Feature requests for the tySelect modifier

[Laserschwert]

The tySelect modifier is an awesome replacement for Max' own, but I'm missing a few things:

- A "blur" function, that's basically another item in the modifier's Selection List, and - as the name suggests - just blurs the selection (both ways basically, since soft selection only expands the selection outwards).

- An alternative version of the "Stack Selection" item in the selection list, that doesn't get the selection from the modifier stack, but from the items above it in the selection list (maybe called "List Selection" or "Pass Along Selection"?). In a current project I needed this to add a soft selection to an existing "Mesh" selection, without increasing the radius in all directions.

- A way to restrict the soft selection expansion to a specific axis or plane (or have separate values/multipliers for the different axes).

[tyFlow]

1) Sure

2) I don't understand this request...a selector that can import the selection of another selector? Why not just set the selection operation of your Mesh selector to "add"?

3) This would only be possible in world-space, without a lot of really complicated controls, and I can't really think of a good usage case. Can you provide one?

[Laserschwert]

These requests are actually somewhat related. I have a plane intersecting a landscape, with the plane getting the tySelect modifier set to "Mesh" (and the landscape picked for that), so that all the vertices of the plane that are inside the landscape get selected. This selection is basically my "shoreline" between the plane of water and my landscape. Now, I want this selection to be soft, stretching from the shore into the water, but just using a soft-selection in the "Mesh" item of the tySelect doesn't work, because there's also more landscape that continues underneath the waterlevel, and vertices inside the soft-selection radius of these submerged polygons ALSO get selected, which I don't want. What I'm doing now is adding a second tySelect modiifer, set to "Stack selection", which passes along the "vertices inside the landscape"-selection from before, and now I can do a proper soft-selection of this intersecting selection, without the rest of the landscape mesh interferring with this.

Being able to blur the selection with another item in the list would probably do the trick as well (as long as it can blur either inwards, outwards or centered). Alternatively being able to make the soft-selection only expand along the XY-axis would work as well. But passing along the selection list's selection (basically like "stack selection", but within the same tySelect modifier) would most likely be the easiest to implement.

[tyFlow]

I think the best option would just be to duplicate your landscape, slice it at the level of the water, thus removing anything below the water, and then use that as your mesh selector. Then you won't get underwater parts influencing the selection. The selector will also run faster, because it has to process less vertices.

[Laserschwert]

I think the best option would just be to duplicate your landscape, slice it at the level of the water, thus removing anything below the water, and then use that as your mesh selector. Then you won't get underwater parts influencing the selection. The selector will also run faster, because it has to process less vertices.

Well, this does work with a purely height-map based landscape, but as soon as there's something like a cave or other concave formation in the landscape, simply slicing downwards doesn't work, since now the geometry above would influence the selection just as well. Furthermore the plane is animated in its Z-position, so the slice would have to be linked to that - which, of course, is possible, but adds another step to the whole setup. Speed isn't necessarily an issue either, as I can just set the tySelect modifier (and whatever it drives) to "Render only".

[tyFlow]

You can always stack a second tySelect on your Mesh select one, set mode to "stack selection" and then modify your soft selection from there.

[Laserschwert]

Thanks for adding both "relax" and "previous selection" to the modifier! :-D