Smart Selection: The Foundation of Every Great Animation

The Selection tool (V) is the most-used tool in any animation editor. In Brinimate, we’ve packed it with productivity features so that moving, grouping, and duplicating objects feels natural and fast — whether you’re on desktop with a keyboard or on a tablet with your fingers.

🖱️ Single Object Selection

Click any object on the canvas to select it. When selected, you’ll see:

Blue bounding box with resize and rotation handles.
Properties loaded instantly in the right-side Inspector panel.
Z-order controls available in the Quick Sidebar on the left.

This is your starting point for every transformation: move, scale, rotate, or change color.

⇧ Shift: Multi-Selection

Hold Shift and click additional objects to add them to your current selection. This is called additive selection.

Use cases:

Select the arms, legs, and torso of a character to move them together.
Pick multiple props on a scene to delete them in one go.
Grab several layers to reorder them as a group.

When multiple objects are selected, the Inspector will show Pathfinder options — letting you unite, subtract, intersect, or exclude shapes from one another (see the Pathfinder guide).

🔲 Marquee Box (Click & Drag)

Click and drag on an empty area of the canvas to draw a selection rectangle. Any object that the rectangle touches or contains will be added to the selection.

Best practices:

Use the marquee to grab all objects in a specific region.
Combine with Shift to add the marquee selection to already-selected objects.
Great for selecting all elements in a scene panel before grouping them into a Symbol.

⌥ Alt + Drag: Instant Duplicate

This is one of the most powerful shortcuts in Brinimate. Here’s how it works:

Select one or more objects.
Hold the Alt key (Option on Mac).
Drag the selection.
A perfect copy appears at the drag destination. The original stays.

Creative example — A Crowd of Trees:

Draw one tree.
Alt+drag to create a second one. Move it slightly to the right.
Repeat 8 times. In 30 seconds you have a full forest.
Now select them all with the marquee and add a motion tween for a swaying wind effect.

⌘/Ctrl + Drag: Force-Move (No Accidental Resize)

When you have very small objects or objects with many overlapping handles, a regular drag can accidentally trigger a resize. To prevent this:

Select the object normally.
Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) before dragging.
The movement is forced — no handle will activate.

This is especially useful when animating small characters or tight UI components on screen.

🎯 Copy & Paste

Use keyboard shortcuts to work without leaving the canvas:

Ctrl + C: Copy selected objects to Brinimate’s internal clipboard.
Ctrl + V: Paste them at the center of your current view.

Note: The clipboard is local to Brinimate’s session — it won’t interfere with your OS clipboard.

✏️ Renaming Objects

Renaming keeps your layers organized, especially on long animations with dozens of elements.

In the Outliner panel: Double-click any object name → type the new name → press Enter to save or Esc to cancel.

In the Timeline: Double-click the layer name on the left side → edit → Enter.

💡 Pro Tip: Name objects early! An object called “right_eye” is infinitely easier to find in the timeline than “Path_37”. Consistent naming will save you hours when you start adding keyframes and tweens across 30+ layers.

Ready to level up your selection skills? Head over to the Quick Sidebar guide to learn how to execute frequent actions — like reordering and opacity — without opening a single panel.