Create a face-tracked HUD in Performer
Build a spherical HUD over your camera or a video, arrange instruments with Hands layout, use eye focus and MIDI cues, and record the presented scene.
Open Performer → HUD workspace, choose TRINA · HUD or CAMERA, and start in Helmet. Instruments follow your head around a curved visor; the iris reticle follows the selected eye. Use Hands layout to place instruments, Targeting for optional eye controls, and the header’s RECORD button to save the presented scene. Open HUD workspace.
How do I start with a camera or video?
Choose the Exterior picture in Modes & source. TRINA · HUD supplies the included face video. CAMERA requests video permission; keep your face visible and include your hands when arranging by gesture. VIDEO · IMAGE accepts your own file, and SCREEN opens a window picker. STOP releases that source. If the camera does not start, for example because you declined the permission or another app is using it, HUD switches to TRINA · HUD and explains why. To use your camera, allow it in your browser’s site settings and choose CAMERA again.
Exterior shows the person surrounded by instruments. Words face the actor, so some read backward from the outside. First Person shows the wearer’s view with readable instruments around an outward scene. It starts with Simulated city, which needs no camera or face. Choose Start outward camera, Choose outward window, or Scene video or image for your own outward picture. Mirror only the outward picture affects that scene independently. Stop outward source releases it; Exterior also offers Stop retained outward source when one is still active.
Mirror the source changes the Exterior picture. Face cutout darkens the area outside the face, and Recenter visor establishes the current head position as the resting pose. Camera and window permissions require an explicit action. Changing views retains the chosen sources; leaving HUD stops independent outward and COMM captures. Use ← Performer to return to the ordinary workspace. HUD requires a WebGPU-capable browser. Preparing the visor… indicates loading; Waiting for face input asks you to center your face or choose a usable source. Waiting for the outward scene asks for a ready outward picture. If preparation fails, read the error and choose Retry HUD.
How do I play Startup, Flight, Health Status or Combat?
Select an operating mode in Modes & source. Startup / replay presents a sixteen-second power-on: the visor lights, a red scan crosses the eyes, instruments snap, slide and build into place, a calibration arc sweeps across, the suit walks past for diagnostics and the visor settles ready. Skip to ready finishes it immediately; Replay entrance / disarm repeats the entrance and clears contact activity. Cancel sequence interrupts it. Startup pauses when the required picture is unavailable, the document is hidden, or an Exterior diagnostic surface is shown. Changing viewpoints keeps its progress.
HUD off flies every instrument away from your face and leaves the visor dark. Choose Startup / replay to power it on again from nothing, for example when you start filming, or choose Flight, Health Status or Combat to bring that arrangement straight in. While the visor is off, suit, diagnostics, eye reticle, skip and replay commands wait until you turn it on. The visor stays off when you return to HUD until you turn it on.
Flight, Health Status and Combat select different instrument arrangements, each with a heading arc across the top of the visor: red for Flight and Combat, blue for Health Status. Widget set in HUD looks chooses Film, the default film-style instruments, or Modular, which adds stacked battle and targeting clusters on the visor beside your face. Suit regions, vitals, contacts and missiles are visual simulations. Music & audio opens the shared audio controls, and Play music / Pause music controls that music. Without active music, the readouts use the labeled demo tempo. See audio controls and tempo.
How do I add and place instruments?
Open Widgets → Browse widgets. The Library contains 144 instruments and nine built-in displays. Find a widget searches names, families and descriptions; Family narrows the results. Thumbnails and List show the same entries. Arrow keys, Home and End move keyboard focus. An empty search shows a message; clear the search or select another family to recover.
Hover or keyboard-focus an instrument to preview it. Play selected, Stop preview, Assembly frame, Ready frame and Exit frame provide explicit playback controls. Touch selection shows a still; reduced-motion preferences also use stills on hover. Choose Color from cyan, amber, ice or red, and Spherical layer from Near / sharp, Middle or Far. The Add [instrument ID] to visor button adds the selected instrument and enters Hands layout. The composition supports up to 32 instruments.
Built-in displays have a Show still sample action and a button opening their Suit, Targeting or Widgets controls. Opening controls does not reveal a suit, scan contacts or create another copy. Open mode controls takes you to the operating modes for Startup and the volume ornament. If a sample cannot load, its controls remain available.
