Basic controls

Moving/rotating the world

There are two ways to move the world in Microcosm. First, you can press and hold the move button to the left of the main control wheel. While holding, the world will move along with your device. Try pointing at some voxels, pressing and holding the hand, then moving your device left and right to see this in action.

You can also move the hand icon to move and rotate the world. Moving your finger up and down will make the world fly away from or toward you, respectively. Similarly, moving your finger left and right will make the world rotate around the grabbed point.

The other way to move the world is by placing two fingers anywhere in the main screen. Similar to the hand icon, the world will move along with your device. You can move your fingers left and right to rotate in the same way as the hand. Additionally, you can move your fingers up and down, or rotate them to rotate on two additional axes.

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Moving and rotating the world with the move button and two finger gesture. The world is snapped back to a 90º rotation by using the Toolbox > Level tool.

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AR/VR mode

Press the AR/VR button to toggle between augmented and virtual reality modes.

Exporting

Press the share button to open the share sheet. Anyone can export a CSMZ file, which can be shared with other Microcosm users. Users who have purchased Microcosm Pro can also export in PLY or OBJ+MTL format.

Screen recording/screenshot

Press the video camera icon to start a screen recording that excludes the UI. Press the camera icon to take a screenshot without the UI. Users who have purchased Microcosm Pro can disable the “Made with Microcosm” watermark from the settings menu.

Note that the 3D cursor and AR planes are invisible while screen recording is active.


Tools

Microcosm has a variety of tools for drawing voxel worlds. All tools respect the currently selected drawing mode. Change between the “create”, “replace”, and “erase” drawing modes by tapping the lower half of the center circle. Change voxel color/transparency by tapping the upper half.

Freehand brush

Press and hold to draw voxels starting at the cursor location. When this tool is selected, you can also tap or press and hold on an existing voxel to begin drawing from that point.

Box brush

Press and hold to define a box starting at the cursor location. Release to update the region using the selected drawing mode. When this tool is selected, you can also tap or press and hold on an existing voxel to begin drawing from that point.

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Clipboard

When the clipboard is empty, press and hold to select a box region. This is similar to the box brush.

After the clipboard is filled, its icon changes, and additional tool buttons appear. These buttons allow you to rotate the clipboard contents, or clear it to copy a new region. To paste, tap the primary clipboard icon again.