Preferences
The Preferences dialog collects the global application settings.
It opens from the Settings → Preferences... menu in the start window.
Settings are grouped in five tabs. Changes are saved when you press OK;
Cancel closes the dialog without saving.
Interface
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Theme | Application colour theme (Light, Blue, Dark, Soft and Contrast variants, ICP and MotioForge Studio themes). The change takes effect immediately. |
| Language | Interface language: Italiano, English or 中文 (Chinese). After changing it, MotioForge Studio offers to restart: the new language is fully applied only after restarting. |
Keyboard & Timeline
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| Run range | F3 | Plays the animation within the selected timeline range. |
| Run until last segment | Ctrl+F5 | Plays the animation up to the last segment, ignoring the selected range. |
| Auto-close final segments | F6 | Automatically closes the last segments back to their initial value. |
| Stop animation | Shift+F5 | Stops the running animation or continuous loop. |
| Delete selected segments | Del | Deletes the segments selected in the timeline. |
| Zoom + | + | Increases the timeline horizontal zoom. |
| Zoom - | - | Decreases the timeline horizontal zoom. |
| Zoom factor | 1.10 | How much the time scale changes per zoom step (1.10 = 10% per step). |
Advanced
Technical transmission and audio analysis parameters. Change them only if you know what you are doing:
the defaults are fine in most cases.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| PWM port min TX gap (ms) | 0 | Minimum interval between two consecutive transmissions on a PWM port. |
| PWM max TX/sec per port | 150 | Maximum number of commands per second sent on a PWM port. |
| Serial min TX spacing (ms) | 3 | Minimum pause between two consecutive packets on the serial bus port. |
| Freq. analysis min threshold (%) | 30 | Lower threshold for frequency detection in audio analysis. |
| Freq. analysis max threshold (%) | 80 | Upper threshold for frequency detection in audio analysis. |
| PWM forced command min interval (ms) | 20 | At segment end a "forced" command is sent to confirm the rest position. This parameter enforces a minimum interval between two identical forced commands, so the bus is not flooded when adjacent segments end at the same position. |
Performance
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| Undo move/resize | Off | When on, moving and resizing segments can also be undone. When off, only creation and deletion can be undone, and editing is faster on less powerful PCs. |
Support
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| Support email | info@montedelgallo.com | Address that license and technical support requests are sent to. The In use line shows the address currently active. If the field is left empty, the default address is used. |
AI Assistant
Configures the engine used by the AI assistant (F2).
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|
| Backend | Ollama | Ollama (local / free) or Claude API (Anthropic). If a Claude API key is entered, Claude is used regardless of the selected backend. |
| Ollama URL | http://localhost:11434 | Address of the Ollama server. Change it only if Ollama runs on another computer on the network. |
| Ollama model | mistral | Name of the Ollama model. The list is loaded automatically from the installed models; you can also type a name. |
| Claude API key | — | Anthropic API key (sk-ant-…). It is stored in plain text in the preferences file. |
| Claude model | Claude Haiku | Claude Haiku (fast, cheap) or Claude Sonnet (best quality). |
| Log lines included | 80 | Number of lines of the ares.log file sent to the assistant as context. 0 = disabled. |
License
| Item | Description |
|---|
| Status | Shows whether a valid license is installed. Without a license MotioForge Studio runs in TRIAL/BETA mode. |
| Paste the received license | Field where you paste the license received by email. |
| ✓ Verify license | Checks the pasted license and, if valid, activates it. |
| 📧 Request license from support | Opens your email client with a pre-filled license request addressed to the support email. Do not modify the USER DATA in the email before sending it. |
Domains folder
The folder where MotioForge Studio reads and saves domains is set from the
Settings → Paths... menu in the start window. Each subfolder corresponds to a domain.
Existing domains are not moved automatically: changing the folder means using a different domains
repository. Reset to default returns to the default folder.
Use a network shared folder (NAS, OneDrive, Google Drive) as your
domains folder to share projects across multiple workstations.
Where preferences are stored
Preferences are saved to a JSON file in the MotioForge Studio user configuration folder.
Most settings take effect immediately; the language requires a restart.