How to Use Proportional Editing in Blender

The proportional editing tool in Blender is a fundamental feature used for smooth mesh deformation, allowing you to influence unselected neighboring geometry while transforming a selected element. This article explains how the proportional editing tool works, how to enable it, how to control its radius of influence, and how to choose different falloff curves to achieve organic shapes and seamless modeling workflows.

Understanding Proportional Editing

In standard editing mode, translating, rotating, or scaling a vertex, edge, or face only affects the selected geometry. This can result in sharp, jagged, and unnatural deformations when trying to create organic shapes.

Proportional editing solves this by acting like a magnet with a soft falloff. When you move a selected element, the surrounding unselected vertices are pulled along with it. The strength of this pull decreases the further the surrounding vertices are from the selection, creating a smooth transition.

How to Enable and Use the Tool

To use proportional editing, you must be in either Edit Mode or Object Mode.

1. Activation: Press the O key on your keyboard, or click the small circular icon located in the top-center toolbar of the 3D Viewport.
2. Transformation: Select a vertex, edge, or face, and initiate a transformation by pressing G (Grab/Move), R (Rotate), or S (Scale).
3. Adjusting the Influence Circle: Once you begin the transformation, a gray circle will appear around your cursor. This circle represents the area of influence.
   • Scroll the Mouse Wheel Up to decrease the radius of influence.
   • Scroll the Mouse Wheel Down to increase the radius of influence.
   • Alternatively, use Page Up or Page Down keys to adjust the size.
4. Confirming: Left-click to confirm the transformation once you achieve the desired shape.

Falloff Types

The way the surrounding geometry deforms is determined by the “Falloff” type. You can change this via the dropdown menu next to the proportional editing icon in the toolbar. Each falloff type alters the shape of the influence curve:

• Smooth: Deforms the mesh in a natural, bell-curve fashion. This is the default setting and is ideal for general organic modeling.
• Sphere: Creates a rounded, spherical deformation, pulling vertices more aggressively near the center.
• Root: Similar to sphere, but with a more pronounced, steeper peak.
• Inverse Square: Results in a sharper drop-off, affecting vertices closest to the selection much more than those further away.
• Sharp: Creates a pointed, cone-like deformation, perfect for spikes or mountain peaks.
• Linear: Creates a straight, diagonal slope of influence from the center to the edge of the circle.
• Constant: Translates all vertices within the radius of influence by the exact same amount, creating a flat-topped step.
• Random: Distorts the surrounding vertices randomly within the radius, which is useful for creating rough, uneven, or natural terrain-like textures.

The “Connected Only” Option

By default, proportional editing operates in a 3D spherical radius, meaning it will affect nearby geometry even if it is not physically connected to your selection (such as the upper lip of a mouth affecting the lower lip).

To prevent this, you can enable Connected Only by pressing Alt + O or selecting it from the proportional editing dropdown menu. When active, the influence will only propagate through vertices that are physically connected by edges to the selected element, ignoring adjacent but separate geometry.