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Animations

The Animations section in Studio lets you author one or more animation tracks that drive the viewer's camera through your scene. A track is a keyframed path — at each keyframe, the camera's position, target, and field of view are sampled. The viewer interpolates between keyframes at runtime.

A track can be set to auto-play when a visitor opens the scene page, turning your splat into a cinematic flythrough.

Track properties

Each track has the following properties:

FieldDescription
NameA display label for the track in the Studio UI.
DurationLength of the track in seconds.
Frame rateFrames per second the keyframe times are expressed in.
Loop modenone — play once and stop. repeat — loop seamlessly from end back to start. pingpong — play forward, then reverse, repeating.
Interpolationstep — snap from keyframe to keyframe. spline — smooth curve between keyframes.
SmoothnessA 0–1 blend applied to the spline interpolation. 0 is linear, 1 is maximally smooth.
KeyframesA list of (time, { position, target, fov }) entries that define the animated camera path.

Authoring a track

The general flow is:

  1. Frame the camera in the viewport at the time-zero pose you want.
  2. Add a keyframe at time = 0.
  3. Scrub forward, reframe the camera, add the next keyframe — and so on.
  4. Pick a loop mode and an interpolation that matches the mood of the track.

The keyframe list stores three parallel arrays (position, target, fov) and a times array; you don't normally edit these by hand, but if you're consuming the saved JSON externally see Experience Settings for the canonical shape.

Auto-play on load

Set the scene's start mode to animTrack to make the animation track play automatically when a visitor opens the scene page. Combined with a seamless repeat loop, this gives the impression of a hands-off showreel. When more than one track is defined, the first track in the list is the one that plays.

Tip: smooth loops

For a track that loops cleanly (loopMode = repeat), avoid placing keyframes on both the very first frame and the very last frame at the same pose — the spline will be flat there and the loop will appear to "snap" rather than continue smoothly. Instead, leave a small gap before the end of the track and let the interpolation carry the camera back to the start pose.

See also

  • Cameras — the initial cameras you can frame and reference
  • Annotations — annotations can pause a playing track when selected
  • Experience Settings — the JSON contract that stores animation tracks