Maya style selection using bounding box (vs. hitting "B")?

Support Basics & Interface
1

A while back I threw out all of my customizations and committed myself to learning “raw” Blender (with the exception of a a left click select).

So far that has been one of the best decisions I have made around using Blender. Not necessarily because its defaults are better than other packages, but because I no longer have to look very hard to learn new skills (i.e. if I research how to do something in Blender I know that what I learn will work with my vanilla setup). I enjoy using Blender in its raw state.

However, now that I am being productive with Blender in its raw state, I am looking to do some very minor customizations to change one or two of the interface features that, after many weeks of using Blender, I am still not happy with.

I would like to make it so that if I click on an empty space, all items are deselected. If I click and drag on empty space, it begins a marquee selection (deselecting what was previously selected). And if I shift-click drag I will begin a marquee selection, without first de-selecting what was previously selected.

I know this is possible because if I use the Maya preset, it behaves in this manner. But I really want to keep the rest of Blender as stock as possible. I have been unable to figure out how to tease out the specific items that I need to customize to get this behavior.

I looked at this thread:

And have been able to get the box selection to work on left mouse click, but it doesn’t do the other things (i.e. deselect the previous selection on a new mouse click and drag, or use the shift key to add to the selection on a shift-mouse click and drag.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Edit: I’d like to keep the default "B’ and (De)select all “A” active as well if possible, but it isn’t necessary.

Edit2: I am getting closer. Here is what I have done so far:

Under 3D View/3D View (Global):

I modified Border Select as described in the post linked above. Except I turned off “Extend”

I then added as second Border Select (view3d.select_border), set it as above, but turned on “Extend” and required “Shift”.

I then added a mesh.select_all under “mesh” set to “Mouse” and an Action of “Deselect”.

The issue is that the shift-border select does not add to the selection, but only subtracts from it.

I will keep working on this and post screen shots when and if I solve it.

Edit 3: Except now I can’t select individual vertices just by clicking on them… nuts.

2

You have a conflict happening on the same mouse button.

Blender sorts mouse articulations into Press, Click, Release and Tweak. Activate/Select uses Press by default. When Tweak is used on the same button, whatever is mapped to Press will always trigger first.

To circumvent this, find “Activate/Select” in 3D View Global, expand the version which uses Shift modifier, change articulation from “Press” to “Click”. This forces Activate/Select to happen after a Tweak event.

Regarding select and deselect; There’s a hidden command to automatically select or deselect on empty space. The full python command is bpy.ops.view3d.select_or_deselect_all(). The hotkey command is view3d.select_or_deselect_all.

To make this the default behavior, find “Activate/Select” in 3D View (Global), there will be multiple entries, but you only need to change the top one, replace the hotkey command with view3d.select_or_deselect_all,

or you can disable the first “Activate/Select” and add a completely new entry.

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That is super helpful. Thanks!

I’ll try implementing it tomorrow and report back.

4

Hi,

you may want to check this out: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?447451-Standardized-Keymap-for-Blender

:slight_smile:

5

Thanks. I’m actually just opening the key map editor right now to try out the suggestions from iceythe.

I’ll also look at this thread to see what it might offer. That said, I’m pretty committed to trying to use the Blender defaults as much as possible… It really has helped me as I learn because I can quickly Google how to do something and know that my system will match up with the answers given online.

But I’m not going to be 100% strict about that. After working in Blender for 8 hours a day for the past two weeks there are a few places where I’m willing to customize. But these, I think, are going to be mostly interactions that I won’t have to look up (I.e selection style like I mentioned in this thread, or maybe gong back to Maya navigation - mostly because now that I’m used to blender, going back to Maya is messing me up! I would like to unify the two.)

I’m also willing to add to the functionality of blender in a way that doesn’t change the key mapping in any significant way. I.e I have remapped ctrl-G to run my own custom add on that groups items in the outliner like in Maya.

Minor things like that.

But this other key map looks very interesting and is something I will be checking out as well. Thanks!

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Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. Following it I have almost gotten to where I need to be. :slight_smile:

I am now able to deselect by clicking on blank areas (I added the view3d.select_or_deselect_all the way you suggested. I also changed the Activate/Select - The one set to Shift Select Mouse - from Press to Click). Thanks!

I have two Border Select options set up.

The first is the usual Border Select as is the default in Blender, but set to be Tweak, Left, Any and Extend turned off. This works for doing a border select, but it does not work for shift-selecting additional items.

So I added a second Border Select, attached it to Tweak, Left, Any plus the Shift key, and turned on extend. But that does not seem to help.

I also tried turning ALL of the Activate/Select items from Press to Click, but it also did not help.

You have all been so helpful so far, so I am going to lean on you a bit more. Any thoughts?

Thanks

7

When you’ve expanded Border Select entry in the hotkey editor, there’s a sub-entry called Gesture Border right below it. Expand it.

https://i.imgur.com/tNXXOLF.png
tNXXOLF.png581×548

There, in the middle of the list you’ll see a “DeSelect” entry mapped to Shift. Change it to Alt, or something (I have an extra border select on Alt just for subtracting.)

https://i.imgur.com/FF56VXX.png
FF56VXX.png557×512

I don’t know why it’s mapped like that - it doesn’t make sense to have subtract selection on Shift since Blender uses Alt and MMB for that everywhere else in the software.

If that doesn’t work, export your key config and upload it here, and I’ll take a look!

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Thanks so much for your help so far. I really appreciate it.

I tried changing the section you indicated, but it still doesn’t behave. I can do a border select and select new things, but when I hold down the shift key (or even the alt key) I don’t get a marquee at all.

Here is my config file. Thanks again!

Attachments

bvz_exportedKeysConfig.zip (3.61 KB)

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Was going to reply to this with links to iceythe but you’ve already got the very person helping you.

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You were missing the extra entries for Shift/Alt modifier for the border selection. After adding those seems to work!

bvz_exportedKeysConfig_v2.zip (3.5 KB)

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iceythe,

Thank you SO MUCH. That was very kind of you. I have downloaded it and am working with it now. As soon as I have a moment, I’ll dig into it to try to see what I had missed before.

Thanks again!