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Concepts & Glossary

A short reference for the terms used throughout DanceXR docs. If a page uses a word you do not recognize, it is probably defined here. Each entry links out to its full feature page.

Core entities

Actor
A character model loaded into the scene. Actors come from PMX or XPS files. Each actor has its own motion, materials, physics, and behavior settings. Multiple actors can share a stage; the selection disc under each actor’s feet is how you target one of them. See Actor menu & tools.
Motion
An animation that drives an actor’s bones. Motions usually come from VMD or BVH files. Motions can also be procedural (generated at runtime) — see Procedural motion below.
Audio
A music or sound file (OGG, WAV on PC; MP3 on mobile) that can be played back, often paired with a motion to form a dance set.
Dance set
A bundle of one audio file plus one or more actor motions, optionally with camera motions. DanceXR auto-detects a dance set when an audio file and matching motion files share a folder or zip. See Dance set.
Stage
The 3D environment the actors stand on. Stages can be loaded from external 3D models or set to the built-in Room stage.
Prop
A 3D model that is part of the scene but not a character — furniture, screens, mirrors, primitive shapes. See Props.
Accessory
A 3D model attached to an actor’s bone — hats, weapons, items held in the hand. Different from a prop because it follows the actor. See Accessory.
Scene
The complete state of what is on screen — actors, motions, stage, lighting, camera, settings. A scene can be saved to disk and reloaded. See Save scene.
Scene bundle
A scene packaged together with all the model and motion files it depends on, so it can be shared without missing assets. See Scene bundle.

UI elements

Menu bar
The strip of icons at the bottom of the screen (or floating in front of you in VR). Five icons on the left open the system, environment, scene, audio/motion, and actor menus. Playback controls are on the right.
Selection disc
The yellow circle drawn under each loaded actor’s feet. Click it to open the actor menu. Drag it to move the actor. While dragging, the mouse wheel rotates and the horizontal wheel (or VR thumbstick) moves the actor vertically.
Gizmo cube
A virtual cube that appears on body parts when a supported motion or tool is active (Idle Motion, Auto Dance, Motion Override, and several others). Drag a face to move along it; use the wheel or thumbstick to rotate. Typically there are five cubes per actor: two hands, two feet, one body. See Actor menu & tools.
Toggle states
Click on empty space to cycle through three UI states. UI mode shows menus and discs. Control mode hides menus but keeps the actor selection discs visible. Immersive mode hides everything for a clean view. See Controls & UI.
Progress bar
The strip at the very bottom that shows the current motion/audio name and play position. Click to play/pause; drag to scrub.

Bones, physics, and colliders

Bone
A point in a model’s skeleton. Motions animate bones; physics simulates the parts attached to them.
Joint
A constraint connecting two physics bodies, allowing them to swing or stretch within configured limits. Most cloth and hair behavior comes from chains of joints.
Colliders
Colliders define the shape of a physics body for collision detection. Colliders can be static (strictly following the animated bones) or dynamic (simulated by physics engines using velocity, gravity and constraints). Colliders can be assigned to a group and collisions can be enabled or disabled between groups.
Rigid body
A physics object that has shape, mass, and a defined motion type. PMX models include rigid bodies in the file. XPS models do not, which is why XPS physics is configured manually.
Spring force / damping
How joints pull a bone back toward its rest position (spring) and resist motion proportional to velocity (damping). These are the core knobs in every physics page.
Projection distance / projection angle
Safety limits in PMX joints. If two connected bodies drift further apart (or rotate more) than the projection threshold, they snap back to prevent runaway simulation.

Materials and appearance

Material slot
A category of material on a model. DanceXR groups materials into Skin, Hair, Eyes, Lips, Opaque, Transparent, and Custom slots. Settings on a slot apply to every material in that category. See Material settings.
Dressing system
The mechanism for toggling visibility on parts of a model. Works two ways: material morphs (PMX) and optional items (XPS). Used for outfit changes, removing accessories, hair swaps. See Dressing system.
Alternative textures
Extra texture sets that DanceXR auto-detects when files in the model’s folder or zip share names with the model’s textures. Lets a user swap looks at runtime without editing the model. See Alternative textures.
Body paint
An overlay layer on top of the skin material, drawn from images placed in the texture/drawing folder. See Outfit & bodypaint.
Toon shading
Cel-style anime shading. Toggled per actor; affects how light wraps and how shadows ramp. See Toon shading.
Transparency depth prepass
A rendering technique that runs a depth pass before drawing transparent surfaces, picking only the topmost layer. Solves sorting problems but means stacked transparent layers (multi-layer hair, nested sky spheres) only show the top layer. Toggled in graphics settings. Mentioned in FAQ.

