Overview

VerkLabs is a digital audio-visual workstation in your browser. You compose the music, design the visuals, direct the camera, and then save it or perform it live, all in one tool. A project holds the 3D scenes, shaders, instruments and notes together, and the Runsheet timeline brings them in time with each other. It is built on one node graph for sound and image: you make a synth and a shader the same way, in the same Node Editor. It combines a Scene Viewer, the Node Editor, a Runsheet, and My Files, a cloud storage for your projects, textures, sounds, and other assets.

Learn it by doing. These lessons walk you through it, step by step, in the editor:

The User Interface

VerkLabs is built around three main areas, each optionally present in both of its two modes:

• Scene Viewer – where you see and interact with the 3D scene itself.
• Node Editor – where you build with nodes: the materials and deformations of objects, and the instruments that make the sound. It is one node language for both, with the same wires and the same Add Node menu, and the sound an instrument makes can drive a shader through the Frequency and Audio Track nodes.
• Runsheet – where you schedule how events play out over time, including sound and music (see Runsheet and Instruments and Music).

For music there are three more windows: the Piano Roll, where you write notes, the Scope, where you watch the sound of an instrument, and the Controls panel, with an instrument’s knobs. Every window can be docked beside the others, put in tabs, or left floating, so you can arrange the workstation the way you work.

New to VerkLabs? Choose Learn > Lessons… in the Drop-Down Menu for a guided lesson that teaches as you build – see Lessons.

Viewer Mode is for exploring a finished scene rather than creating one – the audience for a shared project, rather than its creator. None of the title bars or drop-down menus appear; instead there’s a single Media Bar at the bottom of the screen, similar to an online streaming service, to start and stop the project and control media.

Editor Mode is for building a scene. The Scene Viewer, Node Editor, and Runsheet each get their own controls there, described below – and they follow the same project → object hierarchy as the scene itself. The Scene Viewer’s title bar and drop-down menu work at the project level: the overall editor layout, project properties, and media controls. The Node Editor’s title bar and Properties menu work at the level of whichever single object is currently open in it. The Runsheet timeline operates at the project level.

Scene Viewer

The Scene Viewer is your central window into the 3D world, in both modes. You can simply enjoy the scene animations, or explore interactively using mouse or trackpad gestures, control the camera focus, and interact with individual objects.

Use the mouse or trackpad to:

• Move and rotate the camera
• Change focal point

Media Bar (Viewer Mode)

The Media Bar sits at the bottom of the Scene Viewer, and disappears when you’re not moving the mouse, providing an unobstructed view.

It shows the project’s name and creator, playback controls (Start, Pause, Stop), device toggles for Microphone, Camera, and Audio, and Fullscreen and Share buttons.

Canvas Top Bar & Drop-Down Menu (Editor Mode)

The Canvas Top Bar sits above the Scene Viewer and stays visible at all times while editing. From left to right, it gives you:

• The Drop-Down Menu button (see below) and, next to it, the Start button that runs the project.
• Save, Save As, Open, and New, for managing the current project.
• Add/Remove Objects, which opens the Objects panel.
• The mode switch, 3D and Music: one of the two is always on. 3D shows the Scene Viewer with the selected object’s Node Editor; Music shows the Piano Roll in place of the Scene Viewer, with the current Music event’s instrument in the node editor instead – see Node Editor and Instruments and Music. Clicking the one that is on does nothing. In a project with no music yet, Music makes the first Music event for you (an empty 16-beat clip, played by the project’s first instrument, or the Piano from the library) and opens the Piano Roll on it, so you can start writing notes at once.
• A shortcut for each window: Canvas, Node Editor, Piano Roll, Runsheet, Mixer, Scope and Controls. A shortcut is green while its window is showing, and dim while there is nothing for it to show (the Scope and Controls need an instrument open in the Node Editor). Click one to show or hide that window. The same list is in the drop-down menu, under Window.
• On the right, the current project’s file name, and your sign-in status – click it to sign in, or to see your account. Hover over the file name to see the project’s credit – the same “© creator” shown in Viewer Mode’s Media Bar.