In Hands layout, pinch an instrument, move it and open the pinch to release it. You can also drag with the pointer or touch. The visor holds its pose while you arrange it, and each instrument keeps its spherical layer. Exterior requires a tracked face before Hands layout is available. Recenter refreshes the held pose; Reset layout restores the original instrument arrangement. Return to Helmet to resume head attachment. Tracking loss releases a held gesture.
How do eye focus and the iris reticle differ?
Targeting → Look focus estimates which instrument you are looking toward and brings it inward, where it becomes sharper and slightly larger. The default Signal is Eye direction estimate; Head direction is an alternative. Response ranges from 0 to 1 and starts at 0.55. Keep your eyes open briefly to establish neutral input. Recenter look resets that reference, and Reverse horizontal direction reverses the response independently of source mirroring. Visor lag on fast head turns lets the visor trail quick head turns slightly before it catches up; it is off initially.
This is an estimate rather than calibrated gaze. Manual panels, Suit inspection and Hands placement take priority. First Person can use the retained Exterior input for these optional controls; when that input is unavailable, manual cues and scene viewing still work. Look focus selects instruments and does not fire performance commands.
The Eye reticle is separate: choose Target eye, then Acquire selected iris or Eye target off. Its graphic appears in Exterior and hides during a blink or lost eye tracking. Inputs → Enable deliberate eye gestures enables a third, optional control path. Assign Actor-left wink, Actor-right wink and Both eyes to a cue, or leave them Unassigned. Open both eyes for warmup, hold a deliberate closure, then release. Ordinary blinks are ignored. Leaving HUD disarms these gesture commands.
How do I use Suit diagnostics and synthetic contacts?
In Suit, choose Character, then Reveal suit status or Hide suit. The list grows when you unlock extra characters or add your own 3D model. Inspect suit moves the model for inspection; Rotate suit in 3D toggles its rotation. Expand diagnostics and Focus Flight instrument open the circular instrument’s associated card; Collapse instrument closes it. Choose a Region from Head, Torso, Left side, Right side or Lower body. Red region warning and Yellow region warning require Combat or Health Status; Clear region warning clears them. These indicators do not measure a person’s health.
In Targeting, choose a Count from 1 to 9, enter Combat, then use Scan synthetic targets → Arm fictional missiles → Launch fictional missiles. Enable Mode enters the required mode and takes you to Scan; it does not start a scan. Each contact acquires separately. Click a contact or use Select next virtual contact to select it. Changing the count during a lock requires reacquisition and a fresh Arm; during a launch it applies to the next sequence. Lost or replaced input clears locks and requires fresh Scan and Arm commands. No outward object detection or physical output is involved.
How do I unlock extra characters?
Type the classic code in the HUD workspace: ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A. Two extra suit characters then appear in Suit → Character, and HUD confirms Secret characters unlocked.
- Open Performer → HUD workspace and click the HUD picture, so the keys don’t go into a text field.
- Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right on the arrow keys, then B and A. The letters work in either order, and Enter (Start) afterward is optional.
- Open Suit → Character, choose one of the new characters, then Reveal suit status.
The unlock stays in this browser. Type the code again to hide the extra characters; if you are wearing one, HUD switches back to X-12. Right after the arrows, B and A finish the code instead of selecting the Right side region or arming missiles; at any other time they keep their cues.
How do I use my own 3D model as the suit?
Upload a self-contained .glb file, up to 30 MB and 200,000 triangles, in Suit → Your 3D model. HUD prepares the model in your browser and wears it as the suit, so Reveal suit status, Inspect suit and Rotate suit in 3D show it like the built-in characters.
- Open Suit in the HUD workspace.
- Choose Upload 3D model under Your 3D model and pick your .glb file.
- Wait while the button reads Preparing model…; Character then switches to Your 3D model.
- Choose Reveal suit status, Inspect suit or Rotate suit in 3D to see it on the visor.
- Use Replace model to wear a different file, or Remove model to delete it and return to X-12.
- The model stays in this browser; it isn’t uploaded to BeamTracer. Choose Your 3D model in Character to wear it again, including after you reopen HUD.
- HUD draws the suit from the model’s shape: textures are ignored, an animated model holds one pose, and a wide model is scaled down to fit the suit panel. Region warnings divide the model by height and side.
