Virtual.ink documentation

The Effects panel is the live visual engine for Virtual.ink. It controls how light is isolated, accumulated, transformed, stylized, composited, and branded while the camera is running.

This page documents the current Effects panel in the current build. Older six-tab descriptions are no longer accurate. The current panel adds a Presets tab, a Drift tab, and a Shine tab, and the Transform tab is now focused on symmetry tools rather than the older flip-first layout.

Open the panel from the sparkle icon on the right side of Live View. All changes apply in real time.

What The Panel Does

At a high level, Effects lets you control five different layers of the result:

1. How paint is generated and kept alive: painting mode, softness, decay, stroke timing, drift, and motion.
2. How paint is spatially remapped: mirror-style symmetry, mandala patterns, tiling, and outline rendering.
3. How the paint is separated from the scene: thresholding, softness, detail recovery, ambient preserve, and cleanup.
4. How the output is stylized: color ramps, glow, pixelation, aberration, vignette, shine, and scene grading.
5. How the final frame is presented: watermark overlay and preset switching.

License Availability

The current desktop app exposes these tabs by tier:

Tab	Availability	Purpose
Presets	Starter and above	Save, organize, apply, and cycle effect looks
Motion	Starter and above	Control painting lifetime and whole-canvas movement
Transform	Starter and above	Apply symmetry, tiling, and stroke-outline rendering
Drift	Starter and above	Add paint-aging and decay-style motion effects
Look	Starter and above	Stylize the composite with color and image effects
Shine	Starter and above	Generate per-light-source star, glow, ring, or radial effects
Separation	Starter and above	Isolate paint from the camera scene
Scene	Starter and above	Grade the separated background behind the paint
Watermark	Basic and above	Add a configurable branding overlay

Notes:

• The desktop live view includes the Presets manager inside the Effects sidebar.
• Remote dashboard surfaces can expose the effect controls without the full Presets tab.
• The configurable Watermark tab is separate from any trial or license-enforcement overlay.

Panel Behavior

Several pieces of panel behavior are easy to miss if you only glance at the UI:

• Each tab has its own reset link, and that link only appears when that tab differs from defaults.
• The footer-level Reset Effects action resets live effect parameters, but it does not erase your saved preset groups.
• Many controls only appear when a prerequisite is active.
• Separation changes the behavior of other tabs, not just the Separation tab itself.

Here are the most important conditional UI rules:

Condition	What changes
Separation is 0	Scene is disabled, and most paint-only toggles are irrelevant
A symmetry mode is active	Fold, center, twist, zoom, wobble, and light-only controls appear
Tiling mode is active	Tiles X and Tiles Y appear
Wobble Amount is above 0	Wobble Rate appears
Painting mode is active	Light Softness appears
Painting mode is Decay	Decay Speed and Decay Acceleration appear
Painting mode is Stroke	Stroke Duration, Fade Out, and Fade In appear
Drift effect is enabled	That effect's Intensity and sub-controls appear
Drift Ease is not Linear	Ease Strength appears
Pixelate is enabled and Separation is active	Lights only can be toggled for Pixelate
Color Ramp is enabled and Separation is active	Lights only can be toggled for Color Ramp
Color Ramp is enabled	Apply for both cameras appears
Invert is enabled and Separation is active	Lights only can be toggled for Invert
Shine Color is Tint	R, G, and B tint sliders appear
Shine Trails is enabled	Trail Fade and Trail Motion appear
Shine Trail Motion is not None	Trail Speed and Trail Direction appear
Watermark Overlay is Off	Watermark size, position, spacing, and blend controls stay hidden
Scene Tint is above 0	Tint Color appears

Rendering Mental Model

You do not need to think like a shader author to use Effects well, but it helps to understand the order in which Virtual.ink applies things.

The current pipeline works roughly like this:

6. The paint engine accumulates light using the current painting mode, light softness, thresholding, decay or stroke timing, canvas animation, drift, outline rendering, and accumulation blend mode.
7. The transform stage remaps the result through symmetry or tiling and can optionally keep the effect mostly on bright paint only.
8. Virtual.ink composites the camera feeds into a working image.
9. Shine detects bright light sources from the raw frame and adds source-based effects such as stars, rings, glow, or radial blur, plus optional trails.
10. The final post-effects chain runs scene adjustments, pixelate, edge glow, warp, chromatic trails, color ramp, hue shift, chromatic aberration, invert, vignette, watermark, and any enforced trial overlay.

