Getting Started with Layer

Making an account on Layer is easy and free for all users.

✅ Click “Get Started” in the top right of the website.

✅ Connect your Gmail account or use an email manually.

✅ Review and accept the Terms of Service and Data Processing Policy

✅ Verify your account and start creating!

Visual learner? You can also kick back and watch our helpful Workspace Overview Tutorial.

The first step is to choose what you want to create! With Layer you can make 2D, 3D, and Video assets - but we usually recommend starting with 2D until you're familiar with the tools.

Click on the desired generation, and you will now be on a screen that looks like this. It's a bit overwhelming at first - but that's actually a good thing! Layer is designed to support professionals, so getting started takes a little longer but it's well worth it compared to simpler tools.

Select a style in the top left. These are different AI models and pre-trained Layer styles.

Once you’ve chosen a style, it’s time to create your first prompt. This “prompt” or description is how to tell the AI generation model exactly what you want. The more descriptive the better, as it helps the AI narrow down the type of image from millions of inputs. isometric style house, medieval fantasy style, bright pastel colors

Creating a great prompt is the key to generating the best assets, but it takes practice. You can check out our full guide on prompt generation for all the details. The key is to be descriptive.

Layer comes fully equipped with a portfolio of styles to choose from. These range from 8-bit pixel art to hi-def realistic artwork - and everything in between. Simple click the style in the bottom left of the prompt box at any time to select from a list with visual examples.

Layer also supports the creation of your own unique style. With this feature you can upload your own artwork and train a custom model, allowing you to create iterations of art you already have. This is especially helpful when scaling game assets created by artists inside your studio.

Once you’re happy with your forged image, it’s time to head to the Canvas to edit and export your asset. Simply click “Edit in Canvas” on the right side of the screen to switch to the Canvas view.

The Layer Canvas is a powerful tool for creating specific variations of generated assets, and editing them in real-time. This allows you to fine tune your assets to match your game art before exporting as a PSD.

Editing assets is easy with the Canvas. Once you have your image, select from the options at the bottom of the screen to get started. For more info, check out our full guide for editing assets in the Canvas.

In this example the Lasso tool was used to select the head of our chibi witch character.

You can now add prompt direction for this specific part of the image. This is extremely useful for editing parts of your image without changing the overall asset.

Now that you’ve edited and expanded your image, you’re ready to export the final asset for use in your game. Click “Export” in the top right corner and select the best option. Remember, if you want access to all the layers in a program like Adobe Photoshop you will need to select “PSD”.

Now that you have a handle on creating images on Layer, let's check out video.

You can generate video from text prompts with some models, but we usually recommend using an image as a starting point. For this example we just select our previous 2D image from the Drive, or Forge session to transform into a video. Let's bring our little witch to life!

Similar to 2D, start by selecting a model. With Layer you have access to the majority of popular video models, with more coming all the time. For this example we'll use Kling 1.6 Pro.

It's also important to remember when prompting with video to add cinematic instructions about what you want the camera to do - like zoom out, zoom in, pan around, hold steady, etc.

Okay, we've done 2D and Video - now it's time to explore 3D models.

Start be selecting a reference image, and the 3D model... model, you want to use. Like video, each one has it's own advantages to consider.

Using Tripo 2.0 in this instance, here is the resulting model of our witch. You can also remove the textures and export as an OBJ file to bring into any 3D editing or game engine software.

By now you should be familiar with Layers basics and successfully forging assets for your game. If you’re looking for more powerful features such as faster forging or organization management - we’ve got you covered.

Just check out our Pricing Page on the Layer website for all details around each account type, and what works best for you and your team.