#Interface

#Panels

Bright's window is made of dockable panels. Drag a panel by its tab to move it, stack it with another, or float it. The layout is restored next time, and you can save named layout presets.

#The Viewer

Every graph has exactly one Viewer node, always named Viewer. It cannot be deleted or renamed, and the Viewer panel is always bound to it.

• Pipes 1 to 9: with a node selected, press a digit to wire that node to the pipe and view it. With nothing selected, a digit switches to that pipe.
• Display: OpenGL OpenColorIO display transform, with exposure and gamma.
• Channels: view R, G, B or A alone (R, G, B, A), luminance (Y), or back to RGB (C). A single-channel input shows as grey.
• Wipe (W) compares two inputs.
• In and out points (I / O) limit playback to a range.
• Fit (F) frames the image; ROI (Alt+W) limits rendering to a region; U re-reads files and renders once. Right-click for a snapshot to the clipboard and hold.
• Node tools such as RotoPaint and Tracker draw their controls in the Viewer when the node is selected.

#3D view

The Viewer switches between 2D and 3D (Tab while the Viewer has focus). The 3D view shows meshes, cameras and lights with a transform gizmo (tools on Q, W, E, R) and a tool rail on the right. F frames the selection and A frames all; 1 to 5 switch draw modes. Mouse navigation follows Maya or Blender, chosen in Preferences > General.

#The node graph

• Create: press Tab and type to search, or use a create letter (R Read, T Transform, B Blur, G Grade, M Merge, W Write). The letters can be remapped in Preferences > Hotkeys > Node Graph.
• Wire by dragging from an output to an input. Dragging into the Viewer, or pressing a digit, wires a node to a viewer pipe.
• Select with a click or a rubber band; pan and zoom with the mouse.
• Edit: Delete removes nodes and heals the wires around them, D disables, N renames, Ctrl+D duplicates, Ctrl+G makes a group. Copy and paste work between graphs.
• Find and navigate: / finds a node, F frames the selection, Shift+F frames all, Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down select upstream or downstream.
• Ports: P cycles how ports are shown; F1 opens the port type colour guide.
• Connection style: bezier, linear or stepped wires, set in Preferences > General.
• Nodes can show a postage stamp thumbnail of their output.

#Properties

Properties shows the knobs of the selected nodes, grouped in tabs. Any float knob can be animated: set a key on the knob, then edit the curve in the Curve Editor or the keys in the Dope Sheet. Knobs can also be driven by expressions and by node connections.

#Timeline and playback

The timeline has transport controls (play, stop, step, jump to start and end) and shows the frame range. Space plays and pauses when you are not typing in a field.

Playback reads from a RAM frame cache (about 4 GB by default), filled by background rendering on worker threads. The cache can spill to disk. Its size, share of RAM and spill folder are in Preferences > Cache, with buttons to clear the RAM cache, the spill and the disk cache.

#Preferences

Edit > Preferences (Ctrl+,):

Preferences are stored on the machine. They never go into a project file, and the project never writes into preferences.