Skip to main content

Preview and Recording

Previewing​

Preview plays a sequence against the real place in edit mode, with no need to press Play in Studio.

  • Scrubbing the ruler, stepping, or typing a time starts a paused preview at that point.
  • Play runs it from the playhead. Without Loop it stops at the end of the range; with Loop on, it wraps back to the range start.
  • Stop ends the preview and puts everything the sequence changed back the way it was.

Preview writes are kept out of Studio's undo history, so undo only ever steps through your edits.

While a preview is paused, a Camera track lets go of the camera so you can fly it with Studio's controls and key the new view. The sequence still holds the camera; it just stops locking it in place.

A playback range narrows preview to part of the sequence. Right-click the ruler and choose Set Range Start Here or Set Range End Here, then drag the handles to adjust it, or set Start and End under Playback Range in the Inspector. Clear Range removes it. The jump buttons and the Go to Start and Go to End shortcuts go to the ends of the range when one is set.

Preview in Team Create​

Preview changes the real instances, so collaborators watch them move. Flow keeps that safe:

  • A sequence being previewed is locked: other users can't preview or edit it until the preview ends.
  • Instances under preview are marked. Collaborators who have the plugin get a warning in the status bar when they select one, and the editor won't let them assign it to a track, make a template from it, or record changes to it while it is being previewed.
  • When a preview ends, Flow only restores a property if it still holds the value the preview wrote. If a collaborator changed it in the meantime, their edit is kept and you get a warning instead.

If Studio closes mid-preview​

Before it changes anything, a preview writes what it is about to change to a journal in ServerStorage. If Studio crashes, or the place is saved or synced while a preview is running, the next time the plugin starts it finds the journal and asks A preview was interrupted. Restore original state? In Team Create, the same prompt appears for everyone else as soon as the user who was previewing leaves.

Record mode​

Record mode turns the changes you make in Studio into keyframes, the way auto-keying does in Blender.

  1. Click ● Rec to arm it.
  2. Move the playhead to a time.
  3. Change a track's subject in Studio: drag it, rotate it, edit a property in the Properties window.

Each change becomes a keyframe at the playhead, on a Property section for that property. A section is added if the track doesn't have one there yet.

If you change a selected instance that no track covers, record mode adds an Instance track for it first, so the whole workflow is select, arm, move. An instance that can't be bound, usually because it sits outside the sequence root, is skipped with a warning.

Record mode only captures properties that can be written back. Read-only and derived properties such as AssemblyMass, Position, and BrickColor are left out, since they follow from the properties that are recorded. It never records the sequence's own output, so you can arm it while a sequence is playing and adjust a subject live.