Overview & First Steps
What the visualizer is, how the screen is organised, and your first scenario in under a minute.
What is the Visualizer?
KickViz is a branching, timeline-driven tactical whiteboard. You build a scene on a 3D pitch — players, ball(s), cones, targets and zones — and everything you do is recorded on a timeline. The timeline holds keyframes: moments in time where an item has a certain position, attachment, action or appearance. Between keyframes the app smoothly animates the difference.
The big idea in V3: a scenario is a tree of branches, and every branch owns a complete timeline of its own — its own length, its own tracks and its own keys. You start in the root branch (the start of the play) and, at the end of any branch, you can split the story into sub-branches — for example what the attack does if the defender steps out. KickViz then plays the path you choose, branch after branch.
You can open and play a scenario as a guest — no account needed. Saving and loading, teams, and public scenarios require an account.
The Screen, Top to Bottom
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| File menu | New / Open / Save / Save As…, Load scenario, teams, login |
| Add buttons | Add Home Player, Add Away Player, Add Item (Ball, Cone, Target, Polygon Zone, Circle Zone, Dynamic Zone) |
| Viewport | The 3D pitch — click to select and move things, drag to orbit |
| Camera cluster | Floating buttons: 2D / 3D, Orbit / Pan / Zoom, Names (player name labels on/off) |
| Undo / Redo | Bottom-left of the viewport — undo and redo any change (Ctrl/Cmd+Z and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z). In V3 this also covers structural branch changes: adding, removing, renaming or re-prioritising a branch |
| Capture | Bottom-right of the viewport — save the current view as a PNG image (shares to Photos on mobile) |
| Master timeline bar | The thin bar above the bottom panel — one equal segment per branch on the path you are on. Pull its handle to walk the whole scenario |
| Scenario tree panel | The bottom panel's first view — the three-column map of the scenario (FROM / CURRENT · SIBLINGS / POSSIBLE NEXT), with the scenario name, the branch count, and the Edit and ▶ Master Play buttons |
| Timeline view | The bottom panel's second view — one branch's timeline strip (ruler, one track per item, playhead, AUTO key, play button) with a ‹ BACK button that commits and returns to the tree |
Your First Scenario in 60 Seconds
- Click Add Home Player a few times — players appear on the pitch.
- Click a player to select it (a ring appears under it).
- Click somewhere else on the pitch — the player moves there. Because AUTO is on (top of the timeline), a keyframe is recorded at the current playhead second.
- Move the playhead (the orange line on the ruler) to a later second, e.g.
0:05. - Move the player again — another keyframe is recorded at
0:05. - Press the play button (or Space) — the player glides from the first position to the second. You just made your first animation.
Core Concepts You Should Know
- Keyframe — a recorded state at a specific second (position, action, attachment, visual).
- Track — one item's row on the timeline (e.g.
Player 3 · HorBall 01). - Movement track — position keys that drive where an item is at any second.
- Segment — the space between two movement keys; click it to set how the item travels (straight line, curved, arched).
- AUTO key — when on, moving an item automatically writes a movement key at the playhead second.
- Attachment — the ball or a zone can be attached to a player so it follows them.
- Visual window — zones only; a time range where the zone uses a specific shape / radius / colour.
- Branch — one complete timeline in the scenario tree, with its own length, tracks and keys.
- Split — adding a sub-branch at the end of a branch, turning it into a decision point where the story continues in more than one way.
- Priority / default continuation — every branch has a priority number among its siblings; order 1 is the DEFAULT — what plays when nothing has been chosen — and is only an initial value.
- Inherited first key — a sub-branch's key at
00:00comes from where its parent ended and is read-only (locked 🔒). - Your picks — selecting a branch records it as your choice for that sibling set; those choices are the path the master timeline plays. Picks live in the session only — they are never saved, and a freshly loaded scenario starts from the defaults.
- Master timeline — the one-segment-per-branch bar that walks the whole scenario in order, from the current branch through the chosen path to the end of the last branch.
Read on: The Scenario Tree & Branches → The Timeline System → then the item guides (Players, Ball, Cones, Targets, Zones).