Proportional Editing

Proportional Editing is a very useful feature, especially when you’re working on organic modeling. Basically, you select an element (either vertices, edges, faces, or objects), but when you move it around, the surrounding elements follow the selection, depending on the falloff type and radius of influence you apply (see Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4 The Proportional Editing menu on the 3D View header (left), the falloff types (middle), and the effect of the Proportional Editing tool on a mesh when moving a single vertex (right)

Using Proportional Editing is very easy: just find the icon on the 3D View header and select one of the methods to enable it. Alternatively, you can press O on your keyboard to turn it on and off. Once Proportional Editing is enabled, when you perform a transform, a circle will appear around the selection that indicates the radius of influence and you can roll the scroll wheel of your mouse up and down to increase or decrease that size.

When you enable Proportional Editing, another drop-down menu will appear next to the Proportional Editing icon, where you will be able to select different falloff types. Here are the Proportional Editing methods you can use (see Figure 6.4):

Connected: This option affects only the vertices, edges, or faces that are directly connected to the selection (it won’t affect parts of the same mesh that are separated).

Projected (2D): Its effect won’t depend on the mesh, but on the point of view from which you’re looking at the mesh.

Enable: This option will activate the effect of the Proportional Editing tool on the mesh surrounding the selection inside the radius of influence, even if it’s disconnected.

Disable: This option disables Proportional Editing.