The Alekhya manual
A complete reference for the application: every tool and sub-tool, every panel, every setting, and every effect, across 74 pages. New here? Begin with the introduction, then draw something in your first shot.
Introduction
Getting started
What Alekhya is, how its screens fit together, and a first drawing on the canvas.
- IntroductionWhat Alekhya is, the scope it deliberately keeps, and how this manual is organised.
- Your first shotCreate a project, open a canvas, place a stroke in scene space, and orbit the viewport to confirm it holds its position.
- Saving your workHow a shot is saved — autosave, the Save button, closing, and the shot the app reopens on launch.
Interface
The tool palette, the QuickStrip, panels, workspaces, and the menu bar.
- Tool PaletteThe always-visible strip of tool icons, where it can sit, and all seventeen tools in palette order with what each one does.
- QuickStripThe permanent narrow rail holding the tall size and strength sliders and the colour swatch, and exactly what it shows for each tool.
- PanelsEvery canvas and editor panel, what each one holds, and how docking, tabbing, splitting, tearing out and floating behave.
- WorkspacesThe built-in panel arrangements — Draw, Animate, Sculpt, Effects and Edit — how to save your own, and how resetting behaves.
- MenusThe complete menu bar — File, Edit, Layer, Animation, View, Window and Help — and where the in-app menu button differs from it.
The scene
Scene & workspace
The 3D viewport, the bendable drawing surface, and the two cameras.
- The viewportThe 3D view you work in, the camera that flies it, the gestures that move it, and the axis views, grid and focus mode that help you navigate.
- The drawing surfaceThe canvas as a parametric surface — flat, cylinder, sphere or cone — and the panels that bend and place it.
- CamerasThe two-camera model — the viewport camera you work from and the shot camera that frames the render — and every control in the Camera panel.
- 2D shotsThe flat shot mode — what it removes, what it keeps, the page that replaces the grid and camera, and why the mode is fixed at creation.
Layers
Layer types, groups, sub-layers, masks, adjustment layers, and blend modes.
- Layer TypesThe layer kinds Alekhya can create — plane, camera, vector and adjustment — what distinguishes them, and when each is appropriate.
- The Layers PanelThe Layers panel — its rows and badges, the action row, the New menu, every per-layer property, and the thirteen blend modes.
- Masks and GroupsGroups, sub-layers and masks — what each composites, their controls, and how a mask relates to the layer that owns it.
- Adjustment LayersAdjustment layers hold no content of their own; their effect stack applies to everything composited below them, including the paper.
Drawing
Painting
The brush engine in full — every Brush Settings control, the bundled brushes, custom brushes, and brush import.
- The brush engineHow Alekhya turns a pen stroke into marks — the dab engine, the three drawing systems, and the rule that brush edits never reach finished work.
- Draw toolThe raster paint brush — its Tool Options, where a stroke lands in 3D, and how draw-and-hold and Free 3D drawing work.
- TipBrush Settings ▸ Tip — the dab itself: its size, opacity, edge, grain, how far apart stamps fall, and its cross-section.
- StrokeBrush Settings ▸ Stroke — stabilization, taper, and the routes that carry pen pressure and tilt into the mark.
- Scatter & RandomizeBrush Settings ▸ Scatter & Randomize — throwing dabs off the path, multiplying them, and varying their size, angle and hue.
- Brush libraryThe Sub Tool panel — the 11 shipped categories, selecting and previewing a brush, and saving, forking, renaming or deleting one.
- Bundled brushesEvery one of the 51 shipped brushes across 11 categories, with the values that distinguish each from its neighbours.
- Custom brushesBrush Settings ▸ Custom Brush — building a brush from tip sets, paint textures, swept ribbons or 3D elements, and saving it.
- 3D scatter brushesPainting instanced geometry along a stroke — the six scatter kinds, capturing your own elements, billboards, and the 3D Scatter controls.
- Brush filesExporting and importing brush packages, and what a Photoshop .abr pack does and does not bring with it.
- EraserThe pixel eraser — what it rubs out across raster ink, fills and tubes, which layer it acts on, and how its mark is fixed.
- BlendThe colour mixer — Blend, Blur and Fingertip, what an affine blend stroke is, and why the tool carries no colour of its own.
Colour & fills
The Color panel, the Fill tool and its boundary scopes, and Gradient.
- Color panelThe hue ring, the saturation and value square, the hex field, the fixed palette and the recent swatches, and how they drive the brush colour.
- FillThe bucket tool — its three boundary scopes, the gap and expand controls, fold filling across planes, and the replace rule.
- GradientFilling an enclosed region with a two-colour ramp drawn by a drag, and the gap and expand controls it shares with the bucket.
Selection
The Select tool, its four scopes, and using a selection as a mask.
Drawing guides
Symmetry, rulers and perspective — the three guides that steer the pen as you draw.
- Drawing guidesThe three guides that steer the pen as you draw — symmetry, rulers and perspective — where they live, and the order they are applied in.
- SymmetryThe mirror, quadrant, radial and mandala symmetry modes — how many copies each makes, where the axis lives, and what a replica is.
- RulersAll nine rulers — straight, parallel, perpendicular, ellipse, concentric, radial, curve and the two surface axes — and the difference between a ruler anchored to itself and one anchored to your stroke.
