Glossary
The words you'll meet in Paraplex and in these docs, in alphabetical order.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Anchor | A point on a path. Corner anchors make sharp turns; smooth anchors have handles that bend the curve. See Pen and paths. |
| Artboard | A copy of the frame in another shape (square, vertical, wide) shown beside it, so one scene can be exported in several formats. See Formats and artboards. |
| Assistant | The AI assistant. Describe what you want and it builds or edits the scene, and you review the result before keeping it. See Meet the assistant. |
| Bento | A ready-made grid of cards of different sizes, like a bento box. See Layouts and bentos. |
| Canvas | The big area in the middle of the editor where your scene draws. |
| Clip | The stretch of time a layer is on screen, from its in point to its out point. It shows as a bar on the timeline. |
| Code layer | A small live web page in the scene: HTML, CSS, JavaScript or React, running on the timeline's clock. See Code layers. |
| Connector | A line whose ends are pinned to other layers, so it follows them when they move. See Pen and paths. |
| Credits | What AI features are paid with when you're signed in and not using your own API key. See AI credits and keys. |
| Dock | The toolbar at the bottom of the editor for adding things to your scene. |
| Dolly | Moving the camera toward or away from the scene. Middle-drag on the canvas to dolly. |
| Easing | How motion speeds up and slows down between two keyframes. See Easing and springs. |
| Embed | A live, interactive version of your piece that you put on a website. See Publish and embed. |
| Environment | The surrounding light that the scene reflects, such as a studio or a sunset. See Lighting and environments. |
| Export | Turning your scene into a file: a video, a PNG, a GIF and more. |
| Export resolution scale | The size of your exports, as a multiple of the artboard: 2× of a 1920 × 1080 artboard is 3840 × 2160. |
| Formation | One layer holding many cards, dots or cubes in a shape, such as a grid, a ring or a sphere, that can flow from shape to shape. See Formations. |
| Frame | The rectangle on the canvas that ends up in your export. Also, one still picture in a video (a 30 fps video shows 30 frames a second). |
| Frame rate (fps) | How many frames a second a video has. Set it on the timeline. |
| Generator | A layer built by a small program, such as a galaxy, a city or grass, with settings you can animate. See Generators. |
| Gizmo | The arrows and handles on a selected layer for moving, rotating or scaling it on the canvas. |
| Group | A layer that holds other layers, so they move, fade and arrange together. |
| HUD | The readouts a camera draws on its screen, such as REC and a timecode, added as layers pinned to the frame. See Media frames and HUDs. |
| In point and out point | When a layer's clip starts and ends. |
| Keyframe | A property's value saved at a moment in time. Two keyframes with different values make motion. |
| Lane | A row on the timeline that holds one property's keyframes. |
| Layer | Anything in your scene: a shape, text, a picture, a light. Each one is a row in the Layers panel. |
| Layers panel | The list of layers on the left of the editor. |
| Layout | A group's rows, columns, gaps and padding, which arrange its layers in a box like a web page. See Layouts and bentos. |
| Marker | A mark on the timeline's ruler, such as a beat, that clips snap to when you drag or trim them. See Audio. |
| Material | How a surface responds to light: matte, glossy, metal, glass. See Materials and appearances. |
| Orbit | Turning the camera around the scene. Drag across the frame to orbit, and press F to reset. |
| Panel | Paraplex's basic shape layer: a card, rounded rectangle, ellipse or solid that can hold a color, a gradient, a picture or a video. Its settings are in sections named Panel Fill, Panel Surface and so on. |
| Path | A shape or line you draw point by point with the pen, or bring in from an SVG. See Pen and paths. |
| Playhead | The white line on the timeline that marks the moment you're looking at. |
| Pre-composition | A group drawn on its own first, as one flat picture, so it fades, blends and takes effects as a whole. See Groups and pre-composition. |
| Preview mode | A way to try your piece as a viewer would, with hover, click and scroll working. See Preview mode. |
| Preview resolution | How sharp the canvas draws while you edit, from 0.25× to 1×. It doesn't change your exports. |
| Project | A saved scene. See Saving your work. |
| Properties | A layer's settings, shown in the properties panel on the right. |
| Quick-actions strip | The row of icon buttons above the Layers panel. |
| Rig | A group's way of placing its layers for you: in a row, an arc, a ring, a carousel or a grid. See Groups and pre-composition. |
| Scene | Everything in a project: layers, camera, lights, background and timeline. |
| Section | A group of related settings in the properties panel, such as Transform. |
| Splat | A 3D capture of a real place or object, made of millions of soft dots (a Gaussian splat). See 3D models and splats. |
| Spring | An easing that overshoots and settles, the way a real object does. |
| Template | A finished scene you start from and make your own. See Templates. |
| Timeline | The strip under the canvas for playing, scrubbing and editing keyframes and clips. |
| Transition | How a layer, or the whole piece, comes in or goes out: a fade, a slide, a blur and more. |
| Unit chart | A number shown as countable things, such as people, coins or pills. See Charts and data. |