Animate mode

Animate mode is what the hologram does. It is all timelines: you pick a moment on the right and its timeline opens at the bottom.

Moments

Moment	When it plays
Always	Over and over, all the time. What the hologram does when nothing happens: float, spin, glow.
When a player comes close	Once, when a player comes closer than a distance you choose.
When the player walks away	Once, when they go further than another distance.
When looked at	Once, when the player starts looking at it.
When looked away	Once, when they stop looking at it.
Click 1, Click 2…	Each click plays the next one; after the last it starts again. + Another click adds one.

A filled dot next to a moment means it has something in it.

Every player goes through these on their own: one player can be at their second click while another has not come close yet.

Each moment's settings

• When a player comes close: the distance in blocks, and Hidden until a player comes close, so the hologram is not seen from afar before anyone visits.
• When the player walks away: its distance. It is always a little more than the approach one, so standing at the edge does not make it flicker.
• Click: which click counts (any, left or right), and Remove this click.

The timeline

Each layer is a row, plus a first row for the whole hologram. Time runs left to right, in seconds.

• The length is at the top. For Always it is how often it repeats.
• The ▶ button plays the moment you are editing; Space does too. The ⏮ button goes back to the start. Drag along the ruler to scrub.
• Under the other moments, a faint Always row shows what keeps happening at the same time.

Effects: the bars

1. Pick a row (click the layer's name on the left), then press + Effect. Or double-click an empty spot of a row, right where it should happen.
2. Pick an effect from the list. Hovering one plays it in the preview.
3. It appears as a bar:
   • Drag the bar to choose when it happens.
   • Drag its edges to choose how long it lasts (shorter is faster).
   • Click it to change the effect, its exact start and length, and, for repeating effects, how many times it repeats in the bar.
   • Del removes it.

Effects that overlap in time stack: the row grows and each bar gets its own strip. They play together: a float plus a bounce goes up and down twice as much; a heartbeat plus a pop in multiplies the size. See every effect in Effects.

Your own movement: keyframes

For anything the ready-made effects do not do, press + Your own movement and choose what moves:

Movement	Moves
Move	Left/right, up/down and front/back, together in one row
Turn	Around itself
Tilt	Forward and sideways
Size	Bigger or smaller
See-through	Text fades in or out
Letters shown, Rainbow, Glow	The text effects, by hand

The row starts at rest, with one keyframe at the start: the movement is yours to make.

• Click along the row to add a keyframe there.
• Drag a keyframe to move it in time.
• Click one to set its value and how it gets there: steady, smooth, speeds up, slows down, overshoots a little, bounces, springy, jumps at the end.
• Move or turn the layer in the 3D view: in Animate mode, that writes a keyframe at the playhead instead of moving the layer for good.

When it starts: actions

Every moment except Always has When it starts: things that happen the instant it begins, all at once.

Action	Example
+ Text	Change a text layer's text, for that player only. It stays changed until another moment changes it.
+ Sound	entity.experience_orb.pickup 1 1.2 (name, volume, pitch)
+ Message	<green>Welcome, {player}! in the player's chat
+ Command	A command, as the player or as the server ([console] give {player} diamond 1)

Actions happen at the start of the moment; effects can be placed anywhere in its timeline.

Try it as a player

Try it as a player (over the preview) stops editing and plays the whole hologram as a player would live it:

• The click button, Look and Look away do what a player would.
• The Distance slider walks you closer and further: crossing the distances plays comes close and walks away.
• It starts as a player arriving from afar finds it, which is also what the plugin does.

Back to editing returns to the timeline.

Holograms written by hand

A hologram whose file was written by hand, with logic the moments cannot show (states that play different things, timers, placeholders as triggers), opens with a note in Animate mode. Its logic is kept exactly as it is, and you can still change its design in Edit mode. Animate it from scratch replaces its logic with empty moments, keeping the layers.

The ready-made holograms, and anything made in the editor, open as moments.