Landing a Clip at an Exact Length With the Seed Generator
Stop recording twenty takes hoping for a good ending. Search for a starting seed whose run finishes when you want it to.
In This Tutorial
The Problem It Solves
A physics run finishes when it finishes. If you need a clip that resolves at 30 seconds, the usual approach is to record repeatedly and keep the take that happened to land well. The Seed Generator inverts that. A run is fully determined by its starting seed, so the generator searches seeds, simulates each one, and returns ones whose run finishes near the time you asked for. You set the ending you want and it finds the start that produces it.
- •This is in the Physics tab, under Seed Generator.
Setting the Target
Target Escape Time accepts 10 to 180 seconds. Min Escape Offset accepts -0.5 to 0 and Max Escape Offset accepts 0 to +0.5, and together they define how close a candidate has to land to count as a match. A tight window gives a precise result but takes longer to find, since fewer seeds qualify. Start with the default window, confirm you get results, then tighten it if you need the ending to land on a specific frame.
- →Target Escape Time: 10 to 180 s
- →Min Escape Offset: -0.5 to 0 s | Max Escape Offset: 0 to +0.5 s
Finish Your Physics First
The search is only valid for the configuration it ran against. A seed is a starting condition, and the run it produces depends on every physics value in play. If you change gravity, bounciness, arena size, ring count or gap size after generating, the seed no longer produces the run you found. Treat seed generation as the last step: lock the look, lock the physics, then search. Regenerating after a change is quick, but forgetting to regenerate wastes a recording.
- •Save the configuration before you search, so you can return to the exact state the seed belongs to.
Variance
The generator can vary parameters within a band while searching, rather than only trying different seeds. Gravity Variance and Bounce Power Variance each accept 0 to 50 percent. Allowing variance widens the search space, so matches are found faster, at the cost of the result differing slightly from your exact settings. If you have tuned the physics precisely, leave variance at zero. If you mainly care about hitting the target time, allowing 10 to 20 percent will find seeds considerably faster.
- →Gravity Variance: 0 to 50 percent
- →Bounce Power Variance: 0 to 50 percent
Recording the Result
Once you have a seed, go to the Video tab and turn on Sync Simulation so the capture restarts the run from the seeded start when recording begins. Set Auto-Stop Capture with Stop After a second or two past your target time, so the ending is captured with a little room to trim. The result is a clip that begins and ends where you planned, every time you record it, which is what makes a consistent posting schedule possible.
- •Record a couple of seconds past the ending. Trailing frames are easy to trim and impossible to add back.
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