Motion concepts

Procedural motion
Motion generated at runtime instead of read from a file. Includes Idle motion, Catwalk, Auto Dance 1/2/3, Lifelike motions, and the procedural secondary motion layer.
Motion pass
A layer of motion stacked on top of another. Lets you play one motion as the base and override specific bones with another. See Motion passes.
Motion override
A targeted replacement of specific bones in a motion. Useful for fixing arm clipping, retargeting facial bones, or applying a custom pose to part of an animation. See Motion override.
Remix
Pairing motion data from one dance set with the audio from another. DanceXR auto-adjusts speed to match. See Remix motion.
Custom inherit motion
A user-defined inherit-bone setup, used to add or modify the bone-following relationships some PMX models rely on. See Custom inherit motion.

Configuration and persistence

Content library
The folder DanceXR reads model, motion, music, stage, and user content from. Locations differ per platform. See Content library.
Preset
A saved bundle of settings — for an actor, a material, a physics rig, etc. Stored under presets/ in the content library. Shareable with users on the same DanceXR version.
Settings folder
settings/ inside the content library. Holds per-feature configuration (materials, physics, dressing, etc.) that DanceXR writes automatically. Not meant for hand-editing, but safe to back up.
Cache file
cache.json in the content library. Holds the indexed list of detected models, motions, and other assets. Safe to delete — DanceXR will rebuild it on next launch.
Config file
config.json next to the executable. Holds application-level preferences. Deleting it resets DanceXR to defaults.
License file
license.txt. Tied to your activation. Removing it forces re-activation. See FAQ.

Editions and tiers

DanceXR has multiple builds and tiers. The full matrix is on the Download page; short version:

Free
Single actor, basic features. PC only.
Pure
Paid PC build. Multi-actor, XPS physics, procedural dance, raytracing included. No adult content.
Pro
Paid PC build with adult content support. Raytracing sold as a separate DLC on this build.
Creator
Adds offline rendering — 4K, VR 180, VR 360, frame-by-frame at any resolution, regardless of real-time framerate. Available via Patreon. See Creator edition.
HD / RT / LW build variants
Three rendering tiers of the PC build. HD is balanced quality. RT adds real-time raytracing. LW is the performance-optimized lightweight build. Choose based on GPU and use case.
Patreon tiers
Patron / Pro / Creator on Patreon, in addition to one-time Steam/Itch.io purchase. Patreon includes early access to monthly releases.

AI backends

Operator
The dedicated local AI backend for DanceXR. Bundles voice synthesis (TTS), large language model inference, and a unified HTTP API behind one process. Powers the modern AI Voice Chat workflow. Runs on your own hardware. See DanceXR Operator.
TTS (text-to-speech)
Converts AI-generated text replies into voice. Operator uses Kokoro; older builds use Piper.
STT (speech-to-text)
Converts your microphone input into text to send to the AI. DanceXR uses a built-in Whisper model.
Persona
A personality and description profile applied to a character in AI Chat. Can be authored manually or imported from TavernAI-style PNG character cards.
Template
The prompt scaffold that drives the AI when generating chat. Stored under chat/templates. Editable plain text.

Recording and capture

Offline render
Frame-by-frame recording that ignores your real-time FPS. Lets a slow PC capture 4K/60fps video by spending more wall-clock time per frame. Creator edition only. See Creator edition.
3D SBS
Side-by-side stereoscopic video, one image per eye placed horizontally. A common 3D-video format.
VR 180
Stereoscopic 180-degree VR video (in DanceXR, currently 120° per eye, padded to 180°). Output is fixed at 4096×2048.