Getting around

This page covers the home screen, moving the camera, and finding your way around a model. Selecting and moving things is in Select and transform.

The home screen

Qwartz opens on its home screen. From top to bottom:

• New Model starts a model from a cube (⌘N on a Mac). Open… opens a .qwartz file from anywhere else, such as Files or iCloud Drive (⌘O on a Mac). The gear opens Settings.
• Continue shows the models you opened last, then the others in Qwartz’s own folder, each with a picture of the model and where it’s saved. When there are more than eight, All shows every one.
• Start from has five starters: Cube, Grid (an 8 × 8 plane), Blocky Character (box parts, ready to paint), Tiled Room and Terrain Block (each with a tile sheet, ready to stamp). Each one opens a new model you can change freely.

Touch and hold a model on iPad, or right-click it on a Mac, for more. Remove from Recents takes it off the list and leaves the file where it is. On a Mac, Show in Finder shows where the file is.

Qwartz saves your work as you go. New models go in Qwartz’s own folder: on iPad, it’s On My iPad → Qwartz in the Files app.

Back to the home screen. On iPad, press the back arrow at the top left of a model. On a Mac, each model opens in its own window, and Window → Qwartz Home (⇧⌘0) brings the home screen back.

The free version keeps up to five models. See The free version.

The Mannequin (preview)

A preview. The Mannequin comes with Characters, which isn’t in the App Store version yet. In a TestFlight build, turn on Characters (preview) in Settings, then quit and reopen Qwartz: the Mannequin joins the starters.

The Mannequin is a character ready to animate. Its body is made of boxes and capsules on the Qwartz skeleton, the same joints as a Mixamo character, and it comes with a Walk clip. The body bends smoothly where its parts meet, at the elbows, the knees and the hips. Paint it, reshape it, or use it to try clips before your own character is ready.

Orbit, pan and zoom

The camera turns around a point in the middle of the view. Orbit moves around that point, pan moves the point, and zoom moves closer to it or away.

On iPad, the Pencil can turn the view too: with the Select tool, drag it from an empty spot.

On a Mac, a mouse wheel always zooms. A trackpad’s two-finger scroll zooms by default; to make it orbit or pan instead, change Trackpad scroll in Settings. With either choice, hold Command while you scroll to zoom, and Shift to swap orbit and pan. Invert zoom direction turns the scroll zoom around.

If the camera moves too fast or too slow for you, change Orbit & pan speed in Settings. Double-tap the slider (double-click on a Mac) to set it back.

Quick views

To look straight at a side of the model, press View Settings (the eye) in the toolbar. Under Camera, choose Front, Back, Left, Right, Top or Bottom. The view turns to face that side and keeps its zoom.

The same panel has the display settings: Lighting, X-Ray selection, and Show wireframe, for the selected object or for All objects.

Frame Selection

Select something, then press Frame Selection, the viewfinder next to the selection’s name at the top right. The view centers on what’s selected and moves in until all of it fits, with room around it: an object, a few faces, one edge. Pinch to step back. On a Mac, press F.

Isolate

Isolate shows the objects you choose, and their children, on their own, so the rest of the model stays out of the way while you work.

1. In Object mode, select one or more objects.
2. Press Isolate in the action bar at the bottom. You can also touch and hold a row in the outliner (right-click on a Mac) and choose Isolate, or press / on a Mac.
3. Everything else is hidden. A colored frame goes round the view, and a pill at the bottom says what’s isolated.
4. To leave, tap the pill, or press Isolate again (Esc or / on a Mac).

Isolate centers the view on what it isolates, and puts the camera back where it was when you leave. To keep the camera where it is, turn off Frame isolated objects in Settings. Selecting an object outside the isolation in the outliner also leaves Isolate. Nothing is changed in the model: Isolate is only a way of looking at it.

The outliner

The outliner lists every object in the model. Open it with the sidebar button at the left of the toolbar.

• Tap a row to select that object. The view switches to Object mode. On a Mac, Command-click adds or removes a row, and Shift-click selects a range.
• The eye hides the object, and shows it again. Hidden objects are left out of exports.
• Double-tap a row to rename it. You can also rename an object in the Inspector, at the top right.
• Parents and children. Drag a row onto another to make it that object’s child: it then moves, turns and scales with its parent. Drag a row between two others to change the order. The arrow next to a parent folds its children away. A .glb export keeps this tree, so a game engine gets the same parents and children.
• Touch and hold a row (right-click on a Mac) for Isolate, Group Selection (⌘G), Unparent, Duplicate (⌘D), Delete, Hide or Show, and Lock or Unlock Object. Group Selection puts the selected objects under a new empty parent.
• Lock keeps an object out of the way while you work around it. A padlock shows in its row, and in the view it can’t be selected, boxed, painted or moved: a tap goes through it to what’s behind. Its children are locked with it. It still shows, and you can still select it in the outliner: the Inspector then says Locked, and Unlock Object frees it. The UV editor shows a locked object’s UVs and image with Locked in its toolbar, but doesn’t move or paint them.

While Isolate is on, the rows outside it are dimmed.

Apple Pencil and finger

On iPad, Qwartz tells the Pencil and your finger apart. The Pencil uses the tools: it selects, drags the handles, draws the marquee, paints and stamps tiles. Your finger moves the camera. You can keep the Pencil in hand and orbit with a finger of the other hand at any moment, even halfway through a task.

If you don’t have a Pencil, or prefer your finger, turn on Edit with finger in Settings. A finger then taps to select, drags the handles and draws the marquee. To paint, touch and hold for a moment, then draw: a quick drag turns the view instead. Two fingers pan, and a pinch zooms. Taps with a finger reach a little further around points and edges than the Pencil’s, so you can pick them without zooming in.

In Settings you can also choose what a Double-tap or a Squeeze of the Pencil does in Paint and Tile: switch to the eraser, go back to the last tool, swap colors, or pick a color. Use System Setting follows the choice in iPadOS Settings. Squeeze needs Apple Pencil Pro.

Settings and help

Where they are. On iPad, press ⓘ at the right of a model’s toolbar: About Qwartz, Settings… and Help. On the home screen, the gear opens Settings. On a Mac, choose Qwartz → Settings… (⌘,) and Help → Qwartz Help (⌘?).

Settings apply to every model, and right away. Each one is described in Settings and Apple Pencil:

• Viewport: Frame isolated objects (above), and Gizmo size, the size of the move, rotate and scale handles.
• New Documents: the Palette a new model starts with.
• Pixel Paint: Pixel density. See Pixel paint.
• Navigation: Orbit & pan speed; on a Mac, Trackpad scroll and Invert zoom direction.
• Apple Pencil (iPad): Edit with finger, Double-tap and Squeeze.

What a model shows, such as the grid, the wireframe and snapping, is set per model in the toolbar’s View Settings and Snap & Grid. See Snap and grid.

Something missing or unclear? Write to [email protected].