Important interaction:

• When Separation is active, the separation mask is reused by later effects. That is how Scene can affect only the background, and how Lights only can keep some Look effects from touching the scene.
• Hue Shift is stacked intelligently. If no Color Ramp is active, hue shift happens before ramping. If a Color Ramp is active, hue shift happens after the ramp so both effects can combine without canceling each other.

Presets

The Presets tab is the look-management system for the Effects panel.

Use it when you want reusable looks such as "clean event", "neon mandala", "smoke decay", or "gold logo mode" without rebuilding the stack manually every time.

What Presets Save

Effects presets save effect state only. They are designed for looks, not for the rest of the app.

Saved in presets:

• separation settings
• transform and symmetry settings
• motion and painting settings
• drift settings and drift sub-controls
• look settings
• scene settings
• shine settings
• accumulation blend mode

Not saved in presets:

• watermark overlay settings
• camera selection and camera setup
• recording duration and countdown
• file output options
• other non-effect app settings

That exclusion is intentional. If you switch presets, your watermark stays independent.

Preset Workflow

Control	What it does
Active group	Chooses which preset group you are working in
Cycle on save	Lets a save-triggered workflow advance to another preset
Cycle on reset	Lets a paint reset advance to another preset
Group name	Click to rename the active group
Group description	Optional note for what the group is for
Preset buttons	Apply a preset immediately
Save	Capture the current effect state as a new preset
Update last applied preset	Overwrite the current preset with your latest tweaks
Create	Make a new preset group

Cycling Modes

Each group supports three cycle modes for save and reset triggers:

Mode	Behavior
No cycling	Do nothing
Sequential	Step through presets in order
Random	Pick a preset randomly while avoiding repeats until the group is exhausted

Useful behavior details:

• Cycle on reset is tied to the light-paint reset action.
• Cycle on save is wired into save workflows, not just list organization.
• Ctrl + Left and Ctrl + Right step backward or forward through presets in the active group.
• Resetting Effects does not delete the preset library. Preset groups have their own factory-default reset path.

Separation

Separation isolates the light painting from the rest of the scene. It is the control set that turns Virtual.ink from "paint on top of a camera feed" into "paint and background as separately stylable layers".

Once Separation is above 0, several things change at once:

• Scene controls become meaningful.
• Paint-only restrictions for other tabs become available.
• Light can be styled more aggressively while keeping the room natural.

Separation Controls

Control	Range	What it does
Light Separation	0-100	Controls how aggressively bright content is classified as paint instead of scene
Separation Softness	0-100	Softens the boundary between isolated paint and the surrounding image
Detail Recovery	0-100	Brings back faint strokes and subtle light texture that a hard key would otherwise lose
Ambient Preserve	0-100	Keeps more room tone, performer presence, and background ambience in the final composite
Noise Cleanup	0-100	Suppresses flicker, weak contamination, hot pixels, and low-level garbage in the mask

How To Tune Separation

Use these heuristics when dialing it in:

• Raise Light Separation first to establish the basic key.
• Add Separation Softness when edges look harsh or brittle.
• Raise Detail Recovery when dim strokes disappear too easily.
• Raise Ambient Preserve when the result feels too cut-out or the subject loses context.
• Raise Noise Cleanup when the mask sparkles, flickers, or grabs unwanted highlights.

Practical Guidance

Situation	What usually helps
Thin LED tools or faint glow props disappear	More Detail Recovery, slightly less aggressive Light Separation
Scene contamination is coming through	Higher Light Separation and more Noise Cleanup
Subject looks cut out from the room	More Ambient Preserve and a little more Separation Softness
The background should stay almost untouched	Use Separation, then keep later effects in Lights only mode

Transform

Transform is the geometry and symmetry tab. It no longer centers on flip controls. In the current UI it is mainly about folding, rotating, tiling, and reshaping the accumulated paint.

