Skip to content

Settings

The Settings panel holds your editor preferences together with the settings of the open scene and project. This page describes how the panel is organised, what each page is for, and which other pages cover a topic in depth. It ends with a reference of the editor's keyboard shortcuts.

In short

Click the gear near the bottom of the side bar, or choose Edit → Settings, to open Settings as a tab in the Main zone. Application pages apply to every project, Scene pages are saved with the open scene, and Project pages are saved with the project. Change the size of the whole interface with UI Scale, or with Ctrl+=, Ctrl+- and Ctrl+0.

Opening Settings

  • Click Settings (the gear) near the bottom of the side bar. Click it again to close the panel. The button is lit while Settings is showing.
  • Choose Edit → Settings. The item is ticked while Settings is showing.

Settings opens as a tab in the Main zone, and you can also move it into a separate window (see Layouts and Docking). Some other parts of the editor open Settings at a particular page: Manage Layouts in the side bar's + menu opens Custom Layouts, for example.

The list on the left groups the pages under Application, Scene and Project. Click a group name to fold it away. Some pages have a documentation button next to their title that opens the matching page of these docs.

Group Pages Where the settings are kept
Application Editor, Scripting, Shortcuts, Custom Layouts On your computer, for your user account. They apply to every project.
Scene Time Runners, Scripts, Subsystems, Physics, Recorder, Execution Order In the open scene. Save the scene to keep your changes.
Project General, Renderer, Audio, Scripting, Log In the project, except where noted below.

Application settings

Editor

Setting Default What it does
Show Advanced Component Settings Off Shows extra, normally hidden component options in the Inspector. They are meant for troubleshooting.
Highlight Unset Meshes On Highlights, in orange in the Scene Hierarchy, entities that have a mesh component with no mesh assigned.
Instantiate Prefab On Creation On When you create a prefab from entities in the scene, replaces those entities with an instance of the new prefab.
UI Scale 100% Changes the size of all text and controls, from 75% to 250%. See UI scale.

The Gizmo Snap Values section sets how far the transform gizmo snaps while you hold Ctrl during a drag:

Setting Default
Translation Snap Value 0.5 (metres)
Rotation Snap Value 15 (degrees)
Scale Snap Value 0.1

Viewport Navigation covers the gizmo and snapping.

UI scale

UI Scale makes the whole editor interface larger or smaller. Besides the setting on the Editor page, you can use these shortcuts anywhere in the editor:

Shortcut Effect
Ctrl+= Increase the scale by 10 percentage points. Hold to keep increasing.
Ctrl+- Decrease the scale by 10 percentage points. Hold to keep decreasing.
Ctrl+0 Reset the scale to 100%.

The scale stays between 75% and 250% and is remembered the next time you start the editor.

Application scripting

The Scripting page of the Application group shows Show Hidden Fields and Debugger Listening Port, but neither has any effect in this release. The settings for your project's C# scripts are on the Project → Scripting page.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is a read-only quick reference. Click a category on the left, Editor, Viewport, Content Browser or MuJoCo, to list its keys and what they do. The Keyboard shortcuts section of this page lists the editor-wide shortcuts with more detail on where each one works, and Viewport Navigation covers the viewport keys.

Custom Layouts

Custom Layouts lists every custom layout you have made, in all your projects, sorted by name.

Control What it does
Load from File... Adds a layout from a .hlayout file.
Icon button Opens the icon picker for the layout.
Name field Renames the layout.
In this project Shown for layouts that are on the side bar of the open project.
Save button (Save to File...) Saves the layout to a .hlayout file. The file dialog starts in the project's Layouts folder.
Delete Deletes the layout from every project, after you confirm Delete name?.

Layouts and Docking explains custom layouts and how to share them.

Scene settings

Scene settings belong to the open scene and are saved in the scene file, so different scenes can step time, run physics and record data differently.

Time Runners

Scene Time Mode chooses how the scene steps time: Game Realtime (Non-Deterministic), Sim Realtime (Deterministic Capped) or Sim High Perf. (Deterministic Uncapped). In the high-performance mode, Disable Viewport Rendering skips drawing the viewport while the simulation runs. Strict UI Responsiveness and Strict UI Framerate keep the editor responsive during fast simulations. Below them is the list of time runners, each with its own rate. Click Add Time Runner to add one; a scene can have up to eight.

The Time Manager explains time modes and runners.

Scripts

Scripts turns each of the C# script update methods on or off: OnPreUpdate, OnUpdate, OnPhysicsUpdate, OnLateUpdate and OnPostUpdate, one for each phase of a simulation step (Enable OnUpdate Scripts, and so on). For each one it also chooses the time runner it runs on, its Execution Phase, and its Internal Phase Priority, which orders it among the other systems in that phase: lower numbers run first. Enable Free Step Update Scripts turns on the updates that follow the screen's refresh rate instead of the simulation.

See Phases and Time Runners.

