The scenario is that I am working on a scene that contains some objects, and I decide to make some changes to one of them, a small object, but I can't select it as it is hidden behind (or inside) another larger object.  Each time I try it's the large one that gets selected.  I would hope that the answer is as simply holding down a key and them cycling through all the objects created.  Or is that just TOO simple?

You wonderful people have never let me down in the past.

If the object you want to select has its own name, you can go to the little up triangle on the bottom right of the animation bar and choose "select all meshes" and pick it out from the list that pops up.

You could also LOCK the objects that hide the one you want to select. This would leave your object free for direct selection.

Didn't I say it was an easy question...if you know how.  The answer was locking the object...once I had worked out how to lock it.  Many thanks

Or, hold the CTL key down & left click your mouse, holding it down. A list of the names of all the objects at that location will pop up & you can select whichever one you want...

Ah... photosynthesis was faster than I. ;)

How to select hidden objects or such that a part of a group in Bryce:

• move mouse pointer over intended object
• press CTRL key and keep it pressed.
• Bryce will now display a short list of the objects directly under the mouse pointer
• select object from that list
• use SHIFT key in addition, if you want to select/deselect multiple objects

Hubert

 

 

Thanks guys.  Another great solution

Here is another Great way to do stuff similar using Positive and Negative Boolean Functions I have made a form which goes into detail how to do it.

Hope you find this also interesting

Karl

if there isnt a gagillion objects you can hit the tab button till you select it..

You can't boolean metaballs, Karl.

Bryster,

You can certainly use negative metaballs to cut away parts of positive metaballs, which is a boolean operation. And while you don't HAVE to group metaballs the way you have to group other objects to get them to boolean, you CAN group them if you want to control multiple sets of  metaballs independently. You can't use the intersect boolean function on metaballs & you can't boolean them with other types of objects, but positive/negative works just fine. This may be what you meant, but I think it's misleading to just say "You can't boolean metaballs"...

Never worked for me.

 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1551181&user_id=122226&np&np

Hi I made a mistake in the typo

I meant use negative and Positive Metaballs I have not been able to do it but someone on the daz3d forum has he made an alien head from positive and negative metaballs. But whenever I try it refuses to do so.

Karl

Attached Link: Chaotic Order Mandala

Booleaning metaballs have worked I believe from the very first release in which metaballs were released or if not, shortly thereafter. Bryce 7 introduced the ability to create negative metaballs by just changing the attribute of a positive metaball to negative. Before that, you had to hold the Shift key down when first creating a metaball to make it negative.

Using booleans with metaballs to model  isn't as easy or straightforward as using other booleans only because negative metaballs exert a "gravitational" effect, just as positive metaballs do. So the size of a negative metaball & it's distance from the positive metaball it is subtracting from affect what happens. I don't do realistic modeling, but I think it would be very challenging to do so using metaball booleans (though I'm sure more patient & skillful Brycers than me have done it). But for the kind of abstract & surreal work I do, it works just fine.

The attached link is an example in which I've used booleaned metaballs. Those depressions in which the "eyeballs" are sitting are created by negative metaballs, as are the cutout areas of the egglike shapes right below them through which the tori runs.Here's a real simple way to validate this:

 

Open Bryce 7. Set the edit mode to Camera Space. Create a metaball. Just to make thing easier to see, make it larger & move it up above the ground plane (or just delete the ground plane). Then duplicate it. Both metaballs are positive at this point, so what you'll get is a larger metaball. Then change the second metaball's attribute to negative. This will make them both disappear, because they exactly cancel each other out. Next, make the negative metaball much smaller - say about a quarter of the size of the positive one. You'll see one metaball again. The negative metaball doesn't seem to have any effect, because it's INSIDE the positive metaball. Now very slowly move the negative metaball towards you, while watching the nano preview. You'll see  it carve out a hollow depression. You can watch how it changes as you move it back & forth. If you change the size of the negative metaball, that will change things as well.

Hope that helps...

eyeland.  Thank you for your contribution but all the talk of metaballs, camera space and negative/positive is way above my head AT THIS STAGE, but I am learning every day.

Cheers

Jack