The interface at a glance
The five panels you work in most, and how to rearrange the layout.
The window is a set of dockable panels. Drag a panel by its tab to rearrange the layout: drop it on the edge of another panel to split in that direction, or on its tab strip to stack them. To send a panel to its own window, right-click its tab and choose Float Panel. The arrangement is saved when you quit and restored at the next launch, floating windows included, each back at the position and size you left it.
Node graph
Every effect, shape, render and export is a node, and you wire nodes together to produce a result. The other panels are views onto what the graph is doing. Press Tab anywhere in the graph to search for a node and drop it in.
See The node graph and Creating & wiring nodes.
Viewport
The viewport shows the live result of the whole graph, whether that is a 2D canvas, a 3D scene or a render. It is interactive: navigate the camera, and grab and move objects. You author in it directly rather than previewing. To watch one node rather than the finished picture, open its own viewer.
The on-screen tools follow the selection instead of a toolbar. Select a single Brush, Pen or tracker node and its tool becomes active in the viewport; select nothing, or several nodes, and there is no tool.
See The viewport and Viewport tools.
Parameters panel
This is not an inspector, and it does not follow the selection. A node's own controls live on the node body in the graph. The Parameters panel holds the ones you have pinned there deliberately, gathered from anywhere in the graph so a performance set sits in one place.
See The Parameters panel & hotbar and Parameter widgets.
Timeline
Timeline & Layer Manager is one panel along the bottom, holding both. The timeline drives playback and time. Press Space to play or pause, scrub the playhead, and set keyframes to animate. The layer list sits to its left and controls opacity, blend mode, matte and stacking order, plus a checkbox that bypasses a layer rather than hiding it.
See The timeline and Layers & compositing.
Assets
Your library of files to bring in: images, models, audio and more. Search it by name, narrow it by category in the sidebar, and zoom with a pinch or Cmd-scroll, which crosses from a thumbnail grid into a compact list. Dragging a file onto the graph creates a node of the right kind but does not attach the file. To bring the file itself in, drag it from Finder onto the window.
See The asset browser.
Drop a dragged tab on the outer quarter of a panel to dock it on that side, or on the middle to stack it as a tab. Dragging outside the window does nothing. See Panels & Layout and Pop-out windows.