# 3D Preview

The centre panel renders the selected garment on a real freemode ped — `mp_m_freemode_01` or `mp_f_freemode_01`, extracted from your own GTA V install — with your `.ytd` textures applied. It is where you judge fit, texturing, clipping and silhouette before you build anything.

:::frame{caption="The selected garment on the freemode ped, with its real textures."}
![A body armour garment shown on the male freemode ped in the 3D preview, with the viewport bar below it](https://pub-57d6558d0e204696b4cdeee5d172e561.r2.dev/cloth-tool/features/live-ped-preview.4fc4162f72.webp)
:::

It is not a still image. The ped can play the game's own animations, and a garment that ships cloth data can be simulated.

The 3D preview is free. Previewing on peds from the [Ped Library](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/ped-library) is Premium.

## Moving the camera

| Action | Control |
| --- | --- |
| Orbit | Left drag |
| Pan | Middle drag, right drag, or **Shift** + left drag |
| Turn the model under fixed lights | **Shift** + middle drag |
| Zoom | Mouse wheel (towards the pointer) |
| Front / Back / Left / Right | **Viewport options → Scene → Camera angle** |
| Reset camera | **Viewport options → Scene → Reset camera** |

:::tip{title="Judging a material"}
**Shift** + middle drag spins the garment while the lighting stays put. Orbiting moves the camera *and* your view of the highlights with it, which hides how a surface actually behaves. Spinning the model is how you tell satin from plastic.
:::

## The viewport bar

The bar along the bottom of the preview holds the switches and the menus:

| Control | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Textures** | Turns textures on or off, and opens the menu of ways to draw the mesh (below). |
| **Grid**, **Wireframe**, **Floor** | Drawing aids. |
| **Only model** | Hides the ped and shows the selected garment on its own. |
| **Auto-rotate** | Turns the model slowly. |
| **Cloth** | Opens the cloth simulation panel. See [Cloth simulation](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/cloth-simulation). |
| Person icon | Ped animation: walk, run, jump and more. See [Animations](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/animations). |
| Shirt icon | The [Appearance Menu](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/appearance-menu): ped, outfit and look. |
| Sliders icon | **Viewport options**: lighting and scene. |
| Pin icon | **Locked in preview**: keep other items on the ped while you switch between items. |
| Camera icon | The [Photo Studio](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/photo-studio). |
| Clapperboard icon | Stage this garment in the [Scene Creator](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/scene-creator). |
| Expand icon | Pops the preview out into its own window. |

When the preview is narrow, the switches fold into one **Show** button.

## What the viewport draws

The **Textures** button opens a menu of five ways to draw the same mesh.

| Mode | What it is for |
| --- | --- |
| **Shaded** | The normal view — textures and lighting. |
| **Normals** | Geometry normals as colour. A face lighting up the wrong way here is inverted in game too. |
| **UVs** | The texture coordinates themselves — red across, green up. |
| **Checker** | An even grid on the UVs. Squares that come out stretched are stretched in the texture too. |
| **Flat** | No texture and no shading. Silhouette and geometry on their own. |

With **Wireframe** on, you can also set its **Colour** and **Opacity**, and switch on **Garment edges only** to leave the ped solid.

The corner readout gives polygons, vertices and indices for the selected garment, not for the whole ped.

## Normal and spec maps

New in 2.0.9. In **Shaded**, the preview uses the same three maps the game does, not only the colour texture:

- **Normal map**: seams, folds, stitching and quilting catch the light the way they do in game, even where the mesh itself is flat.
- **Spec map**: gives leather, vinyl, rubber and skin their highlight. It is read with the shader's own intensity, falloff and fresnel, so a material is as shiny as it is in game, not more.
- A garment **without** a spec map stays matte, as cotton does in game.

The maps come from where the game reads them. If a garment is linked to a loose `.dds` or `.png` diffuse, the normal and spec maps stored in its model are still shown.

To make normal and spec maps for a garment that has none, use the [Material Editor](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/material-editor).

## Viewport options

The sliders button opens **Viewport options** with two tabs, **Lighting** and **Scene**. The ped and its body moved to the [Appearance Menu](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/appearance-menu) in 2.0.8.

