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 |
| Icons | Icon set customization |
| Fonts | UI font settings |
| Orbit Preview | Camera, grid, lighting and background of the single-clip 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 |
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. In Lite both the preset and the overrides are capped at 128 px / 20 FPS - see Lite & Pro.
:::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 and are not rebindable here:
| Window | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Animation Workbench | Ctrl+Shift+A |
| Keyframe Editor | Ctrl+Shift+K |
| Characters | Ctrl+Shift+C |
| 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.