> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.seriesmith.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The look builder

> Tutorial 7: a series' look picked from pictures or built from its parts, saved as a preset, and the pictures and shots made again under it.

> **[Watch tutorial 7 on YouTube](https://youtu.be/VLc0e-J0YCM)**
>
> The look builder: the whole series, another look.

A series' **look** is one line in its series config (`style.look`): how the whole show is
shot or drawn. It opens every shot's prompt and every picture's. This tutorial changes the
look of the live-action Clips project from tutorials 1 and 2 (Mara at the lighthouse).

## 1. Pick a look from pictures

**1. Open Series settings**

The cog in the Shots toolbar (Advanced mode) → **Series settings** → **Look**. (The
series wizard's **Series** step has the same row.)

**2. Browse the presets**

Every look is a picture of the same woman in a red coat at a tram stop, so they compare:
live action (prestige drama, neon noir, 1970s film, documentary, black and white),
genres (western, thriller, horror, 80s VHS...), animation (3D animated, 2D cartoon,
anime, stop-motion) and illustration (watercolor, graphic novel...).

**3. Pick one**

Click **1970s film**. It fills the look line, which is still yours to edit.

> [!NOTE]
>
> A genre's picture shows its world (a frontier town, a desert highway), but the line is
> only the look: light, lens, grade, stock. Your locations and characters decide where the
> story is, so a western look on a city street is a dusty, sun-bleached city.

## 2. Build the look from its parts

**1. Open Build the look**

Under the presets, **Build the look** shows a row for each part, a picture for each
choice: **Medium**, **Camera**, **Lens**, **Film / sensor**, **Light**, **Grade**.

**2. Pick a part at a time**

Start with the medium, then the camera and lens, the film stock, the light and the grade.
Each pick adds what a director of photography would say of it (*anamorphic lenses: oval
bokeh, horizontal lens flares...*), and the line rewrites itself. A second click on a pick
clears it. A drawn or animated medium folds Camera, Lens and Film away.

**3. Start from a preset, if you like**

A look preset sets the rows too, so you can pick *1970s film* and change only its grade.

**4. Edit the line by hand (optional)**

Once you type into the line yourself, the picks leave it alone. **Use the built line**
puts theirs back.

**5. Save as a preset…**

Press **Save as a preset…** under the line. It's offered under **Yours** in every show on
this machine. Give its tile a picture with the picture button on it: **Render it** on the
sample scene, take it **from your work** (a frame of a take, or a picture in Refs), or
**import a picture**.

**6. Save the series settings**

**Save**. The look is written into `series.json`, its picks kept as `style.look_parts`.

## 3. What it does

The look goes into every picture too, and on a model that renders from pictures (H3) the
plate and the character's views carry most of it. So make them again under the new look
before re-rendering the shots.

**1. Regenerate the pictures**

**Refs** → the place's plate and each character's views → **Generate**, then **Pick** the
new ones. (Or **Generate missing** after clearing them.)

**2. Re-render stale**

The shots that used the old pictures are now `stale`. Press **Re-render stale**: each is
rendered at the same seed, so the new take differs by the look and nothing else.

**3. Compare**

Right-click the new take → **Compare with…** the old: c001 before, and in the 1970s look.

> [!TIP]
>
> A **lens for one shot** is a field of its own (`lens:` in the script, **Lens** in the shot
> form). It's one sentence of the prompt and never changes the pictures, so with a plate's
> sharp focus behind it, it may show little on H3. It shows most on models that draw the place
> from words (LTX-2, Wan).

## Next

> **[8 · Shot direction](https://docs.seriesmith.com/tutorials/shot-direction.md)**
>
> How close, from where, and how the camera moves.

> **[Writing the look line](https://docs.seriesmith.com/authoring.md#writing-the-look-line)**
>
> What a good look line says, and what it leaves out.


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