how to tell which surface is selected in UV mapping

Support Materials and Textures
1

Blender 2.54
In the UV editor, I have a lot of surfaces unwrapped from the mesh by using Unwrap command. Is there any method to tell which surface is which, e.g. by using the “select island” or “select surface” option in the UV editor and have any hint in the 3D panel which surface was just selected in UV panel?

2

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/UV/Editing_the_Layout

Active Face Select
If turned on, when youRMB click a ‘face’ in the UV map, the corresponding face in the 3D View is highlighted. Use this as a nice way of seeing how the initial unwrap corresponds to your real world to aid in rearranging the map into a coherent layout. In addition, (stay with me here) all four UVs that correspond to that face are selected. Very handy for moving/rotating a whole UV face at a time, instead of individual UVs.

This is for blender 2.49 but should still be applicable for the blender 2.5betas

3

Where is this Active Face Select option in select menu in UV editor? Currently I don’t have it, here is my Select menu in UV editor:
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/2557/selectmenu.jpg

4

No ‘Active Face Select’ option yet.
There is button labeled " Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync " so what you select in UV editor, becomes selected in 3dViewport and vice versa. The button is placed near selection mode buttons in UV editor.

5

The problem with this “Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync” is that when it is checked, the UV editor displays the whole mesh of the object, all faces, no matter if they are assigned (mapped) to the current image or not. This makes it of limited use for meshes with a lot of faces, because it is just unreadable.

What I was thinking about was to be able to have displayed in the UV image editor only the faces that are assigned (mapped) to the current image and additionally some way to mark which face is which in UV and 3D.

6

‘UV local view’ does exactly this.

Best wishes,
Matthew

7

Or select one face with image you want to see in UV editor then Shift-G>Image and hide the others by Shift-H.