In Quick mode the selection moves, turns and scales as you move the mouse — there is no handle to grab.
Quick is handy when you just need to put an object in place: on the floor, on a table, on a slope. You move the mouse, and the selection slides over the surface under the cursor. Rotation and scale go on the mouse wheel, without switching tools.
The gesture doesn't stop while you fly the camera: you can select objects in one part of the level and put them in another one you couldn't see.
Turning Quick on
Press Q or the Quick Control Mode button in the Column UI. The gizmo disappears, and a yellow dot shows in the selection's pivot — this starts Quick.
The selection doesn't start moving by itself: you click the dot first. So between gestures you can select other actors as usual — a plain click in the scene works as always.
Starting and ending the gesture
- Select an actor or several actors.
- Click the yellow dot. It turns white when you hover over it.
- Move the mouse: the selection follows the cursor, the pivot lies on the surface under it.
- Left-click to place the selection. The yellow dot shows again — you can start the next gesture.
While the selection follows the mouse:
- The mouse wheel turns it around the Z axis.
- Shift + wheel — around the X axis, Ctrl + wheel — around the Y axis.
- Ctrl+Shift + wheel — scales it, keeping the proportions.
The wheel rotation step is 15°. You change it in the Mouse Wheel Step: field of the snapping settings. In the Local coordinate system the wheel turns the selection around the pivot's axes, in the others — around the world axes.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| A left click | the selection stays where it is |
| A short right click | the gesture is cancelled, the selection goes back |
| The right button held | the usual camera navigation, the gesture goes on |
| Esc | the selection stays where it is, the selection is cleared |
To make the selection land on the surface with the right point — a corner, the bottom, the centre of a face — put the pivot there first in Edit Pivot. In Quick it's the pivot that slides over the surface.
Quick and axis constraints
Quick remembers its own constraints, separately from the gizmos. The behaviour depends on two things: whether axes are on (F5, F6, F7) and whether Ray Hit mode (F8) — the surface hit — is on.
| Axes | Ray Hit | How the selection moves |
|---|---|---|
| off | on | over the surface under the cursor — the default |
| off | off | it stays in place; the wheel still turns and scales it |
| on | off | in the air — along the axis that is on, or in the plane of two axes |
| on | on | along the axes that are on, and takes the height from the surface under the cursor (unless the Z axis is on) |
All three axes at once work the same as none.
Grid snapping works in Quick too, and so does vertex snapping. N tilts the selection to the normal of the surface it moves over: a picture carried along the floor lies flat against a wall. The tilt goes in the object's own axes in any coordinate system, and the mouse wheel then turns the selection around the normal — see Tilting the pivot to the surface normal.
With Transform Each on, the selection follows the mouse as a whole, and the wheel turns and scales each of several selected actors around its own pivot. One actor is turned by the wheel around the pivot, as without Transform Each.
The chain of steps: turn, tilt, scale
A Quick gesture can go on with more steps — a turn, a tilt and a scale. You set the steps up in the Quick Controls popup: right-click the Quick Control Mode button in the Column UI.
The row of steps
The top block of the popup is the row of steps. Place mode and Transform mode keep chains of their own; the caption above the row tells which one you are editing: Place chain or Transform chain.
- A click on an icon turns that step on or off. A step that is off stays in the row at its place, dimmed.
- Drag an icon to change the order of the steps.
- In Place mode the Place step is always on and first: without it there is nothing to place. In Transform mode you can turn it off — then the click on the yellow dot starts the next step right away, for example a turn on the spot.
The steps that are on show under the Stripe UI — an icon per step, the current one highlighted. A right click on these icons opens the Quick Controls popup.
| Step | What it does |
|---|---|
| Place | the Quick gesture itself: the selection follows the cursor, a click places it |
| Rotate Refiner | press the mouse button and move the cursor around the pivot — the selection turns after it: around the world Z axis, in the Local coordinate system around the pivot's Z axis. Release the button — the turn is done |
| Pitch Refiner | press the button and move the mouse — the top of the selection leans the way the cursor goes: up the screen — away from the camera, sideways — sideways; it never turns around its vertical axis. Moving the cursor back to the start takes the tilt off. The mouse wheel in the middle of the tilt turns the selection around its own axis — the tilt still faces the cursor |
| Scale Refiner | press the button and move the mouse up or down — the selection scales keeping its proportions: twice as big for every 150 pixels up, smaller going down. The Scale snap of the Snapping popup rounds the scale; digits open the Touch&Type Scale window |
After the last step the chain starts over: the yellow dot shows again. A short right click brings back the previous step, Ctrl+R the first one.
Moving in the middle of a step
While Rotate Refiner, Pitch Refiner or Scale Refiner runs, you can move the selection without leaving the step. Hold Shift and move the mouse: the selection moves as in the Place step — as far as the point under the cursor moved, over the same surface. The turn, the tilt and the scale don't change, the cursor hides meanwhile, and the Place icon lights up under the Stripe UI.
