Welcome to your first beginner VFX art lesson in Studio! To get started, let's walk through how to open the sample template, customize Studio's layout for your tasks, and playtest the core gameplay of the experience where players join a carnival ride and defend their cart from enemies.
Open template
Templates are pre-made 3D worlds that you can use as the base for your own experiences. To introduce you to animation in Studio, Roblox has created the Mansion of Wonder template with everything necessary for the experience to work properly, such as the code to run the gameplay and an environment that you can customize at a later time.
For a full list of Roblox-provided templates, see Templates.
Click the following button to open the Mansion of Wonder template:
Customize workspace
Roblox Studio launches with extra windows open that you don't need for this lesson. You can close these extra windows to create more space for what you're currently working on.
To customize the workspace for your VFX art task:
Close any open window on the left side of Studio by clicking the X button on the top-right corner of the window. If you don't see anything to close, go to the next step.
Leave the Explorer and Properties window open on the right side of Studio. If you have done each step correctly, Studio looks like the following image.
If you don't see the Explorer and Properties windows, you can open them by going to the Home tab and clicking the Explorer and Properties buttons.
Playtest the experience
Before you start creating VFX art, it's important to take a moment to playtest the template so you can see how the gameplay works. When players join the experience and jump into the carnival ride, slimes and ghosts begin to slowly advance toward the player's moving cart. If these enemies touch the cart too many times, the cart explodes.
To playtest the experience's gameplay:
In the top-left corner of Studio, keep the default Test playtest option, then click the Play button. Studio enters playtest mode.
There are a variety of additional playtest options that you will explore in a later chapter of the tutorial.
In the experience, use the following player controls to walk up to the golem character on the stage, then press E to open up a menu. From that menu, click Play Game.
Action Control Move W A S D or arrow keys Rotate Hold the right mouse button and look around. Pan Hold the middle mouse button to drag your camera around. 
When the ride starts, left click to shoot the blaster at enemies. Watch the cart's health at the top of the screen and try and make it to the treasure room at the end.
During the ride, you can't use your mouse to click parts of Studio. To use the mouse, press 1 on the keyboard.
When you're done, return to the top-left corner of Studio, then click the Stop button. Studio exits playtest mode.
Now that you are familiar with the gameplay, it's time to start creating special effects!