Studio
Tuning with parameters
Every piece arrives with its own controls: sliders, colours, switches and buttons to play with.
Most pieces Perlin makes come with controls of their own: how fast it moves, how many particles there are, the colour of the sky, a button for a new seed. They live in the Parameters panel, and moving one changes the piece as it plays, without restarting it.
Tuning is free and needs no account. It's the quickest way to find the version of a piece you like before you share, render or keep changing it.
Where the controls are
On a desktop the panel floats at the top right of the stage, headed Parameters with a count of its controls. Click the heading, or press P, to fold it away and bring it back. When the stage is narrow (with the Code panel open, or in a small window) the panel starts folded.
The panel hides itself while the piece shows an error, in present mode, and on a piece with no controls. On a phone the controls are in the Parameters tab under the stage instead: see The studio on a phone.
Kinds of control
| Control | How to use it |
|---|---|
| Slider | Drag the fader. Click the number on the right to type an exact value, then press Enter (or Esc to leave it). You can also drag the control's name left or right to nudge it; hold Shift for finer steps. |
| Colour | Click the swatch or its hex code to open your system's colour picker. |
| Switch | Click to turn it on or off. |
| Choice | A row of buttons when there are a few short options, a dropdown when there are more. |
| Text | Type into the field. The piece follows as you type. |
| Button | Does something in the piece: a new seed, a reset, a burst of particles. |
A greyed-out control is one the piece has switched off for now, often because another control makes it irrelevant.
Folders
A piece with many controls groups them under headings such as Camera, Light or Colour, and a folder inside a folder shows as "Light / Sky". Click a heading to fold that group away. Folding only changes what you see; the controls keep working.
Randomize and reset
Two buttons sit beside the panel's heading.
- Randomize (the dice) gives every slider a new value, staying away from the very ends of its range, and flips some switches and choices. Colours, text and buttons are left as they are. Press it a few times to explore, and stop when something looks good.
- Reset to defaults (the curved arrow) puts every control back to the value the piece started with and clears your tweaks from the version. It's greyed out until something has changed.
How your tweaks are kept
Your settings are saved with the version on stage, not as a new version. A slider is kept when you let go of it, a colour once you stop moving in the picker, a switch or choice straight away, and text when you leave the field. Values that the piece's own buttons set, such as a new seed, are kept the same way.
- Each version has its own. Step back to an earlier version and its settings come back with it. See Versions and history.
- New versions carry them forward. When Perlin changes the piece, the new version starts with your settings, as long as it's in the same engine. Perlin is told where your controls are set when you ask for a change, so you can say "keep the colours as they are now".
- Everything else uses them. A share link, a published piece, a downloaded HTML file, a still and a render all show the controls as you left them.
Asking for controls
If a piece has no controls, or not the ones you want, ask for them in words: "add a slider for the speed and a colour for the background", "put the camera controls in their own folder", "add a button that scatters everything". Perlin adds them in a new version.
Recording changes as keyframes
With the Motion panel open (press M, on a desktop), its Record switch is on to begin with. While it's on, changing a control on the Timeline tab adds a keyframe at the playhead, and on the States tab it sets that value into the state you've selected. Turn Record off, or close the Motion panel, to tune without adding keyframes. Animating controls over time is covered in Keyframes and tracks.
Related
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