Hi,

being used to a viewport centric workflow i'm stuck with a general selection issue. I've got 2 spheres, a small one inside a bigger one. Is there any way to select the smaller one in the viewport?

cheers,

A>

Andi Farhall
Is there any way to select the smaller one in the viewport?

With one click? No. You could select both and then deselect the bigger one.
Problem is, because of the object highlight on mouse over, the wireframe mode reduced to a preview only utility, it doesn't provide any accesibility benefit.
You might want to RFE a “disable obj highlight in wireframe mode” option, I did it too. Some things don't get changed no matter how badly they need change, unless there are more people requesting that.

In your Houdini preferences , “Objects and Geometry”, check 'Popup menu selection.
I think you need to restart the hou so …

In the viewport , do a simple click on the mess and a popup menu appear.

Although that's a good feature to know about, it doesn't really address the need to easily (one click) select objects directly in the viewport: instead of accessing a list of objects in a side-panel you're accessing a list of objects in the viewport.

Hi,

i put an RFE in regarding this, using an example of multiple small spheres inside a large sphere.

cheers,

A>

In the Display Options, go to the Geometry tab, Wireframe group and disable “Select Wireframe Surfaces as if Solid”. Then you can select the smaller sphere when you switch to wireframe mode. It used to work this way by default, but many users wanted to be able to select in wireframe easier than by picking edges, so this option was added and enabled by default.

That's cool, but I'm willing to bet a lot that this question will pop again. Not that you can ever prevent questions to reoccur about anything, but these type you can minimize by overhauling the prefs in Houdini which barely changed if at all since at least H14. They're all over the place.
For example this one should've been under “Selections” in main Prefs.

Hi Twod,

that's certainly allowed me to crack on, very helpful. I do find the selection in Houdini tricky compared to soft, I know there's muscle memory involved but there might always be better ways to do things. I guess if the bulk of core users don't want things to change then it makes positive evolution of a product tricky.


cheers,

A>

Andi Farhall
I do find the selection in Houdini tricky compared to soft

What are you referring to exactly?

Having slept on it and also compared the two I actually think it comes down to object preselection highlighting, I just don't like it as I find it distracting, the lack of usefull selected primitive highlighting in wireframe mode, it just looks like an edge select to me. The more i dig and direct compare the less I can put my finger on so it's good that you posed the question. I don't want Houdini to turn into soft at all but one thing soft has over every other package is workflow harmony which to someone involved in art can only be a good thing. I may well have made a fuss about (almost) nothing here so apologies if i have…

A>

Andi Farhall
The more i dig and direct compare the less I can put my finger on

Well, I'm also glad I asked the question, because that was the intended purpose
We always ought to address specific points, because just pointing out overall impressions is not helpful, even when those impressions are backed by justified grievances - they need to be spelled out precisely.

I've complained about the object highlight too and I still hope there will be an option to turn it off, unless there's already one, tucked away under some tab somewhere. Hopefully twod will pleasantly surprise us again.
Most viewport-centric accustomed people and especially modelers, will hate these type of distracting visual cues (there are others, for which RFEs have been filed).
You too should probably file a RFE for an option to disable this.

Hi twod,
I might have filed a RFE for what I'm about to describe (don't remember) and I don't know if you're the dev. dealing with these issues, but since you stuck your neck out on this one (no good deed goes unpunished), I'll toss it your way to maybe address it or pass it along to whomever is necessary.

The problem with “Select Wireframe Surfaces as if Solid” is that it has a big and annoying impact on selecting faces when in wireframe. It treats faces as if they're objects and selecting them becomes a precision job by carefully clicking near edges to select the desired face.

Can we keep the shaded mode selection for faces when in wireframe and the above options has been disabled?

Some programs pop up a small selection drop down list if there are multiple possibilities for viewport selection under the mouse pointer. It shouldn't be too hard to do that in H if the whole wireframe thing it to complicated.

Edit: I just found out that H does exactly this when you turn on “pop up menu selection” in the preferences

@OneBigTree
Yeah, I knew about that and at one time my response to this (IIRC) was along the lines: if viewport interactivity is considered first, that feature is merely moving the necessity to select from a list like the tree-view (or explorer in case of XSI) to another place: the viewport.
Lists are lists regardless of the place they're displayed at. As a modeler, in XSI, I was never compelled to select objects in a list if I could eyeball them in the viewport.

McNistor
@OneBigTree
Yeah, I knew about that and at one time my response to this (IIRC) was along the lines: if viewport interactivity is considered first, that feature is merely moving the necessity to select from a list like the tree-view (or explorer in case of XSI) to another place: the viewport.
Lists are lists regardless of the place they're displayed at. As a modeler, in XSI, I was never compelled to select objects in a list if I could eyeball them in the viewport.

Yes, it doesn't replace the ability to directly select through another object in wireframe. But in some cases it is actually superior to direct selection depending on the complexity of your scene. But it probably should go in a right click menu because you don't want it all the time. Anyway, don't get me started on the right click menu…