Play in Formo - what's here and how it's organized

Play is where a scene stops just sitting there and starts running: physics, particle systems, and a play/stop cycle built specifically so none of it is ever a risk to what you've already made.

TL;DR:

- Physics is a genuine rigid-body simulation - dynamic, static, and kinematic bodies, real forces, real collisions - not an approximation.

- Particles spawns hundreds of individually-animated elements from a single emitter, starting from eight presets or built entirely from scratch.

- Play Mode is deliberately non-destructive: stop, and everything reverts exactly, with Pause, Step, and an Apply action for the one time you want to keep a result.

- **Physics also has a real API: **velocity, angular velocity, and collision queries, all readable and writable from a formula, not sealed off once the simulation starts.

Work with physics in play

Drop physics onto any shape and gravity, collisions, and forces play out live. Body type (dynamic, static, kinematic), mass, gravity scale, friction, restitution, and collider shape are all real, adjustable properties — and a physics object can trigger a genuine collide event, with the other object, the impact point, and the impact direction all available to react to.

To get started: select an object, click the module Add button in the properties panel, and choose Physics.

Learn more how to work with physics in our guide Physics.

Create particle effects

Fire, smoke, sparks, rain, snow, confetti, explosions, bubbles — eight presets to start from, or build your own from the emitter shape up: emission rate or burst timing, lifetime, scale over time, velocity and drag, gravity, a noise field for natural drift, color over lifetime, and sub-emitters that spawn a whole new burst when a particle dies.

To get started: select an object, click the module Add button, and choose Particles.

Learn more how to work with particles in our guide Particles.

Use play mode non-destructively

Press play and everything runs live. Press stop and it snaps back exactly to where it started. Nothing sticks unless you specifically keyframed it. Pause freezes a running scene without discarding it, Step advances one frame at a time for precise inspection, and Apply is the one deliberate way to actually keep a result permanently.

To get started: press Space to play, and the same key to stop.

Learn more how to work with Play Mode in our guide Play Mode.

Control physics from formulas

Physics isn't sealed off from the rest of Formo's reactive system once it's running. Velocity and angular velocity are both readable and writable directly from a formula, a collides() query checks contact between two specific objects inline, and applyForce/applyImpulse can be called from anywhere, not just inside a collision handler — the bridge between a running simulation and everything else in your document reacting to it live.

To get started: reference .physics.velocity on any physics-enabled object from a formula on any other object.

Learn more how to work with the physics API in our guide "Physics API in Formo."