Scenes and Hierarchy

A scene is your game world: the characters, props, lights and cameras that make up a level or a screen. You build one by arranging objects in the Hierarchy, then save it as a file you can reopen and ship.

The Hierarchy panel

Everything in the current scene, as a tree.

Along the top: + Add Entity, a search box that filters by name, and a filter funnel that narrows the tree to one kind of object.

On the right of each row are an eye to hide the object and a lock to stop accidental edits. Both are undoable.

Adding objects

Click + Add Entity for a searchable list.

Group	Holds
Presets	Empty Entity, Directional, Point, Spot and Ambient Light, Camera 3D, Camera 2D, Sprite, Node 2D
Shapes	Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Plane, Cone, Torus, Capsule and more
Components	A single rendering, post-process, effect or audio component as its own entity

Installed plugins add their own entries, so the list reflects what your project has loaded.

To skip the search, right-click the empty space below the tree. You get the same list as a menu of categories. Hover one and its entities appear beside it, so a Point Light is a hover and a click away.

Added the wrong thing? Ctrl+Z.

Selecting

What you do	What happens
Click	Select just this object
Ctrl+Click	Add or remove this object from the selection
Shift+Click	Select everything between the last pick and this one
Double-click	Rename it in the tree
↑ / ↓	Move to the previous or next visible row
→ / ←	Open or close the selected branch, then step into or out of it
Drag from empty space	Rubber-band select
Esc	Deselect everything

The arrow keys work once you have clicked into the Hierarchy, and they walk what you can actually see. A collapsed group is stepped past, not through.

Selecting a row also expands it, and clicking it again to deselect folds it back. Turn that off under Settings > Interface > Hierarchy > Toggle on Click if you are clicking through a deep model and do not want every row unfolding.

Parenting and reordering

Drag a row to move it. Where you drop decides what happens:

Drop on	Result
The top of a row	Move it just above that row
The bottom of a row	Move it just below
The middle of a row	Tuck it inside as a child

Children move with their parent. You cannot drop an object into one of its own children, and the whole move is one undo step.

Right-click a row for Add Child Entity, Rename, Duplicate, Unparent, Group as Children, Attach, label colours and Delete.

Attaching assets

Creating one on the spot

Hover Attach in a row's right-click menu and you get the same new-file list the Assets panel offers: Rust Script, Material, Particle, Template, Scene.

An overlay asks for a name, pre-filled with a sensible default, and a destination folder, starting on the conventional folder for that type and creating it if you do not have one. An existing file is never overwritten.

For scripts there is also an Attach to this object tick, on by default, so a new script is wired up in one step.

Attaching one you already have

Drag a file from the Assets panel onto the object's row. The row lights up as you hover it.

• A script is added to the object's Scripts component.
• A material is assigned to the object.

The object is selected after the drop, so the Inspector is already showing what you attached. Dropping the same script twice does nothing the second time.

If the row is an imported model's root, a material is applied to every mesh inside it, which is what people usually mean. Drop on a specific child row to change just that mesh.

Dropping a scene file instances it instead. See below.

Asset badges

Objects carrying authored assets show a small badge left of the eye and lock, so you can see what is attached without opening the Inspector. Click a badge to open that asset in its editor: a code icon opens the script, a palette icon opens the material graph.

Moving things around

Select an object and a gizmo appears. Q W E R switch between Select, Move, Rotate and Scale.

There are also Blender-style modal transforms: press G, R or S, move the mouse, click to confirm. X Y Z lock to an axis, Shift plus an axis key locks to the plane facing it, and you can type an exact amount. Esc cancels.

Full detail is in Viewport and Camera.

Saving

Ctrl+S saves the scene. Scenes are .bsn files, kept by convention in your project's scenes/ folder. They are plain text, but the editor writes them for you.

Only named objects are saved. Everything you add through + Add Entity is named for you, so this rarely comes up.

Scene thumbnails

Every save also snapshots the viewport and keeps it as the scene's thumbnail, so the Assets panel shows you the level rather than a generic icon. Whatever the focused viewport was showing when you saved is the picture you get. Frame the shot, then save.

A scene that has never been saved from the editor keeps its plain icon. This is the only moment the picture is free to take, because reproducing it later would mean loading the whole scene.

Auto-save

On by default, every 5 minutes. Change it under Settings > Auto-Save.

A countdown appears in the status bar in the last few seconds. When it fires it saves the same way Ctrl+S does, so a focused material or script tab is never overwritten by it. Auto-save pauses while you are in Play mode.

Which scene loads first

Settings > Project > Boot Scene picks the scene a game starts on. It is independent of whatever you are editing. Every save targets the scene tab you have focused, and nothing writes to the boot scene unless that is the tab you are on.

Global scenes

A global scene loads before the boot scene and stays alive through every later scene change. Use one per concern: a HUD scene, a music scene, a networking scene.

Set them under Settings > Project > Global Scenes.

Everything a global scene spawns is marked persistent, so scene loads skip it and scene saves never bake it into the level you have open. Play runs your game, which loads them exactly as an exported game does, so you can test without exporting.

This is also the only place a loading screen can work, because everything in the outgoing scene is despawned partway through a scene change. Only a global scene's script is still running to show progress.

Reusing scenes inside scenes

Drop one scene inside another as a scene instance. Good for a prop, an enemy or a room you want in many places. Edit the original once and every copy follows.

Three ways to add one:

• Drag a .bsn file from the Assets panel onto the viewport. It lands under your cursor.
• Drag it onto the Hierarchy. It is added at the scene root.
• Right-click in the Hierarchy and choose Instance Scene.

Its contents appear nested under an instance row. Unpack Scene Instance breaks it apart into ordinary objects.

When you save, only the instance's own position and overrides are stored in the host scene. Its insides still live in the original file, and edits to them are saved back there. A scene cannot reference itself.

Shortcuts

Ctrl+N new, Ctrl+O open, Ctrl+S save, Ctrl+Shift+S save as, Ctrl+D duplicate, Delete delete, F focus the selection.

The full list is in Keyboard Shortcuts.