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I'm trying to select just the faces the camera can currently see to do some specialized uv mapping for them.

If I leave "Limit Selection To Visible" off, I can select all visible faces - but also all non-visible faces.

When I click this on, though, it doesn't seem to select all visible faces - just some of them. Please see screenshots, one showing me using border select to select the faces, and one zoomed in a moment later showing what was actually selected.

What am I doing wrong? Is there some sort of tolerance config parameter somewhere?

EDIT

Per @Vince's comment, I should clarify what I think I'm doing. In the first screen shot, I took a camera, right clicked on it, went into camera perspective via ctrl-num0, put a mesh in edit mode, Select > Deselected All, pressed B to start border select, made sure Face select was on and "Limit Selection To Visible" was on, and you can see me dragging from top left down to bottom right over the mesh. I expect that every face visible in this view should be selected. HOWEVER, immediately afterward, when I zoom in (second screen shot, all I did was scroll the middle mouse button), you can see that not all the triangles were selected. There's a patchwork of white areas, which are the selected triangles from that operation, but all of the dark areas are faces that were facing the camera but weren't (for some reason) selected. I expect that all of these should be selected (ie white).

Furthermore, if I try this exact same thing again zoomed in, more things that weren't selected become selected; and if I start over but further zoomed out, even fewer faces end up selected in the end.

And yes, this is a straight flat noob question about selection.

Please excuse the funky texturing (blue/green), which has nothing to do with the question.

Here we go, selecting visible faces! Nope, not today.

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  • 2
    It's quite unclear what you're problem is, could you explain "It doesn't seem to select all visible faces"? Limit selection to visible doesn't ever actually select anything, it just limits what you can select with [B], [c] or RMB. – Scalia Apr 17 '15 at 20:36
  • I've attempted to clarify; if this still isn't good enough please let me know so I can try again. To respond directly, I meant "with [B]" it doesn't seem to select all visible faces. – James Dowdell Apr 18 '15 at 1:46
  • 1
    if you hit [ctrl] + [+] it will select all faces adjacent to currently selected faces, it's not the best for your situation, but all those tris that didn't get selected in the first place should get hit up immediately. – Scalia Apr 18 '15 at 1:49
  • I assume that would also wrap around to the backfaces too though, right? Better than no answer, but certainly sub ideal. – James Dowdell Apr 18 '15 at 7:48
  • 2
    The face has to be able to be seen directly. I imagine it is likely using a backfacing functionality of some sort, so protruding parts on the front of the mesh will have parts that do not get selected. The same for any major details that seriously change the mesh shape. Also, what effect are you trying to achieve? There may be an easier solution. – VRM Apr 18 '15 at 11:50

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