• Introduction
• Quick start for audience
• Quick start for players
• UpStage
• About the project
• Team
• Get Involved
• Technical information
• About this manual
• Audience
• The role of the Audience
• Join a live cyberformance
• Chat
• Player
• Becoming a player
• Manage your Profile
• Backstage
• Create your own Stage
• Manage your Stage
• Customise your Stage
• Manage your Stage: Media
• Manage your Stage: Chat and Replays
• Manage your Stage : Scenes
• Enter your Stage
• How does the audience see your stage?
• Invite audience
• Media management
• Media in UpStage
• The Studio
• Creating Graphics for UpStage
• Creating Audio for UpStage
• Upload Media
• Modify Media
• Assign Media to your Stage
• Delete Media
• Player : Live Stage
• Enter a live Stage
• Quick overview of tools
• Who is here?
• Chat with the Audience
• Player Chat
• Player: Live Stage Tools
• Audio tool
• Backdrop tool
• Avatar tool
• Avatar Speech and Voices
• Avatar Animation
• Props tool
• Stream tool
• Live Drawing tool
• Object Drawing tool
• Text tool
• Depth tool
• Curtain
• Scenes
• Stage Settings
• Clickable links on stage
• Streaming
• Introduction to streaming
• Sending a stream
• Assign a stream to a stage
• Recording and Statistics
• Statistics
• Chat logs
• Replays
• Screen Recordings
• Admin
• UpStage administration
• Customise your Foyer
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Troubleshooting

Quick overview of tools

Once you have created a stage, uploaded media, and assigned media to the stage, you will want to start creating your performance. When you are logged in and have player access to a stage (either you created it, or the stage owner gave you access), you will see tools on the live stage that are not visible to the audience. These tools allow you to manipulate the media assigned to the stage, in real time, to present your performance to the audience.

When you enter a stage as a logged in player, you will see a toolbar on the left and, unless disabled or hidden by a player, a chat window. Here you will find the media you have assigned to this stage (such as backdrops, avatars, props, audio and streams) as well as tools for real-time features (drawing, text and streams), stage management tools (settings, curtain and scenes) and the player chat.

In the top right-hand corner is the UpStage logo, an indicator that shows if the stage is live or connecting and a counter displaying the number of players and audience currently on the stage.

Toolbar

The left-hand toolbar contains the following tools:

• Audio - sound media files 
• Backdrops - Images that can be displayed as a backdrop to the stage action
• Avatars - Images and animations that can be moved around the stage and can speak with text2speech voices
• Props - Images that can be moved around the stage and attached to avatars
• Streams - Pre-recorded video and live audio-visual streams that are either pre-assigned to the stage or sent spontaneously if the stage is set to auto-detect streams.
• Live Drawing - Draw in real-time directly on the stage
• Object Drawing - drawings that can be saved as objects either avatars or props
• Text - Create text objects that allow you to write in real time directly on the stage
• Depth - Manage the depth positions of media on the stage
• Curtain - Closes a curtain over the stage but leaves chat and emojis (if enabled) available for audiences
• Scenes - Select a saved arrangement of media with a single click, or start fresh with a blank scene 
• Settings - Hide or expose the chat window and reactions, clear text from the chat window, change the background color of the stage, and masquerade as audience to see how they are receiving your stage
• Player Chat -  Chat privately with your cast and crew without the audience seeing it

Click on a tool in the left-hand menu and an overlay will appear at the top of the screen, showing the available media or tools.

To hide the overlay, click again on the tool icon in the left-hand menu, or click on a different tool to display its overlay.

All of these tools are explained in detail in the following chapters.