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Selection

This chapter covers common tools which can be found in almost all the Tools Sets. These tools can interact with almost everything in the editor, and are therefore very important to be learnt.

In order to interact with a model, we need a way to pick its elements. For this reason there are 6 different selection modes you can choose among.

With Vertices Selection Mode , you can interact with the vertices of your model. For example you can click on a single vertex to start reshaping it.

Edges Mode is used to select single edges, for instance clicking everywhere on them. Again, once an edge is picked, there are more options to interact with it.

Polygons Mode is used to pick curved Polygons, again by clicking on the polygon surface.

The other options apply to specific groups of elements.

A Loop is a loop of chained edges. In order to pick a loop, we need to click on one of its edges. The condition for two edges being in chain is that they meet at the same vertex, and that they are almost aligned on that vertex. For example, loop is useful to shape at once loops of edges on cylinders, or on other similar primitives. Depending of the edge you start with, the loop may be closed or open.

Opposite to the loop is the ring. A Ring is a chain of polygons. In order to pick a ring, we need to select an edge, and the polygons attached to that edge will be selected first, then the chain is propagated to more polygons if possible. The condition here for two polygons being chained is to have a common edge. The chain is propagated only on curved quads, through opposite edges, and stops if any polygon is found not being a quad, like a curved triangle. Depending of the edge you start with, the ring may be closed or open as well.

In Parts Mode, we can click on a polygon to select all the polygons being in the same part. This makes sense only for models which have already been splitted into parts. If you want to try this, you should start from some of the premade models like the moka or the cup. An interesting way to look for models with more than one parts, is looking in their asset inspector. Here models with more parts are rendered using different materials.

In the previous examples, we have seen how to pick one element at a time, but also multiple selections are supported. Below the selation modes, you can find the group of selection Tools.

By default, the Pick Tool is selected. With this tool we can pick a single element, by clicking on it, and, as we have seen before, one or more elements maybe selected, depending on the Selection Mode in use.

With the Rectangle Tool we can select more elements at once. by dragging a selection rect on screen. Again, the overall selection depends upon the selection Mode chosen. For instance, if Vertices selection Mode is active, and the rectangle is dragged over the two vertices at the extremes of an edge, then both the vertices, and the edge, will be selected. Some thing for the vertices of a polygon.

The Circle Tool works in a similar way. We can drag the circle over the elements we want to be selected. And we need to press the P or O keys on the keyboard to reduce or increase the size of the circle.

For all the selection tools we have the option to active the cumulative variant. When Cumulative mode is disabled, any picking or selcting action will clean the selection. Whene Cumulative variant is enabled, elements can be selected in more steps, since the selection is never cleaned. So, for instance, in Vertices Mode, with the Pick Tool in Cumulative variant, we can select, one by one, all the vertices of a polygon to get it selected.

There are also a few actions to know about selection. You can select everything or remove everything from the selection, with Select All or Unselect All. It is very practical to know that you can execute the same actions with the S key for Select All, and with Shift plus the S key for the UnSelect All.

Another usefull action is Grow. Grow is used to add to selection every elements adjacent to elements which has already been selected. For example, if we select a vertex and press Grow, every edge or polygon attached to that vertex will be selected; and we can click grow more times, to propagate the selection on more and more elements.

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