The Workspace¶

Select an animation or frame to show its settings in the Inspector.

Panel Layout¶

Once a character is open, the window is divided into five areas:

Area	Position	What it holds
Animations	Left, top	The animation list, with a search box, + (add), - (delete) and the 🏠 home button.
All Sprites	Left, bottom	Every sprite available to this character, with a search box. Drag from here into the timeline.
Preview	Centre	The current frame, drawn with its boxes, pivot and weapon point. This is where you drag things.
Timeline	Bottom	The frames of the selected animation, in order, plus the Play button.
Inspector	Right	Every setting for whatever is currently selected. Its contents change with your selection.

The 🏠 button closes the current character and returns to the startup screen. Normal edits save automatically.

Preview Mouse Controls¶

The preview is a zoomable canvas, not a fixed image.

Input	Action
Wheel up / down	Zoom in / out by 10% per notch, centred on the mouse pointer.
Right-drag or Middle-drag	Pan the view.
Left-drag on empty space	Pan the view.
Left-click on empty space	Deselect / select whatever is under the pointer.
Left-drag on a gizmo	Move or resize it (see below).

Because a left-drag on empty space pans, the editor distinguishes a click from a drag by distance: if you press and release without moving far, it is treated as a click and selects; if you move, it pans.

Reading the Cursor¶

The pointer tells you what you are about to grab before you press the button. This is the fastest way to avoid dragging the wrong thing:

Cursor	Meaning
Pointing hand	Over the pivot handle, or over the character sprite.
Move (four arrows)	Over the body of a box, or the weapon point — dragging moves the whole thing.
Horizontal / vertical resize	Over a box edge — dragging resizes in that one direction.
Diagonal resize	Over a box corner — dragging resizes both directions.

If you see no special cursor, the overlays are probably hidden. Turn Logic back on.

Gizmos in the Preview¶

Gizmo	Appearance	Drag behaviour
Pivot	Small magenta square	Moves the sprite's pivot. Dragging up moves the pivot up.
Body boxes	Blue rectangles	Move by the body, resize by edges and corners.
Hit boxes	Coloured rectangles	Same as body boxes.
Weapon point	Cyan marker	Drag the marker to move it; drag the rotation handle to change Direction.
Opponent	The held opponent's sprite	Drag to set the opponent offset for this frame.

Weapon direction snaps to the nearest of the available directions as you rotate, rather than being free-angle.

Along the top of the preview:

Ghost — shows a faded copy of the previous frame's sprite behind the current one, so you can line up movement between frames.
Base — shows the sprite the reference character uses for this frame, faded behind the current one, as a guide for matching the original artwork.
Alpha (the number next to Base, e.g. 0.45) — how visible the reference artwork is, from 0.1 for barely visible to 1 for fully opaque.
Logic — shows or hides all the editing overlays: hit boxes, body boxes, the pivot handle, the weapon point and the opponent preview. Turn it off to judge the artwork on its own.

Keyboard Shortcuts¶

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Previous / next animation.
← / →	Previous / next frame.
Space	Play or stop the animation.
Ctrl+C	Copy the current selection.
Ctrl+V	Paste.
Ctrl+S	Save.
Delete	Delete the current selection.

Two things about these shortcuts are worth knowing, because they are not obvious:

They are context-sensitive. Delete and copy/paste act on whatever you last selected — an animation, a frame, a hit box, or a body box. Selecting a hit box and pressing Delete removes that hit box, not the frame it sits on.

They are suppressed while you are typing. Arrow keys, Space and Ctrl+C/V do nothing while a text field has focus, so you can type a name containing spaces without triggering playback. Click away from the field to get the shortcuts back.

Copy and Paste Between Frames¶

Beyond Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V, right-clicking a frame in the timeline gives you selective pasting, which is what you usually want when reusing work across similar attacks:

Copy Logic — copies the frame's hit boxes, body boxes, events and throw data together.
Paste Logic (Replace) — overwrites all of it on the target frame.
Paste Hitboxes Only / Paste Bodyboxes Only / Paste Events Only / Paste Throw Data Only — pastes just that one category and leaves everything else on the target frame alone.

Entries that would paste nothing are greyed out, so the menu also tells you what is currently on the clipboard.

The same Copy Logic and Paste Logic buttons appear in the Inspector when a frame is selected.

Saving¶

Every change is saved immediately and automatically. There is no save step to remember and no unsaved-changes state during normal editing — Ctrl+S exists, but you rarely need it.

This is what makes the hot-reload workflow practical: change a value here, switch to SOR2 New Era, hot-reload, and you are testing the new value. See Test Mod.

Next: Create/Open Characters, Animations.