Docs / Getting started / The tool window

The tool window

A map of the numbered workflow cards, and what the Animatica Timeline is for.

The window docks natively into the 3ds Max main window, and Max restores its dock position across sessions. Text fields inside it are flagged so Max's single-key hotkeys do not swallow your typing — you can type a prompt containing any letter without the viewport reacting.

The Animatica tool window as it opens on a fresh install, in the Compact layout: the header with the Compact / Full switch and the Timeline button, then the Model, Skeleton, Text to Motion and Single Pose cards, with the Skeleton pill reading "not created".

#The cards

Everything is one scrolling column of collapsible, numbered cards. The numbers are the workflow order, not a hierarchy.

Card	Purpose	Where it is
00 · Model	Which model generates, and the knobs only that model has	In the column
01 · Skeleton	Create, adopt, pick or delete the rig	In the column
02 · Motion Import	Load motion from a file on disk	Its own window — Animatica ▸ Open Motion Import…
03 · Text to Motion	Generation parameters, output placement, constraints, and the Generate button	In the column
04 · Single Pose	One pose at the current frame	In the column
05 · Console	The log every other window writes to	Its own window — Animatica ▸ Console…

Settings is not a card here. It opens as a separate window from the Animatica menu, and shares this window's state. Two more windows open the same way: the Console and Motion Import. Every one of them reads and writes the same state as the column, so a rig loaded in Motion Import is the rig the Skeleton card shows.

#Compact and Full

The column has two layouts, switched with the Compact / Full control in the header row. Compact is how a fresh install opens: each card keeps its workflow controls and folds away the knobs, so what is left on screen is pick a rig, write a prompt, Generate. Full shows everything.

The same tool window in the Full layout: the Skeleton card gains the canonical filter, the create-on-generate checkbox and the Adopt button, and Text to Motion shows its General, Advanced and Output Target groups.

What Compact folds, card by card:

Card	Hidden in Compact
Model	Nothing — it is the first thing the workflow asks for
Skeleton	The canonical filter, Create new skeleton on generate, and Adopt
Text to Motion	The whole Advanced group, and the Ground and Layer & Rig blocks of Output Target. Placement stays, because where the motion lands is a workflow question
Constraints	Convert Animkeys, the keyframe row, the two path display switches and the Prev / Next buttons
Single Pose	Use current position, Auto apply as constraint and Key pose

Three things make the switch safe to flip:

Nothing is reset. A hidden control keeps whatever you set through it, and keeps working. Compact is show/hide only.
Hidden is not silent. In Compact, a line under Generate Motion names any folded-away setting that still differs from its default — "2 hidden options differ from defaults: Num samples = 4, Match scene FPS = off — switch to Full to review" — so a stale knob cannot tint a generation unnoticed. The line is absent when everything is at its default.
Two windows, two switches. The Settings window has a Compact / Full switch of its own, on its own remembered flag, so folding the column leaves Settings as it was. The Animatica Timeline is never compacted.

Both choices are remembered per host. Unlike the other hosts, there is no menu item for the toggle — the two switches are the only way, on purpose.

The Animatica tool window with every section expanded: Model, Skeleton, and Text to Motion with its General, Advanced and Output Target groups, the collapsed Constraints sub-card, the Generate Motion button, and Single Pose at the bottom.

Many groups carry their own Reset, scoped to the fields that group owns — resetting Advanced restores its parameters but deliberately leaves the group's enable toggle alone, so a reset does not collapse the panel you are editing.

#The Animatica Timeline

The timeline has no home inside the panel. It lives in a floating window that opens by itself the first time the tool window is shown, and is re-opened from the Timeline button in the top right of the window header. Closing it hides it — your prompts are not lost.

It is where the work is authored in time:

Prompt blocks. Press Add Prompt, or double-click empty space to create a block and edit it straight away. Drag a block to move it, drag its edge to resize. One generation builds a single request out of every block on the ruler.
Constraint pins. Six quick-add buttons in the header capture a constraint of their type at the playhead; pins then sit on the ruler and their markers in the viewport, in matching colours.
The header also carries the skeleton selector with Add — the same picker as in card 01 · Skeleton, kept in lock-step with it — plus Convert Animkeys, an inline pose prompt with Pose, Generate, Save Prompts / Load Prompts, the zoom controls and the mode readout, which reads Replace.
One ruler per rig. Prompts and pins belong to the rig picked in the skeleton selector. Switch rigs and the ruler switches with them; delete a rig and its prompts and pins go with it.

The scene range is yours — the timeline follows the scene's range and frame rate live, and Animatica never writes the scene range back.

Prompts travel inside the .max file: they are stored on the scene root in a binary-safe slot that survives save and load. Save Prompts and Load Prompts additionally write them to, and read them from, a file of their own, which is useful for moving a set of prompts between scenes.

#When a button seems to do nothing

Open the Console. Most failures are logged there as a line rather than raised at you, and nothing is lost by opening it late — the main window logs whether or not the Console has ever been opened, and the buffer is replayed when it opens.