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The Copy and Paste Sets buttons let you copy a selection set from the main toolbar and paste it as needed.

Selecting by criteria

The remaining selection criteria let you locate subobjects using a variety of different methods.

By Surface, Normal, and Perspective

The By Surface panel lets you specify a degree of concavity, and the tool locates all the concave areas in the current object. Negative values also can be used to find convex regions. Figure 14.28 shows the selected concave regions.

FIGURE 14.28

The By Surface tool can be used to find the concave regions of an object.

The By Normal panel lets you choose an axis and a value, and all subobjects within the Angle value for the selected axis are selected. This is a great way to quickly determine which polygons are facing away from the current view. The Invert button can find all normals pointing toward the negative axis side.

The By Perspective panel selects those polygons that are within the Angle value to the view axis. If the Outline button is enabled, then only the outer borders of polygons are selected. Click the Select button to see all the selected polygons meeting the criteria.

By Random, Half, and Pivot Distance

The By Random panel lets you randomly select polygons within the current object. You can set to randomly select a given number or a percentage of the total. The Select button makes the random selection, or you can randomly select within the current selection. Additional buttons grow or shrink the selection. Figure 14.29 shows a random selection.

The By Half panel lets you quickly choose half of the available polygons as determined by axis. The Invert Axis button lets you choose the negative side of the axis. The By Pivot Distance chooses those polygons that are farthest away from the current pivot point, creating a circular selection area. Reducing the distance value creeps the selection closer to the pivot's location.

FIGURE 14.29

The By Random tool can be used to make a random selection of polygons.

By View, Symmetry, and Numeric

The By View panel selects those polygons closest to the current view camera. Increasing this value extends the selection farther into the scene, as shown in Figure 14.30.

FIGURE 14.30

The By View tool is used to select those polygons closest to the current view.

Regardless of the current selection, you can make it symmetrical about any of the three axes using the By Symmetry panel. The By Numeric panel, which is only available in Vertex and Polygon modes, lets you select all vertices that have a given number of edges or polygons that have a given number of sides. The Equal, Less Than, and Greater Than buttons are used to mathematically determine those subobjects.

By Color

The By Color panel, available in Vertex mode, lets you locate any vertices that have a given color or Illuminate vertex color setting according to the specified RGB values.

Using the Object Paint Tools

The last tab is the Object Paint tab. This tab includes tools that let you select and paint with a specific object. This is great for spreading objects around a scene. The tab also includes several options for randomizing the size, orientation, and placement of the painted objects.

Selecting an object to paint with

Within the Paint Objects panel, shown in Figure 14.31, are two paint modes for painting and filling. Each of these buttons is a toggle and turns the paint mode on and off. While each mode is active, you can switch between objects and subobjects as needed.

FIGURE 14.31

The Paint Objects panel lets you paint or fill with objects.

Before you can begin painting with an object, you need to select an object using the Pick Object button. Simply click the Pick Object button and select an object in the scene. The selected object is highlighted and added to the list of paint objects. If you select the Pick Object button again, you can add another object to the list of paint objects. Clicking the Edit Object List button opens the list of