Toolbar
The toolbar resides at the top of Studio. The buttons and tools visible in the bar change when you click on the Home, Model, Avatar, Test, View, and Plugins tabs.
The Home tab contains basic tools for manipulating 3D objects and testing your experience.
The Model tab contains tools for manipulating 3D objects in the workspace, creating detailed models, working with physical constraints, and adding advanced objects.
The Avatar tab contains specialized tools for creating and fitting accessories, importing custom meshes, building default rigs, and creating animations.
The Test tab contains tools for testing an experience, simulating multiple clients, and emulating different devices.
The View tab lets you toggle the various windows of Studio, as well as several display features.
3D Viewport
The 3D viewport represents the Workspace of a place. From here, you can move the camera around the virtual world, manipulate objects with the mouse, and playtest an experience without leaving Studio.
Camera Controls
Inside the viewport, you can move the camera with the following controls. See also Studio Shortcuts for additional key shortcuts.
Keys/Shortcuts | Action |
---|---|
W A S D | Moves the camera forward/left/back/right. |
Q E | Moves the camera down/up. |
Shift | In combination with any movement key, changes the camera speed. If desired, you can customize the camera speed within Studio's settings. |
F | Focuses the camera on a selected part. |
Right Mouse Button | When pressed, dragging the mouse moves the camera view around. |
Mouse Scroll Wheel | Zooms the camera in or out. |
Middle Mouse Button | When pressed, dragging the mouse pans the camera. |
Right Mouse Button & Mouse Scroll Wheel | Pressing the right mouse button and scrolling the mouse wheel up increases the camera scroll speed. Conversely, pressing the right mouse button and scrolling the mouse wheel down reduces the camera scroll speed. |
Selecting Objects
As you hover over parts and models in the viewport, they are outlined to indicate their potential selection. You can select an outlined object by clicking it, or you can select multiple objects by holding Shift, Ctrl, or ⌘ as you hover over and click them.
Selection Cycling
In more complex environments or when zoomed in, objects will commonly be hidden from your view by other objects in front. To select hidden objects without moving the camera around, hold Alt or ⌥ and click to perform selection cycling to the next further object behind the currently selected object.
Children or Parents
When one or more objects or models are selected in the Explorer window, you can select all of their children by right-clicking and choosing Select Children from the context menu. Similarly, right-clicking and choosing Select Parent(s) selects the direct parents of those objects.
Selection Style
To display outlines and/or bounding boxes around selected objects, choose an option from the Selection Style menu in the View tab.
Visualization Options
In the upper-right corner of the 3D viewport, you can quickly toggle or set common visualization options related to on‑screen UI overlays, light sources, physics simulation, character pathfinding, and more. The menu also contains a control for viewing/setting the camera scroll speed.
Commonly Used Windows
You can toggle on commonly used windows through the View tab, including the Explorer window, Properties window, Asset Manager, Toolbox, and many others.
Explorer
The Explorer window, visible by default, shows a hierarchical list of every object and service inside the place, collectively referred to as its data model. Frequently used services in the hierarchy include Workspace which mirrors the 3D viewport, as well as ReplicatedStorage and ServerStorage.
Properties
The Properties window lets you adjust properties of a selected object to change how it looks and behaves. Object properties are divided into sections; for example, a MeshPart includes sections like Appearance which allows you to change its color, material, transparency, and more.
At the bottom of the window, you can define custom attributes for an object, similar to its default properties. Attributes and their values are saved with your place/assets and they're an ideal way for team members to experiment with different values during runtime, even if they don't understand the underlying code.
Asset Manager
The Asset Manager lets you manage places, images, meshes, packages, audio, and models in your experience. It also provides a mechanism to bulk import large groups of assets.
Toolbox
The Toolbox contains a selection of models, images, meshes, audio, plugins, videos, and fonts made by Roblox or Roblox community members. It also includes all of the creations that you've personally distributed on the Creator Store or those which were distributed by groups you belong to.
Output Window
The Output window, accessible from the View tab, displays errors captured from running scripts, messages from Roblox engine, messages from calls to print(), and errors from calls to warn(). See Output Window for further details.
Command Bar
The Command Bar, accessible from the View tab, lets you execute Luau code outside of scripts. Similar to a terminal, pressing ↑ or ↓ while using the command bar navigates up and down among previously-executed commands. Clicking the small arrow on the right side similarly reveals a list of previously-executed commands.
Customizing the Layout
Studio's drag-and-drop interface lets you easily customize window layout to best suit your workflows.
Repositioning Windows
You can reposition any window by click-dragging its header bar. As you begin dragging the window, the interface reveals empty docking area regions. If you drag the mouse pointer into any empty region, a floating position selector appears in that region. Dragging the pointer over the "center" of the floating selector targets the empty region as the dragged window's destination, indicated by the region darkening and becoming outlined.
If you drag the mouse pointer into a populated region such as the 3D viewport, a floating position selector appears with multiple options for the window's destination. For example, dragging the pointer over the "left" icon will position the window on the region's left side.
Grouping Windows
If you drag a window into a populated region and choose the "center" icon of the position selector, the dragged window will group into that region as a tab. This allows you to set up tab groups of commonly used windows.
Pinning Windows
To maximize screen space for the 3D viewport, you can pin windows (or an entire group of windows) to the edges of the overall Studio window. Once pinned, you can temporarily open any window by clicking its tab — this does not disturb other windows, and the expanded window will automatically collapse when you click in another window or click its tab again.
To pin a window or an entire group of windows, click the "collapse" button. Alternatively, to un‑pin a pinned window/group, open it by clicking its tab, then click the "expand" button.
Floating Windows
To float a window freely of other windows, simply drag‑and‑drop it without selecting any icon from the floating position selector.
Saving & Publishing
Options to save and publish can be found in the File menu in the top left of Studio.
Option | Action |
---|---|
Save to File | Save the experience locally to your computer in .rbxl format. |
Save to Roblox | Save the experience to Roblox's cloud storage. Unlike Publish to Roblox, this does not update the current live version of the experience. |
Publish to Roblox | Save and publish the experience to Roblox so other users can play. For more information, see Publishing Experiences and Places. |
In-Studio Testing
Studio offers a suite of options for testing an experience before releasing it to the public. All of the testing options are accessible from the Test tab.
- Rapid Playtesting — Provides a close simulation of the experience running on the Roblox application.
- Multi-Client Simulation — Compares how each client "sees" other clients within the experience.
- Device Emulation — Provides insight on how controls operate on a mobile device or how on-screen UI displays on different screens and aspect ratios.
- Controller Emultation — Accurately emulates gamepad input directly in Studio.
See Studio Testing Modes for more information on each testing option.