The Outliner: Your X-Ray Vision

When an illustration has 5 shapes, you can just click on what you want. When an illustration has 500 shapes overlapping across dozens of layers, clicking on the screen becomes a nightmare.

That’s why Brinimate provides the Outliner — a definitive text-based hierarchy list of every single object on your canvas. It’s your X-ray vision for complex scenes.

📋 What the Outliner Shows

The Outliner, typically docked on the left (toggled via the top menu, or opened via the bottom sheet on mobile), displays a tree structure:

Shapes: Rectangles, circles, custom paths.
Paths (Strokes): Freehand brush lines and geometric outlines.
Groups: Folders containing multiple shapes/paths.
Symbol Instances: Copies of symbols from your library.
Text: Text blocks.

This list represents the Z-order (stacking order) from back to front. The object at the bottom of the list is drawn first (in the background); the object at the top of the list is drawn last (in the foreground).

🎯 Precision Selection

Ever tried to select a tiny white highlight circle that’s positioned perfectly over a larger shape, only to accidentally select the large shape instead?

Solution: Open the Outliner. The tiny highlight will be listed right there. Click its name in the Outliner. It is instantly selected on the canvas, completely ignoring whatever your mouse was hovering over.

🔄 Reordering Z-Index Structurally

While the Quick Sidebar allows you to “Bring to Front” or “Send to Back”, sometimes you need an object to sit exactly between item #40 and item #41.

In the Outliner:

Click and hold the drag handle (the grip icon) next to an item in the list.
Drag it up or down in the tree.
Release.

You’ve just manually restructured the stacking order with pixel-perfect precision.

📁 Grouping for Sanity

As you build a complex vector character, you might end up with 30 paths just for the eye (iris, pupil, highlights, lashes, sclera).

Select all 30 objects (via the canvas or Shift+clicking in the Outliner).
Press Ctrl+G (Cmd+G on Mac) to Group them.
In the Outliner, they all collapse into a single folder labeled “Group”.
Now you can move the entire eye as one unit.

✏️ Naming Objects Like a Pro

By default, objects are named “Path”, “Shape”, or “Group”. In a large project, this is useless.

To rename an object:

Double-click its name in the Outliner.
Type a descriptive name (e.g., eye_left_highlight_01).
Press Enter.

Renaming groups and complex paths is critical before converting them into Symbols, as it saves you entirely from wondering what “Group 8” is during animation.

💡 Pro Tip — The “Lost Object” Tracker Have you ever drawn something, changed its opacity to 0%, deselected it, and then completely lost track of where it is on the screen? You can’t click it because it’s invisible. Open the Outliner. Scroll through the list. You’ll find it there (you can even see if its opacity is 0 in the Inspector). Select it via the Outliner and you instantly regain control.