Edit Mesh Tool
The Edit Mesh tool lets you change a polygon mesh by hand in the viewport: select its faces, edges or vertices and move, rotate or scale them. Your changes are stored in an Edit Mesh operator in the mesh's operator stack, so they stay part of the procedural history, the same way strand edits are stored in the Edit Guides Operator.
Starting to edit a mesh
Select a mesh and pick the Edit Mesh tool from the toolbar. Clicking a mesh in the Scene view or the Operator Stack switches to the Edit Mesh tool on its own, unless the active tool is one which already works on meshes, such as the Paint Texture Tool. Selecting a mesh in the viewport, opening a groom and undo keep the tool you are using.
The first selection you make inserts an Edit Mesh operator above the mesh. Later edits are stored in it. While the tool is active, the edited mesh shows its wireframe and its components, even when the viewport's wireframe overlay is off.
Selection modes
The Mode buttons in the Tool Properties panel choose what you select:
- Component - whole face islands, groups of faces connected through shared vertices. Clicking one face selects the entire piece of the mesh it belongs to.
- Face - individual faces. Selected faces are filled with the selection color.
- Edge - individual edges. Selected edges are drawn as thick lines.
- Vertex - individual vertices. Every vertex is shown as a dot, selected ones in the selection color.
Each mode keeps its own selection, so switching modes does not lose what you selected in another one. The mode is stored in the Edit Mesh operator as its Selection Mode parameter.
Click to select the component under the cursor; where several overlap, click again at the same spot to cycle through them. Drag a rectangle, circle or lasso to select everything inside it. Ctrl adds to the selection and Shift removes from it. Select All, Deselect All and Invert Selection work on the components of the current mode.
With Ignore Occluded on, components facing away from the camera or hidden behind other geometry are not selected.
Transforming the selection
When something is selected, the transform gizmo appears at the center of the selection. Use it to move, rotate or scale the selected vertices; in Face and Edge mode these are the vertices of the selected faces and edges. Each drag is a single undo step.
Soft selection
With Soft Selection enabled in the Edit Mesh operator's properties, vertices around the selection are partially selected and follow a transform with a strength that decreases with their distance from the selection:
- Distance - how far from the selection the soft selection reaches. The distance is measured along the mesh edges, so it does not jump across gaps, for example between the lips.
- Falloff - the strength of the soft selection over that distance, with the selection at the left of the curve and the soft selection distance at the right.
Partially selected vertices are shown as dots colored from the partial selection color to the full selection color.
The Edit Mesh operator
The Edit Mesh operator stores the moved vertices and the selections, and applies them to its input on every evaluation. Its changes are recorded by vertex and face number, so they apply to an input with the same topology as the one they were made on; if the number of vertices or faces of the input mesh changes, the stored edits are skipped.
The selection and the soft selection are carried on with the output mesh.