Commands - Selection

In this section we are listing all the commands that are here to help you select objects and assets, and modify the current Selection

Add Asset To Selection

Adds some assets to the currently selected ones

Quick Name: AA

Usage: This command is very useful when you want to perform an operation on few assets present in very different locations at once.

Example: You want to all the "Hit" VFX and SFX in one place, but some are coming from asset store packs, some other are under some folder of one of the game's entities. You could manually look for them and move them, but with MonKey you can add them to the selection, and then use the "Move To Folder" command to move them all at once!

Add GameObjects To Selection

Adds some objects to the currently selected ones

Quick Name: AG

Usage: This command is very useful when you want to perform an operation on few game objects present under very different hierarchies at once.

Example: You want to group together few game enemies under one common parents, but they are right now under different buildings on the scene: you can add them all to the selection without having to manually look for them in the hierarchy and risking to mess up with your current selection, and then parent the whole selection

Order Selection By Hierarchy

Orders the selection based on the hierarchy as seen in the editor

Quick Name: OSH

Usage: Since MonKey supports ordered selection, it makes it easier to select the order with which the objects are selected to perform different operations. This command is reordering the selection so that the first selected is the object that's the highest in the hierarchy.

Example: You want to place all the objects you have selected in circle around the first object selected, but you started your selection from the bottom of the hierarchy, so the center wouldn't be proper: using this command lets you have the top object be the first one selected,so that it is the center of the circle.

Print Ordered Selection

Prints the names of the objects in the order they were selected

Quick Name: POS

Usage: If you want to be sure about the order with which you selected your objects, you can use this command to check it out.

Select Children

Select all the children of the selected objects

Quick Name: SC

Usage: Selecting the children can be very useful when you group objects by similarities to quickly select all of them. With MonKey it becomes even more important to group objects together due to the amount of commands that can be applied on groups of objects.

Example: You want to be able to quickly selected all the treasure chest on the level: creating a parent for them allows you to select all of them at once by using this command. When there are not many children you can of course do it manually, but the command becomes useful when you start to spawn many objects.

Select Scene Objects of Type

Selects all the objects of the specified type

Quick Name: ST

Usage: One of the most useful command when you want to replace en entire type of content by another one. This command can be slow on big scenes as it needs to analyze every single objects present on the opened scenes.

Example: You want to add a new stealth component to all the enemies on a specific map without touching the prefab (let's say it's a component that is only good for that very map,as it's the only stealth map). You can find all the objects that have your "enemy" component, and add this stealth component to them.

Select GameObjects With Terms

Selects all objects that contain the specified terms in their name

Quick Name: SGT

Hot Keys: CTRL+SHIFT+G

Usage: Especially useful when you properly name your objects :)

Example: If you want to quickly find the coins on your scene (but preferred to group them by zone, so you cannot selected them as siblings), you can use this command by searching for "coin".

Select Assets With Terms

Selects all assets that contain the specified terms in their name

Quick Name: FAT

Hot Keys: CTRL+SHIFT+T

Usage: Same thing as "Select GameObjects With Terms" but for assets.

Example: You are looking for all the assets that have "Blood" in their name to move them to another folder. This command will select them at once.

Select Instances

Selects all instances of the specified prefab

Quick Name: SI

Hot Keys: CTRL+SHIFT+I

Usage: When spawning a lot of prefab instances, it is easy to lose track of where they are. When you want to switch all the instances of a specific prefab into instances of another one, this can be very useful.

Example: You want to replace all the instances of the "Heavy Box" prefab on the scene by instances of " Light Box". You can select all the instances using this command, and then use the "Replace Objects" command.

Select Common Parent

Selects the common parent of all the selected objects

Quick Name: SCP

Hot Keys: CTRL+SHIFT+M

Usage: If you are selecting few objects but want to select the parent they have in common, this command is for you.

Example: You selected two turrets of a spaceship where all the turrets are split into groups using this command will let you select the parent of the turret groups so that you can then select all the groups at once by using "Select Children"

Select Parents

Selects the parents of all the selected objects

Quick Name: SPA

Usage: This command is especially useful if you used "Find Object Of Type" and it returned you s list of objects that are under the objects you wanted to select in the hierarchy.

Example: You used "Find Object of Type" Tree, but it returned you the tree models that are under the tree objects, and you wanted to select the pivots of each trees. this command will help you do that.

Select Prefab Root

Selects the prefab roots of the selected objects

Quick Name: SPR

Usage: You sometimes by mistake put a prefab under another one, but don't want them nested: using this command will help you find the root of the prefab you placed under the other one.

Select Previous Selection

Selects the previous selection since the last empty selection

Quick Name: SPS

Hot Keys: CTRL+ALT+Q

Usage: You sometimes want to select the previous selection you had before you used another command after a bunch of operations, so you won't be able to find it in the Undo stack, this command will do exactly this.

Example: You selected a bunch of rocks, then moved them around, used few commands on them, then selected some trees and did some operations on them, but you now want to modify the rocks again. Using the undo stack would cancel the operations you did on the trees, but using this command will not.

Select Siblings

Selects the siblings of all the selected objects

Quick Name: SS

Hot Keys: CTRL+ALT+S

Usage: Useful when you have a a lot of siblings to selected, and if it would force you to use the scroll on the hierarchy: few seconds saved!

Example: You store all the statues under a parent game object, and your level is a statue shop so you have well over 1000 of them: using this command will select all the statue, which you can then replace by potteries with the "Replace Objects" command if you want to convert your statue shop into a pottery shop.

Sort By Name

Sort all the selected GameObjects by name in the hierarchy

Quick Name: SN

Usage: This command is useful when you want to bring a bit more order to your hierarchy.

UnSelect All

Clears all the selected objects

Quick Name: UNA

Hot Keys: CTRL+END

Usage: Useful when you want to quickly deselect objects without having to select another one.

UnSelect Children

UnSelects all the children objects if their parent is selected

Quick Name: UNC

Usage: This can be useful when you selected too many objects using a selection command.

Example: You were looking for all the trees using the "Select Objects With Terms" command. It selected trees, but also all the LODs of the tree. Using this command will only select the parents.

UnSelect Parent

UnSelects the up most parents of the selection : intermediate parents will still be selected

Quick Name: UNP

Usage: Similar to "Unselect Children" , but unselects the parent instead.

Example: You were looking for all the LODS of trees using the "Select Objects With Terms" command. It selected trees LODs, but also all the parent trees. Using this command will only select the LODs.

Select Meshes In Children

Selects all the meshes under the selected objects (included)

Quick Name: SME

Usage: Very useful when you want to use commands that do operations on meshes without having to select the object having a mesh

Example: You want to switch the materials of all the LODs of a model using the "Replace Material" command, you can first use that one to quickly select all the meshes

Select Children Of Type

Selects all the children objects of the specified type

Quick Name: SCT

Usage: : Same as Select Objects Of Type, but works only on the children of the selected objects. This is very useful to restrict a search to a specific hierarchy.

Example: You want to select all the rigidbodies in the children object to adjust their mass quickly: using this command will save a lot of time, especially for large hierarchies.

Select Objects with tags

Selects all the objects in the opened scenes that have the given tag

Quick Name: SCT

Usage: You can now mark objects with a given tag in a useful way: Grouping them by tag now allows you to also quickly select them.

Example: You want to tag all the level objective with "objective". Whenever you want to modify all of them at the same time, you can just use this command. You may as well decide to hide all the objects with the specific tag to clean up the selection.