A sticky, transparent composition overlay for rendering, photography and design.
Download for Windows · Source code · Installation guide
Looking for a D5 Render overlay, D5 OverLayer, Twinmotion OverLayer, Twinmotion overlay, or Twinmotion composition guides? OverLayer places rule-of-thirds grids, golden-ratio guides, golden spirals, leading lines and perspective guides over your viewport. It is free, open source, and works as an independent Windows app.
Position a frame over your viewport, choose your guides, then lock it. Mouse clicks pass through to your app. When following an app window, closing the controls keeps its overlay running.
Use it over your rendering viewport, 3D camera view, image editor or other windowed creative software. D5 Render, Blender, SketchUp and other apps are examples of possible hosts; OverLayer works independently of their plugin APIs. There is nothing to install inside your creative application.
Golden spiral and composition controls in D5 Render
| Leading lines in D5 Render | Golden triangles in D5 Render |
|---|---|
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- Download
OverLayer-1.0.0-windows-x64.zipfrom GitHub Releases. - Right-click the ZIP → Extract All. Keep the complete extracted folder.
- Open OverLayer.exe. No Python installation or administrator access needed.
The release is unsigned. Windows may show an unknown-publisher prompt; verify the source of your download and the published SHA-256 checksum before deciding whether to run it. Do not run the executable directly inside the ZIP.
Requirements: Windows 10/11, x64. Your creative app should use its normal windowed or borderless mode. Exclusive fullscreen is not supported.
For D5 Render or Twinmotion, open your project in a normal windowed or borderless window, select that app in Align & follow, and draw the overlay over its viewport. Lock the guides to keep working through them. No D5 plugin or Twinmotion plugin installation is needed; OverLayer runs separately.
- Open your creative application and arrange its panels as you like.
- In OverLayer's Align & follow section, select your app window and choose Follow window. The list refreshes each time you open it, shows each window's program name, and pre-selects known creative apps.
- Choose Draw viewport area… (or press Ctrl+Alt+A) and drag a rectangle over the render viewport, like selecting a screenshot area. Release to fit; press Escape or right-click to cancel. Minimum area: 240 × 180 logical pixels. Each monitor has its own correctly scaled selector. Start and finish the rectangle on the monitor containing your viewport; dragging past its edge stays within that monitor.
- Fine-tune using the eight corner/edge drag points, or drag inside to move the whole frame. Hold Shift while dragging for one-fifth-speed precision, or enter exact X / Y / Width / Height values in the controls.
- Choose one or more guides. Flip or rotate them to suit your composition.
- For leading lines or perspective, drag the teal vanishing-point handles.
- Choose Lock overlay. You can now work normally in your app through the guides. Enter (including keypad Enter) also locks a visible overlay when OverLayer has focus. Use Ctrl+Alt+L or the controls to unlock it.
- Close or hide the controls. The guides stay active. Use the tray icon or Ctrl+Alt+P to reopen controls.
- A locked overlay ignores mouse input and has no close button.
- Closing controls hides them; it does not quit the application. If no host window is attached, closing controls also hides the guides. The explicit Hide controls button can keep a free overlay active.
- The notification-area icon remains available; Windows may put it under the tray's Show hidden icons arrow.
- Following a window keeps your frame's position and size proportional to that window's client area. It hides when the window is minimized or another app is active, and returns when you return to the attached window or OverLayer. Palettes, inspectors and dialogs that belong to the same app count as that app, so the guides stay put while you use them. Match window fits the frame to the followed window's content area.
- By default, following is selected per session: the last frame and guides persist, but you select your app window again after restarting OverLayer. A saved locked frame starts hidden until you draw an area or choose Show guides, so it does not reappear locked over the desktop. When an attached host window closes, its guides hide automatically. Tick Follow this app automatically next time to opt in to re-attaching, and restoring the frame, whenever that program has a window (including after it restarts). OverLayer remembers only the program's file name and the frame's proportions. Choosing Detach window turns auto-follow off for the session.
- Launching OverLayer again brings the existing controls back instead of creating another overlay. Ctrl+Alt+H always hides guides immediately.
- Changing your application's internal panel layout requires realigning the overlay manually. OverLayer does not inspect viewports or read project files.
