Beginner All Tools

Navigation & Shortcuts

Learn how Trumble is laid out, how to move between tools and panels efficiently, and every keyboard shortcut available across the Paint, Texture, Trim, and Bake tools. Once these become muscle memory, your workflow speed will increase dramatically.

⏱ ~8 min · 6 sections · All Tools

Step 01

The App Layout

Every tool in Trumble shares the same overall three-column layout. Understanding where things live means you'll never have to hunt for a panel or setting mid-workflow.

The three panels are:

Left panel — tool selector and the active tool's options (brush size, opacity, fill settings, etc.). Always contextual to whichever tool is active.

Centre viewport — your main workspace. 3D view for the Texture and Bake tools, 2D canvas for Paint. The Assets Library lives at the bottom of this area.

Right panel — channels, layers, environment settings, and document properties. This is where you manage your layer stack and material channel slots.

Step 02

Panels & Toggles

Both side panels can be toggled open and closed with a single key. This is useful for maximising your viewport when you need to focus on a detail, then bringing panels back when you need to adjust settings.

Panel Toggles — Available in all tools
P
Toggle Side Panel Shows or hides the right-hand panel (channels, layers, material settings). Press once to collapse it and reclaim viewport space; press again to bring it back.
Global
L
Toggle Library Panel Shows or hides the Assets Library panel at the bottom of the viewport. Useful when you need a clear view of the canvas without dismissing the panel permanently.
Global
Full focus mode: Press P then L in quick succession to collapse both panels at once, giving you a completely clean viewport. Press both again to restore your workspace.
Step 03

Global Shortcuts

Global shortcuts work in every tool — Paint, Texture, Trim, and Bake. These are the most important ones to learn first since they apply no matter what you're doing.

Global — Work in all tools
Ctrl+Z
Undo Steps back one action in the undo history. Works across Paint, Texture, Trim, and Bake. Trumble maintains a full undo history for the duration of your session — use it freely without worry.
Global Paint Texture Trim Bake
Ctrl+Shift+Z
Redo Steps forward through the undo history, re-applying actions you've undone. Use this if you undo too far and want to get a step back.
Global Paint Texture Trim Bake
Ctrl+Y
Redo (alternate) An alternative redo shortcut for users more familiar with the Windows convention. Identical behaviour to Ctrl + Shift + Z — use whichever feels natural.
Global Paint Texture Trim Bake
P
Toggle Side Panel Collapses or expands the right-hand panel (channels, layers, material settings).
Global
L
Toggle Library Panel Collapses or expands the Assets Library panel at the bottom of the viewport.
Global
Undo is non-destructive. Every brush stroke, fill, layer change, and channel edit is undoable. Don't hesitate to experiment — you can always step back to a clean state.
Step 04

Paint Tool Shortcuts

The Paint tool has the most shortcuts of any tool in Trumble. Most follow conventions from professional 2D painting apps, so if you're coming from Photoshop or Procreate, many of these will already feel familiar.

