Select Children

The Select Children tool additively selects all recursive children of every object currently in your selection — across as many separate hierarchies as you have selected simultaneously. This is an improvement over Blender’s built-in child selection (Select ‣ Select Grouped ‣ Children), which only works from the active object and requires multiple steps to cover multiple hierarchies.

How to Use

  1. Select one or more objects in the viewport.

  2. Click Select Children to add all recursive children to the selection.

The operation is additive — nothing is deselected. The active object is also preserved exactly as it was.

Modifier Keys

LMB

Select Children — recursively adds all children of every selected object.

Ctrl

Select Full Hierarchy — walks up to the root ancestor of each selected object first, then selects that root and its entire subtree. Useful when you have a mid-hierarchy object selected and want to grab everything above and below it in one click.

Key Behavior

  • Multiple Hierarchies at Once: The operator processes every object in the selection simultaneously. Selecting three separate hierarchy roots and clicking Select Children will expand all three in one operation.

  • Fully Recursive: It does not just select direct children. It walks the entire parent-child chain downward, so grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on are all included.

  • Non-Destructive to Selection: The tool never deselects anything. Existing selection is preserved and children are added on top of it.

  • Skips Inaccessible Objects: Children that are hidden or located in a disabled or excluded collection are skipped silently. The operator reports the total number of child objects it was able to select.

Practical Example

Suppose you have two separate prop hierarchies in your scene — Crate_Root with five child pieces, and Barrel_Root with three child pieces. In vanilla Blender, selecting both roots and running Select Grouped would only add children of whichever is the active object.

With Select Children, select both roots and click the button once. All eight child objects from both hierarchies are immediately added to your selection, ready for a batch operation.

This is particularly useful before exporting, applying modifiers across a rig, or using any other tool that should cover an entire set of hierarchies at once.