Alternative paint selection tool

Hi,
I just recently started to use blender and I’m really missing a paint selection tool which is only selecting the closest element to the cursor. I’ve tested the circle selection tool but it is very hard to work quickly and precise at the same time, because if I use a big radius I tend to select more elements then I acctually want to.

Here is a gif animations I’ve recorded which shows the problem I have with the circle tool.

http://www.cral.de/stuff/circleSelection.gif

Here is another animation which shows what I would like to have in blender.

http://www.cral.de/stuff/closestToElementSelection2.gif

I don’t need the preselection highlighting, which is also shown in the last gif. I only would like to have a paint selection which is only selecting the closest Vertex/Edge/Face to the cursor.

Another drawback of the circle selection tool is that I’m not able to rotate the camera.

I’ve a little bit of scripting experience in Modo but I don’t really know how to do something like this by myself.

TIA
Chris

Sorry, the second gif animation was broken so I fixed it and uploaded it again.

Can somebody help me with this or tell me which commands I need to create something like this?

i agree … selecting without a circle would be nice just like in modo or maya.
in edge and face mode this makes even more sense :slight_smile:

yep, the gifs are just an example. this should work in edge/face too.

Wow, this would be beyond awesome!!