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 (Vertex,
UV,
Edge,
Face, 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.
- Select the 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.
Note: 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.