Subsystems

Subsystems turns the engine's per-step systems on or off and chooses the time runner, Execution Phase and Internal Phase Priority of each one:

Setting What it is for
Enable External Action Gate (gRPC Sync) Keeps the simulation in step with an external client that sends actions over gRPC. Watchdog Timeout (s) stops the scene if no action arrives for that long, Warning Threshold (s) sets when the gRPC panel starts warning that it is waiting for the client, and Reset Settle Steps lets the robot settle after a reset before actions are accepted. See gRPC API.
Enable Update RobotControllers Updates robot controllers each step: motion graphs, inverse kinematics and joint control. See Robots.
Enable Update Animation Updates animated meshes.
Enable Update AudioScene Subsystem Updates spatial audio.
Enable Sync Point System Marks sync points at the rate of its time runner. Scripts can wait for one before resetting and starting an episode, so that the reset and the first recorded frame land on the same step. See The Time Manager.

Physics

Physics enables the physics engines the scene uses and sets how they run, with Enable Box2D Physics, Enable Jolt Physics and Enable MuJoCo Physics. Box2D handles 2D physics, Jolt handles 3D rigid bodies that aren't part of a MuJoCo model, and MuJoCo handles robots and other MuJoCo models. Each enabled engine runs on the time runner you choose for it.

For MuJoCo, Perf Mode chooses how its steps fit into the simulation step:

Perf Mode What it does
Quality: Phase Separated Splits MuJoCo's work across the phases of the step, so other systems can act between them.
Balance: True Steps Runs MuJoCo's work in one phase, still as separate steps, so other systems can act between them.
Performance: Substeps Runs several MuJoCo substeps inside each step, without interruption. Set how many with Substeps.

Under Simulation Math, the page shows the resulting Base Runner Hz, Effective Physics Hz and XML Timestep.

The Convex Decomposition settings control how mesh colliders are split into convex hulls for MuJoCo:

  • Decomposed Colliders shows how many of the scene's decomposed colliders are up to date, out of date or not baked yet. Bake Out of Date bakes the ones that need it, and Rebake All recomputes all of them.
  • Default Backend chooses CoACD or V-HACD for colliders that don't choose their own, and Reset n to Scene Default makes every collider follow it again.
  • Concurrent Mesh Baking bakes several meshes at once.
  • The CoACD Preset and V-HACD Preset buttons set the scene-wide quality, from fine and slow to coarse and fast. Scene Limits caps the quality individual colliders can ask for.
  • Clear Bake Cache deletes cached results so the next bake recomputes them. Delete All Hull Assets deletes every baked hull in the project; click it twice to confirm.

Decomposing a mesh collider

Without decomposition, a MuJoCo Mesh Collider collides as the convex hull of its whole mesh: one closed piece, drawn as MuJoCo mesh (one hull) in the viewport's Colliders view. That suits convex objects, but a bowl, a cup or a track loses its hollow. The Physics Decomposition component splits the mesh into several convex hulls instead. A mesh collider you add with Add Component comes with it, but objects added with the viewport's + (Create) button don't: click Add Physics Decomposition in the collider's Inspector to add it. On a Procedural Mesh, Convex Decomposition adds the component when you turn it on and removes it when you turn it off.

  • Override Backend lets this entity use a different Decomposer, CoACD or V-HACD, from the scene's Default Backend. CoACD needs a closed mesh and hands any other mesh to V-HACD; the component then also shows Fallback Voxel Resolution.
  • Threshold (CoACD) sets how closely the hulls follow the surface. Lower values are more accurate, with more hulls and a longer bake: 0.05 is coarse and quick, 0.02 suits rolling contact and 0.01 is near exact. With V-HACD, Voxel Resolution sets the level of detail instead; higher is finer.
  • Max Hulls (-1 = auto) caps the number of hulls. At -1, CoACD decides for itself and V-HACD uses 64. If the hulls fill in a groove, raise it.
  • Max Vertices/Hull caps the vertices of each hull. Fewer vertices make collisions cheaper; 64 to 256 is typical.
  • Convex Padding pushes every hull face outwards by this distance, in mesh units. It helps stop objects passing through thin parts, but lifts resting and rolling objects by the same amount; 0 keeps the hulls exact.
  • Min Hull Volume (%) drops sliver hulls smaller than this share of the total volume. The largest hull always stays.

The component shows whether its hulls are baked and up to date. Click Bake to bake them now; pressing Play also bakes hulls that are missing or out of date. When the settings no longer match the stored hulls, Keep Stored Hulls changes the settings back to the ones the hulls were baked with, so the hulls count as up to date without a bake.

With V-HACD, Detail Regions are boxes in which the mesh is decomposed in finer detail. Add Detail Region adds one, and Add Region From Last Hit centres one where you last clicked this entity's mesh in the viewport. Each region has a Center, Half Extents, Rotation and a Resolution Multiplier from 1 to 16 that sets how much finer it is. The collider view draws the regions, in edit mode, as Detail regions.

To go back to a single hull, remove the component, then click Clear Baked Hulls on the collider. Until you clear them, the collider keeps using the hulls it was baked into.

Recorder

Recorder configures data recording for the scene, on the General, Session, Data, Video and Lidar tabs. Recording describes every tab, and the Sensors pages cover camera and lidar bindings.