Symmetry Modes

Mode	What it does
None	Leaves the canvas geometry untouched
Mirror	A simple reflected two-fold symmetry
Kaleidoscope	Multi-slice reflected symmetry
Pinwheel	Multi-slice rotational symmetry without reflection
Mandala	A high-fold reflected symmetry setup intended for dense radial patterns
Tiling	Rectangular mirrored tiling instead of radial folding

Transform Controls

Control	Range or options	What it does
Symmetry	None, Mirror, Kaleidoscope, Pinwheel, Mandala, Tiling	Chooses the symmetry family
Folds	2-24	Sets how many slices the radial symmetry uses
Reflect Mode	Reflect, Pinwheel	Switches between reflected and non-reflected fold behavior
Sensor Coverage	0.05-1	Scales how much of the original frame is sampled into the symmetry pattern
Rotation	0-360	Rotates the whole symmetry field
Center X	0-1	Moves the symmetry center horizontally
Center Y	0-1	Moves the symmetry center vertically
Spiral Twist	-180-180	Adds more angular twist as pixels move away from the center
Hue per Fold	0-360	Shifts color across slices so each fold can take a different hue
Radial Zoom	0.1-3	Changes radial remapping. Lower values feel tunnel-like. Higher values feel more fisheye-like
Auto-Rotate Speed	0-120	Continuously rotates the symmetry over time
Wobble Amount	0-30	Pulses the effective symmetry coverage over time
Wobble Rate	0.1-5 Hz	Controls how fast that wobble pulses
Light Only	On or Off	Keeps more of the original non-bright content when the symmetrized result is dark
Tiles X	1-8	Number of columns in rectangular tiling mode
Tiles Y	1-8	Number of rows in rectangular tiling mode
Stroke Outline	On or Off	Switches accumulation from filled strokes toward edge-emphasized paint
Outline Fill	0-1	0 is edge-only. 1 is normal filled paint

How To Read The Less Obvious Controls

Control	Why you would change it
Sensor Coverage	Use lower values when you want the symmetry to sample a tighter, more center-focused part of the source. Use higher values when you want the folds to include more of the camera image
Spiral Twist	Good for turning clean radial symmetry into shells, whirlpools, petals, or corkscrew shapes
Hue per Fold	Useful when geometry alone is not enough and you want each slice to read as a separate colored arm
Radial Zoom	A strong shape control. Lower settings pull content inward. Higher settings push outer regions harder
Wobble Amount and Rate	Adds a breathing quality to symmetry by changing effective coverage over time
Light Only	Helpful when you want to stylize the paint aggressively without dragging darker scene information into the symmetry mapping

Recommended Uses

Goal	A strong starting point
Clean mirrored tunnel	Mirror, lower Sensor Coverage, small Auto-Rotate Speed
Dense mandala	Mandala, more Folds, some Hue per Fold, modest Wobble
Pinwheel vortex	Pinwheel, Spiral Twist, Auto-Rotate Speed, Drift Swirl
Repeating wall of light	Tiling with 3x3 or 4x2, then add Pixelate or Color Ramp

Drift

Drift controls how accumulated paint ages and deforms over time. Unlike simple post-processing, Drift lives in the accumulation pipeline itself. It changes how existing paint survives, spreads, erodes, and moves as new frames arrive.

Drift only works when a painting mode is active. If painting is effectively off, the Drift tab tells you to enable painting from the Motion tab first.

How Drift Works

Each Drift effect is an independent layer with:

• an on or off checkbox
• an Intensity slider
• up to three sub-controls
• shared global timing controls at the bottom of the tab

You can combine multiple Drift effects at once.

Shared Drift Controls

Control	Range or options	What it does
Limit	0-1	Controls how much the drift engages as paint ages. 0 applies more constantly. Higher values delay or ramp the effect across the paint lifecycle
Ease	Linear, Ease-in, Ease-out, Ease-in-out	Shapes when the drift becomes strongest over time
Ease strength	0-1	Controls how strongly the chosen ease curve affects that timing
Fade out	On or Off	Keeps natural brightness decay active alongside drift. Turn it off if you want paint to persist until drift destroys it more directly

Drift Effect Inventory

Effect	What it feels like	Sub-controls
Smoke	Soft diffusion and cloudy breakdown	Scale, Density, Turbulence
Wind	Directional sweep or gust-driven smearing	Direction, Gustiness, Spread
Ripple	Wave-like oscillation in the paint	Frequency, Amplitude, Speed
Ember	Floating sparks and upward heat behavior	Size, Lift, Flicker
Swirl	Rotational drag and spiral motion	Tightness, Speed, Spread
Bloom	Expanding soft halo growth	Spread, Softness, Pulse
Rise	Upward or directional lift of older paint	Direction, Spread, Scale
Turbulence	Noisy breakup and chaotic flow	Scale, Direction Bias, Randomness, Detail
Scatter (fly)	Piece breakup with outward particle-like motion	Spread, Scale, Spin
Drip	Gravity-like sag and liquid stretch	Viscosity, Spread, Scale
Vortex	Pull into a rotating center	Pull, Tightness, Spin

