Toggle Preselection Highlight by selecting from the marking menu (Ctrl + Shift + right-click in the scene).
When Preselection Highlight is enabled, you can highlight components before you actually select them. As your cursor moves close to a component, a colored highlight appears on the closest component.
Preselection Highlight works on all component selection modes (Face, Vertex, UV, Edge or Multi), but only supports polygon objects.
To highlight components before selecting them
- (Optional) Activate Soft Selection (hotkey: b) to highlight an area of your mesh.
- Drag your cursor over your mesh.
Maya automatically highlights the closest component.
By default, Highlight Nearest Component is turned on in the Modeling Toolkit and the Select Tool settings. When Highlight Nearest Component is turned off, components are highlighted only when your cursor is placed on top of them.
Tip: Disable Highlight backfaces in the Tool Settings to highlight only those components that are facing the camera.
You can adjust the cursor distance required to highlight a component via the Preselect Size attribute in the
Selection Preferences.
Symmetrical preselection highlight
When Symmetry is on and you drag your cursor across your mesh, Maya highlights the closest component and the corresponding component on the opposite side of the mesh.
