ClayStage Guide

Getting started

Sign in with Google or email. You're in the studio right away. Every account starts on the Free plan with 15 one-time credits, and you can upgrade any time from your name (top right) → Account & billing. Once you're in, the flow is always the same:

Everything autosaves continuously under the project title at the top left. There is no save button to remember.

Plans & features

ClayStage has four plans. Credits are spent on generations; each plan unlocks a different set of tools.

Annual billing is available on the paid plans. The studio shows your current plan and remaining credits next to your name; when a tool is locked for your plan, ClayStage tells you which plan unlocks it.

Changing plans. Upgrades open Stripe in a new tab, are prorated, and take effect immediately (you pay the difference now). Downgrades apply at the end of your current cycle, so you keep what you're paying for until then. Edit subscription and adding seats also open in a new tab.

Projects

• New scene: Projects dropdown → + New scene.
• Duplicate: Projects dropdown → Duplicate project makes an independent copy of the open scene and opens it (“<title> copy”). Every row in My projects has a duplicate button too. Generations stay with the original.
• Open or delete: click your name (top right) → My projects. Opening a project loads its scene and its generations.
• Your projects and renders are private to your account.

Building a scene

Cyc walls

The room itself. Pick one from the first library section: seamless sweep, corner, C-curve, round, U, ramp, or flat wall. Select it to adjust width / depth / height / roundness (seamless) or stretch any wall with the Width× / Height× / Depth× sliders. Follow keeps the wall opposite the camera automatically.

Stages

Pedestals, steps, slabs and block sets, the furniture only. Stages are additive: click three stages, get three stages — nothing replaces anything, so you can compose whole sets. Stages no longer carry a built-in wall; pair any stage with any wall from the Cyc Walls section. A multi-piece stage arrives as a real group — every piece is its own object in Scene Contents with its own material, eye and gizmo; one undo removes the whole set. Edges start with a barely-there chamfer; dial the Chamfer control up whenever you want rounder. Once a piece is textured its Texture Mapping rows (Tile / Rotate / Offset) appear in the Inspector.

Objects & text

Click any object in the library and it lands on your set. 3D text uses Google Fonts (pick any family and weight from the picker) with depth, kerning and rounding controls. The Google Fonts picker is open to every plan. (Using your own system / installed fonts is a Teams feature.)

The Scene panel

• Rename anything: double-click its name, type, press Enter.
• Reorder freely: drag any row anywhere — an insert line shows where it lands. Drop a row onto a group to fold it in, or drag a child out to the root. Reorders are undoable and saved with the scene.
• Segmented models are groups: a model with multiple segments now arrives as a group — every segment is its own row with its own material, eye and gizmo. Big groups fold behind their chevron so long models don't bury the panel.
• Multi-part uploads (older scenes): a disclosure chevron () appears on segmented models saved before groups. Expand it to see each part nested under the parent. Click a part to focus it: the next material you click or drop applies to that part only, and the Inspector shows that part's material with its preview.
• Per-part visibility: each nested part has its own eye toggle: hide a single part (a section of the modular duct, a run of cables, the fire escape or a pipe) and it drops out of the render; click the eye again to bring it back. The parent's eye still hides the whole model at once.
• Pull a part out of its group: the Pull out control on a part now moves it into its own standalone object. It leaves the group and lives on its own. To put it back, use the eye toggle.
• The lock, hide and delete controls live on every row; click empty space below the list to deselect.

Moving, rotating, scaling

• Move: just drag the object. It always stays in contact with what's below: platforms, steps, other objects (drop-to-floor).
• Lean / tilt: hold ⇧ while dragging.
• Rotate: drag the indigo ring under the selected object. Hold ⇧ for 5° steps.
• Scale: drag the indigo cube floating at the object's corner for a uniform resize, or type exact X/Y/Z values in the Inspector.
• Scale one axis: drag a face handle on the cube, cylinder, tube (or any model) to stretch just that axis. It now follows your drag direction.
• Duplicate & drag: hold ⌘ and drag an object. A copy follows your cursor. (⌥ is reserved for camera orbit, as in Cinema 4D.)
• Deselect: press Esc, click empty viewport space, or click the empty area at the bottom of the Scene panel.

Camera

⌥ + drag orbits around the exact point under your cursor. Click a spot on any geometry and the view swings around it, with no jump when you start the drag. Space + drag pans, scroll dollies, and keeps flying through when you're in close. Multiple cameras live in the bottom bar; each can be locked. When a scene has more than two cameras the bar collapses to just the active one, with a chevron and camera count to expand the full list. The frame-darkness slider (eye icon, bottom bar) controls the aspect-ratio mask.

