Using Manipulators

Mouse controls  |  Keyboard controls

Many nodes support the use of manipulator widgets to translate, rotate or scale objects in 3D space. These manipulators can often be used in either the Cinema or Viewer windows.

Each axis of a manipulator is colour-coded red for the X direction, green for the Y direction and blue for the Z direction using a left-handed coordinate system with Y as the up direction:

Mouse controls

- Click and drag the left mouse button on any of the red, green or blue manipulator axes to adjust the transformation for that axis only.

- For translate, click and drag the left mouse button on central square to translate over the plane of the current camera.

- For rotate manipulators, click and drag the left mouse button inside the white circle to rotate all axes at the same time, or on the border of the white circle to rotate around the current camera's view axis.

Keyboard controls

- X, Y, Z: Restrict adjustment to particular axis. When held down, the appropriate axis will automatically be highlighted for each manipulator.

- Ctrl: Provide finer-scale control over adjustment.

- Alt/Option: Snap to the nearest 10 degrees when rotating.