Add Camera based selection
Hello everyone,
The other day, I was modeling and realized that I was spending unnecessary time on certain tasks. I found myself constantly pulling vertices, duplicating objects, pulling vertices again, and so on.
Each time I duplicated an object, I had to switch to X-ray mode to select the two vertices of the cube that were aligned on the same axis, as I wanted to deform the geometry uniformly.
It occurred to me that this step wouldn't be necessary in other software programs, thanks to an option called "Camera based selection." This feature allows you to select the entire geometry of your selection, regardless of whether it's visible to the camera or not, eliminating the need to enter X-ray mode.
I found this option very useful for situations like this and believe it's a valuable tool for modelers like myself.
Thanks to the Blender developers for everything,
Have a great weekend!
1 Comment
It's not camera based selection, quite the opposite, it's removing the constraint of only being able to select what is visible from the current point of view.
Prior to 2.80, this feature used to be called " limit selection to visible ", and was renamed to X-Ray since 2.80 because it's how it works: make things visible to make them selectable.
But I agree making the two concepts of display and selectability linked together prevents lots of flexibility.
I can't find the discussion pages anymore, but I remember a few debates happened here and there, where people did bring up that being forced to change the display of the whole viewport to make everything visible just to be able to select things that are otherwise obstructed from the viewpoint was an unusual principle compared to other softwares and felt more restrictive than anything. Plus sometimes people want to see through without being able to select through.
As often in other softwares, you do have an option to limit the selection to what's visible, but toggling it really just changes what you can select, without affecting the display. Allowing you to keep it always on or off depending on what you want, not cluttering your viewport, keeping good performance, ... Some people opposed to this as it could lead to unwanted selection, but I personally find this to be a poor argument. Let the user make its bed instead of enforcing one.
Edit: I did better searching and found some interesting stuff:
There was quite a design discussion by the devs 4 years ago, but it didn't lead to any final solution:
#73479 - 3D View Selection Occlusion (Select Through) - blender - Blender Projects