Academy

Design Mode

Design Mode Tools

In Design mode, you can make changes to your animation on a global level instead of just in one specific keyframe. Any changes that you make to an object in design mode, such as changing the size or color, will be reflected across your whole scene.

Design mode has many different tools which allow you to create new assets from scratch on your canvas, as well as edit them. You’ll find most of your tools in Design mode in the Top Toolbar, Style Inspector, and the Project Toolbar, such as Boolean operations, arrange tools, and text tools.

Selection Tool

The Selection Tool ic-selection icon is your default design tool in Move. It allows you to select objects on your canvas, as well as rotate, duplicate, and perform additional transformations with the selected object.

Node Tool

The Node Tool ic-node icon allows you to select individual vector points in your shapes and paths. Vector-based shapes consist of points connected by paths via mathematical equations. The path-connected points create vector shapes. These points are called Bézier Nodes. With the Node Tool, you can edit the points to refine your object’s paths. You can also use the Node Tool to add or remove points from a path.

Shape Tool

The Shape Tool ic-shape icon allows you to create geometric shapes, such as rectangles, lines, ovals, stars, polygons, and spirals. Clicking on the icon once will select the Shape tool. Clicking a second time will open a sub-menu where you can select different shapes. Click and drag on your artboard to create the shape. After you create a shape, you’ll revert back to whichever tool you had selected before the Shape Tool.

Text Tool

You can add text to your project by clicking the Text Tool ic-text icon in the Toolbar, or by pressing T on your keyboard and clicking anywhere on the canvas. A bounding box will appear on your canvas, containing the word Text. The content-aware Text Panel will then appear inside the Style Inspector. To add text to the box, just start typing.

Linearity Move Text Tool upper section

You can edit your text in the Inspector. Linearity Move gives you many options here. You can change the font, as well as the size and style. Text style options like Bold, Italic, Underline, and Strikethrough can be found here, as well as text alignment tools, letter spacing, and line height.

Linearity Move text tool bottom section

Next, you have three options for controlling your text box.

  • If you click auto-width (double arrow icon), your selected text box will automatically adjust its width to the accommodate whatever text you type into it.
  • If you click auto-height (5-lines icon), your selected text box will not grow wider, but it will automatically adjust its height to the accommodate whatever text you type into it.
  • If you click fixed-size (text in a box icon), your selected text box will remain static. If you write too much text, you’ll see it, but it’ll be outside the box.

Finally, you can convert your text into vector shapes by clicking “Create Outlines from Text”.

Arrange Tools

The arrange tools allow you to edit your objects faster and more precisely than you can with just the Selection tool. You have several different arrange tools available in the Top Toolbar and the Inspector:

Group/Ungroup

If you have multiple objects selected, you can use Group to combine them into a single adjustable element, while keeping the singular shapes intact. Clicking Ungroup while you have Grouped elements selected will separate the elements back into singular entities.

Align + Distribute

While you have at least one shape selected, you can use the Align buttons to align them to one of the sides (or center) of your canvas. If you have at least three shapes selected, you can use the Distribute buttons to place all the shapes an equal distance from each other on a vertical or horizontal axis.

Precise position

You can use these fields to adjust the position of your selected object with extreme precision by typing a specific value into the X or Y axis fields.

Precise size

While you have an object selected, you can adjust its height and width to precise values by typing into the W or H fields. Clicking the Lock button will link the height and width. This means if you change the value of one of them in these fields, the other one will adjust proportionally. This does not affect changes you make to the object by clicking and dragging on its nodes. Clicking the lock again will de-link these fields.

Flip

Use these buttons to flip your selected object either horizontally or vertically.

Would you recommend this tutorial?
Get started with Linearity today.

Get Started
v2