The painter's side of the image

Camera

Walk through the scene. Press on the plan where you want to stand and drag towards what you want to see. Then walk as in a game: the keys move you, the mouse turns your head, the wheel changes the focal length. You climb stairs and stop at walls, or switch gravity off and fly.

Leave cameras as you go. Press C wherever the view works: a camera stays on that spot and you walk on. Press Esc and your viewports come back as you left them, on the camera you started from.

Snap it to a composition. Go through the guides over the view: diagonals, golden section, thirds. Click a point on the one you keep, then the point in the model that belongs there, and the camera turns and shifts its lens until the two meet.

Frame and render. Format and resolution presets, portrait in one click, tilt-shift for straight verticals. Every camera's render settings sit in one list that you send to render.

• Walk W A S D · Shift to run · gravity or flight
• Look the mouse · the wheel for the focal length
• Camera C, and walk on
• Compose snap a point of the model to a guide
• Exit Esc or right-click

Materials

PBR Loader. Point it at a texture folder. It reads the maps and builds the Corona material.

In development: a language model (Claude, GPT or Gemini) does the set-up for you. It searches your texture library for suitable materials and reads the material libraries open in the Slate Material Editor, then works in a loop with Slate (proposing, building, checking) until the Corona material is right. It remembers what you chose and learns from it.

• Renderer Corona

Colour Atlas

A palette library inside 3ds Max. Pick a colour anywhere on screen and find the palettes that hold it. Load a photograph and extract its palette, each colour's share shown as its length. Build and save your own. Drag a colour from a palette onto an object and the object takes it.

In development: read a PDF or an EPUB, find the palettes it holds, and save them to a new palette folder named after the book.

Joining the launch, not built yet: change every tint in the scene from one list.

• Library public-domain sources, plus your own