About Product Actors

Product actors are some of the main actors used in an experience. They enable you to manipulate physical products in an experience.

You create product actors by inserting physical products from external apps.

Important: The term "product" is used throughout the app and actually implicitly refers to a product actor. Consequently, this guide refers to the term "product actor" to avoid any confusion with the term "physical product".

This page discusses:

See Also
Creating Product Actors
Editing Product Actors

Product Actor

A product actor is a 3D actor that references a physical product created with 3D Modeling apps. When you insert a physical product into an experience, a product actor is automatically created.

Modifications

Modifications made to the product actor do not impact the referenced physical product. For example, when you edit the properties of the product actor (such as color, visibility or position), the referenced physical product remains unchanged.

However, modifications made to the physical product automatically impact the product actor (except if the properties are already configured in the experience). For example, when you change the geometry of the referenced physical product, the visual representation of the product actor changes accordingly in the experience.

Physical Parts and Subproducts Display

Parts or subproducts of a physical product are hidden in the experience structure.

To display all the physical parts or subproducts, you need to explore the physical product (see table below).

To configure and manipulate a physical part (or subproduct), you must expose it as a subproduct actor.

Before Exploring a Product Actor Exploring a Product Actor




Subproduct Actor

A subproduct actor is an object that enables you to expose and configure a part (or subproduct) of a product actor.

In the example, the product actor is explored and its parts are displayed. (1)

Then, the following subproduct actors are exposed: Body and Doors. (2)

Exploring a Product Actor (1) Exposing Subproduct Actors (2)




Notes:
  • You cannot change the hierarchy of a subproduct actor. For example, you cannot place a part under another parent node.
  • A subproduct actor references a part (or subproduct) in the product structure. If you change the product structure, the subproduct actor becomes invalid. If you delete an subproduct actor, the configuration applied to the object is also deleted. Of course, the object itself is still visible in the experience.

Example

Consider the following product structure:

  • Car is the physical product.
  • Door is a part of the physical product.

Consider the corresponding experience structure: Car_actor is the product actor that references the physical product in the experience.

If you want to change the orientation of Door in Car_actor, you must expose Door as a subproduct actor through the Level Selector for example. Then you can change the orientation directly in the experience.

Note: The orientation of Door remains unchanged in Car.

Consider the following result after exposing Door: Door_subproductactor is the subproduct actor that references the part in the experience.

Important:
  • You cannot place Door_subproductactor under another 3D actor in the experience.
  • Of course, if you delete Door from Car, Door_subproductactor becomes invalid.
  • If you delete the subproduct actor, Door returns to its original position in the product structure. It also remains visible in the experience but can no longer be manipulated.