Getting started with Raylight
Raylight turns a static screenshot into a cinematic product video. You bring a frame, the editor gives it depth, motion, and a camera. This lesson walks through the pieces you will touch every session.
Create a project
From your dashboard, create a new project. A project plays as one or more scenes on a single timeline, and each scene is a stack of layers with its own camera. The free plan includes three projects, exports up to 720p, and clips up to 60 seconds, which is plenty of room to learn.
Bring in your first frame
There are two fast ways to start:
- Drop in a screenshot or image. It is placed flat and fit to the canvas, ready to animate.
- Paste from Figma. In Figma, select your frame and choose Copy as SVG, then paste it into Raylight. The text, shapes, and layers come in as separate pieces you can edit, not one flat picture.
Real layers are what let the camera move through your scene later, so start from a Figma paste rather than one flat picture when you can.
Learn the canvas
The canvas is where you arrange and tilt layers in 3D space. A few things worth knowing early:
- Every layer sits at its own depth. Spread them apart and a camera move makes the near ones slide past the far ones, the way roadside trees rush past distant hills from a moving car. That feeling of real space is the whole trick.
- Select a layer to see its position, rotation, and tilt in the sidebar.
- The usual shortcuts work: duplicate, select all, nudge with the arrow keys, and reorder with the bracket keys.
Animate on the timeline
The timeline at the bottom holds your scenes and the animation on each layer inside them. You do not animate it frame by frame. Instead you add blocks, like a fly in or a fade, then set when each one happens and how it speeds up and slows down.
When the scene looks right, move on to the camera. That is the next lesson.
Where to go next
Start with the core concepts, one short page each: