Have you ever been working on a model and wanted to select all the faces or edges connected by sides? Well, these connected faces and edges are called loops and Blender actually provides a pretty simple way to select them. So how do we select edge or face loops in Blender?
To select edge and face loops:
We can select an edge loop in Blender by going to edit mode and vertex or edge select mode. Then hold alt while clicking on the middle of an edge to select the entire loop.
To select a face loop in Blender, go to edit mode and face select mode. Hold alt while clicking on an edge to select the face loop going in the edges' perpendicular direction.
In the rest of this article, we'll go over both edge and face loops in more detail as well as how to save our selection. As well as that we'll also go over selecting multiple loops at once. We'll also go over the few other methods of selecting loops that are a bit more niche but still useful.
Related content: How selecting works in Blender
An edge loop is either a horizontally or vertically connected line of edges. We can select an edge loop by first going to edit mode if we haven't already. Set the select mode to edge and hold down alt while hovering over an edge then right-click.
The direction the edge is facing is the direction of the loop we'll select.
To save our edge loop selection we'll just use vertex groups. Note that this method might not work as well if our mesh has a lot of triangles. Once we've selected the loops we want to save in properties > object data properties > vertex groups click the + to add a new group.
Name the group to what you want to call the selection then click assign. When we want to select it again first press Alt + A to deselect everything if you don't want to add it to your current selection. Now just click select and our loop we'll be selected again.
A Face loop, similar to an edge loop, is either a horizontally or vertically connected line of faces. We can select a face loop by first switching to edit mode on the object we want to edit if we haven't already. Then Set the select mode to face and hold down alt.
Hover the cursor over one of the edges of a face and then right-click. The direction of the edge from the center of the face is the direction of the loop we'll select.
Recently Blender has introduced face maps which allow us to save face selections quite easily. First, select the face loops you want to save then in properties > object data properties > face map click the + to add a new face map.
Name the face map to what you want to call the selection then click assign. We don't have to deselect everything but the select button is additive so it will just add to what selection we already have.
The first way to select multiple loops is just to hold shift and then alt-right-click on the next loop that we want to select. As well as that though we can also select a few edges and then select their loops all at once.
To do this first set the select mode to edge and then select the edges you want to select the loops of. Go to select > select loops > edge loops and now all of the loops for the selected edges will be selected.
Note that if we try this with faces it will just act as if we selected the edges of the faces instead of selecting the face loops.
First, let's start with edge rings. Edge rings are similar to edge loops but rather than the direction of the edge being the direction of the loop, the direction is perpendicular to the selected edge. To select an edge ring set the select mode to edge and hold ctrl + alt. Now just right-click on an edge to select an edge ring.
A boundary loop is the ring of edges around the selection or the edge of the mesh. To select a boundary loop first select what you want to get the boundary loop. Go to select > loop > boundary loop and now we'll have the boundary loop selected. This will also work for multiple selection islands.
This works sort of like the opposite of selecting a boundary loop. First, select the boundary loop that we want to select the interior of and then go to select > loop > select loop inner region.
We can also change which half we want to select by enabling select bigger in the dropdown that appears after we've selected the operation. Like boundary loop selection this also works for multiple boundary loops.
Similar to edge and face select mode we can also select loops in vertex mode. To select an edge loop in vertex mode just hold alt and right-click on an edge to select the loop. We can also select face loops in vertex select mode by holding Alt + Ctrl.
Edge loops, Face loops, Edge Rings, etc. While we might not be selecting these all the time, knowing how to select them can save us a lot of time. Rather than having to manually select each edge or face one at a time, we can just hold alt to quickly select each face or edge in a loop.
With the other selection methods mentioned, we should be able to cover pretty much any selection case. These are definitely more niche but when we do need them it will be much quicker than selecting each edge manually.
Thank you for your time.