Choosing Drift Well

If you want...	Try...
Atmospheric haze	Smoke plus low Bloom
Energy and sparks	Ember plus Scatter
Liquid or melting behavior	Drip plus low Wind
Rotational chaos	Swirl or Vortex plus symmetry
Organic instability	Turbulence with medium Limit and Ease-in-out

Drift Tips

• Start with one Drift layer before combining three or four.
• Use Limit and Ease before cranking intensity. Timing often matters more than raw strength.
• Turn Fade out off when you want the effect itself to control the paint's death.
• For Turbulence, Detail adds more noise layers. That usually looks richer, but it also makes the motion busier.

Motion

Motion covers two separate ideas:

11. how paint accumulates and disappears
12. how the existing paint field moves through the canvas

Painting Modes

The current panel exposes three paint behaviors:

Mode	What it does
Continuous	Paint keeps building and stays on the canvas until something else clears it
Decay	Paint gradually fades according to Decay Speed and Decay Acceleration
Stroke	Each stroke stays for a defined duration, then fades out

Note:

• The live dock controls whether painting is on or off.
• The Motion tab controls how painting behaves once it is on.

Painting Controls

Control	Range	What it does
Light Softness	0-1	Blurs the incoming light before accumulation so harsh points become smoother and thicker
Decay Speed	0-50	Main fade rate in Decay mode
Decay Acceleration	0-50	Makes old paint fade faster as it ages
Stroke Duration	0.5-30 s	How long a stroke stays fully alive in Stroke mode
Fade Out	0-10 s	How long a stroke takes to disappear after its full-duration phase
Fade In	0-5 s	How gradually new stroke energy arrives

What Light Softness Really Means

Light Softness is not a glow. It is a blur-before-accumulation control.

In practice that means:

• higher values soften hard hotspots
• tiny LEDs or bright points feel thicker and less spiky
• edges smear a little more before they enter the paint buffer
• drift and decay can feel smoother because the source paint is less brittle

Canvas Animation

Animation moves the already accumulated paint field rather than changing the camera feed itself.

Control	Range or options	What it does
Animate	None, Zoom, Gravity	Chooses whether the accumulated paint stays still, zooms from center, or shifts through the frame
Direction in Zoom	Out, In	Zooms the accumulation outward or inward from the center
Direction in Gravity	Up, Down, Left, Right, Spiral	Pushes paint in a direction, or switches to a spiral-like tangential motion
Animation Length	0.01-40	How far the accumulation is displaced per cycle
Animation Speed	0.05-40	How quickly that motion is applied over time

Zoom Vs Gravity

Mode	Best mental model
Zoom	Re-samples the accumulated paint from the center outward or inward. Great for tunnel looks, expanding halos, or collapsing portals
Gravity	Shifts the paint field across the frame. Great for rain, falling curtains, wind-driven smear, or spiral drift

Look

Look is the final style layer for the composite. It is where you add color treatment, texture treatment, channel separation, and finishing contrast.

Look Controls

Control	Range or options	What it does
Hue Shift	0-5	Cycles hue over time
Accumulation Blend	Lighten, Additive, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light	Changes how new light merges with existing paint
Chromatic Trails	0-1	Splits trail color channels for a prismatic, age-based color smear
Edge Glow	0-1	Adds a bright edge-emphasis around paint contours
Pixelate	0-64	Pixelates the image into blocks. Visually meaningful values start once it is clearly above 0
Lights only	On or Off	Restricts Pixelate, Color Ramp, or Invert to paint pixels when Separation is active
Color Ramp	Off plus 30 palettes	Remaps brightness to a palette LUT
Apply for both cameras	On or Off	Extends color-ramp use beyond the isolated-light-only case and is especially relevant in dual-camera workflows
Warp	0-1	Adds a time-based distortion or feedback-like spatial warp
Chromatic Aberration	0-20	Offsets RGB channels for a lens-separation feel
Vignette	0-1	Darkens the frame edges
Invert / Negative	On or Off	Inverts image color

Accumulation Blend Modes

Accumulation Blend only appears when Separation is active, because it becomes much more useful once the light can be treated independently of the scene.

