The Selection Strip

Overview

The "Selection Strip" contains an area at the bottom for prompt and selection information about your scene.

There is a coordinate display area in which you can type transform values, buttons to turn on "AI/Physics" and change speed of "Viewport Navigation".

Click on the links below for more information.

1. Status Line

The "Status Line" displays the number of objects selected and directly below that, it also provides functional hints for buttons or menu items in Sandbox Editor. (In the above example picture, we are receiving information from the heightmap when you left click on the terrain.)

2. Lock Selection Toggle

The "Lock Selection" toggle turns selection locking on and off. Locking the selection prevents you from inadvertently selecting something else in a complex CRYENGINE level.

When your selection is locked, you can click or drag the mouse anywhere in the viewports without losing your selection. When you want to deselect or alter your selection, click the "Lock Selection" toggle again to unlock the selection.

"Lock Selection" is off by default. If it is switched on, the button is highlighted in orange. With the toggle on, you can click anywhere in a viewport and Sandbox Editor maintains the current selection.

If you want to select something but can't, it's usually because you have locked your selection.

3. Transform Coordinate Display

The "Transform Coordinate Display" area shows the position of the cursor or the status of a transform, and allows entry of new transform values.

The information in these fields varies, depending on what you are doing:

When you are simply moving the mouse in a viewport, these fields show the current cursor location in absolute world coordinates.
While you are creating an object, these fields also show the current cursor location in absolute world coordinates.
While you are transforming an object by dragging in a viewport, these fields always show coordinates relative to the object's coordinates before the transformation was started.
While you are transforming an object, these fields change to spinners, and you can type values directly in them.
While a transform button is active and a single object is selected, but you are not dragging the object, these fields show the absolute coordinates for the current transform.
While a transform button is active and multiple objects are selected, these fields show the previous selection's transform coordinates.

Pic1: In this example, the "Transform Coordinate Display" shows the absolute coordinates for the selected objects positional transform

The "Viewport Navigation Speed Control" allows you to change viewport movement speed.

The "Speed" input is used to increase or decrease the movement speed of all the movements you make in the main Perspective Viewport.

The 3 buttons to the right of the "Speed" input are quick toggles for changing speed to 0.1, 1 or 10.

You can manually set the speed by typing into the box or use the spinner to adjust the speed up or down. The minimum value is 0.01 (good for very small precise movements) and the maximum is 100 (very fast).

5. Terrain Collision Toggle

The "Terrain Collision" toggle turns terrain collision on and off. Enabling terrain collision inhibits camera movement below the terrain surface.

6. AI / Physics Section

There has been a few additions to the physics section recently.

The "AI/Physics" button turns physics simulation and AI on and off. This button allows you to test physics and AI behavior directly in the Editor without entering into game mode.

The next two buttons ("Pause" & "Next Step") are used for stepping through the physics system, 1 frame at a time. To use these correctly, follow these steps:

Click the "Pause" button first
Click the "AI/Physics" button
Use the "NextStep" button to simulate through time, frame by frame

Once you're finished with debugging, make sure to disable the pause button again to return to normal operation.

Unreleased as of 3.8.6 but coming soon

The "Hand" button, which is a new feature, allows the user to interact with physicalized objects within the scene while still in Editor mode (not game mode). There are several new features for debugging different physicalized objects.

To use these features simply press the "AI/Physics" button, then press the "Hand" button.

Pinch mode: Hold LMB to grab an object in the scene, with full rotation in all axis.
Grab mode: Hold LMB + Ctrl to grab an object, but without simulating any rotation on the object. (The object will stay level.)
Shoot mode: Press LMB + Shift to interact with items like breakable trees, touch bending vegetation or cloth. In shoot mode, there are two variations, a simple impulse that is triggered as soon as you release LMB, or the longer you hold down LMB the 'charge' of the impulse will increase (max 3 seconds). Release the LMB to apply the impulse.

With the shoot mode 'charging', notice as the more impulse that is accumulated ( via holding LMB + Shift) a red sphere will appear & grow under the mouse cursor to provide feedback to the user how much is being applied.

7. No Sync Player Button

The "No Sync Player" button detaches the player entity from the camera (while in Editor mode, there is a character entity attached to the camera which is otherwise always synced).

This can be useful with "AI/Physics" enabled and not wanting to activate triggers while navigating through the level.

8. Goto position Button

The "Goto position" button opens the "Go to position" dialog box using which a user can jump to a specific position in the level.

You can enter positional coordinates or use the spinners to specify values. Clicking on the "Goto position" button will immediately move the perspective viewport to the specified coordinate.