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The Discover Page

Step one in any Maxon Studio experience is accessing the tool. In After Effects, you’ll find this under the Window menu rather than under Effect, where many other Maxon products live.

Alternatively, use the default shortcut combo Ctrl+Alt+Space (Windows) or Ctrl+Option+Space (Mac) to launch Studio.

Once in Studio, you’ll likely encounter a view something like this:

1. The Discover tab. Click this whenever you want to return to this “home” space and your capsule gallery.
2. Back and Forward. Just like in your web browser, use these buttons to “rewind” and advance through your recent steps in Studio.
3. The Search bar. Studio capsules have associated keyword tags, such as “text” and “colorful.” These tags are also tied to a range of synonyms and other similar terms. The Find bar isn’t a universal search tool. Rather, it’s streamlined to target terms most pertinent to capsules.
4. Categories. Instantly focus in on the type of capsule you want populating your gallery with these top-level terms.
5. Banners. When you have hundreds of capsules at your fingertips, how are you supposed to spot notable newcomers? With banners! Capsule creators design these banners, which automatically rotate into circulation atop the Studio UI.
6. The capsule gallery. Whatever capsules apply to the sorting criteria you’ve selected will display in the gallery as thumbnail previews. Most will animate if you pause your mouse over them. With no sorting criteria selected (such as a category or tags), all capsules will display in one scrollable stream.

Some of these elements lead to additional on-screen items, so let’s work our way through.

The Discover page defaults to having the All Capsules category selected (as shown above, left). However, when we select another category, such as Text (above, right), a listing of subcategories appears between the banner and gallery areas (below). You can select more than one subcategory at a time.

A circular, counterclockwise-pointing arrow appears to the right of this subcategory bar once you select a subcategory. This is the Revert button, which erases your subcategory selections.

Similarly, look at the Search bar. If we search for the word “slideshow,” for instance, a list of possible capsule tag matches appears under the bar. When we select the desired tag, it shows that tag atop the gallery, as shown below. (You can find and select multiple tags.) The tag(s) then serve as a filter for your results in the capsule gallery. To erase tags, either click the x symbol on each tag or click the Revert icon to reset to the Discover page’s default state.

Just as access to subcategories sits above the gallery, the Filter menu (also shown above) awaits to the left of the subcategories list. Filters, such as Favorites or Recently Applied, are yet another way to divide the capsule gallery into smaller, more convenient chunks.

Capsule Thumbnails and Profiles

As discussed earlier, the Discover page houses the capsule gallery, which is loaded with capsule thumbnails. When you hover over a thumbnail, it will animate to provide a preview of the capsule’s action (assuming the underlying capsule contains keyframed action). Additionally, you can interact with any of three buttons that appear when you hover over each preview.

1. The Favorite button marks selected capsules as favorites. You can then use the Filter function to isolate your chosen favorites in the gallery, like so:
   
   Note that filter selections do not reset when you change categories. Thus, as per the above image, if your only favorites are backgrounds, then you switch to the Text category, for instance, your gallery will show no previews. That’s because the Favorites filter is still selected. Be sure to change to a different filter (especially All Capsules) to see full gallery results.
   
2. The Apply button applies that specific capsule to your project. Remember that you can apply multiple capsules per project, although each will add to the load on your system resources.
3. The Download button downloads the capsule’s data from the cloud to your local system. The following image shows the difference between a downloaded capsule, which displays a check mark, to an unloaded one.
   

Note that a warning (shown below) will display if you attempt to apply a capsule without an active license for the underlying Maxon tools.

When you click a capsule's Apply button, Studio needs a composition to which it can apply the capsule. If you haven't yet created a comp, no worries — Studio is ready to help! As shown below, Studio prompts to confirm that you want to create a composition layer, if needed. The capsule then appears as a layer on your timeline, and Studio pops up a confirmation message stating that the capsule has been applied.

The Profile Panel

When you click any thumbnail in the preview gallery, the action opens the Profile Panel, your gateway to the capsule’s hidden info. The Profile Panel will either appear on the right side of your Studio interface or fill the interface if you've sufficiently narrowed its dimensions. (See Studio's Dynamic User Interface for more about this.)

1. The capsule’s title and creator. Use these to help with your capsule organization and sourcing, respectively.
2. Capsule preview. If you liked the thumbnail in the gallery, you’ll love this larger version, if only because it now includes…
3. Playback controls. Use the Play/Pause icons and playhead to assess pieces or individual frames within the preview. At the right edge of these controls, the Expand button allows the preview to fill the Maxon Studio interface, even to the point of swallowing the leftmost page and Settings icons. Be aware that the capsule creator may have designed the preview for a lower resolution than a full-window resizing.
4. Capsule buttons. Remember those three buttons we discussed above — Favorite, Download, and Apply? Here they are again, even bigger and better. Note that, once applied, the Apply Button turns into an Edit button and an Apply Again icon () appears next to the blue check. When you have more than one instance of a capsule, a pull-down menu will display to the right of the Edit button, allowing you to select which instance you wish to modify.
5. Details. The Capsule Type correlates to the Category filters we discussed earlier. The About section can give additional information and/or tips from the capsule creator.
6. Tags are the metadata strings Studio uses to guide Find bar results. If you’re stuck on what to look up in a Find operation, you might find some ideas by examining the tags provided in similar capsules.