Keyframes & auto-key
Set Key captures a whole pose in one press. Auto-key records your adjustments as you make them, and only on channels you've already chosen to animate.
Set Key: capture the whole pose
Set Key (⌥K in Chapter Studio) writes the selected entity's full pose (all ten channels: position, rotation, scale, and opacity) as keys at the playhead's current time. It doesn't matter whether the entity already has a track; Set Key creates one on the first press.
Set Key follows your whole selection. Select six objects (or the clips of six objects on the timeline) and one press keys all six, as a single batch and a single undo entry. Audio is never keyed this way; a channel has no pose.
Park the playhead where you want the pose to land. Scrub the timeline ruler or the graph editor's ruler band to get there.
Pose the entity using the inspector's transform fields in Chapter Studio, or by grabbing it with the gizmo in Chapter Vision.
Press Set Key. A diamond appears in the entity's keyframe lane at that time.
Note. If the entity has never been shown in the segment, your first Set Key also adds a reveal for it. Keyframing something implies you want to see it; you'll never animate an entity the audience can't watch.
Auto-key: record as you adjust
Both apps have an auto-key toggle, the round record button near the transport. With auto-key on, every transform change you make writes a key at the playhead automatically: nudge a position field, drag the gizmo, dial opacity, and the adjustment becomes animation.
There's one deliberate rule: auto-key only re-keys channels that already have keys, and only the ones that actually changed. A channel you've never animated is never keyed by accident.
Why that rule protects you
In most animation tools, leaving record mode on turns every stray adjustment into animation. Reframe a prop two centimeters to the left and you've silently keyed its position; now it lerps back toward some old value at playback and you spend ten minutes finding out why. Chapter Vision's rule means the first key on any channel is always a deliberate act — Set Key, or an insert in the graph editor. After that, auto-key knows the channel is part of the performance and keeps it up to date. Before that, your tweaks are just tweaks: they move the rest pose and nothing else.
Tip. This makes it safe to leave auto-key on for a whole session: animated entities record; everything else stays still. Use Set Key when you want to promote a new channel (or a whole entity) into the animation.
Moving and deleting keys
You can rework timing in two places:
| Where | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Keyframe lane (timeline) | Drag a diamond to move a whole pose: every channel keyed at that time slides together. ⌘-click diamonds to build a selection. Double-click a diamond in Chapter Studio to delete the pose. |
| Graph editor | Drag individual keys per channel in time and value, multi-select groups, insert keys on a curve, and delete the current selection. |
The lane is your dope sheet for fast, pose-level timing. The graph editor is your fine brush for per-channel value and curve shaping.
Copying poses between objects
Selected keyframes respond to ⌘C and ⌘V like clips do, with one powerful twist: a copied pose can be pasted onto a different object. Copy the keys of a settle-into-place move from one prop, select another, paste at the playhead, and the second prop inherits the same performance. Pasting onto an entity that has never been animated creates its track for you. See editing clips for how the timeline clipboard behaves.
Keying from the gizmo on Vision Pro
In Chapter Vision, the gizmo is auto-key aware. With record on, finish a move, rotate, or scale drag, and the changed channels are keyed at the playhead the moment you let go. Combined with the in-room preview, this is the fastest way to block spatial motion: stand where your audience will stand, grab the entity, and put it where it should be at that moment. See the gizmo for the handle layout.
A workflow that works
Block with Set Key. Step through the segment and capture full poses at the story beats: start, arrival, rest. Don't fuss over easing yet.
Turn on auto-key and refine. Scrub to a beat, adjust what's wrong, and let record mode write the corrections into the already-animated channels.
Polish in the graph editor. Shape tangents, fix overshoot, and offset channels against each other for natural motion.
Watch out. Deleting a pose diamond removes the keys on every channel at that time. If you only want to drop one channel's key, do it in the graph editor instead.