Build your first scene
Create a lit cube and give it a textured PBR material in Atlas.
In this tutorial, you will create an Atlas project, replace the starter lighting, and turn the default cube into a small acoustic-foam prop. The finished scene will also be the starting point for the next tutorial, where you will animate the cube with TypeScript. Note that to follow this tutorial, you will need a PBR texture set. The screenshots use a free acoustic-foam texture set from CC0 Textures.
Create the project
Choose the PBR renderer
Select PBR, enter a project name and location, and create the project. PBR is the best fit for this scene because it supports the base-color, normal, metallic, and roughness textures used later in the tutorial.
The other renderer choices are useful for different goals:
- PBR + DDGI adds dynamic diffuse global illumination.
- Path Tracing progressively simulates more light bounces for high-fidelity scenes, but requires more rendering time.
Learn the editor layout
The new project opens with a cube, a camera, ambient lighting, and a procedural sky.
The editor is divided into five main areas:
- Scene Collection — select and organize the objects in the scene.
- Viewport — view the scene and move, rotate, or scale objects.
- Inspector — edit the selected object's transform, material, and components.
- Content Browser — manage scenes, scripts, textures, and materials in the project.
- Top bar — save, configure, and run the project.
The tabs above the viewport provide focused workspaces for the scene, materials, post-processing effects, and Graphite interfaces. Stay in Scene for now.
Replace the starter lighting
Turn off the procedural sky
Select Environment in the Scene Collection. In the Inspector, turn off Atmosphere Sky and Automatic Ambient. This removes the blue sky and stops it from automatically lighting the cube.
Click Reload runtime in the viewport toolbar to reload the scene with the new environment settings.
Remove the remaining default light
With Environment still selected, expand its atmosphere global-light settings and turn off Casts Shadows and Enabled.
Select ambientLight_0 in the Scene Collection and set Intensity to 0. The scene should now be black except for the editor grid and the unlit cube.
Create the material
Before continuing, place an extracted PBR acoustic-foam texture set inside the project's assets folder. The screenshots use a folder named AcousticFoam003_4K-JPG containing color, DirectX normal, metalness, and roughness images.
Organize the material assets
At the project root in the Content Browser, select Create → Folder, name the folder materials, and open it. This keeps the material beside assets, matching the ../assets/AcousticFoam003_4K-JPG/... texture paths visible in the Shading workspace.
Create a PBR material
Inside materials, select Create → Material and name it Foam Material. Atlas creates the material and adds it to the Content Browser.
Connect the texture maps
Double-click Foam Material to open the Shading workspace. Use Choose beside each channel to assign the matching image:
| Material channel | Texture used in the screenshots |
|---|---|
| Base Color | AcousticFoam003_4K_Color.jpg |
| Normal | AcousticFoam003_4K_NormalDX.jpg |
| Metallic | AcousticFoam003_4K_Metalness.jpg |
| Roughness | AcousticFoam003_4K_Roughness.jpg |
Leave Ambient Occlusion, PBR Pack, and Opacity empty because this texture set provides no separate maps for them. The material preview should show the alternating acoustic-foam pattern.
Finish and run the scene
Apply the material to the cube
Return to Scene and select Cube. Drag Foam Material from the Content Browser onto the Inspector. The cube now uses all four PBR maps from the material.
Add a point light
Press Shift L to add a point light. Move it just in front of and slightly above the cube so the normal map catches the light clearly. The screenshot uses approximately X 1.25, Y 1.0, and Z -1.3.
Keep the light white and leave Casts Shadows off for this simple scene. Adjust its intensity if needed until the ridges are visible without washing out the material.
Save and run
Save the scene with Command S, then select Run in the top-right corner. Atlas opens the project in the runtime window, using the scene camera rather than the editor camera.
If the cube is not framed like the screenshot, stop the runtime, select Main Camera, and adjust its position or target before running again.
Your first scene is complete. Continue with Animate the cube with a script to add motion without changing the scene setup.