Selecting uv island from poly - 3DSMax

rage288

Its a quick one, how can I select a whole UV island by selecting a single poly in the viewport? Kinda like the "expand polygon selection to seams" but instead of using UVUnwrap seams (wich work with pelt and peel) it uses the actual borders of the uv islands. Im using 3DSMax 2016.

Thx!

phixel

Yes, there is a checkbox in the bottom left area of your UV window: select "by element" which will select the whole UV island. There are also buttons right next to that to grow or shrink UV selections & pick UV rings or loops.

rage288

Yes I know both of those but I want a tool that selects a whole "uv element" by just selecting a poly in the viewport not inside the edit window.

phixel

Sorry I misread your question. There is a button in the Peel section of the unwrap UVW modifier that will expand your selection to the seam borders of the UV island. Other than that, I am unaware of any other button or shortcut that will do what you are asking.

rage288

Im aware of that also but it expands to the seams that u made with the seams tool that are used for pelt and peel (the blue lines) Im looking for exactly that but one that works with the green ones! Thx!

Yoji

sry for the necro but any news on this? did you find anything @rage288 ????

Altea

When you click in the display it will select also in the UV editor window. Simply click in that island with the island button active in UV editor window,
As alternative use the button "create group" that automatically will select the island. But you need to remember in some point to remove the groups or packing can be affected.

monster

You can use this script. It's pretty old since I made it around Max v6 or v7 in 2004. But it should still work.

Select a vertex, edge or face. Then run the script.

(
	--//function to convert selected subObjects to shell
	fn expandToShell =
	(
		--//Get the modifier, exit if not unwrap
		uv = ModPanel.getCurrentObject()
		if classof uv != Unwrap_UVW do return false

		uv.selectElement()
		uv.updateview()
	)

	
	undo "To Element" on (
		expandToShell()
	)
)

Pdude2K7

@monster - Was just looking for this. thanks for the script, man!

rage288

Thanks my dude!

melviso

@monster Thank you.
EDIT: Btw, is there a way to add this script to the toolbar or u can only use it with 'run script' ?

redhonour

@melviso Once you've opened the script in the Max Script Editor, you can just drag and drop it to a toolbar

melviso

@redhonour Thanks a ton,mate

Kanni3d

Another necro, but you can click on one polygon, then ctrl+click, and it'd expand to the entire uv shell ( you can do this across many shells at once too, as I loved to click on individual polygons on a mesh in viewport, then ctrl click in uv editor to grab all of those corresponding uv shells, rather than manually finding them) - but for some reason in 2020.3 (and 2021) it's broken entirely. Even the button that specifies "expand to seams" still expands to the entire mesh. Super annoying, but thankfully this script exists. 

coven

Hey @Kanni3d. Not seeing that issue here. If I have nothing selected, I can hold CTRL and double click a face and it will select the island. If this isn't what you are seeing, shoot me a message and I'd be happy to look into it.

Kanni3d

Hey, @coven ! Thanks for looking into this

Double clicking will select the whole island which is nice individually. But sometimes I'd like to select multiple uv shells at once, so earlier versions of max, I'd single click a bunch of individual polygons on my model, and then ctrl click in uv editor to convert to full uv shells. 

Here's how it performs in latest 3ds max (convert edge selection to seams still is broken, as it just grows the selection to the full element, not uv seams)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o_hqvD3GUwcZZ4AFUDP_UCM0yMfs-SIe/view?usp=sharing

coven

Oh I see. Yeah we changed that. We are in the process of unifying selections in Max. Now if you want to select multiple islands, for the first island you can just double click. For the next island you want to add, you hold CTRL and double click. This is the same for selecting elements in edit/able poly, poly select (basically all the poly mesh stuff). 

Kanni3d

That works great actually, and probably faster than previous. (I hope you understand why I select individual polygons first and convert them to uv shells in the first place some people I've explained that to think its pointless/weird).

rahimi001

Altea said:

When you click in the display it will select also in the UV editor window. Simply click in that island with the island button active in UV editor window,
As alternative use the button "create group" that automatically will select the island. But you need to remember in some point to remove the groups or packing can be affected.

This is awesome! Do you know how I can take this script and turn it into a hotkey via hotkey editor? 

Eric Chadwick

rahimi001 said:

This is awesome! Do you know how I can take this script and turn it into a hotkey via hotkey editor? 

Which script? The reply you quoted doesn't contain a script.

And, sorry but did you try a search? https://www.google.com/search?q=script+to+hotkey+3ds+max