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Chapter 6: Selecting Objects and Setting Object Properties

Tutorial: Selecting objects
To practice selecting objects, you’ll work with a simple model of the lion toy. When you’re finished, you
can throw this model to your dog for a chew toy.
To select objects, follow these steps:
1. Open the Lion toy.max scene, which you can find in the Chap 06 directory on the DVD.
2. Click the Select Object button (or press the Q key), and click the lion’s body in one of the viewports.
In the Command Panel, the name for this object, lion, is displayed in the Name and Color rollout.
3. Click the Select and Move button (or press the W key), click the lion’s body, and drag in the
Perspective viewport to the right.
As you can see, the lion’s head and body form an object independent of the other parts of the lion
object. Moving it separates it from the rest of the model’s parts.
4. Choose Edit ➪ Undo Move (or press Ctrl+Z) to piece the lion back together.
5. With the Select and Move tool still selected, drag an outline around the entire lion in the Top
view to select all the lion parts, and then click and drag the entire lion again.
This time, the entire lion moves as one entity, and the name field displays Multiple Selected.
6. Open the Select Objects dialog box by clicking the Select by Name button on the main toolbar (or
by pressing the H key).
All the individual parts that make up this model are listed.
7. Double-click the nose object listed in the dialog box.
The Select Objects dialog box automatically closes, and the nose object becomes selected in the
viewports.

Figure 6.6 shows our lion friend with just its nose object selected. Notice that the name of the selected
object in the Name and Color rollout says “nose.”
Locking selection sets
If you’ve finally selected the exact objects that you want to work with, you can disable any other selections
using the Selection Lock toggle button on the Status Bar. (It looks like a lock.) When this button is enabled,
it is colored yellow, and clicking objects in the viewports won’t have any effect on the current selection. The
keyboard shortcut toggle for this command is the spacebar.

Caution
In Photoshop and Illustrator, the spacebar is the keyboard shortcut to pan, but in Max it locks the current selection.
If you accidentally lock the current selection, then you can’t select any other objects until the lock is removed. n

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