Scenes
A scene is a whole look: its layers, their knobs, the cables and the scene colors. Scenes is where you load a ready-made one, keep your own, give one its own music and share one as a file.
Loading a scene
Open Scenes and tap a card. The picture changes to that scene, then play your music. The window has two tabs (on iPhone, two pages: swipe left or right to turn between them):
- Nebula Scenes are ready-made (on iPhone the tab just says Nebula). They are grouped by the main visual. The first one, Nebula, is the default look.
- My Scenes are yours.
The search box (find a scene, or Find on iPhone) finds scenes in both lists by name. Several words all have to match. A card says loaded for the scene on screen, or queued when it waits for the next song. Cards for your own scenes also say how many layers and patches (cables) they hold.
Changing on the next song
In Settings › Playback, turn on Change scene on the next song. A scene you pick then waits, and fades in with the next song instead of cutting in at once.
My Scenes
You never have to press Save. Nebula keeps the current scene a moment after your last change.
- Change a Nebula Scene (turn a knob, add a layer, make a cable) and your version is kept in My Scenes under the name My followed by the original's name, such as My Aurora. The ready-made one is never touched. Load that ready-made scene and change it again later and the new copy is My Aurora 2.
- Change one of My Scenes and the change is saved to it.
- Import (an icon on iPhone) sits beside the search box on My Scenes, with Sort once you have a scene.
- Use Sort to order My Scenes by A to Z, Last changed or Most played.
- Free keeps 3 scenes of your own. With 3, Save a copy shows a gold PRO mark and opens the Nebula Pro window, and a Nebula Scene you change is no longer kept as a new My… scene (a note says so once). Delete one of yours to make room. Pro has no limit. Scenes you already have are never taken away.
- Delete a scene of your own with the trash on its card: tap, then tap again when it turns red. Ready-made scenes can't be deleted.
The card menu
Tap the … on a card (or press and hold it, or right-click on a Mac):
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename… | Gives one of your scenes a new name. A name that is already taken isn't accepted. (My Scenes only.) |
| Save a copy… | Makes a copy under a name you choose, in My Scenes. Works on ready-made scenes too. |
| Music this scene starts | Chooses what plays when the scene loads. See below. |
| Export… | Saves the scene as a .nebula file. |
Music for a scene
A scene can bring its own music. Under Music this scene starts choose:
- None: the scene leaves the music alone. This is the normal setting.
- Use what's playing: the scene remembers the song, playlist, Indie track, radio station or the microphone that is playing now.
The next time you load that scene, Nebula starts that music. Cards for scenes that bring music show a small music symbol. The menu shows what is chosen now, for example Now: Heart 80s.
Export and import
- Export from the card menu writes one scene to a
.nebulafile you can keep, send or post. It holds the layers, knobs, cables, colors and the scene's music choice. It holds no audio. - Import adds a scene from a
.nebulafile. You can also open one from Files, AirDrop or Messages. It lands in My Scenes under its own name; a scene already there with the same name is replaced. - Every scene Nebula exports is signed, so a friend on the free app sees it in full, even if it uses Pro features. A scene written by hand or by an AI assistant isn't signed: on the free app it opens trimmed to 2 layers, 3 cables from the Music sources and the free blends, with a note, This scene uses Pro features; showing the free part. Pro opens everything.
- Files over 512 KB are refused.
The ready-made scenes
These come with Nebula under Nebula Scenes, beside the default scene.
| Scene | What it is |
|---|---|
| Living Painting | A painting that listens: its drawn lines turn to smoke with the music, then settle back. |
| Ink | Clouds of ink bloom and curl with the music. |
| Stellar Nursery | Glowing gas clouds where stars are born, stirred by the bass. |
| Starscape | A deep night sky that breathes with the music. |
| Aurora | Northern lights: curtains fold with the bass and ripple with the mids. |
| Melody Thread | A silk ribbon that traces the sung melody. |
| Note Nursery | Notes are born from the melody and drift away. |
| Equalizer | A classic bar equalizer, one bar per band. |
| Fireflies | A swarm of sparks on a turning current; hits burst new ones. |
| Tesla Arcs | Branching lightning leaps on every hit. |
| Rain Pond | A dark pond at night: drops fall on the beats. |
| Plasma Globe | A glass plasma ball whose arcs flare on hits. |
| Pin Field | A field of glowing pins; beats send ripples outward. |
| Bokeh Drift | Soft discs of light, like city lights out of focus. |
| Sand Plate | Glowing sand gathers into a new figure on every chord. |
| Pendulum Wave | Rows of glowing pendulums fall out of step and back into line. |
| Sync Lanterns | Thousands of lanterns blinking into spiral waves of light. |
| Iron Filings | Glowing filings comb along magnets that flip with the beat. |
| Sequin Tide | A cloth of sequins catching flashes that sweep across its folds. |
| Attractor Cloud | Glowing streams flowing round a turning 3D strange attractor. |
| Ring System | A planet's rings of glowing moons that breathe with every hit. |
| Sunflower | A sunflower spiral of seeds that pours outward on every beat. |
| Particle Life | Glowing creatures that form, chase and dissolve with the chords. |
| Slime Veins | A neon web of veins that reaches for food on every beat. |
| Murmuration | A starling flock that banks as one and tears open on every hit. |
| Ember Sieve | Glowing embers pile up on hidden ledges and spill in cascades. |
Each one is built on an Element, with its own colors and a cable or two. Take one apart in Layers and Patches to see how it works.
The .nebula file
A scene is one small JSON text file, saved as name.nebula. It's written so a person (or an AI assistant) can read it.
{
"version": 1,
"name": "Ember Field",
"layers": [
{ "visual": "fireflies", "blend": "screen", "opacity": 0.8, "params": { "count": 8192, "rise": 0.5 } },
{ "visual": "pin-field", "blend": "normal", "opacity": 1, "params": { "colourMode": "palette", "glow": 0.4 } }
],
"wires": [
{ "source": "bass", "target": { "layer": 1, "key": "height" }, "amount": 0.2, "smooth": 0.3 }
],
"colours": { "list": ["#ff8c26", "#ffc24a", "#ff4a30"], "shift": 0, "speed": 1 }
}| Key | What it is |
|---|---|
version | Always 1. |
name | The scene's name in My Scenes. Same name, replaced. Keep it short. |
layers | 1 to 8 layers, top layer first. Layer 0 is drawn on top. |
wires | Optional. The cables, at most 256. See Patches › In a scene file. |
colours | Optional. The scene colors: a list of 1 to 12 "#rrggbb" colors, shift (0 to 1) and speed (0 to 4). |
Each layer has a visual (the Element's id, from the Elements page), and optionally blend (see Layers › Blend; ids are normal, screen, lighten, plus-lighter, difference, multiply, overlay, soft-light, color-dodge, darken, exclusion, hue, color), opacity (0 to 1), params (knob values by key) and palette (up to 12 colors for that layer).
When Nebula opens a file: an unknown Element still makes a layer but shows an error; unknown knobs are dropped; a menu knob with a value not in its list falls back to its default. Knobs you leave out keep their default values.
Tip. The bottom layer is drawn over black. A normal layer at full opacity covers everything under it, so give normal to the bottom layer (or use it at low opacity as a tint), and use screen, lighten or plus-lighter for layers above.