Overview
Learn to create interactive motion graphics that react to music, voice, and movement.
In this 3-hour hands-on starter guide, you’ll build real-time 3D visuals using VerkLabs’ node-based editor. Start with simple shapes, then make them pulse to music, respond to your voice, and morph with gestures.
No coding required.
Ultimately want to learn TouchDesigner? This starter guide teaches the same real-time node-graph thinking, free and with nothing to install. See how the two compare, node family by node family — so you know exactly what carries over when you’re ready to graduate.
Prefer to be guided inside the editor? Seventy-five interactive lessons - a techno track, a synth-pop song, a house track, a twelve-bar blues, a hip-hop beat, a country song, a reggae and dub track, a rock song, a funk groove, a disco track, a jazz tune, an R&B groove, a Cuban son, a ballad, a bossa nova, an EDM drop, the first lessons in classical music (phrases and cadences, two voices, a canon, three fugue lessons, four-part harmony, the Alberti bass, a sonata in two parts, theme and variations, a minuet and trio, a waltz, a wedding march, and building an orchestra), chords and a melody, music theory (scales and keys, how chords work, melody over chords, rhythm), a synth of your own, shaping a sound with function nodes, a drum kit, an echo and reverb, how shaders work (pixels, corners, patterns, ripples, noise your first code node and function nodes), a lit 3D scene, a sphere that jams to a beat, a sphere that responds to you, click and key effects, printing numbers to debug a graph, color you can control, spinning, tiling and warping a pattern, remembering the last frame, trails and echoes, materials with a glowing rim and a shifting sheen, a small solar system of orbits, a piece of music in the spirit of a holiday going wrong, objects and a camera moved from the timeline, a color changed by a parameter, a Shadertoy shader as a node, playing an instrument live, a theremin played with the mouse, recording and looping what you play, notes chosen by a note graph, keys played as drum pads, playing with your hands, visuals that react to the sound, a cloud of particles, the arranging of a track and a half-minute audiovisual piece - run beside your project and check each step as you go. Open the Learn… menu in the editor, or see Lessons.
What You’ll Create
1: Introduction
Set up an account and get started with the Node Editor. Create a 3D object. Learn how to save and share your projects.
2: Animation
Build visuals that pulse and shift colors in sync with music—control bass, treble, and rhythm.
3: Interactions
Make your projects respond to your voice through the microphone, use your webcam as a live texture, and control effects with hand gestures.
4: Shapes
Morph spheres into organic, breathing forms that evolve with sound and movement.
5: Objects & Camera
Build scenes with multiple objects and animate camera movement.
6: Particles
Create swarms of particles that dance, swirl, and respond to audio and gestures.
Examples
Some examples of what you can create if you continue to build with VerkLabs.
Further Examples
Further examples of what you can create if you continue to build with VerkLabs.
Survey
Please take 5 minutes to share your feedback: Feedback Survey.
What You’ll Learn
- Build interactive motion graphics using a visual node system
- Make visuals react to music, voice, and gestures
- Create organic animations with procedural effects
- Compose multi-layered reactive scenes
No coding or graphics experience needed—if you can connect dots, you can create with VerkLabs.
Reference Manual
If you have questions, or want to see what’s possible with VerkLabs, you might wan to check out the Reference Manual.
Help Us Improve
At the end of the starter guide, please take 5 minutes to share your feedback. Your input helps us make VerkLabs better and shapes future guides.