Director Workbench — Block Scenes, Frame Cameras, and Save Shots Faster

Director Workbench is our lightweight previs space inside the canvas. It gives you a fast way to test blocking, arrange actors, place cameras, and save reference frames before you commit to generation.

Instead of jumping straight from an idea to prompts, you can shape the scene first. That makes shot planning easier, especially when you need multiple angles, consistent eyelines, or a shared layout across a team.

What Director Workbench is for

Director Workbench is designed for the moment between concept and render. You already know the beat you want, but you still need to answer practical questions:

• Where are the characters standing?
• Which camera angle sells the moment best?
• How wide or close should the lens feel?
• What should stay consistent across the next few shots?

The panel turns those questions into quick spatial decisions instead of vague notes in chat.

Core workflow

The workbench is split into two working modes:

• Director mode lets you orbit the scene, place actors, move cameras, and inspect the full setup from the outside.
• Camera mode lets you look through the active camera so you can judge framing before saving a shot.

That switch matters because it mirrors a real directing loop: first arrange the scene, then step into the lens and see whether the shot actually works.

Main features

1. Place actors with fast blocking

Add actors into the scene and drag them to rough in staging. You can also rename, lock, hide, and reorder them from the scene outliner, which is useful once the scene stops being a single-character setup.

This is not meant to be a full DCC pipeline. It is meant to be quick enough that you keep exploring instead of over-modeling.

2. Create cameras from common shot presets

You can add cameras from preset viewpoints such as front, side, close-up, top, over-the-shoulder, and dutch angles. If you already found a useful editor view, you can also create a camera directly from the current view.

That means the panel is good for both:

• starting from a known cinematic pattern
• discovering a composition first and turning it into a reusable camera second

3. Tune lens and target behavior

Each camera can store its own position, target, and field of view. A camera can look at a manual target point or follow a selected actor, which makes it easier to keep framing attached to the subject while you iterate on blocking.

This is especially helpful when you want to try several focal lengths on the same beat without rebuilding the whole shot.

4. Preview before you capture

Camera mode shows the live shot from the active camera. That gives you a low-friction way to inspect spacing, headroom, and screen direction before saving anything.

If a shot feels wrong, you can jump back to Director mode, adjust the scene, and immediately recheck it through the camera.

5. Save captures and send them back to the canvas

Once the framing works, you can capture the shot in your selected aspect ratio. Captures are stored in the camera inspector, where you can preview them, delete them, or send them onto the main canvas as image assets.

This closes an important loop: previs does not stay trapped inside the panel. It becomes usable reference material for prompts, shot boards, reviews, and downstream generation.

Why this helps in real projects

• Faster alignment. Teams can point to a concrete frame instead of describing a camera move from memory.
• Better continuity. Multi-shot scenes keep a clearer sense of geography and subject placement.
• Less prompt thrash. You can resolve blocking and framing earlier, before turning every iteration into a new render.
• Cleaner handoff. Captured frames can travel back to the canvas and sit next to the rest of the production context.

A practical way to use it

One simple pattern works well:

1. Build the rough scene with actors and a background
2. Add two or three candidate cameras for the same moment
3. Switch into Camera mode and compare framing
4. Save the strongest captures
5. Send those captures to the canvas as references for the next generation step

That keeps the workbench focused on shot thinking, not scene perfection.

Open the guide from the panel

We also linked this article to the help button in the top-right corner of Director Workbench, so when someone asks “what is this panel for?” the answer is one click away.

If you have been using the canvas for shot planning already, Director Workbench gives that process a dedicated home: lighter than a full 3D tool, but much more concrete than planning everything in text alone.