Design Studio

The Design Studio is where you make what the screen plays. A scene is the camera picture with things placed on the person: 3D objects on a hand or the head, particles born at a fingertip, light effects that trail the body, words. A story plays scenes one after another, each moving on when something happens: a time passes, someone raises a hand, someone touches an object.

Open it

Click Design Studio in the menu row. Any other item in the row is the way back.

It needs two things, both on the Tracking page:


Body landmarks on	The Design Studio places everything on the body, and nothing reaches it until this is on
Hand landmarks on	Only if your scene uses fingers or palms

Body landmarks stops the gestures while it is on. The cursor, the click, the wave and the rotate do not run in this mode. A screen driven by a Design Studio scene is driven by the body itself, not by a cursor.

What is on screen

The scene fills the window and the settings panel sits over it. Press Space to put the panel away and see the whole picture, and again to bring it back.


Scene and Story tabs	The scene you are building, or the storyboard
The bar across the top	Which scene is loaded, its name, Save, Duplicate, Delete, and Reload from disk
The layers, down the left	The background and camera picture first, then one card per layer. Every card has an on/off switch and a fade slider on its header, so you can mute a layer without opening it
output, top right	What the screen and the video stream are showing right now
camera, below it	The camera with the tracking drawn on it, so you can see what MoCat is finding

Make a scene

Pick a scene from the list, or Duplicate one to start from it.
Add a layer with the add bar, or Import from a scene to copy one layer out of another scene.
Open the layer and set where it sits: anchor it to a hand, the head, or another body point.
Set when it shows. Each trigger shows its live value beside it, so you can hold the gesture and watch the number before you choose the level.
Type a name and press Save.

Nothing is written until you press Save. Reload from disk, or the R key, throws away unsaved changes and brings the scene back as it was.

The layers

Layer	What it is
3D object	A shape or a model you loaded, placed on the body and triggered by a movement
Particle emitter	Points born on a body point and let go, drifting through a flow
Feedback effect	The camera picture fed back into itself: light trails, silhouette light, ghosts. Two can run at once, one as the back wall and one cut to the person or the room
Fluid	Smoke and dye stirred by the body and the outline of the person
Picture or video	A backdrop behind everything, or a piece in front
Words	Titles, captions and labels on the scene

Let the body drive a setting

Beside most sliders is a bind button. It ties that setting to a reading from the body: how far away the person is, how fast a wrist is moving, how wide the arms are spread, where a fingertip is on the screen, and more. Choose the reading and the two ends of the range, and the setting follows the person while they move. The readout shows the live value.

Stories

A story is a list of scenes. Open the Story tab, add the scene that is up to the storyboard, and set how each one moves on:

Moves on when
After a time	So many seconds after the scene comes up
A motion	A person arrives, a hand is raised, a palm opens, arms spread, and so on
An object in the scene	Someone touches it, holds it, points at it, or hits it with particles

Held is how long it must keep happening, so brushing past does nothing. Go to is which scene comes next, so a story can branch rather than only run in a line. From here plays the story from that step, and Open to edit stops the story and loads that scene so you can change it.

Stories are saved by name, like scenes, and one scene can be in several stories.

Play it on the screen

The Design Studio is where you build. The Content page is what decides what the audience sees:

Open Content.
Click Design Studio Content.
Pick your scene or story under Scene or Story.
Click Launch Screen With Content.

The choice takes effect the next time the content launches. With a scene already playing on the screen, save your change in the Design Studio and press R on the screen's window to reload it.

The video stream carries the scene too, with a transparent background when you set the camera picture's opacity to 0, so a scene can be composited over what your video software is already running. See Video Output.

The keys


Space	The settings panel, in and out of the way
R	Reload the scene from disk, losing unsaved changes
S	Save what is on screen as a picture, into your pictures folder, where every picture layer can then use it
H	A readout: frame rate, camera rate, which hands are found, live trigger values
Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z	Step back, and forward again. Fifty steps, while the page is open

Where your work is kept

Everything you make lives in Documents\MoCat\Design Studio:


`scenes\`	One file per scene
`stories\`	One file per story
`assets\3d\`	Models you added, `.glb` or `.gltf`
`assets\images\`, `assets\video\`	Pictures and videos you added

An update never overwrites these. See File Locations.

If it does not work

Problem	Cause	Fix
Nothing appears on the body	Body landmarks is off	Turn it on, on the Tracking page
The picture is there, the objects do not move	The camera cannot see enough of the person	Step back so the camera sees your upper body, and check Camera View
A layer's card says not connected in red	It points at a layer that is no longer in the scene	Choose another one in the row it names
The screen still plays the old version	The scene was saved after the screen opened it	Press R on the screen's window, or launch it again
Fingers do nothing	Hand landmarks is off	Turn it on, on the Tracking page

Next: Your MoCat Folder