- PerspectiveThe 1-, 2- and 3-point and fisheye constructions, the axis set a stroke can snap to, the tolerance that keeps curves drawable, and one guide across every plane.
Shapes & vector
The Shape tool, QuickShape, and the Vector Pen with its modifiers and animators.
- Shape toolRubber-band lines, rectangles, ellipses and polygons drawn from a single drag and stroked with the current brush.
- QuickShapeDraw-and-hold shape fitting — the hold threshold, every shape it fits, the chip, the handles, and what undo returns.
- Vector PenDrawing persistent editable paths, editing points, and choosing a 2D ribbon or a 3D swept cross-section with stroke and fill.
- Vector Modifiers & AnimationThe four non-destructive path modifiers, the three procedural animators, draw-on trimming, and keyframed shape morphing.
Text
Live editable type, 3D extrusion, deforms, and per-character animation.
- Text ToolPlacing live, re-editable text on the canvas, and the Typography panel's font, character, paragraph, and transform controls.
- 3D TypeExtruding a text object into a solid with depth, bevel, and end caps, and reshaping it with the five non-destructive deforms.
- Text AnimationThe six per-character animation presets, the keyframable Progress property, the stagger and amount controls, and counter text.
Shaping
Sculpting
Sculpt Stroke, Sculpt 3D's brush set, and spinning drawn lines into a solid.
- Sculpt StrokeThe tool that deforms the points of strokes you have already drawn, in the viewport or into depth.
- Sculpt 3DThe tool that sculpts relief onto a drawing surface and shapes solids directly: seventeen brushes, adaptive refinement, symmetry, holes, and painted detail.
- Make 3DTurning drawn profile lines into a solid you can paint and sculpt — one line, two, or several views of the same form — and the axis the spin runs about.
Deformation
Transform, Warp, Puppet pins, and skeletal rigging with IK.
- TransformThe 3D gizmo — what it targets, the Move, Rotate and Scale modes, local versus global axes, and the movable anchor.
- WarpThe Warp tool — a lattice that folds a layer or a single object in three dimensions, with keyframable folds.
- PuppetThe Puppet tool — pin a drawing, drag to pose it, and fold it in three dimensions; pin poses are keyframable.
- RigThe Rig tool — drawing bone chains, the edit/pose/weights split, FK posing and IK handles, automatic and painted weights, jiggle, bendy joints, and joint fixes.
Look
Effects
The per-layer effect stack and a full reference for every effect in every family.
- EffectsThe per-layer effect stack, the Effect Controls panel, and the thirty-six effects across six families.
- ColorThe seventeen colour effects — curves, levels, gamma, saturation, duotone mapping, and the rest of the Color submenu.
- StylizeThe eleven Stylize effects — sharpen, edges, emboss, mosaic, scanlines, vignette, glow, drop shadow, outline, fake lighting, and stroke maker.
- BlurThe three blur effects — Gaussian, Motion, and Radial — their kernels, and what each one does to alpha.
- DistortThe three distort effects — Twirl, Bulge, and Ripple — their falloffs, their fixed centre, and what each one really does.
- KeyingThe Chroma Key effect — removing a background colour, softening the edge, and suppressing colour spill.
- TransitionsThe Transition effect, its keyed progress channel, and the thirty reveal styles across seven categories.
Particles
The particle engine, its preset library, and emitter settings.
- ParticlesThe Particles tool, its deterministic fixed-timestep simulation, placing an emitter, timeline frame-lock, and the preset browser.
- Particle PresetsAll 23 particle presets across the Ambient, Pyro, Celebratory, Water, and Magic categories, with the values that define each one.
- Particle SettingsEvery control in the Particles panel — the quick multipliers, colours, emission, forces, look, custom graphics, and the Custom System builder.
Time
Animation
The timeline, cels, keyframes, the graph editor, parenting, and inbetweening.
- TimelineThe Timeline panel — transport, frame rate, work area, zoom, the row tree, and the ruler that scrubs the shot.
- CelsFrame-by-frame drawings that hold until the next cel replaces them — creating, clearing, trimming, selecting, and onion skin.
- KeyframesThe channel-armed keying model, the full vocabulary of keyable properties, the dope sheet, and the ease bar.
- Graph editorShaping a channel's value curve — interpolation types, bezier handles, per-axis focus, and how non-scalar channels are graphed.
- Parenting & NullsInheriting a transform from one or several parents, null objects, the viewport motion path, and transform drivers.
- InbetweeningGenerating cels between two or more drawings by transporting the artist's own strokes — the sheet, the correspondence editor, and the limits.
Editing
The full-screen non-linear editor: media, sequences, the clip inspector, and the keyboard.
- The editorThe full-screen non-linear editor that assembles a project's shots with imported video, audio and images — how to open it, its Media panel, saving, sequences, and the round trip back to the canvas.
- SequenceThe multi-track timeline — tracks, the razor, ripple and lift delete, mark in and out, markers, snapping, zoom, and sequence export.
- Clip InspectorEvery control for the selected clip — motion, opacity, audio, speed, shape, the effect stack, masks, stabilisation and auto-roto.
- Sequences & keyboardManaging sequences, sequence settings and retiming, the clip clipboard, saving, and all thirty-six keyboard shortcuts.
Output
Export
Rendering to image, video, and image sequence, and sharing project files.
Reference
Gestures, the complete menu reference, and file formats.