The grid button beside it cycles composition guides over the render frame: rule of thirds → golden ratio (phi lines + spiral) → off. The phi lines span the frame; the spiral keeps its true golden proportion fitted inside whatever output ratio is selected. Guides never appear in captures or renders.

Dolly Zoom. Click Dolly in the camera bar, then click your subject in the viewport. Now just drag the focal length slider. The camera automatically dollies in/out to keep your subject the same size while the background compresses or expands (the classic “Vertigo” effect), all from one control. Click Dolly again to turn it off. Because the move is baked into the camera position, capturing animation keyframes at two focal lengths records a real dolly-zoom shot.

Materials

Drag a swatch from the library onto any object. On platforms and multi-part uploads, the drop lands on exactly the piece under your cursor (or focus a part in the Scene panel first). The viewport shows a faithful preview; the generation uses the true material by name, from its prompt phrase. The photoreal grain, veining and weave come from the AI, not the preview texture.

• Mapping: select the object (cyc walls and platforms included) → Texture Mapping → Tile / Rotate / Offset. Tiling is mirrored, so there's no visible grid of seams on big surfaces.
• Wear: every object carries it natively. Inspector → Wear slider + type (Dust, Fingerprints, Fine Scratches, Mixed, plus any admin-uploaded wear maps).
• Hue & Saturation: once a material is applied, the Inspector adds Hue and Saturation sliders to tint the selected material. Recolor a swatch on the fly without dropping a different one.
• Untextured objects don't block Generate anymore. They render in a clean studio finish, and the button warns you what's still clay.

HDRIs & lighting

Pick a preset in Lighting · HDRI (chrome-ball previews show each environment). The Environment item in the Scene panel gives you rotation, intensity, and two independent toggles: Lighting on/off and Background visible/hidden, so you can light with an environment while showing only your cyc wall. With Lighting off the scene goes truly dark. Gobos or a custom HDRI become the only light. Portrait and Outdoor categories are tuned for the character workflow (Creator and up). The Environment panel also has a Contact shadow toggle (the soft fake-AO disc under each object), off by default; your real light-cast shadows are unaffected.

When an HDRI is loaded, the Environment panel also gains Hue and Saturation sliders. Recolor the whole environment, both the light it casts and the backdrop you see, without swapping HDRIs (warm a daylight studio, desaturate a colorful street, and so on).

Gobos

Light patterns: blinds, windows, foliage, spots. Click one to add it, then select it and use its three grips:

• Drag the crosshair grip: moves the target; the light stays planted.
• Drag the cone / arrow: swings the light around its target; the target stays.
• ⌘ + drag: moves light and target together as one rigid unit.

Color (with a White reset), Blur, Pattern scale and Pattern rotate live in the Inspector. The crosshair never appears in captures or renders.

Selecting past a gobo. A gobo's light cone never blocks the objects it points at — click an object through the cone (selected gobo or not) and you get the object. You still grab the light itself by clicking its cone over empty space or the cyc backdrop, by its crosshair/arrow grips, or by selecting the gobo in the Scene panel. (Locking a gobo also makes it fully click-through.)

Animating a gobo. With the Animation timeline open, tick Sweep, Tilt or Distance on a selected gobo and it starts moving right away, with a sensible default sweep, tilt or push, so you see motion the moment you check the box. Use Capture start / Capture end to dial in the exact start and end of the move.

Characters & Poses Creator+

Characters, clothing and poses are unlocked on Creator and up (not available on Free). Characters work like materials, but for people. An uploaded character is the person who gets rendered; a mannequin stages their body.

• Upload a character sheet in the Characters section (this is one of your Custom assets, see below). The front-neutral headshot is auto-cropped as the thumbnail (replaceable with the thumbnail button), and a consistency phrase + tag is stored so the person stays identical across renders.
• One click to place: click a person and they drop into the scene as a posed figure (the mannequin is created for you). No separate "add mannequin" step.
• Pose: pick a built-in pose in Poses, or upload a pose photo (even a snapshot of yourself) and the render matches that body pose. Position, scale, outfit, expression and the cast person all survive a pose swap.
• Outfit: upload a flat-lay in Clothing and click it onto the figure.
• Expression & gaze: once a person is cast, the Controls panel shows Expression (smile, laugh, serious…) and Gaze (to camera, away, left/right…). These direct the face in the render and override the sheet's neutral expression.
• Consistency model: use Gemini Image 3 Pro for character work. Strongest at keeping the same person across generations (GPT Image 2 is the solid alternate).

