Automation

In the grid you ride knobs by hand and every show is a re-performance. On the Timeline, parameter changes are part of the composition: you draw them, record them once, or generate them with an LFO, and they play back exactly the same every run. Filament gives you two shapes for this.

Both use the same easing vocabulary and point editor you already know from envelopes and modulation.

Automation lanes

A lane is a collapsible row under a track holding a curve for one target. The master track at the top of the arrangement carries lanes for master controls; each visual track carries lanes for its layer.

Adding a lane

Click the + on a track header and pick a target, right-click the header and choose from its Add automation lane list, or drag a parameter's label straight onto the track (the same label-drag you use to build the master dashboard). Valid targets:

• Layer — opacity and volume, plus any parameter or dry/wet mix on the layer's effect chain.
• Master — brightness, master volume, and any master effect parameter or mix.

There's one lane per target per track — you can't accidentally create two curves fighting over the same value.

Editing points

Curve editing is FL-style, right on the lane:

• Click empty curve to add a point; drag to move it (snapping applies on the time axis).
• Alt-click a point to delete it; select points and press Delete / Backspace to remove them.
• Click a segment and retype its shape from the easing toolbar — the same easings the envelope editor offers.
• Double-click a point for exact numeric time and value entry.
• Box-select points and drag them as a rigid group.

Drawing a curve freehand

Cmd-drag across an empty lane and just draw the shape you want. Filament samples the gesture, thins it down to a manageable set of points, and merges it into whatever was already in the lane. It's the pencil tool — faster than placing points when you know the shape by feel and don't care about the exact numbers.

Editing points from the keyboard

With lane points selected:

Nudging a value with ↑ / ↓ beats dragging when you want a curve slightly higher without disturbing its timing.

Right-click a lane for Select all points, Copy points, and Paste points at playhead; right-click a single point for Copy and Delete point.

The lane header has enable / disable / delete, and you can collapse a track's lanes to get them out of the way — collapsing is a view convenience and never touches undo.

Value vs. rate targets

Most targets take any easing you like. A few targets drive an animation's rate — how fast its motion runs — and those accept linear and hold segments only (eased options are hidden for them). This keeps rate automation mathematically exact, so a show that speeds an animation up over ten minutes lands on the same frame whether you play to it or seek to it.

Reading automated values live

When a lane drives a control, its inspector fader shows the live automated value and wears a Lane badge — the same way a modulated fader does. Turning that knob while you're not recording won't stick: the lane re-asserts on the next frame, and the badge tells you why. To change it, edit the lane or record over it.

Precedence is one rule: a lane owns its target. Everything without a lane keeps its normal behavior — manual value, MIDI, grid modulation, audio reactivity. So you can automate the parts of a show that must be exact and still leave, say, master brightness reacting to sound where you want the room to breathe.

Recording automation live

Rather than draw a curve, you can perform it:

1. Arm the record button in the transport cluster.
2. Play the arrangement.
3. Touch any automatable control — a fader, an effect knob, even a mapped MIDI control. Filament captures your moves against the playhead.
4. Release. The pass is thinned into a light, hand-editable curve and merged into the target's lane as one undo step.

Recording is touch mode: your moves replace the curve only for the span you were holding, and the prior curve resumes where you let go (bridged over a short ramp so it doesn't jump). Record a wiggle over the chorus and the verses on either side stay exactly as they were.

LFO lanes

A lane can be a generator instead of a hand-drawn curve — a repeating wave that needs no points:

• Waves: sine, triangle, saw, square, and sample-and-hold noise.
• Rate: free-running in Hz, or synced to the beat as a musical period.
• Shape: depth, center, and a phase offset in the target's own units.

Open a lane's LFO panel from its header to dial it in, or use the lane's context menu to Convert to LFO and back. LFOs are evaluated closed-form like everything else, so they're perfectly repeatable across seeks, loops, and export — and Convert LFO to points bakes the wave into an editable curve when you want to tweak a single cycle. LFO lanes drive value targets.

Per-clip envelopes

Some parameters belong to the clip, not the track — an animation's own settings, or a knob on its clip effect chain. Those automate with a per-clip envelope that travels with the clip: split it and both halves keep their curve, trim or move it and the envelope re-normalizes, duplicate it and the copy carries it too.

• Edit them in the inspector. Select a timeline clip and its parameter panel offers an envelope per parameter, opening the full envelope editor over the clip's 0–100%.
• See them on the canvas. A clip carrying automation shows a small badge; click its chevron to expand a faint, read-only preview of its curves right on the clip body. Editing stays in the inspector — the overlay is just there so you can tell at a glance which clips move.

Per-clip envelopes are also how a captured performance remembers the knob rides you did on each clip — see Capture & Export.