Asking Perlin for a piece

Perlin builds from what you write in the prompt box at the bottom of its panel. A short idea works, because Perlin makes sensible choices of its own, but the more you say about the look, the motion, what happens when someone touches the piece and what you want to tune afterwards, the closer the first version lands.

This page covers what to put in a prompt, with a weak and a stronger example for each kind of piece. Once a piece exists, Changing a piece takes over.

Sending a prompt

1. Open the studio

   Go to the studio. Perlin needs an account: signed out, the prompt box is replaced by an invitation to create one, and an idea you brought from a Try it in the studio button waits for you until you're back.

2. Write your idea

   Click the prompt box, or press /, and describe the piece. Enter sends and Shift Enter starts a new line. A prompt can run to 4,000 characters. Stuck for an idea? The dice button, Surprise me, fills one in.

3. Choose the engine and effort

   The engine picker under the box starts on Auto, which lets the studio choose. The effort button beside it sets how hard Perlin works on the request; see Effort levels.

4. Send it

   Press the arrow or Enter. With Plan first on, as it is to start with, Perlin replies with a plan and a few questions rather than a piece, and builds when you press Build it (Plan first). With it off, Perlin builds straight away.

What to put in a prompt

A strong prompt names a few of these:

• The subject: what is in the frame. "A field of glowing columns", "a paper boat on a river".
• The look: palette, light, material and style. "Indigo, rust and cream", "lit by a low sun", "brushed chrome", "like a risograph print".
• The motion: its pace and character. "Slowly breathing", "snapping to the beat", "drifting like smoke".
• The interaction: what a cursor or a finger does. "Ripples follow my cursor", "drag to orbit", "tap to drop".
• The controls: what you want to tune once it's made. "A slider for the number of petals."
• Sound, for a piece that should make some.

You don't need all of them. Where you say nothing, Perlin decides: a deliberate palette of a few colours, slow and eased motion, a gentle response to the pointer where it suits the piece, and something worth looking at from the first frame. Say what matters to you and leave the rest to it.

Choosing an engine

Every piece is written for one of three engines. On Auto, Perlin picks the one that suits the idea; the picker lets you choose.

A shader is one program drawing every pixel, so its code can't play sound effects, use painted textures or use your own assets. If a piece needs any of those, leave the picker on Auto or choose 3D or 2D. Text, a logo, a video or music can still go on a shader's timeline, as layers and sound clips. Generated 3D models only go into a 3D piece.

Prompts for each kind of piece

Generative art

Name the system (a flow field, growth, tiling, particles), the medium it should feel like (ink, plotter, watercolour, print), the palette and the pace, and what you'd like to vary.

• Weak: "Something abstract and pretty."
• Stronger: "Thousands of fine ink lines flowing through a noise field on warm off-white paper, building up slowly like a plotter drawing, in indigo and rust. Sliders for line count and flow scale, and a button for a new seed."

Shaders

Describe the world or the effect, where the camera is and how it moves, the light and the atmosphere. Choose Shader in the picker to be sure of the engine.

• Weak: "A cool shader."
• Stronger: "A raymarched cave of glowing crystals, the camera drifting slowly forward, teal light with amber highlights and fog swallowing the far end. Controls for glow, fog and speed."

Games

Say what the player does, how they control it on a keyboard and on a phone, how they lose, how it gets harder and what it looks like. Ask for the rules as controls and you can bend them while you play.

• Weak: "Make a space game."
• Stronger: "An arcade game where I steer a small comet through an asteroid field. Arrow keys or drag to steer, rocks split in two when hit, the field speeds up every 20 seconds, three lives, the score in the corner, in glowing vector lines. Sliders for starting speed and rock count."

Switch on Textures for painted sprites and backdrops, and 3D for modelled characters and props (Sound FX, Textures and 3D).

Instruments and audio

Keep Sound FX on. Describe each sound the way you'd brief a sound designer (its source, material and character) and say how playing it works. For a piece that moves to music, name the tempo, the instruments and the mood, and what in the picture should follow the bass, the highs and the beat.

• Weak: "Make music."
• Stronger, an instrument: "A row of glass bars I tap or click to play, each a note of a pentatonic scale, ringing out in rings of light over a quiet night-time pad. A volume slider."
• Stronger, audio-reactive: "A slow 90 bpm lo-fi loop driving a field of dust that swells with the bass and sparkles on the hi-hats, with a ring of light on every beat."