- To quit, click Quit… near the top of the controls, press Ctrl+Alt+Q, or right-click the tray icon → Quit OverLayer…, then confirm. Esc offers to quit when the controls or unlocked overlay have focus. While drawing a new area, Esc cancels the selection instead. When you are working in another application, its normal Escape behavior is preserved. It can always be ended through Windows Task Manager as well.
| Guide | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Rule of thirds | Classic thirds intersections |
| Golden ratio | Grid at 0.382 / 0.618 |
| Golden spiral | The classic whirling-squares diagram: nested squares with a quarter-circle arc in each, built in a true golden rectangle and fitted to your frame. Every cut falls on the Golden ratio grid lines (0.618 / 0.382); the arcs are perfect circles on a 1.618:1 frame and slightly stretched on others |
| Golden triangles | Main diagonal and perpendicular corner lines |
| Diagonals | Both corner-to-corner diagonals |
| Center & symmetry | Horizontal and vertical center axes |
| Dynamic symmetry | Diagonals and their reciprocal lines |
| Triangle / pyramid | A triangular composition scaffold |
| Leading lines / one point | Rays meeting at your movable vanishing point |
| Two-point perspective | Two movable vanishing points sharing a horizon |
| Horizon / eye level | A movable eye-level line |
| Custom grid | 2–16 rows and columns |
Pick a guide from the tiles, each of which previews its own lines. One guide is active at a time; hold Shift (or Ctrl) and click to combine several, and click the only active guide to switch it off. Guides can be mirrored in either direction and rotated in 90° steps. You can adjust line color (quick swatches or any color), opacity and thickness; add a focal-point marker and safe margins (1–25%, default 5%); and frame for viewport, 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, square, 4:5, 9:16, 2.39:1 or any custom ratio. Dim outside crop darkens the area outside a crop frame. Contrast halo (off by default) draws a thin light or dark outline under each line so guides stay readable on any image. Crop frames are composition references; they do not change your app's camera or render output. Leading lines guide your eye; they do not detect scene geometry automatically.
While the frame is unlocked, dragging shows its size and ratio; the arrow keys nudge it by 1 px (Shift: 10 px) and Ctrl+arrows resize it. Shift-dragging a vanishing point is also five times finer.
Reference images (PNG/JPEG/WebP/BMP) fit inside the selected frame with their aspect ratio preserved. You can adjust opacity, scale (10–400%) and offset. They are local files; presets remember their paths. Exported presets omit reference paths and image contents.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | Lock a visible overlay while OverLayer has focus |
| Ctrl+Alt+A | Draw a viewport rectangle |
| Ctrl+Alt+L | Lock / unlock for alignment |
| Ctrl+Alt+O | Show / hide guides |
| Ctrl+Alt+H | Hide guides immediately |
| Ctrl+Alt+P | Show / hide controls |
| Ctrl+Alt+Q | Offer to quit from anywhere |
| Ctrl+Alt+PgDn / PgUp | Next / previous preset (its name flashes on the frame) |
| Esc | Offer to quit from controls/alignment; cancel area selection |
The global shortcuts can be changed in the Shortcuts section of the controls. Shortcuts are global while OverLayer runs. If another app has reserved one, OverLayer displays a message; use the tray controls instead. On keyboard layouts with an AltGr key (for example Polish or German), AltGr is Ctrl+Alt, so a Ctrl+Alt+letter shortcut would swallow that letter; OverLayer warns you and you can rebind it.
Settings save automatically as you work; the line at the bottom of the controls confirms it. Reset appearance restores the default guides and appearance (black lines, 1.25 px) while keeping your viewport placement, window attachment, lock state and named presets. An Undo button appears for a few seconds afterwards.
Use Save preset… to name a preset for a camera/view. Load restores its guides,
frame, points and appearance. Use Export preset… and Import preset… to
share a .json preset. After importing, align the frame for your own monitor.
Presets are managed manually; camera changes do not select them automatically.
Settings and presets are stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\OverLayer\settings.json.
The guide frame and control panel automatically remember their last screen
position and size, including the monitor used, and restore them on relaunch.
If a saved monitor is disconnected, windows are brought back onto an available
screen. Instructions stay in the control panel; the overlay shows text only
briefly, as a size readout while you adjust it or a preset name when you switch.
There are no accounts, telemetry, background network calls or automatic updates.
To uninstall, quit and delete the extracted app folder. Delete the settings
folder too if you want to remove your presets.
Install Python 3.11 or newer (64-bit), then open PowerShell in this folder:
py -3.11 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -r requirements.txt
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m overlayerNo PowerShell execution-policy changes are needed. Python 3.11 x64 is the tested build environment. To run tests and produce a portable ZIP, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Version 1.0.0 is the first Windows release by Bogdan Demchenko. Automated checks cover guide math, settings validation and native overlay behavior. Window following is based on client bounds; mixed-DPI multi-monitor arrangements and different application layouts need further real-world testing. Screen captures can include the overlay; hide it before taking a clean screenshot. Your application's rendered image is not modified.
Application source: MIT. Bundled Qt/PySide libraries have their own terms; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Contributions welcome.