Animation overview

Keyframe animation in Chapter Vision lives on the segment, not inside steps, so your curves stay put no matter how you rearrange the events around them.

Animation is a segment-level layer

A chapter is built from segments, and each segment carries two independent layers. Steps and their actions are the event layer: reveals, hides, video, audio, gates. Keyframe animation is a separate motion layer that belongs to the segment itself: every animated entity gets its own animation track, and keys sit at absolute segment time, measured in seconds from the start of the segment.

Because keys are timed against the segment rather than any step, curves cross step boundaries freely. Retiming a step, splitting one, or reordering actions never bends or breaks a curve — a key at 4.5 seconds stays at 4.5 seconds. Motion and events only meet where you want them to.

Ten channels per entity

An entity's track holds up to ten scalar channels:

Each channel is its own curve with its own keys, so you can key a rise on ty without touching rotation, or fade with opacity while position coasts. Entities with no track simply sit at their rest pose (the transform you gave them in the inspector), and any channel you never key falls back to that rest value.

One engine everywhere

A single evaluation engine samples your curves in every context: the viewport in Chapter Studio, the in-room preview in Chapter Vision, and the player on Apple Vision Pro. There is no "editor approximation": scrubbing the timeline, previewing in the room, and final playback all sample identical curves and land on identical poses. What you scrub is what plays.

The engine holds flat outside the keyed range, and its automatic ease tangents flatten at peaks and valleys so a bounce apex never overshoots. Even entities that are currently hidden are still posed along their curves, so a mid-curve reveal finds them exactly where they should be.

The clock is the authored clock

Animation runs on the segment's authored time, not the wall clock. When playback stops at a gate or a pause, the authored clock stops too. Every curve holds its pose at the boundary instead of running ahead, and when the audience proceeds, motion resumes from exactly that frame. A ninety-second segment behaves the same whether the audience lingers at a gate for two seconds or two minutes.

Keyframe lanes on the timeline

On the timeline, each animated asset's track shows a keyframe lane: a slim row of diamonds, one per keyed pose, at their absolute times. The lane gives you dope-sheet control without leaving the timeline:

1. Drag a diamond to retime that pose; every channel keyed at that moment slides together.

2. Double-click a diamond in Chapter Studio to delete the pose at that time.

Keyframe lanes appear in both Chapter Studio's timeline and Chapter Vision's floating timeline, and they always agree.

Where you edit animation

In Chapter Studio, select an entity within a segment and open the Animation card in the inspector, which hosts the graph editor for shaping curves alongside Set Key and auto-key controls (see Keyframes & auto-key). In Chapter Vision, the same graph editor lives in the graph dock beneath the timeline, and you can pose entities directly with your hands using the gizmo. On Vision Pro, animated entities also draw motion trails in the room, so you can see a path through space before you play a frame.