UE4 editor feature request, Select-Only mode.

General Feedback & Requests
1

using Unreal Engine Version 4.13

A lack of this simple feature has been something I’ve been telling myself I want every time I’m dressing levels for our game. I was actually curious if there’s been much discussion about it on the forums, and I haven’t seen any yet.

It’s great that we have gizmos for translating, rotating, and scaling objects in the level editor. However Ctrl-clicking dozens of multiple objects to group them can be a bit more cumbersome than it should. When I’m selecting multiple assets in other 3d applications like 3ds Max or Maya, I’ll just press the Q key to go in a “Select-Only” kind of mode. This removes the 3d widgets in your viewport when you don’t need them and keeps them out of the way. This will also remove the frustration of having your assets slide by accident because the control-click + drag transforms your selection around the position of your mouse cursor. Max has a similar feature but you can disable it just by pressing Q.

It’s not a complex feature at all, but It’ll prevent the frustration of having your assets slip out of place when ctrl-clicking to select a group.

EDIT: I made a quick little image of how it could look in the viewport toolbar for users too new for keyboard shortcuts.
5cb54ac04a970c7cf11c1ef848164c7eaf2ab995.jpeg

One more thing I would like to mention, I like that the rotation gizmo changes the way the handles are facing depending on your viewport camera’s relation to it. The Gizmo is clear and easy to use from all angles when you look at it. I don’t understand why the other two gizmos don’t do this as well.

I thought I should share my thoughts on this. Thank you for taking the time to read.

2

So basically a paint select? Would be nice not just to click, but to paint-select like you do with polygons in modo for example. Would actually be very useful yes.

3

@Snefer, I’m not much of a Modo user, but I can’t deny how awesome the paint-select features are in Modo. I think paint selecting objects would be very helpful in the UE4 editor. :slight_smile:

4

Yeah, its something that I have been missing for a long long time, just never thought of bringing it up.

5

Yes, that’s something simple but will really improve editor UX. In my plugins, I always added a “Hide Widget” hotkey to toggle on/off the transform widget, though it’s not technically “Select Only” mode (since you can still do the transformation with Ctrl + Mouse drag trick)

InstanceTool_HideTheWidget.gif

MeshTool_HideTheWidget.gif

6

I must admit I accidentally drag stuff around the map quite often and I do think sometimes its these small things that makes a tool feel more polished and professional :cool:

7

I had requested something like that a while ago.

Just dug up the thread. https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?69373-Select-actors-in-the-viewports&highlight=select

Appearently this was picked up as “UE-847”, but never was anything heard of it again…