The Drop-Down Menu (the icon at the left of the Canvas Top Bar) opens with further controls:

The menu is in groups. Stop and Pause are at the top; the rest are submenus that open beside their row (on a narrow screen, under it):

• Stop and Pause.
• Window, a submenu that lists the windows with a check mark for each one that is open (Canvas, Node Editor, Piano Roll, Runsheet, Mixer, Scope, Controls), the 3D and Music switch, and Reset layout.
• Tools: Settings…, Camera Animation…, Objects… and Instruments… – each opens its own small floating panel on top of the canvas, which you can drag out of the way rather than a full-screen dialog blocking the view.
• Learn: Lessons… opens the guided lessons in a floating panel; Manual and Examples open the reference manual and the examples in a new tab.
• Output: Preview (the project as a viewer sees it), Fullscreen, Present… (show the Scene Viewer on another display, such as a projector (see Presenting)) and Share to share a view-only link to your project.
• Devices: Disable Navigation and Enable Navigation, which switch the mouse’s control of the camera off and on (with it off, dragging the mouse does not orbit or zoom the camera, so the mouse position can drive a shader), and the toggles for Microphone, Camera, and Audio.
• File: Manage My Files and Upload Project.
• About, with information about VerkLabs.

Node Editor

The Node Editor provides a visual way to design materials and deformations using nodes interconnected in a node graph, for whichever object it’s currently open on.

You can:

• Select, move, and connect nodes
• Adjust their properties
• Create custom node types
• See live previews of your material outputs

Color-coded connections, warnings, and selection tools make it clear how data flows between nodes.

It’s opened with the 3D button or the Node Editor shortcut in the Canvas Top Bar, or from Window in the Drop-Down Menu (see above). It is a window in the editor’s layout: beside the Scene Viewer by default, or docked above, below or as a tab, or floating on top of it, where it can be dragged and resized like any other panel. The button in its title bar docks or floats it – see Object Properties and Arranging the Windows.

Within the Node Editor’s own title bar, the Properties button opens a floating panel for the object currently open in it, where you can fine-tune properties such as label, material, size, transparency, and orientation/animation parameters (position, rotation, orbit, scale, etc.).

Node Menu

With the Node Menu, you can add nodes to the graph you’re currently working on in the Node Editor.

The Node Menu is grouped by category:

• Source Data, Source Values
• RGBA, HSLA, Numbers
• Mixing & Selecting Colors, RGBA Effects
• Vectors, Drawing, Texture Operations
• UV Operations, 3D Operations
• Animated Values, Environment Values
• Vertex Output
• Annotations, Custom Nodes

If your node graph is becoming too complicated, or you have defined interesting behaviors you might want to reuse, you can select a subset of nodes and save them as a Custom Node that you can re-use throughout your project. Nodes can also be copied and pasted between different projects.

Runsheet

The Runsheet controls the overall timing of events in the scene. Toggle it open from the Canvas Top Bar or Drop-Down Menu. It’s a multi-track timeline, docked at the bottom of the Scene Viewer, for scheduling events to run automatically over the course of a playback rather than triggering them by hand.

Tracks are grouped by kind: Recording, Audio, Music (notes played by instruments you build or pick from the library), Camera (animate, move, turn, zoom), Params (shader/uniform values), Objects, Motion and Light (move, aim, strength and color of the scene’s light), and on-screen overlays – Title, Background, Text, Nodes, Logo, and QR Code. Add events to a track, position and resize them along the timeline, and use the same Start, Pause, and Stop controls as elsewhere to run the sequence from the beginning, or continue from wherever you paused.

The Runsheet chapter describes every track and event in detail, and Instruments and Music covers making sounds and playing them from the Runsheet, including the Piano Roll – opened with the Music button or the Piano Roll shortcut above, it is a tab of the Scene Viewer’s window by default, taking its place (or it can sit beside it, or float on top) for drawing a melody note by note.

Run on Load and Run Loop – whether the Runsheet starts automatically and whether it repeats – are set in the Settings panel, alongside the Rec. Runsheet option to record a run automatically.

My Files

Editor Mode only.

You save your projects and assets in My Files, reached from the Scene Viewer’s own Canvas Top Bar (Save/Save As/Open/New). Here you can browse folders, filter or sort documents, and manage permissions or shared access. My Files also provides tools for editing document properties, uploading, and deleting assets.