### Lighting

**Time of day** is one slider, and it is the whole lighting rig. It moves the sun, its colour, and the light coming off the sky. Every hour has its own sun, sky and exposure, the way the game does it.

:::frame{caption="Lighting by hour: the time-of-day slider and its presets."}
![Viewport options on the Lighting tab with the time-of-day slider, Jump to presets and the Shadows switch](https://pub-57d6558d0e204696b4cdeee5d172e561.r2.dev/cloth-tool/features/game-lighting.70c6e9df47.webp)
:::

Under it, **Jump to** has six presets: **Night**, **Dawn**, **Morning**, **Noon**, **Golden hour** and **Dusk**. A garment that reads well at noon and dies at dusk is worth knowing about before it ships.

**Shadows** makes the ped cast onto itself and onto the floor.

:::note{title="Brightness and Ambient fill are gone"}
There is no Brightness, Ambient fill, GTA/PBR switch, roughness, metallic or HDR control any more. Time of day replaces all of them. If a garment looks too dark, move the hour rather than looking for an exposure setting.
:::

### Scene

**Backdrop** — eight swatches (Studio, Charcoal, White, Greenscreen, Cyclorama, Sunset, Night, Overcast) or **Use your own image…**. The first four are flat colours, which is what a cut-out or a green screen needs.

Also here: **Camera angle**, **Rotate speed**, **LOD** (switches between the model's detail levels) and **Reset camera**.

## The ped and its body

Everything about the person on the stage is in the [Appearance Menu](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/appearance-menu):

- **Ped**: freemode or a library ped, **Dressed** or **Naked**, **Standing pose** (**A-pose** or **T-pose**), **Component ids**, skin tone and saved bodies.
- **Outfit**: wear a saved outfit (Premium).
- **Look**: wet, muddy, worn, shiny or dyed fabric, and hair colours. View only.

## Animation

The person icon on the bar opens the animation panel. **Enable animation** plays a move on the ped: the built-in moves (idle, walk, run, jump and more) are free; clip dictionaries and your own `.ycd` clips are Premium. See [Animations](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/animations).

This is what a garment actually has to survive. A coat that reads perfectly in the standing pose can fold through the leg the moment the ped walks.

## Cloth

A garment that ships a `.yld` simulates in the viewport, using the constraints and pinned points from the file itself. See [Cloth simulation](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/cloth-simulation).

## When there is no ped

The preview needs your GTA V install to put a body under the garment. If it says so, click **Set up GTA V** (or point the tool at the game in **Settings**), then **Extract base ped** — it reads your game files once and caches the result.

A garment with no `.ytd` draws plain grey. That is the tool telling you it found no texture, not a rendering fault.

## Textures not showing

If a garment renders untextured, it is nearly always one of two things: the `.ydd` has no UV coordinates, so there is nothing for a texture to map onto, or the texture names do not match what the model references.

Switch the **Textures** menu to **UVs** — if the model shows no coordinates there, that is your answer. See [Common Errors](/cloth-tool/information-and-errors/common-errors).

### Every garment looks grey or washed out

Check the **Look** tab of the [Appearance Menu](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/appearance-menu) first. A dye left on there tints every garment in the preview, and is remembered between sessions. Since 2.0.9 a **white** dye means no dye at all, so it no longer greys garments out. Before 2.0.9, a white dye at full strength turned coloured parts, such as a green taser or a bodycam's red rings, grey.

The Look tab only changes the preview. It is never built into the pack.

### The preview shows a different texture variant than the game

A texture variant whose `.ytd` names its texture differently from what the model asks for (for example `diffuse_main_green` for a model asking for `diffuse_main`) is shown, and built, under the model's name. Since 2.0.9 the preview and the item list pictures show the variant you picked. If the model itself stores a texture under the shader's name, that one wins, in the preview and in game.

## Related pages

- [Appearance Menu](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/appearance-menu)
- [Material Editor](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/material-editor)
- [Animations](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/animations)
- [Cloth simulation](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/cloth-simulation)
- [Ped Library](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/ped-library)
- [Photo Studio](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/photo-studio)
- [Inspect Window](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/inspect-window)
- [Interface](/cloth-tool/about-the-tool/interface)