The interface
The module rail, the menu bar, the panels, the sync pill, and the four keys that work in every studio.
Every studio in aukimi is laid out the same way. Learn it once in Inkwell and you already know your way around Fusion.
The module rail#
Down the left edge, grouped into five categories:
| Group | Studios |
|---|---|
| Game dev | Engine · Pixel Editor · Animator |
| 3D tools | Sculpt · Retopo · Matter · Pigment · Render |
| Design | Inkwell · Vectra · Composer · PDF Studio |
| Video & VFX | Fusion |
| Audio | Pulse |
Below the groups, separated by a rule: Clipboard, File Library,
References, and More (the guided tour lives there). With a project open,
Close Project sits at the very bottom; the « button collapses the rail to
icons.
Clicking an icon switches studio. It does not close anything. The studio you leave stays mounted in the background with its state intact, so hopping from Sculpt to Pigment and back costs nothing and loses nothing. The same list is under Window in the menu bar, if you prefer names to icons.
The menu bar#
Each studio brings its own menu bar. File, Edit and View are always there; the rest is the studio's own. Inkwell reads File · Edit · Image · View · Select · Filters · Styles · Tools · Window · Config · Plugins; Engine reads File · Edit · View · Windows · Run · Plugins.
The shared entries behave the same everywhere:
| Menu | What is in it |
|---|---|
| File | New project (Ctrl+N), open the File Library, save (Ctrl+S), close the project, convert a document to a project |
| Edit | Undo (Ctrl+Z), redo (Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z), Settings |
| View | Fullscreen (F11), the File Library, the performance monitor |
| Window | Jump to any studio, grouped as in the rail |
| Help | Documentation (F1), the guided tour, About |
A Share button sits at the top right (see) Working together.
The panels#
The arrangement is consistent enough to be predictable:
- Toolbar: the active studio's tools. Picking a tool reveals its own options, so the interface only ever shows what applies right now.
- Left panel, what your document contains: the scene hierarchy in Engine, the brush palette in Sculpt, the media browser in Fusion, the node library in Matter.
- Right panel, the properties of what is selected: transform, layer blending, brush dynamics, PBR channels, clip effects.
- Timeline: in the time-based studios (Animator, Fusion, Pulse), along the bottom, with its own tabs (graph editor, shots, audio, mixer).
- Canvas or viewport: the middle. Everything else exists to serve it.
- Status bar: along the very bottom, reporting what the studio thinks it is holding: canvas size and colour depth and cursor position in Inkwell, entity count and grid state in Engine.
The four items under the rail#
Below the module groups, separated by a rule, four things that are not studios:
| Clipboard | the cross-studio clipboard (see below) |
| File Library | the shared shelf (its own page) |
| References | the Reference Board |
| More | the guided tour, and the rest |
The Reference Board#
A board of reference images that floats over whatever you are working on. Add
from a file, from a URL, or paste with Ctrl+V. Lay them out on a grid
or freely, lock positions once you are happy, fit all to see
everything, and centre the window.
A board saves to and loads from the file library under a name, so the references for a piece travel with the project rather than living in another application.
The clipboard#
Ctrl/Cmd + C and V work across studios, and what travels is typed
content rather than pixels. Each studio declares what it accepts, ranked by
preference, over seven content types:
raster_layers · vector_shapes · animation_objects · composer_frames ·
audio_clips · video_clips · mesh_3d
The destination gets the highest-ranked type it understands. That is why a Vectra
shape lands in Inkwell as vector rather than as a screenshot of itself, and why
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V is worth knowing: it offers the available formats
explicitly instead of choosing for you.
The sync pill#
Bottom of the window. It reports what has happened to your work, with one state per situation:
| Saved to the cloud | the cloud copy matches what you see |
| Uploading… | a sync is in flight |
| Edits not uploaded yet | changes are local; the next auto-sync will take them |
| Offline | no connection: the cloud copy is from your last sync |
| Changed elsewhere, needs a decision | a conflict; see Projects and documents |
| Last upload failed | the sync errored; the local copy is intact |
| Cloud save is off | working locally, on purpose |
Four keys worth memorising#
Ctrl / Cmd + K | Command palette: search every command, colour, palette, gradient and asset, and jump to any studio |
F1 | Settings, opened on the Documentation tab |
F2 | The keyboard-shortcut reference |
F4 | The Command Center |
The command palette is the fastest route to anything. It offers global commands (colour picker, gradient editor, normal-map tool, File Library, share, chat, settings) plus commands contextual to the studio you are in, Export as GLB and Bake maps in Pigment, Toggle onion skinning in Animator, Boolean union in Vectra.
Settings#
F1, or Edit → Settings. Four tabs: Settings, Documentation, Shortcuts and
Multiplayer. What is worth knowing:
- Appearance: a global accent colour and three workspace themes (Graphite, Midnight, Warm), applied across every studio, plus a larger-text option that scales interface labels without touching your canvases.
- General: auto-save on/off and its interval; the undo depth.
- Infinite undo: history spills to disk when memory fills. The panel shows how much is in memory and how much on disk, and lets you clear it per studio or entirely.
- Live sync: keeps linked assets updated across studios in real time.
- Cloud save: see Projects and documents.
- Language: the interface is translated into 28 languages.
The guided tour#
Help → Guided Tour. It drives the real interface rather than showing a video: each step opens the studio it is talking about and spotlights the actual panel, with narration. One chapter for onboarding, one for Inkwell in depth, then one per studio.