Loading pieces onto a piece

A piece can load other pieces and run them live over itself, as layers. Put a spinning 3D logo over a shader backdrop, a small game in a corner of a scene, or a gallery piece as the background of a title card. A loaded piece is a layer like any other: you place it, size it, fade it, blend it, time it and key it, and you can set and animate its own parameters from the piece it sits on.

You can load one of your own pieces, a gallery piece, or any shared piece from its link, up to ten on one piece.

Loading a piece

1. Open the piece to load onto

   This is the piece that will hold the others. Loading works on a desktop, where the Motion panel is.

2. Drag a piece onto the stage

   Open My pieces (L) or the Gallery (G) and drag a card onto the stage. The stage says Drop to load and the piece's name; let go where you want it. Dropped on the timeline's lanes instead, it starts at that moment.

3. Or pick one from the Piece menu

   On the Layers tab, click Piece. Paste a shared piece's link (a vybe.art/s/ link) into the box at the top and press Enter, or pick one of My pieces or a Gallery piece from the list.

4. Place it

   The piece starts again with its new layer, and the Motion panel opens on the Layers tab with the loaded piece selected. Drag it, size it from a corner and turn it from the handle, as with any layer.

A new loaded piece sits in the middle (or where you dropped it), most of the frame's shorter side wide, in the shape the timeline is made for (16:9 when the timeline has no shape). It shows for the whole timeline, or from the moment you dropped it on the lanes.

The Piece section

Below the name, a line says where it came from: one of your pieces, the gallery, or a shared piece with its creator's name and a link to it.

The rest of the layer's options (Transform, Blend and effects, and Timing with its entrances and exits) are the same as for every layer.

Its controls

Once it is running, the loaded piece's parameters appear under Its controls.

• Change one to set the value it starts with.
• Click the ◆ beside one to key it at the playhead and animate it from this piece's timeline: speed it up at three seconds, change its colour on the beat. Its tracks sit under its bar on the timeline.
• A button parameter has Press, which presses it on the running piece.
• States can hold its parameters too: on the States tab, its parameters are listed in the Layer menu.

If it can't run, the section says why.

Playable or not

Without Playable, presses on a loaded piece go through it to the piece underneath, so your piece's own clicks, hovers and states still work there. With Playable on, the pointer goes to the loaded piece where it shows: a game you can play inside the piece, for example.

A playable piece, or one that fills the frame, isn't picked by clicking it on the stage. Select it in the Layers list first, then move it on the stage.

When a loaded piece's code raises an event, it sets off this piece's Piece event transitions, so a loaded game can tell the scene around it that it has been won.

A copy travels with your piece

A copy of the loaded piece is kept inside your piece, so it goes wherever your piece goes: share links, embeds, remixes and renders. It doesn't change when the piece it came from does. To bring in later changes, delete the layer and load the piece again.

Only one level loads. If the piece you load has pieces loaded onto it, those stay behind.

Rendering

In a render, each loaded piece is drawn a frame at a time along with your piece, from its layer's start, and its sounds, and the sound clips on its own timeline, are mixed in. See Rendering video.

Limits

A piece can load up to ten pieces: each runs a whole engine of its own, and a page has room for only so many. When the tenth is in, the Piece button is greyed out. Long pieces take room too, and the studio says when there isn't room for another; remove one first.

Related

• Text, image and video layers
• States and interactions
• Saving and your pieces
• The gallery and remixing