Mockups

Linked surfaces, not frozen pictures

• Apply a built-in mobile, browser, poster, card, tee, billboard, envelope, or packaging template to the current selection.
• Keep the source live: editing the original updates every surface bound to it.
• Freeze a surface into an embedded snapshot when it should stop following edits.
• Replace artwork on any surface without losing its geometry, fit, masks, or appearance.

Made for real production subjects

Use the same document workflow for mobile screens, desktop windows, front/back stationery, apparel and tees, outdoor billboards, boxes, and product labels. Planar surfaces stay projectively mapped, the product-label template provides a bounded front-facing cylindrical arc with an explicit wrap, seam, and crop policy, and the folded-fabric banner template maps artwork through a bounded mesh envelope. Multiple surfaces can use independent sources or intentionally share one linked source.

Folded fabric through a bounded mesh envelope

Some subjects cannot be flattened without lying: a draped banner, a folded textile, a curved paper hem. The mesh surface divides the artwork area into a small grid of patches; drag the grid vertices on the canvas and the source is resampled through the envelope, with the folds kept exactly where you put them. Moves that would fold a cell inside out are refused rather than rendered wrong, and undo returns the pre-drag grid in one step. It is a bounded envelope for folds and drape — not a 3D model, with no lighting solve and no hidden backside — and composed exports include it like any other surface.

Author your own photo templates

Turn a product or signage photo into a reusable template: the photo becomes an untouched base plate, you define the replaceable area on the canvas or numerically, and clip and foreground-occluder masks keep hands, straps, bezels, and folds in front of the artwork. Templates are embedded in the document, survive save and reopen, and export as bound.varve-mockup.json bundles without any bound client artwork.

Perspective you can trust

Angled surfaces use a true projective mapping: drag the four corners and the content is resampled from the original source, so straight lines stay straight. Export re-renders the source at the requested output scale instead of enlarging a preview, and a missing source is reported as a missing source rather than silently showing an old result. A bounded cylinder uses a separate curved remap; it is never mislabeled as perspective or full 3D.

Every export route tells the truth

PNG, JPEG, WebP, SVG, and screen PDF exports compose the mockup through the same pipeline the canvas uses — an SVG export embeds the composed surface rendered at export scale, not a bare frame. Formats that cannot compose a mockup say so instead of guessing: press PDF/X export stops with a clear message (flatten the mockup first), and React, Flutter, and SwiftUI code exports carry a warning that mockups are not part of vector-structure output. No export route silently ships an empty frame.

A typical workflow

1. Select your artwork and choose Apply Mockup… — from the Object menu, the canvas context menu, the command palette, or Resources → Mockups. The mockup lands beside the source as a normal editable object.
2. Edit the source frame, text, or shapes as usual: every surface bound to it re-renders through the same digest-keyed cache. In the Inspector's Mockup section each surface offers Replace, Edit source,Snapshot, Reconnect, and Clear, plus fit, alignment, rotation, flips, shadow, and numeric geometry.
3. Refine the surface on the canvas: select the mockup, click a surface chip, drag its corner or edge handles — or, on a mesh surface, its grid vertices — (Escape aborts, Reset clears), and useClip from selection / Occluder from selection to keep bezels, hands, or folds in front of the artwork.
4. For your own photo template: select the photo and runCreate Mockup Template from Selection… — the photo becomes an untouched base plate; add surfaces, save, and reuse it with unrelated artwork.
5. Export from the Export tab. PNG, JPEG, WebP, SVG, and screen PDF compose the mockup at output scale; batch variants live under the Mockup section's variant export.