Materials and light
The skin of an object and the stage it stands on: materials, colour, finish, lighting presets, exposure, background and shadows.
The studio draws in real time in your browser. Materials and light are properties like any other: change them, watch the stage, undo if you want.
Open in Puni and choose a scene to edit its materials and light.
#Materials
Shapes, curves, outlines and text have a Material: solid, metal or glass. Color and Roughness show for every material, and a Skin (auto, clay, vinyl, rubber, chrome, clear, frost, jelly or glow; shapes, curves and outlines also take flat and toon) sets the look, with a Finish from matte to gloss and a Weight that thickens it. Metals reflect the stage. Glass has an index of refraction and a coat.
#Flat, cel and ink
For drawn, graphic or low-poly looks, shapes, curves and outlines take two more skins and a few dials. They are advanced properties, set the same way as any other.
| Dial | What it does |
|---|---|
| Skin: flat | Unlit. The colour you set is the colour drawn, with no light, shade or tone curve. |
| Skin: toon | A hard ramp keyed to the key light: Ramp bands (2 or 3), each an exact colour. The lit band is the colour; the shadow band is the colour mixed toward Shadow tint by Shadow strength (1 gives the tint itself). Left at its default, the shadow is the colour darkened in OKLCH (lightness down by 0.25 times the strength, 0.15 at the default 0.6; hue and chroma held), so it never greys and never turns another colour; set any other tint to override it and it mixes exactly. |
| Ink outline weight | An outline in millimetres drawn as a back-face hull in Ink outline colour; 0 draws none, on any skin. |
| Tone mapping | Auto leaves flat and toon as authored and keeps the tone curve on every other skin; Off removes the tone curve from that material (under Flat that keeps the exact hex; a lit skin is still lit); Mapped forces the curve. |
| Flat shading | Per-face shading on a round form. |
| Facets round the form | Shapes only: build a sphere, capsule, cone, ring or knot from that many segments (3 to 96) so it reads low-poly. 0 keeps the smooth form. This is real geometry, so it exports to GLB, USDZ and Cycles like any shape. |
None of these change a scene that does not use them. Only the studio raster draws them, in PNG and film, on this machine or on the hosted renderer. The path tracer (samples above 0), GLB, USDZ, Cycles and the native studio refuse, by name, a scene that holds a flat or toon skin, an ink outline, tone off or flat shading. They never draw an ordinary lit material in its place. Facets alone is geometry and is not refused. An object with any of those dials also cannot join a blend or cut, or sit under a cloner's template (a template named by object, by module, or a group holding one).
An imported file keeps its own materials until you switch Material away from Source materials to a preset: Porcelain, Aluminum, Polymer, Rubber or Glass. Switch back at any time; the original is kept.
#Light
The Scene tab sets the stage.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Lighting | Soft studio, Gallery or Dark studio |
| Exposure | Brightens or darkens the whole picture |
| Background | The colour behind everything |
| Shadows | On or off |
| Transparent | A clear background for pictures and embeds; it also removes the floor and its shadow |
#Two ways to draw
The studio raster draws the live stage and Film. Path tracing is available for stills; it is not a film renderer. See Rendering for each output and its prerequisites.
Read Sharing next.
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