The F2 add-on is one of the least feature rich add-ons in Blender, yet it remains a symbol of grand design and genius. It extends the functionality of the F key in Blenders edit mode so that you can make much simpler selections yet perform the same or better 3D modeling faster.
Enable the F2 add-on by going to Edit > Preferences > Addons and search for F2 and check the enable checkbox. With the F2 add-on enabled, you can create a new face with a single vertex or edge selected when pressing F in edit mode.
It may sound simple, but it is very efficient when modeling. Let's find out how it works.
Let's start by looking at what the F key does by default.
In edit mode with vertex or edge selection active, we can select several vertices or edges and press F to create a face between them.
What the F2 add-on does is that it assumes that we want to create quad topology and make that job easier with a few tweaks.
For example, if we select a single vertex that is connected with and edge to two other vertices and press F, The F2 add-on will change the functionality and create a new vertex opposite of the selected one and create a quad face between the now four vertices.
If the F2 add-on has multiple options, let's say that we select a vertex that is connected to four other vertices through edges. How does it know what two other vertices from the set to use?
Here is the clever part. It uses the position of your mouse cursor, and it will create the new face in its direction.
It can also fill new faces by pressing F if you have an edge selected and there are edges and vertices available to create new quad faces along a path. Each press results in creating a new quad face.
The F2 add-ons have been around for ages but also had a handful of updates during the years. These updates mainly comprise bug fixes, but also a few new features.
We can find these features by going to Edit->Preferences and into the add-on tab. Here, we type F2 in the search bar to filter out all other add-ons. Press the white arrow to expand the add-ons interface if it is collapsed.
Here we will find a few behaviors.
Auto Grab means that when creating a new face from a vertex select, the new vertex will be selected and in a move or grab state so that we can instantly manipulate its position. Otherwise it is just selected but no move command activated.
The Adjust UV setting will extend the UV map so that the new UV face will also have texture if a shader is setup correctly. Keep in mind though that if you want to change the UV map, you may have to recreate it because any face created in this way will not be visible in the UV editor.
I would assume that this is a bug that might get fixed at some point.
The enable extend vertex allows you to work similarly to the poly build tool. You can select a vertex that has a shallow angle and Blender will treat it as if you want to pull out a new triangle or convert an adjacent triangle to a quad.
Then we also have a handful of ways to change what material any new face we create should have.
What these does is that you can select a material from your material list in the properties panel and the selected material will be the material set for the new face. If you are not using this the material on the adjacent faces will decide the material on the new face.
In this article we covered how the F2 add-on works and what few but valuable features it brings to the table. From simply selecting and filling to intelligently adjusting its features based on the selection and position of the mouse cursor.
There are also a few options that can help us adjust the add-on to our own preferences, such as auto grab, extend vert, uv adjustment and material selection.
Thanks for your time.
