Anvil Level Design

Navigation & Selection

Level Design Workspace

Anvil adds the Level Design workspace. You must be in this workspaces to use Anvil features.

Blender workspace tabs showing the Anvil Level Design and Hotspot Mapping workspaces
Blender Level Design workspace with Anvil side panels and the texture browser visible
Image
On the right: Anvil panels containing info and shortcuts. Below: Anvil’s custom texture browser.
Level Design workspace with a large top orthographic viewport beside Anvil panels
Image
The Anvil panels are inside an orthographic view that can be extended as desired.

Camera Controls

Hold Right Mouse to enter free look. Move around using WASD. Sprint using Shift.

Pan the orthographic view using Middle Mouse. Rotate the orthographic view using 1/3/7/9.

Context Menu

Anvil taking Right Mouse for free look overrides the default hotkey to open the context menu.

Use Ctrl-Right Mouse instead.

Visible Select

Anvil includes a new selection tool: Visible Select. It can be found between the Blender select and Blender cursor tools.

Visible Select tool highlighted in Blender's left toolbar

Visible Select always ignores culled faces. In contrast, the built-in select operators all either collide with faces pointed away from the camera, or - when x-ray mode is enabled - require hitting a small square in the centre of each face. Visible Select is intended to make modelling interiors more convenient.

Visible select includes add-to-selection Shift and path-select Alt.

Holding add-to-selection Shift while dragging will paint select.

Comparison of Visible Select and Blender's default selection on a textured interior mesh
Image
Visible Select vs Default Select

Select Connected

Anvil replaces Blender’s built-in Select Connected.

Hover over a mesh with your cursor and use L to select all connected parts.

Connected faces selected across a textured interior mesh in Blender

Hover over a mesh with your cursor and use Ctrl-L to select all connected parts that share the same normal.

Connected faces with matching normals selected on a textured interior mesh in Blender

Shift-L will add a connected island to the current selection.

Ctrl-L on the same face will grow the selection by near normals.

Ctrl-Shift-L will shrink the selection by near normals.

Grid Controls

Use [ / ] to double and half the current grid snap size.

Use Alt-G or eye icon to toggle the face grid overlay.

Adjust the grid overlay and size

Use Ctrl-G to toggle between incremental and grid snap.

Place Cursor

Use Shift-X to enter Place Cursor mode.

Anvil Material Panel
Image
The crosshair icon will also trigger Place Cursor

Place Cursor uses Anvil’s point select base workflow.

Anvil Point Selection

Several Anvil tools ask you to pick a point in the world. The controls below are shared across those tools; the images use Place Cursor as the example.

Point selection conforming to a mesh surface in Blender
Example
Point selection conforms to surfaces, and defaults to the 0 height plane.

Left Mouse selects the current point.

Esc exits without making changes.

Ctrl fixes the current selection plane.

Point selection plane fixed while the cursor moves across geometry
Example
Holding Ctrl fixes the selection plane.
Point selection plane aligned to a selected vertex height
Example
Selecting vertices moves the default plane to match the vertex height.

Point selection respects Blender's snapping mode; when snapping is disabled, point selection will not snap.