BBrush
EEraser
MMarquee Select
FFill
VMove
CClone
GGradient
IEyedropper
Paint Tool only
B
Brush Tool Activates the Brush tool. The left panel updates to show brush size, hardness, opacity, flow, spacing, and jitter controls. Your last used brush settings are remembered.
Paint
E
Eraser Tool Activates the Eraser. In Paint, this removes pixels from the active layer. You can choose which channels to erase (Color, Metallic, Roughness, Normal, etc.) from the eraser's panel options.
Paint
M
Marquee / Selection Tool Activates the rectangular marquee selection tool. Draw a region to select pixels on the active layer. Selections can be filled, moved, transformed, or deleted. Press Escape to deselect.
Paint
F
Fill Tool Flood-fills the active layer or selection with the current foreground color. In the Texture tool, Fill uses UV projection or Tri-Planar projection to apply textures across the mesh surface.
Paint
V
Move Tool Moves the active layer's content around the canvas. Hold Shift while dragging to constrain movement to horizontal or vertical axes.
Paint
C
Clone Tool Samples pixels from one area and paints them elsewhere. Alt + click to set the clone source point, then paint to copy from that source. Ideal for repairing texture seams or duplicating surface detail.
Paint
G
Gradient Tool Draws a linear gradient between the foreground and background colors. Click and drag to set the gradient direction and length. Useful for smooth transitions between values on roughness or AO layers.
Paint
I
Eyedropper Samples a color from the canvas and sets it as the foreground color. You can also hold Alt while using the Brush tool as a quick temporary eyedropper — release Alt to return to painting immediately.
Paint
X
Swap Foreground / Background Colors Instantly swaps the foreground and background colors in the color picker. Especially useful when painting masks — quickly toggle between black and white to reveal or hide parts of a layer.
Paint
Space
Fit Canvas to View Zooms and pans the canvas so it fits perfectly inside the viewport. The fastest way to reset your view if you've zoomed in or panned far off-centre.
Paint
T
Transform Layer / Selection Activates the free transform handles on the active layer or current selection. Drag corner handles to scale, drag outside the bounding box to rotate. Press Enter to confirm or Escape to cancel and revert.
Paint
Enter/Escape
Confirm / Cancel Transform Enter commits a transform, baking the new position and scale into the layer. Escape cancels it, reverting the layer to exactly where it was before you pressed T.
Paint
Delete/Backspace
Delete Layer / Folder / Selection Deletes the currently selected layer or folder in the Layers panel. If a marquee selection is active, clears only the pixels within the selection on the active layer. Either key works — use whichever your keyboard has.
Paint
Delete vs. Backspace: Both keys do the same thing. On keyboards without a dedicated Delete key (many laptops), use Backspace instead.
Step 05

Texture, Trim & Bake Shortcuts

The 3D tools — Texture, Trim, and Bake — share a set of shortcuts. These overlap partially with the Paint tool but have some key differences, particularly around the Select tool and the mask-aware colour swap.

BBrush
EEraser
SSelect
XSwap / Invert
Texture / Trim / Bake tools
B
Brush Tool Activates the 3D Brush for painting directly onto the mesh surface. Strokes are projected onto the UV map in real time. Brush size, opacity, flow, and tip shape are all adjustable in the left panel.
Texture Trim Bake
E
Eraser Tool Activates the 3D Eraser. In the Texture tool, you can select which PBR channels the eraser affects (Color, Metallic, Roughness, AO, Normal, Height, Emissive, Opacity) from the eraser's panel options — useful for clearing only a specific channel without touching others.
Texture Trim Bake
S
Select Tool Activates the UV-aware Select tool. You can select by Island (an entire UV island with one click) or by Mesh (an entire mesh object). Once selected, use the Fill tool to flood the selection with a color or texture. Press Escape to deselect.
Texture Trim Bake
X
Swap Paint Colors — or Invert Mask This key is context-sensitive depending on what you have active:

Normal painting: Swaps the foreground and background paint colors, exactly like in the Paint tool.

Mask or selection editing active: Inverts the mask grayscale — white areas become black and black areas become white. This is the fastest way to flip a mask without manually repainting it.
Texture Trim Bake
Island Select + Fill is one of the fastest ways to base-coat a mesh. Press S, click an island to select it, switch to Fill (F), and flood it with your base color in one click — no need to paint every polygon.
Step 06

Quick Reference

All shortcuts in one place. Print it, bookmark it, or keep this tab open while you work.

Global — All tools
Ctrl+Z
Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z
Redo
Ctrl+Y
Redo (alternate)
P
Toggle Side Panel
L
Toggle Library Panel
Paint tool
Space
Fit canvas to view
B
Brush tool
E
Eraser tool
M
Marquee / Selection
F
Fill tool
V
Move tool
C
Clone tool
G
Gradient tool
I
Eyedropper
X
Swap foreground / background colors
T
Transform layer / selection
Enter/Escape
Confirm / cancel transform
Delete/Backspace
Delete layer / folder / selection
Texture / Trim / Bake tools
B
Brush tool
E
Eraser tool
S
Select tool (Island / Mesh)
X
Swap paint colors — or invert mask grayscale when mask/select active
That's everything. The shortcut list is intentionally compact — Trumble keeps its keyboard map simple so there's less to memorise. Focus on the handful you use most often and the rest will come naturally over time.