Meta Developers

The Desktop Editor has manipulation tools that enable you to edit objects easily and intuitively, with keyboard shortcuts to toggle between different tool functions. Press Q to engage the Select function, W for Translation, E to Rotate, and R to Scale. You can also Multi-Select and Multi-Transform objects by holding Ctrl or Shift while selecting objects in either the viewport or the Hierarchy panel. This feature supports both local and global coordinate systems (except for Scale, which is only available in local mode in order to prevent shearing).

How to use the manipulation tools

These tools provide an easy-to-use UI design. There are 4 “manipulation tool” modes that can be seen on the menu at the top.

On the toolbar menu, you can toggle between the different manipulation modes: Select, Move, Rotate and Scale. Hovering the mouse over the toolbar will show the tool’s keyboard shortcuts. A coordinate system dropdown toggles between the Global or Local axis for an object (note that Scale does not support Global mode; it is only available in Local mode). The floating tooltip displayed during transform indicates the deltas, depending on the coordinate system.

Keyboard shortcuts

These keys will provide shortcuts to the different manipulation modes:

[Q]: Toggle into Select mode.
[W]: Toggle into Move / Translation mode.
[E]: Toggle into Rotation mode.
[R]: Toggle into Scale mode.

Select mode [Q]

Select an object by clicking it in the viewport.
Select objects and reveal their property panel without manipulators taking up space in your world.
Hold Ctrl or Shift while selecting objects in your world enables Multi-Select mode; you can also achieve the same result by using Ctrl or Shift to select multiple objects in the hierarchy menu.

Translate mode [W]:

Translate objects along axes by dragging one of the red, green or blue arrow handles.
Translate objects along a plane by dragging one of the red, green or blue square handles.
Red / green / blue arrows represent the current system’s X / Y / Z axes, respectively.
Planar handles (squares) allow translation along 3 planes: XY, XZ and YZ.

Rotate mode [E]:

Rotate objects around an axis by dragging one of the red, green or blue handles.
Red / green / blue partial circles represent the rotational circle around the system’s X / Y / Z axes, respectively.
Yellow highlights represent the visual delta of the angle currently transformed.

Scale [R]:

Scale objects around an axis by dragging the red, green or blue handles.
Uniformly scale objects by dragging the center gray handle, OR hold Shift and drag one of the red, green or blue handles.
Red / green / blue cubes represent the local system’s X / Y / Z axes, respectively.
Red / green / blue cubes representing the local system’s X / Y / Z axes, respectively
The center gray cube allows uniform scaling, or you can also hold Shift while dragging any of the scale cubes to uniformly scale objects.

Multi-manipulate

Manipulators also work when multiple objects are selected. This allows you to translate, rotate and scale based around the center of the selection.
Shearing is not supported, so a non-uniform scale will scale on the object’s local axes.

Global / local coordinate space

You can toggle the coordinate space the manipulators are based on by toggling it in the manipulation tools toolbar.