moonshine
Features How it works Docs FAQ Join the waitlist

Concepts

Scenes

The unit of show state — what changes when you switch scenes and what doesn't.

A scene in Moonshine is the unit of show state — the answer to “what is being projected right now.” Switching scenes during a show is the primary live action; cueing transitions between scenes is what the playback system is for.

What a scene contains

A scene defines:

  • The assets playing on each projector — video files, image sequences, generators
  • The routing from those assets through any compositing or transforms
  • The mesh model loaded in the 3D viewport (used for warping context)
  • The mask layer state — which masks are active, with what compositing

A scene does not contain:

  • The warps or keystones (those belong to projectors and persist across scenes)
  • The monitoring panel state
  • Operator presence or cursors

This split is intentional. Warps and keystones are physical-alignment data — they’re true for your room, not for any particular show moment. Scenes change between cues; warps don’t.

Scenes vs cues

A cue is a transition target — a saved scene that the playback system can transition into via one of the eleven transition types. Scenes are the underlying state; cues are the orchestration on top.

You can have one scene and many cues that all transition into it from different starting points. Or you can have one cue per scene as a 1:1 mapping. The system doesn’t care which approach you take; both are valid.

Switching scenes

In edit mode, switching scenes is a direct action — click a scene in the list, the viewport and projector outputs update to show that scene’s state. There’s no transition; the change is immediate.

In show mode, scene changes happen through cue triggers — pressing a button in the CueGrid, advancing a playlist, or hitting a keyboard shortcut bound to a cue. The cue specifies the transition (cut, dissolve, iris, etc.) so the change is smooth and operator-controllable.

Persistence

Scenes are stored as part of the project file in TouchDesigner. When you save the project, all scenes are saved. There is no separate scene file format.

A scene file is portable across operators — if you save the project on the TD host and share the project file, another studio with their own projectors can load the scenes. Their projectors won’t have the same warps (those are per-projector, per-physical-room) but the asset routing and mask state will load.

Many scenes vs one big scene

The product doesn’t have a strong opinion. Some shows are one scene per cue; some shows have a small set of scenes and many cues that crossfade variations. Use what matches your show’s structure.

Performance-wise, scene count doesn’t have a hard limit — the cost is paid at scene-switch time, not at scene-count time. A project with 200 scenes is fine; switching scenes still happens at frame-perfect timing because the assets are pre-loaded by TouchDesigner.