minute walkthrough of the Scenaven viewer after you sign in.

Scenaven
Scenaven

1. Check your connection

Click Infrastructure in the top-right pill bar.

  • Cloud — You are using the hosted mesh-api and viewer stack.
  • On-prem — The viewer talks to a Docker kit on your network.
  • Status should read Connected before you upload large files.

If status is Not connected, open the Infrastructure overlay and follow the on-prem setup steps or confirm your cloud session is active.

2. Load data

Click Open and choose a simulation or USD file.

Supported formats include .vtk, .vtkhdf, .hdf, .h5, .vtp, .vtu, and USD variants (.usd, .usda, .usdc, .usdz).

While mesh-api converts volumetric sources, a progress card may appear in the sidebar footer. When loading finishes, the mesh appears in the viewport and the Scene card populates.

Shortcut: Click Examples to open the gallery and load a curated dataset without uploading.

3. Explore the scene tree

Open the Scene card on the left.

  • The top row is usually your Source (the loaded file).
  • Derived operations — Clip, Warp, Extract cells, Extract points — appear as children when you create them.
  • Click a row to make it the active node. Use the eye icon to show or hide a layer.
  • Double-click the source row to reset the camera to fit the model.

The breadcrumb at the bottom-right shows your current selection path.

4. Adjust rendering

Open the Rendering card.

  1. Pick a display style — points, wireframe, surface, or surface with edges.
  2. Choose a Scalar Field from the dropdown, or Solid color for a flat appearance.
  3. When a scalar is active, pick a Colormap and adjust Opacity.
  4. Use the color swatches for solid and edge colors when those modes apply.

The field legend at the bottom of the viewport shows the active colormap range.

5. Apply a filter (optional)

Open Filters and choose a type:

  • Warp — Displace the mesh by a vector or scalar field.
  • Planar clip — Cut the model with an axis-aligned plane.
  • Stage visibility — Toggle mesh geometry visibility (more prim types coming).

Edit parameters in Filter properties. For volumetric VTK sessions, changes compile on the server — wait for the geometry refresh before judging the result.

For clip, enable Show clip plane in viewport and drag the translucent gizmo in the 3D view.

6. Viewport and camera

Open the Viewport card to change:

  • Theme (dark / light) and Background color
  • Grid and Bounds overlays
  • Lighting preset and Exposure
  • Camera projection, field of view, and Zoom to cursor

Use the top-center Align model menu for axis views, fit-to-canvas, and display-style shortcuts.

7. Time animation (when available)

If your dataset has multiple time steps, open the Time controls menu in the top-center HUD.

  • Step backward / forward
  • Play or pause animation
  • Enter a step number directly

Some filter combinations require a short server bake before playback — the UI shows Building animation… while that runs.

8. Agent rail (optional)

On the right edge, expand the agent panel for:

  • amAIra chat — AI assistant (requires auth shell)
  • Python session — Run analysis code against the active mesh session

Both require a signed-in shell session and a healthy mesh-api connection.

Next steps