All actions
Every chip in the action library, in one place: what each action does, the parameters it exposes, and how it appears once it lands on the timeline.
How to read this reference
The library holds 18 actions in five categories: Scene, Add, Video, Audio, and Effects. An action's category decides which timeline section accepts it (Scene, Add, and Video chips all land on Scene tracks), and its role decides what it draws there:
- Opens a clip: starts a span (an asset appearing, media starting).
- Closes a clip: ends the matching span.
- Modifier bar: a duration bar on an attached lane nested under the target asset's track.
- Instant: a one-shot event drawn as a short marker.
Durations are in seconds, distances in meters, volumes and opacities from 0 to 1. Animated actions (Move, Scale, Rotate, fades) also take an easing choice that shapes the motion (ease-in-out by default). For placing actions, see adding actions; for retiming them, see editing clips.
Scene
Scene actions control the assets on stage: visibility, position, size, and orientation. All of them target one asset — the track you drop them on.
| Action | What it does | Key parameters | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show | Makes the asset appear instantly, with no transition. | Target asset | Opens a visual clip |
| Hide | Removes the asset from the stage instantly. | Target asset | Closes the visual clip |
| Reveal | Brings the asset on stage with placement and a fade. This is the workhorse entrance. | Position (relative to the viewer by default) · scale · fade-in duration · manipulable toggle (lets viewers grab, move, rotate, and scale it by hand) | Opens a visual clip |
| Fade In | Fades the asset in from invisible, essentially a Reveal with the emphasis on the fade (0.5 s by default). | Same as Reveal | Opens a visual clip |
| Fade Out | Fades the asset's opacity toward a target, all the way to zero by default. | Opacity · duration · easing | Fading to zero closes the clip; a partial fade is a modifier bar |
| Move | Animates the asset to a new position, optionally rotating and scaling along the way. | Target mode (offset / absolute / relative to the viewer) · rotation (none / to an orientation / by an amount, in degrees of pitch, yaw, roll) · optional scale multiplier · duration · easing | Modifier bar |
| Scale | Animates the asset's size by a multiplier (1.5× by default). | Multiplier · duration · easing | Modifier bar |
| Rotate | Animates orientation only, a turn in place. Defaults to a 90° turn so you see motion immediately. | Rotation mode and angles (degrees) · duration · easing | Modifier bar |
Tip. Prefer Reveal over Show for entrances. Even a short fade reads far more naturally in a headset than an instant pop. Save Show for deliberately abrupt beats.
Note. For continuous, multi-key motion — arcs, drifts, choreography — use segment animation tracks instead of chains of Move actions. See the animation overview.
Add
Add actions bring something new into the scene. Unlike every other chip, they don't create an action directly. Dropping one opens a picker, and the item you choose is then revealed at the drop time, creating its track in the same gesture. They land on the Scene section.
| Action | What it does | On drop |
|---|---|---|
| Add Asset | Brings a 3D asset from your library on stage. | Opens an asset picker, then reveals the chosen asset |
| Add Image | Places an image in the scene. | Opens an image picker, then reveals the chosen image |
| Add Particle | Places a particle emitter built in the particle editor. | Opens a particle picker, then reveals the chosen emitter |
Once placed, the new asset behaves like any other Scene track: Hide it, Move it, fade it, animate it. Particle presets themselves are authored in the particle editor; see the particles overview.
Video
| Action | What it does | Key parameters | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Play Video | Starts a video playing on a channel, presented on a panel in the scene (a 16:9 panel about 1.6 m wide by default). | File · channel · volume · loop · presentation (panel size / placement) · layout (flat, side-by-side, or over-under stereo) | Opens a video clip, and surfaces the panel on the Scene section automatically |
| Stop Video | Stops the channel's video and takes the panel down. | Channel | Closes the video clip |
Video channels are named automatically from the file, so a Play and Stop on the same file always pair up. Video clips also support source-window trims on their edges; see video trimming & consolidating.
Audio
| Action | What it does | Key parameters | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Play Audio | Starts an audio file playing on a named channel. | File · channel · volume · loop · scope (segment-bound or ambient) | Opens an audio clip on the channel's track |
| Stop Audio | Stops whatever the channel is playing. | Channel | Closes the audio clip |
| Fade Audio | Ramps the channel's volume to a target level, so you can fade a bed under narration or fade to zero for a soft ending. | Channel · target volume · duration | Marker within the clip's span |
Channels are the whole story here. Naming, renaming, and auto-creation are covered in audio channels.
Tip. A Fade Audio to zero followed by a Stop Audio is the polished way to end a sound: the fade does the musical work, and the stop frees the channel.
Effects
Effects are self-contained visual events. They don't target an asset, so they carry their own configuration and drop directly onto the Effects section with no picker.
| Action | What it does | Key parameters | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pulse Ring | Shows glowing rings that pulse around the viewer, great for focus moments and ambient atmosphere. | Radius · height · ring count · pulse speed (Hz) · base and peak intensity · disc radius · color | Instant marker on the Effects section |
| Spark Burst | Fires a burst of spark particles from a point in space, a celebration pop or a magical accent. | Position · burst radius · birth rate · particle lifespan · particle size · duration · tint | Instant marker on the Effects section |
For richer, fully custom particle systems, build a preset in the particle editor and bring it on stage with Add Particle.
Beyond the typed forms
Every action in this catalog has a typed parameter form in the inspector, with sliders,
pickers, and fields for each value, shared between Chapter Studio and Chapter Vision. Chapter Studio also offers
a raw-JSON view on every action: a curly-braces toggle that shows the action exactly as
it's stored in chapter.json, with an explicit Apply so a half-typed edit
never breaks anything. It's an escape hatch for fine control and for the long tail of
advanced actions that don't have a dedicated form. See the
ChapterScript format if you want to read
what's under the hood.