Settings Reference
Tools → Animation Workbench → Settings, or the gear in the Workbench toolbar.
Twelve categories down the left side, in four groups: the modes, the look, the previews, and the rest. Everything is stored in assets under Assets/Settings/AnimationWorkbench/, so settings travel with the project - check that folder into version control if the team should share them.
| Category | What lives there |
|---|---|
| Keyframe Editor | How keyframes look, and how the editor behaves while you work |
| Pose Edit | Bone display, focus, click handling, scene background |
| Rig Edit | What Rig Edit asks before it writes, and how its handle snaps |
| Unity Integration | What the Workbench adds to Unity's inspectors, project browser and scene view |
| Appearance | The editor colour theme, and how much the interface moves |
| Icons | Icon set customization |
| Fonts | UI font settings |
| Orbit Preview | Camera, grid, lighting and background of the Keyframe Editor's preview |
| Thumbnails | Quality preset, cache, overrides |
| External Assets | Animation folders outside Assets/, and the Asset Inventory bridge |
| Hotkeys | Every rebindable shortcut |
| System | RAM and disk usage, and the first-run reset |
Appearance
- Theme - the colour scheme of every Workbench window.
- Reduce Motion - turns off interface animation: the Dopesheet → Curve View morph, transitions in the Scene view, the strip at the bottom sliding in, thumbnails fading in, and the Community view's cards flying and popping in. Clip previews keep playing - they are the content, not a transition. Stored per user in EditorPrefs rather than in the project, since whether motion bothers you depends on you, not on the project.
Thumbnails
Thumbnail cost is picked as a quality preset rather than a raw resolution. Each preset sets both resolution and frame rate:
| Preset | Resolution | FPS |
|---|---|---|
| High Performance | 64 px | 15 |
| Performance (default) | 96 px | 15 |
| Balanced | 128 px | 20 |
| Quality | 192 px | 20 |
| High Quality | 256 px | 25 |
Resolution and FPS can be overridden individually if a preset does not fit, up to 512 px and 60 FPS.
:::note Thumbnails render one at a time
There is no "parallel renderers" setting. Preview rendering is serialized on purpose: it shares one preview scene and Unity's global AnimationMode, and the render plus GPU readback only run on the main thread. Turning it into a queue and giving that queue an adaptive time budget did far more for scroll smoothness than any parallelism could.
:::
Cache levels
| Cache | Lives | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | Session | Instant redraw for recently shown clips |
| GPU | Session | Render textures for what is on screen |
| Disk | Persistent | Library/AWAnimationPreviewCache/ |
The disk cache sits in Library/, so it is machine-local and should not be committed. Deleting it costs nothing but re-rendering time.
Hotkeys
Every binding below is rebindable under Settings → Hotkeys. These are the defaults.
Keyframe Editor
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Play / pause preview | Space |
| Create keyframe(s) at current time | Ctrl+K |
| Snap selection to grid | S |
| Delete selected keyframes | Delete |
| Copy / Cut / Paste | Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V |
| Paste at original times | Ctrl+Shift+V |
| Duplicate events | Ctrl+D |
| Select all | F |
| Undo / Redo | Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y |
| Save version | Ctrl+S |
| Reset editor | Ctrl+R |
| Reload active version | Ctrl+Alt+R |
| Toggle Pose Edit (stage character) | Ctrl+L |
| Toggle Scene Edit (character in the scene) | Ctrl+Shift+L |
Animation Layers
One family on Ctrl+Alt, so they can be remembered as a group rather than seven separate cases.
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Add layer | Ctrl+Alt+N |
| Activate layer below / above | Ctrl+Alt+A / Ctrl+Alt+D |
| Mute / unmute active layer | Ctrl+Alt+H |
| Solo active layer | Ctrl+Alt+S |
| Copy / paste layer | Ctrl+Alt+C / Ctrl+Alt+V |
:::caution Careful when rebinding onto Ctrl+Alt
On Windows, AltGr is identical to Ctrl+Alt. Where AltGr+key produces a character on your keyboard layout, the event arrives as text input and the key code is no longer the letter - the shortcut then never fires. On the German T1 layout that hits Q (@), E (€) and M (µ). Pick a key that carries no AltGr character on your layout.
:::
Pose Edit (scene overlay)
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Play / pause preview | Space |
| Previous / next frame | Ctrl+Q / Ctrl+E |
| Previous / next keyframe | Ctrl+Shift+Q / Ctrl+Shift+E |
| Toggle IK / FK mode | Tab |
| Cycle mirror modes | Shift+Tab |
| Pin / unpin active IK chain | P |
| Move pin anchor to current pose | Shift+P |
| Apply pending changes | Ctrl+Space |
| Discard pending changes | Backspace |
| Pose tool: Move / Rotate / Scale | W / E / R |
| Extend / shorten IK chain | + / - |
| Toggle motion trail | Ctrl+T |
| Lock trail to current bone | Shift+T |
| Cycle mesh / skeleton view | Ctrl+M |
| Toggle grid | Ctrl+G |
| Cycle camera focus | Ctrl+C |
| Reset camera | Ctrl+R |
Window shortcuts
These are Unity menu shortcuts: change or add them in Unity's Edit → Shortcuts, under Main Menu › Tools › Animation Workbench.
| Window | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Animation Workbench | Ctrl+Shift+W |
| Keyframe Editor | Ctrl+Shift+K |
| Characters | - |
| Audio Library | Ctrl+Shift+X |
System
- Debug logging - raises the console verbosity of the whole package. Off by default; the level is remembered in EditorPrefs and survives recompiles.
- Reset - restores settings to defaults. Scoped, so you can reset one area without losing the rest.