Not everything in a Studio scene is a character. Furniture, hand props, particle effects, and basic shapes like planes and cubes all come in through the same menu, and once an item is in your scene you get direct control over its animation, its color, and how it groups with the rest of your workspace.
Adding items to a scene
Open Add > Item in Studio to browse what’s available. The list is split into broad categories covering props, furniture, effects, and basic shapes (planes, cubes, spheres). Use the search box at the top of the panel if you know roughly what you’re looking for, since the full list runs long once you have several item mods installed.
Every item you add lands in the workspace tree on the left, where you select, move, and organize it alongside everything else in the scene. If you’re new to that tree, Studio basics covers the basics of navigating it.
Stopping or pausing a built-in animation
Some props (a spinning fan, a flickering sign, an animated light) carry a built-in animation that plays automatically once they’re added. To stop it, select the item in the workspace tree, then use the animation button in the upper-left of the screen, the same toggle you’d use to pause an animated light.
If the item doesn’t respond to that button, check the Item+ tab after selecting it. Many items expose their own animation controls there instead of through the main toggle.
Recoloring any item
To change the color of a prop, whether it’s a vehicle, a piece of furniture, or an effect, select it and open the Material Editor. Use the Color 1 swatch to pick a new color. This works on most standard-shader items and is the fastest way to retheme a prop without touching textures.
If the color picker doesn’t show up, make sure you actually have the item’s base selected rather than a child part or an attached sub-object. Some props are built from several linked meshes, and the color option only appears on the piece that owns the material.
For a full walkthrough of what else Material Editor can do beyond color, see Material Editor essentials.
Building a glowing light-source prop
You don’t need a dedicated mod to fake a colored lamp, a neon sign, or an LED strip. Basic shapes handle it:
- Add a basic shape from Add > Item, a Plane works well for flat panels or strips.
- With the shape on a standard studio shader, open Material Editor and set its Light Color.
- Raise the Light Strength value. Both of these map to the shader’s emission, so the shape lights itself up rather than reflecting scene light.
- Enable Bloom in the Graphics mod so the emission blooms outward instead of sitting flat.
That combination, an emissive plane plus bloom, is how colored “fusion lamp” and LED-strip style light sources get built without a purpose-made mod. Scale and reshape the plane to match whatever fixture you’re faking. For the wider lighting setup around it (actual scene lights, cubemaps, sun shafts), see lighting with the Graphics plugin.
Grouping and parenting items
Once a scene has more than a handful of items, flat lists get unwieldy fast. Group items in the workspace tree by selecting (or creating) a target folder, holding Ctrl and clicking every item you want inside it, then clicking Parent at the bottom of the workspace panel. Everything you selected moves together as a unit from then on, useful for things like a furniture set or a light rig you want to reposition as one piece.
Rename a folder by selecting it and typing into the name field on the Anim tab, top left. Individual items don’t support double-click renaming out of the box.
Parenting through the workspace tree is also how you stick a prop to a specific body part, drag it onto the target bone node and reset its local position to zero so it snaps into place, then fine-tune the offset. For bone-accurate parenting that needs to survive animation playback (a held prop, something that shouldn’t lag or detach), use Node Constraints instead. See node constraints for that setup.
Common item issues
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Studio stuck on the loading screen, or an “item already added” crash | Two installed zipmods share the same internal item ID. Bisect your mods folder to find and remove the conflicting one. |
| Loaded scene shows grey placeholder spheres instead of the real item | Add the real item, ctrl-select the sphere, use the workspace’s Move/Copy to align them, then delete the sphere. If the sphere was parented to a character, parent the new item the same way first. |
| A mirror prop shows wrong or missing lighting on a character | Known limitation of mirror reflections. Add a dedicated light aimed at the mirror’s reflection angle rather than relying on scene lights. See reflections and mirrors. |
| The selection gizmo blocks clicking small nested parts (fingers, tiny props) | Disable the selection circle/gizmo overlay in Studio’s display options. |
Once your props are in place, lit, and grouped the way you want, camera framing is the next thing worth dialing in. See camera work in Studio for that.