Interactive and data pieces

For an interactive piece, say what each gesture does: hover, click, drag, scroll, hold. For a drawing toy or a pattern maker, ask for a button that saves the result, such as "a Save image button", and anyone playing it can keep a picture of what they made.

A piece can't fetch anything from the web, so bring the data with you: attach a CSV or JSON file (Reference images and files), or paste a short table into the prompt. Then say how to show it.

• Weak: "Visualise my sales."
• Stronger, with a sales file attached: "Show each month in the attached file as a petal of a flower, its length the revenue and its colour the region, growing in one after another. Hover or tap a petal to see its figures."

Motion and ads

Ask for an ad, a reel, a promo, an intro or a loop of a set length, and say its shape (9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 or a size in pixels), how long it runs, the words and when they appear, and the sound. Perlin sets up a timeline with text layers and music that you can then edit in the Motion panel (The Motion panel). Attach your logo or font from your assets and it is used as it is.

• Weak: "An ad for my coffee brand."
• Stronger: "A 10 second 9:16 ad that loops: steam curling up from a dark cup in warm morning light. The headline Slow mornings comes in at 1 second, then Order now in a pill at 7 seconds, over a soft music bed. Put my attached logo in the bottom corner."

For a piece to step into or bring into the room, say VR or AR (VR pieces, AR pieces).

Asking for controls

Every piece arrives with its own controls in the parameters panel (P): usually three to eight that each change something you can see, such as palette colours, speed, density, scale, intensity, and a seed or randomise button. To get the ones you want, name them:

• "a slider for the number of petals, from 3 to 12"
• "a colour for the background and one for the glow"
• "a switch to turn the trails off"
• "a choice of three palettes: dusk, neon and paper"
• "a button that scatters everything"

The values you set are kept with each version and carry over to the next one Perlin makes, as long as the engine stays the same. More on the panel in Tuning with parameters.

Interaction and touch

Say what the pointer should do: follow, push, attract, ripple, orbit, draw. Pieces are played on phones as often as on laptops, so Perlin makes anything interactive work by touch as well as with a mouse and keys, and words its on-screen hints for the device in use. A game gets touch controls (tap, hold, drag, swipe, the two halves of the screen, or buttons drawn along the bottom) with keys on top.

If you have a scheme in mind, describe it: "on a phone, hold the left or right half of the screen to steer; on a laptop, the arrow keys". Avoid anything that only works on hover, since a finger has no position until it touches the screen.

Sound

With the Sound FX switch on, Perlin composes sound effects, ambient beds and music loops for the piece before it writes the code. Be concrete: "soft glass marbles clicking on stone", "a deep warm drone that slowly evolves", "a punchy 120 bpm techno loop". A piece with sound gets a volume control.

Browsers only allow sound after the first click, tap or key press in the piece, so it should look complete in silence. Each sound costs tokens of its own; switch Sound FX off for a silent piece.

Palette and mood

Name your colours, in words or as hex codes ("deep navy, sand and a touch of coral", "#0b1d2a and #e9c9a0"), the light ("a low winter sun", "studio softboxes", "neon in the rain") and the mood ("calm", "uneasy", "playful"). Pace words shape the motion: "slow", "breathing", "frantic". Perlin keeps to a deliberate palette and avoids rainbow colour cycling unless you ask for it.

To show the look rather than describe it, attach reference images: Perlin studies their palette, light, texture and composition (Reference images and files).

Follow-ups

Once a piece is on the stage, every message changes it. Perlin keeps the engine, the controls, the palette, the motion and the composition unless you ask otherwise, so a short follow-up such as "make the motion calmer" or "add a slider for fog" is enough. Ask a question and Perlin answers in a sentence or two without touching the piece.

For a different idea, press New piece in the top bar. Perlin reads the conversation so far with every request, and an unrelated idea starts cleaner on its own.

What Perlin does not make

Perlin makes art, games and interactive experiences. It declines anything that asks people for passwords, payment or personal details, imitates a sign-in page, a checkout or another site's interface, tracks the people playing it or sends data anywhere. A request that isn't about a piece, such as an essay or general coding help, gets a one-line reply steering back to what it can make.

Related

• Changing a piece
• Plan first
• Reference images and files
• Sound FX, Textures and 3D