- Export an uncompressed binary glTF (.glb). Draco- and meshopt-compressed files are refused with a message saying so.
How do I adjust lighting, depth and video panels?
Widgets → Light & depth controls the image treatment:
| Control | Choices and starting value |
|---|---|
| Curved depth focus | On initially; nearer instruments remain sharper than farther ones. |
| Focus quality | Fine initially; Balanced provides a different quality/cost choice. |
| Face lighting | 0–1, initially 0.65; adjusts simulated colored light on the tracked face. |
| HUD glow | 0–1, initially 0.65. |
| Density | 0.25–1, initially 0.72; changes the number of displayed instruments. |
| Surface | beauty, depth, normals or contours; initially beauty. Diagnostic views are available in Exterior. |
| Scene resolution | 1280 × 720 initially, or 1920 × 1080. Higher resolution can reduce frame rate. |
Depth, normals, contours and face lighting are visual estimates, not calibrated depth-camera or lighting measurements. Vitals display → Readout offers Off, Pulse and EKG, Respiration or System vitals. These simulated readouts follow music or the demo tempo.
COMM video is an independent panel. Choose Video file, Choose window or Trina video, then Hide video / Show video or Stop video. Hiding retains the source; stopping releases it. A captured window must be selected again after leaving HUD. The main face source and outward picture have separate controls. COMM moves to the opposite upper corner while Startup, an expanded card or the First Person Combat readout is open. The Suit frame leaves space below it.
How do I save, use MIDI and record?
In Modes & source, enter a Name, then choose Save HUD look to retain it in this browser. The Look selector recalls factory and saved looks. Export look downloads JSON; Import look reads it. Wait for Loaded before the next command. Looks retain authored choices, the widget set and layouts, while armed contacts and live capture permissions are cleared. Missing local media must be reselected. The ordinary Remember last mode preference still determines the app shown on reload; reopen Performer and HUD to use the saved look.
Inputs → Keyboard & MIDI lists each cue and its key. MIDI Learn uses the shared MIDI controls; HUD mappings are input-only and send no LED feedback or SysEx. Typing in fields takes priority over cue keys. Detach controls moves the controls to another window; Dock controls returns them to the same scene. Detachment appears only when the browser supports it.
Use the header’s RECORD button to record the presented scene, including live mode and viewpoint changes; press the active recording button to finish and download. HUD uses live recording rather than the ordinary offline RENDER workflow. Export access and watermark behavior follow your account. See video export.
HUD cue reference
These bindings apply while HUD is active; text fields keep normal typing. Inputs → Keyboard & MIDI shows the same list in the app, with START MIDI LEARN for mapping a controller.
| Cue | Key |
|---|---|
| Switch First Person / Exterior | Shift+V |
| Select next virtual contact | Q |
| Startup / replay | T |
| HUD off | Shift+T |
| Skip to ready | L |
| Flight | F |
| Combat | C |
| Health Status | H |
| Reveal suit status | S |
| Inspect suit | I |
| Rotate suit in 3D | R |
| Hide suit | Button or MIDI |
| Expand diagnostics | D |
| Focus Flight instrument | J |
| Collapse instrument | K |
| Acquire selected iris | E |
| Eye target off | O |
| Scan synthetic targets | G |
| Arm fictional missiles | A |
| Launch fictional missiles | M |
| Cancel sequence | 0 |
| Replay entrance / disarm | P |
| Reset performance | Backtick |
| Red region warning | W |
| Yellow region warning | Y |
| Clear region warning | U |
| Head region | Z |
| Torso region | X |
| Left side region | V |
| Right side region | B |
| Lower body region | N |
| 1 synthetic targets | 1 |
| 2 synthetic targets | 2 |
| 3 synthetic targets | 3 |
| 4 synthetic targets | 4 |
| 5 synthetic targets | 5 |
| 6 synthetic targets | 6 |
| 7 synthetic targets | 7 |
| 8 synthetic targets | 8 |
| 9 synthetic targets | 9 |
FX Rack OSC reference
Find the OSC addresses and value ranges that control the FX Rack.
Detached Controls
Move the Performer's controls — or the Pulse Visualizer meters — into a small always-on-top window, so the visuals can run fullscreen while you keep driving the show, or the meters can float over another app.