Rendering guide
Choose and review a path-traced render.
Choose raster or path tracing for your 3D scene. Review reflections, adjust sampling, and estimate render time before exporting in Tesseract.
Read the prompt
Set up Tesseract by Mirage so you can create editable designs and 3D scenes, edit videos, and make motion graphics in this agent’s environment. Read https://github.com/mirage-hq/Tesseract and check the requirements for this local or hosted environment. If it is supported, follow the official plugin or skills installation guide, use its required runtime version, verify the download checksum, and confirm a short preview renders correctly. Then ask what I want to make and which brand references or source assets I have. Keep the editable project and source assets with the finished render.
Give your agent this .tsrct file, then ask for a specific change.
Made in Tesseract
Check the surfaces that depend on light transport.
A moving object appears in the curved reflection of a metal sphere. Inspect how the reflection changes across the shot before committing to a complete animation.
Check the layout before lighting detail.
Raster is the default and is useful for framing, geometry and timing checks. Choose path tracing for a native render when reflected or transmitted light is important to the result.
Review with the final renderer.
Raster and path tracing use different approaches to refraction, indirect light and subsurface scattering. Approve the important surfaces using the renderer and settings intended for delivery.
Measure before a long export.
Render representative frames or a short range at the intended output settings. Use the observed time to plan the full export and check that the environment has suitable graphics hardware.
The workflow
Build it with your agent.
Start with the brief and references. Review the composition and movement before the final render.
Choose the scene’s rendering needs.
Use raster to inspect composition and movement. Test path tracing on reflective, transparent or translucent materials, and on scenes where indirect lighting changes the look.
Start with a small comparison.
Ask for the same representative frame in both renderers. For path tracing, 32 samples can be a draft experiment and the default 128 samples a comparison point. These are starting points, not quality guarantees; judge the actual scene.
Adjust the expensive details deliberately.
Check noise and fine detail with denoising on and off. Increase sampling where it visibly helps. Adjust bounce budgets when reflections or transmission need them, and keep settings consistent across review frames.
Render a short final-quality range.
Use the intended resolution, renderer, sampling and motion-blur settings. Inspect movement for flicker or changing noise, record the render time, then export the complete sequence with the approved settings.
A starting point
Give your agent
a concrete brief.
Install or update the official Tesseract skills, attach your references, and adapt this prompt. Ask the agent to check that its runtime includes the 3D tools it needs.
Set up TesseractCopy and adapt this prompt
Review this Tesseract 3D project for a final path-traced render. Keep the scene editable and do not change the composition. Pick representative frames that show reflections, indirect light, fine edges and movement. First render a small raster preview for framing, then compare a low-sample path-traced draft with the default 128-sample setting. Inspect noise and denoising detail; change quality settings only where the comparison shows a need. Record the renderer, sample count, bounce settings and time for the selected frames. Render a short range at final resolution and check temporal consistency before estimating and starting the full export.
Review the result
Check the details
before the final export.
Separate material problems from sampling noise.
More samples will not repair the wrong geometry, missing texture or an unwanted light reflection. Identify the visible issue before increasing render cost.
Look at moving detail.
Check thin edges, bright reflections, glass and depth-of-field transitions in a short video. A clean still does not prove the full animation will be stable.
Verify the actual deliverable.
Check the exported file’s framing, color and playback in its destination. Keep a record of approved render settings with the editable source so a later revision can be reproduced.
Example follow-up
Keep the lighting and camera. The thin lettering loses detail after denoising, and the metal reflection looks noisy during the turn. Compare those frames with denoising off and higher sampling before choosing the next render settings.
Useful details before you start.
What is the difference between raster and path tracing?
Raster is the default renderer and uses approximations for several lighting and optical effects. Path tracing samples light paths through the scene for reflections, refraction, indirect illumination and supported scattering. The same editable scene can use either renderer, but the results are not guaranteed to match.
Does path tracing use hardware ray-tracing cores?
Tesseract’s path tracer runs through GPU compute. It does not use dedicated RT-core or Apple hardware ray-tracing APIs. Render time depends on the scene, quality settings and the machine running your agent.
Can I run it in a browser or on my phone?
The path tracer is a native offline rendering option, not browser or iOS realtime playback. An agent interface on a phone may use a supported hosted runtime, but that environment’s graphics capabilities and limits determine whether the render is practical.
How many samples should I use?
The default is 128 samples per pixel. Use a small representative comparison to choose settings for your scene. Glass, indirect light, fine geometry, motion blur and depth of field can need different amounts of sampling; there is no single count that guarantees a clean result or a particular render time.
Can it render caustics and export EXR passes?
Caustic effects depend on the scene and light source, so test the specific shot before relying on them. Multilayer EXR/AOV export is not available in this workflow; use the supported still and video outputs.
Are there known rendering limitations in v0.5.0?
Some advanced materials, including glass, subsurface scattering, and iridescence, can fail to compile with path tracing on Metal in v0.5.0. Test a small preview on the machine that will render the final shot before committing to the material and renderer.
Can the path-traced result be HDR?
Supported 3D scenes participate in Tesseract’s HDR pipeline. HDR video export uses 10-bit HEVC with PQ or HLG signaling, and HDR previews use 16-bit PQ PNG. Transparent SDR ProRes output is a separate workflow. HDR video with transparency is not supported.
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