Canvas tools

The tool strip sits at the top-left of the canvas. Every tool is a toggle — press its key again, or click its button again, to go back to Select. Esc also cancels whatever you're in the middle of.

Select (V)

The default. Click an object to select it, drag it to move it, drag its handles to resize or rotate.

• Shift+click adds an object to the selection instead of replacing it.
• Drag on empty space draws a marquee box; everything inside it is selected. Hidden objects are skipped.
• Click empty space clears the selection. (You can turn that off in Settings if you keep losing a selection by accident.)

Pan (H)

Drag to slide the view around. Nothing in the scene moves — only your view of it. The scroll wheel zooms at any time, whichever tool is active.

Orbit (O, 3D only)

Drag to swing the 3D preview camera around the scene, Blender-style. This moves your view, not the render camera — it changes nothing about the finished video. Selecting it switches the viewport to 3D if you weren't already there.

Camera (C)

Shows the render camera and lets you move it. This one does change the video.

In a 2D scene you get an amber dashed rectangle labelled CAMERA, with rule-of-thirds guides. It shows exactly what the render will capture, and it follows the camera's own animation — scrub the timeline and the frame travels along its keyframes.

Each drag creates a camera keyframe at the playhead, so moving the camera is already an animation. Esc mid-drag cancels and puts the camera back. In a 3D scene you get an interactive gizmo instead. Selecting this tool also switches the right sidebar to the camera settings.

Freehand pencil (B)

Sketch a stroke and it becomes a smooth, editable shape.

Press and drag freehand. A live preview line follows your cursor; when you release, the stroke is smoothed into a path object with proper curve handles. Every anchor point on that path can be animated individually afterwards.

• If your stroke ends near where it started, the path closes into a loop automatically. Finish away from your starting point if you want an open curve.
• A quick tap produces nothing — a stroke needs to be more than a couple of points to become a shape.
• The pencil stays active after each stroke, so you can keep sketching without re-selecting it.

Measure (R)

A ruler for checking a construction — is this really a 3-4-5 triangle? is that angle 30°?

Drag from one point to another. When you release, a dimension line stays on screen showing four numbers: the length, the angle from the horizontal, and the Δx and Δy legs, drawn as a dashed right triangle so the reasoning is visible.

• The measurement stays put after you release, so you can read it and compare. To clear it, click once without dragging.
• Angle is measured the way maths measures it — anticlockwise from the positive x-axis, with y pointing up.
• It measures raw canvas points; it doesn't snap and doesn't attach to corners.

Placing an object

Three ways: click an entry in the Insert panel to drop it in straight away, drag an entry from Insert onto the canvas to place it exactly where you let go, or arm a shape as a tool from the command palette and click on the canvas.

• Placing tools are one-shot. After one object the tool returns to Select and your new object is selected — you can't click repeatedly to stamp out several.
• Click positions are snapped when snapping is on.
• Adding any 3D shape switches the viewport to 3D automatically.

Related

• Keyboard shortcuts — every binding in one table
• Panels and features — the panels these tools feed into
• Work in 3D — orbiting, the 3D camera, and the floor