Mode	Typical result
Lighten	Keeps the brighter value. Clean and predictable
Additive	Stacks brightness aggressively. Best for intense neon or laser looks
Screen	Brightens while preserving more highlight detail than pure additive
Overlay	Adds punch and contrast
Soft Light	More subtle tonal push
Hard Light	More aggressive tonal push

Color Ramp Palettes

The current palette set is:

Off, Fire, Ice, Synthwave, Phosphor, Ocean, Sunset, Infrared, Neon, Copper, Bubblegum, Toxic, Plasma, Gold, Arctic, Ember, Coral, Midnight, Tropical, Cherry, Forest, Lava, Mint, Peach, Steel, Candy, Ruby, Jade, Magma, Dusk, Prism.

What Apply For Both Cameras Actually Means

This toggle is easy to misread.

In practice it matters when Color Ramp is active:

• it can extend the ramp beyond a paint-only restriction in the live output
• in dual-camera workflows, it is also used when camera 2 is being recorded with the same ramp treatment

If you only want the ramp on isolated light, keep Separation on and leave Lights only enabled instead.

Recommended Look Combos

Goal	Good starting combination
Clean premium glow	Edge Glow, low Chromatic Trails, Vignette, subtle Watermark
Arcade or retro	Pixelate plus a strong Color Ramp
Psychedelic trails	Hue Shift, Chromatic Trails, Warp, maybe Shine Spiral
High-energy event output	Additive or Screen accumulation plus Neon, Prism, or Fire ramp

Shine

Shine is different from the rest of the Look tab. It is source-aware rather than purely image-wide.

Instead of processing the whole frame the same way, Shine detects bright light blobs and renders a radial effect from each detected light source.

That makes it ideal for:

• LED pens
• glow props
• bright wand tips
• small light sources held by performers

Shine Effect Types

Effect	What it does
Off	Disables Shine
Star	Multi-point flare around each source
Spiral	Spiral energy pattern around each source
Kaleidoscope	Radial multi-slice light burst
Rings	Concentric circles around each source
Radial Blur	Streaked outward blur from the source
Glow	Soft halo around the source

Detection Controls

Control	Range	What it does
Light Threshold	50-254	Minimum brightness needed before a blob counts as a shine source
Min Light Size	1-200	Minimum detected blob area in pixels. Raise it to ignore sparkles and noise
Max Sources	1-8	Maximum simultaneous light sources Shine will track

Shape And Motion Controls

Control	Range	What it does
Radius	0.01-0.5	Effect footprint around each source
Intensity	0-2	Brightness multiplier for the shine result
Falloff	0.5-5	How sharply the effect fades away from the source
Points	2-16	Number of star tips, spiral arms, or radial divisions depending on the selected effect
Rotation	0-360	Static angular offset
Spin Speed	0-5	Automatic rotation over time

Color And Blend Controls

Control	Options	What it does
Color	Source, White, Tint	Uses sampled source color, forces white, or uses a manual RGB tint
Tint R / G / B	0-1 each	Defines the custom tint when Color is set to Tint
Blend	Additive, Screen	Chooses how Shine mixes with the image

Shine Trails

Shine Trails is a separate accumulation system for Shine itself.

Control	Range or options	What it does
Trails	On or Off	Enables Shine accumulation over time
Trail Fade	0-1	Controls how fast the shine trails fade
Trail Motion	None, Zoom, Gravity, Spiral	Animates the stored Shine trails
Trail Speed	0-2	Controls how fast those trails move
Trail Direction	Up, Down, Left, Right	Direction for gravity-style trail movement

Notes:

• Trail Direction matters for gravity-style trails.
• Zoom and Spiral trail modes are not directional in the same way.
• If no valid light sources are detected, Shine simply passes the frame through unchanged.

Shine Tuning Advice

Problem	Likely fix
Too many false triggers from reflections or room lights	Raise Light Threshold and Min Light Size
Only one source matters, but many are being tracked	Lower Max Sources
Shine is huge and messy	Lower Radius or increase Falloff
Shine is visible but flat	Increase Intensity, Points, or use Screen blend
Trails smear forever	Increase Trail Fade

Scene

Scene grades the background behind the paint. It is only useful when Separation is actually isolating the paint from the rest of the frame.

If Separation is 0, the Scene tab remains visible but effectively disabled.

The key rule is simple:

• Scene affects non-paint pixels.
• The paint itself is protected.