Release Shift — the step goes on from where the selection is, without a jump. This way you can, for example, turn a crate, move it to the wall and finish the turn.
- Moving works both with the mouse button held and while the step waits for a press.
- The mouse wheel during the move turns the selection around the Z axis, as in the Place step: Shift is busy with the move and doesn't change the wheel's axis. Ctrl+Shift + wheel scales.
- A mouse button in the middle of the move does what it always does: releasing the held button ends the step.
- A short right click cancels the step together with the move.
- If Quick doesn't move the selection (Ray Hit off, no axes on), Shift doesn't move it either.
Stitched steps
Move an icon flush against its neighbour and the two steps are stitched — a link shows on the seam. With stitched steps the very mouse button move that ends one step starts the next one — no extra clicks:
- the Place step ends with a press — the next step goes on with the same drag, there is no need to release the button;
- a step you drive with the button held ends with the release — the next one starts right away and follows the cursor without a press;
- the last step, and a step before a junction that is not stitched, is committed with a click.
For example, a chain of Place, Rotate Refiner and Pitch Refiner stitched to each other. Click the yellow dot and move the selection. Press the button — the selection is placed; without releasing the button, turn it. Release — the turn is done, and the mouse already tilts the selection. A click commits the tilt.
Stitching and unstitching:
- a click on a link unstitches the junction — the icons move apart; a click on the gap between two icons stitches them;
- an icon dropped flush against a neighbour is stitched to it; dropped into a stitched junction — stitched on both sides;
- a step that is off between two others is skipped, and their junction is decided by the step after the one that is off: if that step is stitched to its neighbour, it is stitched to the step before the one that is off.
The usual keys work in the middle of a stitched drag: a short right click brings back the previous step, Enter and switching to the gizmo (W, E, R) commit what is done.
Ultra-fast Quick
In ultra-fast mode a Quick gesture starts without the yellow dot — right with a drag on an actor. It works in Transform.
Turn it on with the lightning button to the left of the row of steps in the Quick Controls popup, or with F4 in Quick mode. While it is on, a yellow lightning shows to the left of the step icons under the Stripe UI.
- Press the mouse button on an actor and move the cursor — the actor gets selected, and the same drag runs the first step of the chain at once: Place carries the actor over the surface, Rotate Refiner turns it. Release the button — the step is done, and the chain goes on as usual.
- The point you grabbed stays under the cursor — the pivot doesn't jump to the cursor. A pivot past the edge of the screen or behind the camera doesn't jump either: the drag moves it from where it stands.
- Over an actor the drag would take, the cursor turns into a cross with arrows. While you drag the actor, the cursor is hidden — watch the pivot's axes instead.
- A click without a drag just selects the actor, as usual.
- With Ctrl, Shift or Alt held, clicks on actors work as in the editor.
- A short right click in the middle of the drag cancels the gesture: the actor goes back to its place.
- In the middle of Rotate Refiner, Pitch Refiner or Scale Refiner, Shift moves the actor without breaking the step — see Moving in the middle of a step.
The landscape, BSP, hidden and locked actors are not grabbed this way. A floor mesh is an ordinary actor: a drag on it moves the floor.
Outside Quick mode F4 stays the editor's standard key — it opens the Details of the selected actors.
Also in the Quick Controls popup:
- Mouse Wheel Rotation Step — how many degrees one mouse wheel click turns (the same value as Mouse Wheel Step: in the Snapping popup);
- Reset Yaw Every Cycle and Reset Pitch Every Cycle — at the start of every new cycle the pivot's turn around the Z axis (Yaw) or its tilt (Pitch and Roll) goes back to zero.
Stamping copies
Quick can leave copies behind it — like a brush.
- Start a Quick gesture.
- Bring the selection to where you need a copy.
- Left-click with Alt held. A copy stays at that spot, and the selection keeps following the mouse.
- Repeat as many times as you need.
While Alt is held, a temporary copy of the selection shows where you started the gesture.
To avoid holding Alt, start the gesture by clicking the yellow dot with Alt held. Then every plain left click leaves a copy.
To finish stamping:
- Esc — the original selection goes back to its place, the copies stay, the selection is cleared;
- a short right click — the original selection goes back to its place, the copies stay;
- switch to a gizmo (W, E, R) or press Enter — one more copy stays where the selection is and becomes the selection, and the original selection goes back to its place. The gizmo works with this copy right away.
Changing the pivot in the middle of stamping. Press C — stamping pauses, and the selection stays where it was. In Edit Pivot put the pivot where you need it, for example on a bottom corner. Leave Edit Pivot (C or Esc) — stamping goes on with the new pivot, and the original selection still remembers its place.
Each copy is its own step in the undo history: Ctrl+Z removes them one by one, starting with the last.
Copies with the gizmo and repeating the last copy are described in Copies: Alt+Drag and Alt+Enter.