Guide / Scene tools

Cutaways

Any object can cut the scene open at render time. It stops rendering and removes what it covers, and your geometry stays as it is. Works with every method, on the CPU and the GPU.

A furnished villa at dusk, cut open through all four levels: warm light in every room, a lit pool in the garden and on the roof

×Quick start

Pick the object that will cut: an Empty for a flat cut, a closed mesh to cut out a volume.
Object Properties → Cutter: tick the checkbox in the panel header.
Render, or look in Solid mode: the cut shows in both.

×Cut along a plane

An Empty or a flat mesh cuts along a plane and removes the side its arrow points to. Where a closed object is cut, the cut gets a solid face.

The villa model cut in half by one plane: the front half of the house and its plot is gone, and every cut wall and slab shows a lime section face

×Cut out a volume

A closed mesh removes everything inside it. Several mesh cutters add up.

A box-shaped cutter takes out the front corner of the villa's upper floor, opening the bedroom

×Keep only the inside

Invert keeps only what lies inside a mesh cutter. On a plane it cuts the other side.

With Invert on, only the bedroom inside the box is left of the house, standing above the empty plot

×Combine planes

Planes work together: two cut a wedge and three cut out a corner.

Two planes remove the front-left quarter of the villa and its plot through every level

A third plane limits the cut to the upper floor: only its front-left corner is open

×Choose what gets cut

Objects: the objects and collections this cutter cuts or leaves whole. Ticked ones are cut and unticked ones are left whole; once any is ticked, the cutter cuts only the ticked ones. Add them by name, by dragging them from the Outliner, or with the eyedropper: each click on an object in the viewport, or on an object or collection in the Outliner, leaves it whole, then cuts it, then takes it off the list. Esc ends picking. An Exclude collection from 1.0.0 shows here as a collection left whole.

Cut By, in the Object Properties of any other object, lists the cutters in the scene, ticked where they cut that object, so you can change it from there too.

The villa cut open with its furniture left whole — Furniture wholeFurniture cut

The same cut with the furniture cut too: sofas and tables show lime section faces — Furniture wholeFurniture cut

×Keep the light of a closed room

Camera Only: only the camera sees the cut. Light, shadows and reflections still see the whole scene, so a room cut open stays lit as if it were closed.

The villa cut open with Camera Only on: the rooms stay dim, lit only through their windows — Camera OnlyReal light

The same cut with Camera Only off: sunlight falls into the opened rooms — Camera OnlyReal light

×Choose the material of the cut faces

Cap: the material of the cut faces. With Object they take the cut object's material, from the faces behind the cut at Slot 0 or from that material slot at a higher number. With Cutter they take the cutter's first material.

The villa's upper floors cut open with every cut face in the cutter's white — CutterObject

The same cut with each cut face in the material of the wall, slab or batten it belongs to — CutterObject

×See the cut in Solid mode

Solid mode shows the cut as the render does, with solid faces where closed objects are cut, and draws the cutters as outlines. In X-ray, or with Backface Culling on, the cut shows without those faces.

Solid mode viewport in Reblend — Solid mode viewport

×Limits

Cut faces need closed meshes with consistent normals. Subsurface scattering, ambient occlusion and bevel ignore the cut, and in EEVEE a cutter mesh renders as an ordinary object.