and Lasso Select modes."/>
FIGURE 4-6: Border Select, Circle Select, and Lasso Select.
FIGURE 4-7: You can open a little Toolbar menu near your mouse cursor by pressing Shift+Spacebar.
Working with linked vertices
Another handy way to select things in Edit mode is by selecting linked vertices. Linked vertices are a set of vertices within a mesh that are connected by edges. In order to understand linked vertices better, go through the following steps:
1 Select your default cube in Blender and tab into Edit mode (or switch to the Modeling workspace).All the vertices are selected. If not, press A.
2 With all the vertices selected, choose Mesh ⇒ Duplicate from the 3D Viewport’s header or press Shift+D to duplicate your selection.Blender creates a copy of your selection and automatically switches to grab mode, allowing you to move the duplicate set of vertices, edges, and faces immediately.
3 Use your mouse to move your new cube off the original and confirm your placement by left-clicking or pressing Enter.None of the vertices in the original cube are selected. Each cube represents a set of linked vertices. So what if you want to select all the vertices in that cube, too? Sure, you can use the various selection tools in the Toolbar, but on complex meshes, even those tools can get cumbersome. Instead, move to the next step.
4 Place your mouse cursor near any vertex in the original cube and press L.Blam! All the vertices in both your cubes are selected.
Of course, the natural next question is, “How do I deselect linked vertices?” That’s just as easy. Place your mouse cursor near any vertex on the duplicate cube you created and press Shift+L. All vertices connected to the one near your mouse cursor are deselected. I’ve found myself using L and Shift+L pretty heavily when trying to place teeth in a mouth I’ve modeled. These hotkeys are very handy.
Quite a few more selection options are available to you when working with meshes. I describe these selection methods in detail in Chapter 5.
Still Blender’s No. 1 modeling tool: Extrude
Besides transform operations (see Chapter 3), the most commonly used modeling tool in Blender is the Extrude operator. In meatspace, extrusion is a process whereby some material is pushed through a shaped hole of some sort. When you were a kid, did you ever cut out a shape in cardboard and force clay or mud or Play-Doh through it? If so, you were extruding. If not, you certainly missed out on a good solid five to ten minutes of fun (but don’t worry, it’s never too late to start).
A WORD ON NGONS
Ngons are a fantastic help when modeling 3D meshes. However, there are still some limitations. For example, an ngon cannot currently have a hole in it — not on its own, at least. As the figure shows, to get a hole, you need to have two faces. There need to be edges that connect from the inner ring of vertices to the outer ring.
As mentioned earlier in the chapter, it’s best to think of ngons as a process tool. On any mesh that’s likely to be used in animation (like a character model) or included in real-time environment like a video game, the finished mesh should be composed of only tris and quads. An exception to this rule of thumb might be for architectural models or models intended to be rendered as still images. Because those meshes won’t be deformed by something like an armature or a lattice and they don’t have to work in a game engine, often you can get away with leaving ngons in them.
In 3D, extrusion follows a similar concept, except you don’t have to create the hole to extrude through. Instead, that shape is determined by your selection, and you can extend that selection in any direction. Follow these steps to extrude:
1 Select the object you want to edit.
2 Tab into Edit mode or switch to the Modeling workspace.
3 Select the vertices, edges, or faces you want to extrude.Use any of the selection methods listed in the previous section.
4 Extrude your selection in one of several ways:Vertex, Edge, or Face menus in the 3D Viewport’s header.Quite sensibly, because the Extrude operator is used so frequently, it’s the first choice in each of these menus. Do note that Blender will extrude only the components associated with the menu you use. So even if you have a whole face selected, if you choose Vertex ⇒ Extrude Vertices, Blender extrudes only the vertices in your selection rather than the whole face. Most frequently, you’ll probably want to use Face ⇒ Extrude Faces. Extrude tool.When you tab into Edit mode, the Toolbar on the left side of the 3D Viewport expands with a whole mess of additional tools you can choose from. The first of these added tools, of course, is the Extrude tool. Actually, that button is the home of a few different extrusion tools, but I cover that later in the chapter. The default tool for extrusion is Extrude Region, and it has an icon like the one to the left. When you choose this tool, a yellow gizmo appears on your mesh: a plus sign in a circle with a line to your selection. Left-click and drag that gizmo to extrude your selection in the direction it’s pointing.E hotkey.The E hotkey is by far the fastest way to extrude in Blender. When you press E, your selection is extruded and Blender automatically puts you in grab mode on your newly extruded parts. This means all your constraint hotkeys still work as well. Want to extrude