Execution Order

Execution Order is a read-only overview of the systems that run during a simulation step with the current settings, grouped by phase, with the priority, time runner and rate of each entry. Within a phase, systems run in order of Internal Phase Priority, lowest first, and the page sorts them the same way, though systems with the same priority may be listed in a different order from the one they run in. See Order within a phase.

Project settings

General

The top of the page shows the project's name and folders. Below them:

Setting Default What it does
Auto-save active scene On Saves a backup copy of the open scene at a regular interval.
Auto save interval (seconds) 60 How often the backup is written, from 60 to 7200 seconds.
Startup Scene The scene the project opens with. File → Set Scene as Startup sets it to the open scene.

The auto-save backup is written next to the scene file, with .auto added to its name, and only for scenes that have been saved at least once. Your scene file itself is only changed when you save. If you open a scene whose backup is newer, the editor opens the backup and shows Loaded newer auto-saved scene. Use File > Revert to Saved to discard changes.

Renderer

Setting Default What it does
Compute HDR Environment Maps On Turns HDR environment maps into lighting when they load.
Environment Map Size 1024 Resolution of the environment map used for lighting, from 128 to 4096.
Irradiance Map Compute Samples 512 Samples used to compute the diffuse environment lighting.

These values apply to the current session only and return to their defaults the next time you start the editor. The render mode and the other render settings are covered in Rendering.

Audio

Stream files longer than (seconds) sets the length above which audio files are streamed from disk instead of loaded into memory. The default is 30 seconds, and the minimum is 2. The Master Reverb section adjusts the master reverb. Its values are saved with the open scene, not with the project.

Scripting

Setting What it does
Script Module Path The folder the compiled script assembly is written to, Assets/Scripts/Binaries by default. Read-only on this page.
Default Namespace The namespace added to new C# scripts. Dots are allowed for grouping, for example MyProject.Robots.
Script Assembly Name The name of the compiled script assembly, which becomes its .dll file name. It must be a valid C# identifier, without spaces or dots.
Automatically Reload Assembly Has no effect in this release. Scripts always reload after a build.

After you change the assembly name, the page shows Scripts must be rebuilt for this change to take effect. and a Build C# Assembly button. See Creating and Building Scripts.

Log

Log lists every log tag. Tick a tag to log its messages, and choose the lowest level it reports: Trace, Info, Warn, Error or Fatal. Tags without a preset level report from Info up. Reset to Default restores the defaults for every tag.

The project saves only the tags you have changed, so tags you never touched pick up any new defaults in later versions of the editor.

Keyboard shortcuts

These shortcuts work across the editor. Shortcuts for the viewport, such as the transform tool keys, are listed in Viewport Navigation and The Viewport.

Shortcut Action Notes
F5 Play, or Stop while playing Not while typing, and not in the Content Browser or File Tree, where F5 refreshes. Doesn't stop a paused scene: click Stop.
Alt+P Play, or Stop while playing While a Scene viewport or the Scene Hierarchy has focus. Doesn't stop a paused scene.
Alt+C Switch between the scene's camera and the free editor camera During Play or Pause.
Esc Release the mouse pointer During Play.
Esc Deselect everything While a Scene viewport or the Scene Hierarchy has focus.
Del Delete the selected entities While a Scene viewport or the entity tree of the Scene Hierarchy has focus.
Ctrl+D Duplicate the selected entities While a Scene viewport or the entity tree of the Scene Hierarchy has focus, and not during Play.
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V Copy and paste entities While a Scene viewport or the entity tree of the Scene Hierarchy has focus, and not during Play.
Ctrl+Z Undo
Ctrl+Y, Ctrl+Shift+Z Redo
Ctrl+S Save the scene and the project In a Text Editor tab, saves that file instead.
Ctrl+Shift+S Save the scene under a new name The same as File → Save Scene As....
Ctrl+O Open a project
Ctrl+B Build the C# assembly Ctrl+Shift+B doesn't build: in a Scene viewport, it shows or hides bounding boxes.
Ctrl+/ Open the selected entity's C# script With no script selected, switches between the last open Text Editor tab and the Scene viewport.
Ctrl+5 Show or hide the Log panel In the Scene layout, where the Log can't be closed, it brings the Log to the front.
Ctrl+=, Ctrl+- Increase or decrease the UI scale Hold to repeat.
Ctrl+0 Reset the UI scale to 100%
Tab Hide or show the side zones (Fullscreen) While a Scene viewport has focus.
Ctrl+End Jump to the end of a list, such as the Log
Middle-click a tab Close the tab

A Scene viewport has focus after you click in it. The entity tree of the Scene Hierarchy has focus after you click a row or empty space in the tree, not the components below it. The entity shortcuts (Ctrl+D, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Del, Ctrl+Z and redo) don't act on entities while you are typing in a text field, and the Content Browser has its own Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+D for assets (see Assets). Use the left Ctrl, Alt and Shift keys for the shortcuts in this table: several of them, such as Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z and Alt+P, don't respond to the right-hand keys.

Where to go next