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A tour of the studio
One panel, five tabs, in the order you'll use them. Here's where everything lives, and how a render comes together from start to finish.
The panel, step by step
Everything you adjust lives in the panel on the left, in five tabs. They're in the order you'll usually work, so for a new render you can simply go from left to right:
- Scene: the scene you're on, its materials, your saved scenes and your own model.
- Light: choose a sky or studio, and set any lights that came with your file.
- Camera: frame the shot, choose a lens, set the focus and the exposure.
- Render: decide how clean the picture should be, and add finishing touches like glow.
- Animation: play your animation or a turntable, and render it as a video.
Then press Save in the top right. The panel remembers the tab you were on, so you'll come back to the same place next time.
To make the panel wider or narrower, drag the small handle on its right edge. Auddomate remembers the width; double-click the handle to put it back.
Cards you can fold
Inside each tab, settings are grouped into cards, like Sky, Lens or Materials. Click a card's name to fold it away, and again to open it. Auddomate remembers which cards you've folded, so the panel stays the way you like it.
Click the render to edit a material
Click anything in the render, and Auddomate tells you which material it is and opens it in Scene → Materials, ready to adjust. It's the quickest way to find the right material in a model with dozens of them. Dragging still turns the view, as always; only a quick click picks.
Help where you need it
Every setting has a small i beside its name. Hover over it, tab to it or tap it to see what the setting does and when to use it; move away or press Esc to hide it again. The panel stays tidy, and the explanation is always one glance away.
For anything deeper, these Docs are linked from the Interface menu and from the bottom of the panel.
Along the top
The bar above the render shows how the render is going and holds the actions you'll reach for most:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scene | The scene you're on, with a small picture. Click it to choose another scene, open one of your saved scenes, or import a model |
| Status | Says whether the render is Rendering, Finished or Paused |
| Progress dots and time | Fill up as the grain clears towards your Stop at target, with the time so far and roughly how long is left |
| Checks | Opens the checks against pbrt-v4 |
| Commands | Opens the ⌘K command menu |
| Interface | The sliders button: language, theme, test scenes, the axes, keyboard shortcuts and the Docs |
| Reset | Starts the render again from the first sample |
| Save | Every way to save your render. See Saving |
| Start or Pause | Starts, pauses or renders again. Choosing a scene, or changing anything that alters the light, starts rendering again by itself |
On a narrow window, the time and dots step aside first, so the buttons always fit.
Along the bottom
Under the render, on the left, readouts show how fast your graphics card is working in millions of samples per second, and how many samples each pixel has. On wide screens they also show the resolution and the size of your model.
In the middle sits the Turn and Tilt bar, and on the right the small X, Y, Z axes. See Moving around for both.
Your language
The studio speaks eight languages: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Korean and Portuguese (Brazil). It opens in your browser's language, and you can change it any time from the Interface menu or the flag at the bottom of the panel. Switching doesn't interrupt your render.
These Docs, the changelog and the Checks results stay in English for now.
The Interface menu
The sliders button at the top right holds the settings about the studio itself rather than your render:
- Language: the studio in English, 日本語, 简体中文, Deutsch, Français, Español, 한국어 or Português (Brasil). Click the current language to see them all, each with its flag. The studio starts in your browser's language and remembers your choice. The flag at the bottom of the panel changes it too.
- Theme: Light, Dark, or Match my system.
- Show test scenes: adds the engineering scenes Auddomate is checked with to the scene picker, under Tests.
- Show axes: shows or hides the axes in the corner.
- Keyboard shortcuts: every key and gesture. See Keyboard shortcuts.
- Open the docs: brings you here.
- Auddomate Pro: turn Pro on with a licence key. See Auddomate Pro.
- Get support: writes to us at hello@auddomate.com. With Pro, it's Priority support.
On a phone
On a phone, press the panel button at the top left to open the same five tabs as a sheet. Turn and Tilt move into the Camera tab, and the render's progress sits under the picture.