Generating images

1. Pick the model (GPT Image 2 is the default), aspect ratio, resolution (1K/2K, plus 4K on Creator and up), and ×1 or ×4.
2. Choose Light or Dark world.
3. Hit Generate. Untextured items don't block. A toast lists them and the render runs anyway, with those pieces in a clean studio finish.

Progress shows on the card; long renders show elapsed status and a Cancel option. 4K (Creator+) uses the model's native 4K when available, otherwise a precision upscale runs automatically after. Models textured per-part send each part's material to the AI by name. On Free, renders are watermarked on download.

Every generation now matches the on-screen frame exactly: whatever aspect ratio you've selected, what you compose in the viewport is what you get back, with no surprise crop or stretch.

Your generations

• The feed shows renders for the current project.
• Compact view. The control in the Generations header (top-right of the panel) condenses the feed to a tidy strip of thumbnails, so a busy project stays scannable at a glance; hover any one to expand it to full size. Your choice is remembered between sessions. It's the quick fix when Controls and Scene Contents are both open and the feed feels crowded.
• Hover a render to reveal its actions: the download control () saves it straight to your computer; the full-screen control () opens it large (press Esc or use the close control to dismiss).
• Layers Creator+ (the layered-export control, , on renders from this session) builds a layered PSD: the photo on the bottom plus every object cut out on its own named, transparent layer with feathered edges (cyc, platform, each model and text). Opens straight into Photoshop/Affinity.
• The delete control removes a render permanently.
• A card reading "image file missing" is a leftover record whose file was replaced (usually by its 4K upscale). Remove from feed cleans it up.
• How long renders are kept. To keep storage manageable, older renders are cleared automatically based on your plan — Free: about 30 days, Creator: about 6 months, Studio: about 1 year, Teams: kept for the life of your subscription (failed renders clear within a week). Download anything you want to keep before then. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

Connect to Claude (MCP) Preview

ClayStage speaks MCP (the Model Context Protocol), so you can connect an AI assistant like Claude to your studio and work with it by chat. Connect once (sign in and Allow), then build the scene and render, all on your plan. Turn on Claude control to let it build in your live studio.

Connect it

1. In a client that supports custom MCP servers (for example Claude Desktop), add a new server pointing at https://claystage.studio/api/mcp.
2. Claude opens a ClayStage sign-in page — sign in and click Allow. That's it: no tokens to copy. Claude is then connected as you (your plan, your credits, your private scenes).
3. To have Claude build in your scene, open the studio and turn on Claude control (your name menu). The catalog/account tools work without it.

What your assistant can do

With Claude control on, it builds in your live studio: cyc walls, as many stages as you want (they're additive and arrive as real groups), models, 3D text, materials and color, gobos, HDRI and lighting, and cameras; characters with clothing, poses, expression and gaze; and animation including object motion, camera orbits and dolly zoom. It can also pull up your renders, and, if you ask, press Generate for you (it renders in your browser, on your plan).

It does scene surgery too: group and ungroup, parent under nulls, reparent, duplicate, rename, lock, show/hide, reset — plus per-object finishing (hue/saturation tone, wear and imperfections, chamfer, texture tiling/rotation/offset) and camera control down to orthographic vs perspective, auto-framing, focal length and aperture.

It can also work from a reference image you share — it sees the photo and rebuilds the look from ClayStage parts — set the HDRI background and output aspect ratio, validate the scene before you spend credits, and build a whole scene in one batch. It drives full animation too: object and camera keyframes, orbit, dolly zoom, eases, capture start/end and match timeline, and can export a motion clip.

It discovers what is available by calling list_catalog (materials, models, characters, poses, easings and more), so it always uses your real options. The read-only helpers list_plans, list_video_models, whoami, list_renders and render_status are there too.

Your custom assets Creator+

Custom assets let you bring your own content into ClayStage alongside the built-in catalog: your own models, characters, gobos, clothing and poses (plus materials, HDRIs and wear maps). This is a paid feature. Free can't upload; it unlocks on Creator and up.

Turn on Library Mode (click your name → Library Mode) and every section gains its own upload zone, pre-wired to the right file types. Uploads land in your library next to the built-in items and behave identically once placed. The Render description field is what the AI is told whenever the asset appears in a scene. It auto-fills from the filename; make it vivid.

What each upload becomes

Every section's upload zone is pre-wired to the right file types. The Render description auto-fills from the filename. Refine it for the best results.

Managing your library

While Library Mode is on, every tile gains controls: hide, rename, reset, and delete (your uploads only, with confirmation). Hidden items stay visible to you in Library Mode, shown dimmed.

