Freezing and Unfreezing Objects

You can freeze any selection of objects in your scene. By default, frozen objects, whether wireframe or rendered, turn a dark gray. They remain visible, but can’t be selected, and therefore can’t be directly transformed or modified. Freezing lets you protect objects from accidental editing and speeds up redraws.

Above: No layers frozen

Below: Trash can and streetlight are frozen, and displayed in gray

You can choose to have frozen objects retain their usual color or texture in viewports. Use the Object Properties dialog General panel Display Properties Show Frozen In Gray toggle.

Frozen objects are similar to hidden objects. Linked, instanced, and referenced objects behave when frozen just as they would if unfrozen. Frozen lights and cameras and any associated viewports continue to work as they normally do.

For more information, see Freeze Rollout.

Freezing Objects

You can freeze one or more selected objects. This is the usual method to put objects "on hold."

You can also freeze all objects that are not selected. This method lets you keep only the selected object active, useful in a cluttered scene, for example, where you want to be sure no other objects are affected.

Attention: Objects on a frozen layer cannot be unfrozen. If you try to unfreeze an object on a frozen layer (with Unfreeze All or Unfreeze By Name), you are prompted (by default) to unfreeze the object's layer.

Procedures

To access Freeze options, select one or more objects and then do one of the following:

Parent topic: Selecting Objects