# The Lookdev Controller

When you click **Build Character**, the tool creates a bright **red controller node** in the LOP network (Solaris). This node is the heart of the whole look-development workflow — every material the tool builds references it, so adjusting a control here updates your character's look live in the Karma render.

## Finding it

Click **Go to LOPs** on the Reallusion Rigger node, in the **Character ▸ Build ▸ Render** folder, to jump straight to the controller. It's the red, circular node — hard to miss. Several characters in your scene means several controllers, each named after its character.

## How it works

Think of the controller as your character's "look dashboard." The materials don't store their own settings — they read from this controller instead. That means:

* **Changes are live.** Drag a slider and the Karma render updates (a couple of exceptions below).
* **Your settings survive rebuilds.** Rebuild the character (say, after changing an export) and your dialed-in look values are preserved — the controller isn't wiped. This matters more than it sounds; see [What survives a rebuild](#what-survives-a-rebuild) below.
* **Everything is in one place.** No hunting through dozens of shader nodes.
* **The rig is what renders.** Once the character has a rig, the LOP import reads the rig node's output, so the character in Solaris is the animated rig: what you animate is what renders.

!!!info A few controls need a render restart
Most controls update live. A small number — the eye light controls and SSS Quality — are Karma _render properties_, which Karma only reads when a render starts. If one doesn't seem to update, restart your Karma render. Each such control says so in its tooltip, and it's noted on the relevant pages here.
!!!

## What survives a rebuild

The materials the tool builds are ordinary MaterialX networks sitting in your `/stage` network. Nothing is locked, so you can dive in and modify them however you like — and for a one-off tweak the tool doesn't expose, you should.

Careful with this one, though: **Build Character regenerates those material networks from scratch every time.** It tears down the import, the material library, and the displacement nodes and rebuilds them, so anything you hand-edited inside a material is gone. Not damaged, not merged — simply rebuilt as if you'd never touched it.

Here's the full picture:

| What | On rebuild |
|---|---|
| Lookdev controller values | **Preserved** — the controller is never wiped |
| Lights, camera, render settings | **Preserved** — built once, then left alone so your lighting tweaks stick |
| The rig node, its keys and layers | **Preserved** — Build Character never rebuilds an existing rig |
| Material networks, import, displacement nodes | **Rebuilt from scratch** — hand edits are lost |

To rebuild the rig itself, delete the rig node and press **Build Character** (see [Building again](../using/building-the-rig.md#building-again)).

So the rule of thumb is simple: if you want a change to survive, make it on the **controller**, which is exactly what it's there for. Hand-editing a material is fine for experimenting or for something genuinely outside the controller's scope — just save that material off to the side, or accept that you'll re-apply it after the next rebuild.

!!!warning
This bites hardest when you rebuild for an unrelated reason — swapping to a re-export, switching import mode, or fixing a texture path. The rebuild is doing its job; it just takes your shader edits with it.
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## The control folders

The controller's parameters are organized into folders, each covering one aspect of the character. Every folder has its own page in this documentation:

* **Quality** — fast preview vs. full production quality, plus the light rig preset. Covered below.
* [**Skin**](skin.md) — roughness, normal detail, color contrast; contains the Skin Re-tint, Teeth, Subsurface, Wrinkles, and Displacement sub-folders.
  * [**Wrinkles**](wrinkles.md) — the animated expression-wrinkle system.
  * [**Displacement**](displacement.md) — fine surface relief from displacement maps.
* [**Eyes**](eyes.md) — stylized glow and eyes-as-light-source.
* [**Hair**](hair.md) — re-dyeing, highlights, and realistic sheen; contains the Brows sub-folder.

## Clothing & accessories

There's no folder here for clothing or accessories — deliberately. The tool shades clothing, shoes, props, horns, GoZ garments, and other accessories **automatically** as physically-based dielectric MaterialX materials, using the textures (and, for untextured custom accessories, the colors stored in the character's `.json`). They come in looking correct with no controls to dial, which is why they don't appear on the controller.

The one related control lives in the **Skin** folder: **Respect Metallic Maps**. Character Creator sometimes writes junk metallic maps onto fabric and inner-mouth materials; the tool ignores them by default so those surfaces read correctly. Turn it on only for a character with genuinely metallic clothing or accessories. See [Skin](skin.md).

## The Quality folder

Worth understanding first — it controls the speed-vs-fidelity trade-off for your whole look-dev session.

### Quality (Preview / Production)

A master preset with two settings:

* **Preview** — turns off subsurface scattering and uses cheap, fast eyes. Use this while framing shots and dialing in poses; much faster to render.
* **Production** — restores full subsurface scattering and high-quality refractive eyes. Switch to this for your final renders.

Switching this preset flips the two toggles below it automatically.

### Remove SSS

Disables subsurface scattering on skin and teeth. Subsurface scattering gives skin its soft, translucent, lifelike quality — but it's also the single most expensive part of the render. Turning it off is the biggest single speed-up available, which is why Preview mode uses it.

### Hero Eyes

Switches the eyes between two quality levels:

* **On** — refractive, ray-traced corneas for close-up realism. Use for hero shots where the eyes are prominent.
* **Off** — a cheaper cutout cornea, faster and fine for distant or background characters.

### Light Setup

Switches the auto-generated light rig between two pre-tuned looks:

* **Cinematic** — a warm key light with moody, richly shadowed fill. Good for portrait and dramatic hero shots.
* **Neutral** — flat, even, neutral-white lighting. Good for look-dev, where you want to see the materials clearly without a strong mood.

Changing this re-tints the rig immediately. It only affects the three-point rig the tool built — your own lights are untouched, and it has no effect if you haven't used **Create Render Setup**.

!!!success Workflow tip
Stay in **Preview** while you set up your shot and animation, then switch to **Production** only for final, high-quality renders. You'll spend far less time waiting for the viewport to refresh.
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## Top buttons

At the top of the controller, sharing one row:

* **Go to SOPs** — jumps back to the Reallusion Rigger node (useful when you're deep in the LOP network).
* **Reset to Defaults** — returns every control to its original default value, restoring the out-of-the-box look. It asks for confirmation first, since it discards all your dialed-in settings and can't be undone from here. Reset only changes the controller's values — it doesn't rebuild the character or retint the light rig.

One more helper button, elsewhere:

* Inside the Wrinkles folder, **Go to Max Wrinkle Frame** — scrubs the timeline to the frame where the character's facial expression is most extreme, so you can judge wrinkles at their strongest. It scans the animation the character plays: with a rig, the rig's animation, so the clip picked in **Play Clip** and your keys. See [Wrinkles](wrinkles.md).