Polygons preferences

Polygon Display

Vertices

Specify how you want vertices to display:

Display: Turns the display of vertices on or off.
Normals: Displays vertex normals on or off.
Backculling: Makes vertices invisible in areas where the normal is pointing away from the camera.

Edges

Specify how you want edges to display:

Standard: Displays all edges the same (hard or soft).
Soft/Hard: Displays soft edges as dotted lines and hard edges as solid lines.
Only hard: Displays hard edges only (makes soft invisible).

Highlight

Specify how you want to highlight polygons:

Border edges: Displays thicker outside edges to make them more visible for certain operations.
Texture borders: Displays a thick border to highlight the area a texture affects per polygon or per vertex.
Crease edges: Show polygon crease edges highlighted (thicker and bold) or with no highlight. You can turn this option on and off in the Display > Polygons > Custom Polygon Display options dialog box (where it affects the currently selected object) as well as here. This preference affects any new polygon objects you create, not existing objects.

Edge Width: Specify the width of the polygon edge. The range is from 1 to 10.

Faces

Specify how you want faces to display:

Centers: Displays a small square to indicate the face center.
Normals: Shows the normals at the center of each polygon.
Triangles: Displays all polygons as triangles.
Non-planar: Displays non-planar faces with a tinted color for easy identification. A non-planar face has vertices that lie outside the plane of the face. By identifying and eliminating non-planar faces, you can avoid unexpected results from reshaping the surface later.

Show item numbers: Specify where you want item numbers displayed: at each vertex (Vertices), at each edge (Edges), on each face (Faces), or at each UV (UVs).
Normals size: Specifies the display size of the normals. The range is from 0.1 to 10.
UV Size: Specifies the size that UVs are displayed in the main panel and UV Texture Editor.
Color: Turn Colored Shading on to use the Apply Color operation ( Color > Apply Color).

Color material

These menu options override any existing material channels and replace them with the vertex colors you assign. For all options other than None, lighting affects the object’s shading.

None: None of the material properties of the shader(s) assigned to the object are used. In this case lighting is also disabled.
Ambient: The ambient material channel of the assigned shader(s) is overridden by the vertex color.
Ambient + Diffuse: The ambient and diffuse material channels of the assigned shader(s) are overridden by the vertex color.
Diffuse: The diffuse material channel of the assigned shader(s) is overridden by the vertex color.
Specular: The specular material channel of the assigned shader(s) is overridden by the vertex color.
Emission: The emission material channel of the assigned shader(s) is overridden by the vertex color.

Material blend: Renders material blends in hardware. For details of how Material Blend operates, see Color > Material Blend Setting.
Display Alpha as Grey Scale if Color Set Contains Only Alpha: Displays an alpha-only color set as greyscale in the Scene view.

Backface culling

Specify the display for backface culling:

Off: No backface culling occurs. This is the default.
On: Surfaces become invisible in areas where the normal is pointing away from the camera.
Keep wire: Displays wireframe outlines, but any areas where the normal is pointing away from the camera are hidden.
Keep hard edges: Sets backface culling for soft edges only. See Polygonal Modeling for more information on polygonal modeling.