Quickstart Guide

To try it out immediately, use the built-in demo setups: Demo Setups.

To try it out manually, follow these steps to create your first reactive display surface and proximity driver:

Reactive Display Setup in N-Panel

Step 1: Create a Display Target Mesh

  1. In the 3D Viewport, press Shift+A and choose Mesh ‣ Grid (or Mesh ‣ Plane).

  2. If using a Plane, switch to Edit Mode (Tab), right-click and choose Subdivide, setting the number of cuts to 15 or 20.

  3. Return to Object Mode (Tab).

  4. Ensure your mesh is the active selected object.

Step 2: Initialize Reactive Display

  1. Press N to open the sidebar and click the Reactive Surface FX tab.

  2. In the Reactive Display Simulation panel, click Setup Display on Active Object.

  3. Reactive Surface FX will automatically:

    • Create the procedural display modifier stack.

    • Attach the internal display_color and display_dist attribute data-bus.

    • Non-destructively inject shader emission nodes into the object’s active materials.

Tip

The Device setting defaults to GPU Compute for hardware-accelerated real-time simulation. You can switch between Faceted (Pixels), Smooth Vertices, or Dynamic Texture Canvas (with Continuous Stroke) at any time in the setup panel.

Step 3: Create a Proximity Driver

  1. Press Shift+A and add an Mesh ‣ UV Sphere (or Monkey / Suzanne).

  2. Scale the sphere down (S --> 0.4) and position it slightly above the display plane.

  3. With the Sphere selected, hold Shift and select the Plane.

  4. Press Ctrl+P and choose Set Parent To –> Object.

Tip

By default, Driver Source is set to Child Objects. Any mesh parented to the display target automatically acts as a proximity driver! You can also use a dedicated Collection if you prefer not to parent objects.

Step 4: See Reactive Illumination in Real Time

  1. Switch your 3D Viewport shading mode to Material Preview or Rendered (Z --> Material Preview).

  2. Select only the Sphere driver.

  3. Grab and move the sphere around (G).

  4. As the sphere approaches the surface within the Proximity Radius (default 0.5m), the surface faces dynamically illuminate with bright emission!

Next Steps