Scene Controls

Control	Range or options	What it does
Dim	0-1	Darkens the separated background
Desaturate	0-1	Removes color from the background
Blur	0-20 px	Blurs the background while keeping paint crisp
Tint	0-1	Applies a color cast to the background
Tint Color	Warm, Cool, Teal, Rose, Green	Chooses the tint hue
Contrast	-1 to +1	Lowers or raises tonal separation in the background

How To Use Scene Well

Goal	What usually works
Make paint stand out without making the room disappear	Some Dim, a little Desaturate, minimal Blur
Stylize the background for a branded mood	Tint plus low-to-medium Contrast
Hide room clutter	More Blur and Dim
Keep the performer readable while simplifying the room	Moderate Ambient Preserve in Separation, then low Scene Blur and low Scene Desaturate

What Contrast Means Here

Contrast is only for the separated background layer.

• Negative values flatten the room and make it feel softer or more washed.
• Positive values deepen separation between dark and bright background regions.

Watermark

Watermark adds a user-controlled branding overlay on top of the final frame.

This tab is available on Basic and above.

Overlay assets come from the shared Assets library. For watermark work, PNG overlays are the normal format.

Watermark Controls

Control	Range or options	What it does
Overlay	Off or uploaded asset	Chooses which overlay file to draw
Opacity	0-100%	Controls overlay transparency
Scale	5-100%	Sizes the overlay relative to frame width
Position	Centered, Bottom Left, Bottom Center, Bottom Right	Chooses the anchor location
Spacing	0-25%	Insets bottom-anchored overlays from the frame edge
Blend Mode	Normal, Lighten, Overlay, Screen, Soft Light, Hard Light, Multiply	Controls how the overlay mixes with the image underneath

Position Behavior

Position	What it really means
Centered	Places the watermark in the middle of the frame
Bottom Left	Anchors to the lower-left edge
Bottom Center	Anchors to the lower middle edge
Bottom Right	Anchors to the lower-right edge

Blend Mode Guidance

Blend mode	Typical use
Normal	Exact logo reproduction
Lighten	Good when the overlay should replace only darker underlying pixels
Screen	Good for white or bright marks on darker footage
Overlay	More integrated and contrast-aware
Soft Light	Subtle branded texture
Hard Light	Stronger branded texture
Multiply	Useful for darker marks on bright output

Watermark Vs License Overlay

The Watermark tab controls only the user-selected overlay.

If the build is showing a trial or license-enforcement overlay, that is a separate internal overlay path. Turning Watermark off does not remove that system overlay.

Practical Workflows

Clean Event Capture

13. Start with Separation so the room and paint can be treated independently.
14. Use moderate Detail Recovery and Ambient Preserve to keep people readable.
15. In Scene, add a little Dim and Blur.
16. In Look, add a restrained Color Ramp or Edge Glow on Lights only.
17. Add a Watermark only if the final media needs branding.

Graphic Kaleidoscope Output

18. Use Continuous or Stroke painting.
19. In Transform, choose Kaleidoscope or Mandala.
20. Raise Folds and add some Auto-Rotate Speed.
21. Use Hue per Fold or a strong Color Ramp.
22. Add Shine Star, Rings, or Radial Blur for source-based sparkle.

Organic Decay Look

23. Use Decay painting mode.
24. Add a little Light Softness.
25. Enable one or two Drift layers such as Smoke, Ember, or Turbulence.
26. Shape the timing with Limit and Ease.
27. Finish with low Edge Glow or Chromatic Trails.

Branded Output With A Natural Room

28. Turn Separation on.
29. Keep Look effects in Lights only where possible.
30. Use Scene for subtle background cleanup rather than crushing the whole frame.
31. Add a Bottom Center or Bottom Right watermark with Screen or Normal blend.

Common Gotchas

• If Separation is off, Scene is not really active, even though the tab still exists.
• Drift does nothing until paint is actually being accumulated.
• Lights only options appear only for specific Look controls and only when Separation is meaningful.
• Presets do not carry your watermark settings with them.
• Resetting Effects does not erase preset groups.
• Apply for both cameras is only relevant when Color Ramp is active, and it is most useful in dual-camera workflows.
• Trial or free-license overlays are not the same thing as the Watermark tab.
• The Motion tab does not act as the paint on or off switch. That still lives in the main live dock.

In Short

If you want the fastest reliable mental model:

• use Separation to split paint from background
• use Motion to decide how paint lives and moves
• use Transform to reshape it
• use Drift to age it
• use Look to stylize it
• use Shine when light sources themselves should emit extra structure
• use Scene to clean or grade the room behind the paint
• use Watermark for branding
• use Presets to turn all of that into repeatable show-ready looks