The Garden World Editor

The Garden is Tech Connector's single workspace for DCC integration, level authoring, assets, animation, simulation, Play, and packaging. It inspects and edits content from Maya, Blender, Houdini, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, Unreal, and Unity while keeping one Outliner, one viewport, one selection, one undo history, and one saved level. The former Kingdom product is folded into Garden rather than offered as a separate workspace.

Former Kingdom features now in Garden

Garden retains the engine and runtime work that previously appeared under Kingdom:

Content Browser, asset creation/import, dependency inspection, validation, and specialized asset editors.
Level and world authoring through the same Outliner, viewport, Details panel, selection, and undo history used for connected DCC content.
Isolated Play and Simulate flows that keep the authoring document unchanged.
Runtime configuration, Console, build profiles, Windows player builds, and project packaging.
Materials, effects, UI documents, characters, animation, graphs, input, gameplay, physics, audio, navigation, and other registered engine asset types.
Runtime qualification and automation through the game-engine API. The legacy api.kingdom name remains a compatibility route; it does not represent a separate public product.

Opening an older Kingdom UI entry point routes to this same Garden workspace. It must not construct a second viewport or a second level document.

Start here

Open Tools > The Garden (World Editor).
Choose Browse sources or a host in DCC tools, then connect to the running application.
Import or refresh the scene. Confirm the provider name and coordinate system in the viewport status line.
Select an object in the World Outliner and press F to frame it.
Use W, E, and R for Move, Rotate, and Scale. Edit exact channel values in Details when precision matters.

Use the All Tools / Engine Tools / DCC Tools selector to change the surrounding tools without replacing the scene or camera.

A connected badge proves that the bridge answered. It does not prove that every mesh, material, rig, or animation feature transferred correctly. Check the visible result and the source application before saving.

Learn the workspace

World Outliner groups scene elements and cameras by provider. Expanding a provider should not trigger a full scene rebuild.
Viewport supports selection, orbit, pan, zoom, framing, transform manipulators, and display modes. Press 4 for wireframe, 5 for shaded, and 6 for textured display.
Details exposes the selected object's transform, visibility, components, and source ownership.
Runtime participation in Details identifies whether the selection is live source content, editor-only content, or a runtime-ready TC asset.
Scene sources controls import, refresh, live updates, provider coordinates, and source selection.
Chronos supplies the animation timeline, playback rate, keys, and onion-skin controls.

UI feature reference

Save All writes supported open documents; the level status bar identifies unsaved authoring state.
Undo / Redo step through supported scene and property edits.
Add creates supported scene elements and components.
Focus Selected frames the current Outliner or viewport selection.
Select / Move / Rotate / Scale set the active interaction tool. The same tool is available from Q / W / E / R.
World / Local changes manipulator orientation without changing the stored transform.
Play / Stop / Edit control Garden's isolated runtime without replacing or mutating the authoring level.

Engine, Play, and build tools

Content Browser creates, imports, searches, validates, and opens TC assets; Ctrl+Space toggles it.
Add places native actors and runtime-ready TC assets into the same level shown beside live DCC references.
Play saves and launches an isolated runtime snapshot. Live DCC references and authoring-only controls are excluded.
Simulate runs supported physics and effects inside the editor; Stop returns to the unchanged authoring state.
Dedicated asset editors, Console, validation, build profiles, and packaging are available without leaving Garden.
The runtime-participation banner and Create Runtime-Ready TC Asset… action make the DCC-to-player boundary explicit.

World Outliner

Provider roots identify the live or cached source, such as Maya or Blender.
Scene Elements and Cameras separate editable objects from view sources.
Expand and collapse reveal hierarchy without intentionally rebuilding the scene.
Row selection updates the viewport highlight, Details panel, and active manipulator.
Visibility checkboxes control the local view; source-owned visibility changes require a supported committed edit.
F frames the selected row even when keyboard focus remains in the Outliner.

DCC tools and scene sources

Browse sources explains available live DCC, engine, file, and texture sources.
Import scene performs source discovery and creates or reconciles the local scene representation.
Refresh reconciles membership, hierarchy, geometry, materials, transforms, and cameras when the source changed.
Selected limits supported imports to the source selection.
Live enables incremental source updates. Turn it off when diagnosing an update loop or an expensive host evaluation.
Coord shows the active provider convention so axis and unit conversion are visible rather than implicit.
Reset scene clears the local federated scene after confirmation; it does not delete the source DCC file.