Teams: seats & shared library Teams

Teams ($199/mo) is built for studios working together. It adds, on top of everything in Studio:

• Seats. 5 seats included; add more at $35/seat/mo. Invite teammates by email from your name → Members; invitees join your org and share its plan.
• Pooled credits. The org's 1,200 credits/mo are shared across all seats rather than split per person.
• Shared custom assets. Uploads can be published org-wide so every member places the same models, characters, gobos, clothing and poses. The 50 GB cap is the org's shared pool.
• System / installed fonts. In addition to the all-plan Google Fonts picker, Teams can use the fonts installed on the machine for 3D text.
• Member management. An org owner/admin invites, removes, and sets roles for members. No Supabase needed.

Animation (AutoDrive) Creator+

Animation and video export are unlocked on Creator and up (not on Free).

Open Animation at the bottom of the Library. The timeline pops up (it's hidden otherwise). AutoDrive is keyframeless: select any object and, in Controls, tick Position, Rotation or Scale. Each group eases from a Min to a Max over a Start → End frame range, with an Offset that delays the move and a click-to-change easing curve (your full easing library). Set playback to Once or Ping-pong.

Capturing. Pose the object, scrub to a frame, then hit Capture start / Capture end. The current transform is recorded and that range begins/ends at the playhead. Use Capture start · all / Capture end · all to grab Position + Rotation + Scale together, and Match timeline to stretch every animated channel across the whole clip. Add range chains another move after the first, and each chained range has its own Capture start/end too.

• Nulls compound motion. Select an object and click the Null button. It's grouped under a new null in one click. Animate the object (it lifts), then animate the null (it sets back down). The hierarchy composes the moves.
• Cameras animate too. Pick a camera in the Animation panel; AutoDrive its Position, look Target and Focal (zoom). "Edit pose freely" lets you orbit to frame a shot, then the capture-view button records it into Min/Max.
• 24 fps. The timeline runs at 24 fps (what the video models use); the frame count turns accent-coloured on whole seconds (24, 48, 72…).
• Export clip. Records the viewport animation to an .mp4 (constant 24 fps H.264) you can hand to a video model as a motion reference. On browsers that can't record MP4 it falls back to a .webm, which lacks a readable framerate for motion transfer, so MP4 is preferred. The recorded clip and the Render Animation output now match your project aspect ratio, and on Seedance the generated video follows your clip length. Keep the tab focused while it records.

Moving, scaling and rotating objects

Select any object and the default dynamic-place gizmo appears around it: a small ringed orb at its centre, a bit like the planet Saturn, with handles for every move. Everything you need to position, size and turn the object sits right on it (all in your accent colour):

• Move it. Grab the centre planet (the ring-and-ball sitting in the middle of the object, the Saturn-like part), or just drag the object's body. It glides across the floor and always settles onto whatever is under it (the stage, a platform, another object).
• Scale one side. Three small cubes sit on the object's faces, one per axis: one on the front (Z), one on the side (X), one on top (Y). Drag a face cube to stretch just that axis; the opposite face stays planted (drag the top cube up and the base stays on the ground). The two side cubes (X / Z) hide once the object is turned off-axis, and all three hide if it is tilted, because anchored axis-scaling only stays accurate while the object is square to the world.
• Scale all (uniform). A bigger cube inside a thin wireframe box, off at the upper corner, scales the whole object evenly in one drag.
• Rotate it. The big ring around the base spins the object (yaw). Grab the ball on the ring and drag it around; hold ⇧ to snap in 5° steps.

Platforms and cyc walls show the ring and the scale handles too. Locked objects and gobos show no gizmo.

Floating an object off the surface. The dynamic-place gizmo keeps objects on the ground. To lift one freely, press G for the Move tool: the puck/ring/cubes are replaced by a three-axis arrow gizmo — X (red), Y (green), Z (blue). Drag an arrow to slide along that one world axis with no surface snapping, including straight up to float it. Press G again (or Esc) to return to Place.

Keyboard shortcuts

Troubleshooting

• Controls or panels look blank / missing. Turn off your ad-blocker for ClayStage (or allow-list the site). Aggressive blockers (uBlock, AdBlock, Brave Shields, some privacy extensions) can hide UI elements they mistake for ads. This is the #1 cause of "a control isn't showing up."
• "Rendering anyway, for best results: texture …". The named items are still clay; they'll render in a clean studio finish unless you texture them.
• Render fails immediately. The card shows Runway's reason; check credits (top right).
• Mystery shadows on the floor. Usually a gobo pattern. Check the Scene panel for gobos you forgot.
• Can't see the whole set. Press H to frame everything.
• Stuck render. Cancel appears on the card after a while; ×4 batches finish independently.