Viewport

The upper status chips show interaction tool, display mode, coordinate space, pivot, snap state, frame, provider, and selection.
The lower status line reports providers, units/scale, drive-camera/time state, material state, and update timing.
The performance badge separates vertex/triangle totals, draw time, and whole-frame update time.
Orbit, pan, zoom, and frame selection alter only the Garden view unless Drive Cam is enabled.
The orientation widget supplies axis context and view alignment.
Selection highlight, source curve colors, mesh shading, wireframe, textures, and control shapes are drawn as separate layers.

Details and components

Name identifies the selected source or shared-level object.
Location / Rotation / Scale provide exact channels that match the active manipulator.
Rendering exposes supported visibility and display properties.
Components lists attached behaviors or data and supports add, remove, reorder, copy, and paste where ownership allows it.
Prefab Overrides distinguishes inherited data from per-instance changes.
Source-owned DCC objects may expose read-only fields when the bridge cannot safely author that property.
A live source object is visible and editable in the World Editor but is excluded from Play and packaged builds. Choose Create Runtime-Ready TC Asset… to capture it as a standalone .tcscene under Assets/Converted/<DCC>.
Runtime-ready TC assets are included in Play/build automatically. Rig controls and other authoring-only components stay available while editing and are stripped from the isolated runtime copy.

Scene, markup, camera, and shots

Scene groups save, import, export, and scene-management commands.
Markup adds review annotations without changing source geometry.
Shot captures or organizes review images and camera states.
Camera chooses the Garden camera, a connected DCC camera, or a shared level camera.
Use Cam / Lock DCC Views control whether navigation stays local or drives connected viewports.

Chronos animation controls

The frame field and playhead select the current time.
Play, previous/next-frame controls, and the FPS preset determine timeline playback.
Add frame, Duplicate, and Delete edit supported animation data.
Onion skin displays adjacent poses for motion review.
Drive Time sends the selected frame to connected providers; disable it when scrubbing a heavy host scene for local inspection only.

Core workflows

Inspect a live DCC scene

Connect to the already-open host before importing. Garden keeps a local scene representation so navigation and selection stay responsive. A normal transform update should change the affected source node, accept the evaluated result from the host, and update only the affected branch. Use a full refresh after adding or removing objects, changing hierarchy, or when the cached scene is known to be stale.

Edit a connected object

Select the object, choose a transform tool, and drag the manipulator. Garden previews the interaction locally and sends the committed edit to the source DCC. Hold X while moving to snap to the grid, V to snap to a mesh vertex, or C to snap to a curve. Channel fields and manipulators operate on the same transform and pivot.

Work with rigs and animation

Select the rig control rather than the deformed mesh when authoring a pose. Garden sends the control edit to the DCC; the DCC evaluates constraints, deformers, and skinning; Garden then applies the evaluated changes. Use the animation timeline for playback and keys, but qualify final deformation and timing in the source application.

Add or remove scene content

Use Refresh after topology, hierarchy, material assignments, or scene membership changes. Garden compares the source inventory and updates additions and removals. A transform-only edit should not require this path.

Use DCC content in Play

Live Maya, Blender, or other bridge objects are references, not packaged assets. Select the object and choose Create Runtime-Ready TC Asset… in Details. Tech Connector captures supported geometry, materials, rig/deformation data, and animation in the background, writes a standalone TC scene into the project, and refreshes the Content Browser. Place or open that TC asset to include it in Play. The original live reference remains an authoring source and is never silently packaged.

F frames the selected Outliner or viewport object.
4 / 5 / 6 switch wireframe, shaded, and textured modes.
W / E / R activate Move, Rotate, and Scale.
Q returns to selection.
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo and redo supported authoring edits.
Delete removes a supported selected object; duplicate from the toolbar or Edit menu.

Performance and freshness

Garden favors incremental updates. Transform drags are coalesced, echo updates are identified so they do not cycle between Garden and the host, and heavy mesh evaluation is applied after the interaction settles. A full import is appropriate for topology and hierarchy changes, not for ordinary control movement.

If interaction becomes sluggish, pause playback, verify that only the intended live provider is enabled, and use a deliberate refresh once. Repeatedly refreshing while the host is still evaluating can queue unnecessary work.

Troubleshooting

Nothing appears: confirm the provider is connected, import the scene, frame a known object, and check visibility and display mode.
The mesh is distorted: verify units, up axis, bind pose, skin matrices, and whether the source is reporting evaluated rather than rest geometry.
The manipulator is offset: confirm the selected transform, object pivot, and provider coordinate conversion.
Updates loop or lag: disable Live temporarily, make one edit, refresh once, and compare the source and Garden transform values.
Textures are missing: switch to textured mode, then verify material assignments, image paths, and color-space support.

Screenshots show actual Tech Connector widgets with sample labels. A screenshot or saved graph does not prove a live DCC run.