Question About Parts of Vehicles

anthony.luigi_05ebfcd7e7

I was hoping someoen could explain how one coould remove or hide specific parts of a vehicle. Big Bill Truck to be exact! I have run into this on other things so I would imagine the answer would apply to all.

I'm finding that many parts are linked together in such a way, that if I try to hide or change a material I wind up changing way more than I want. For inistance, If I click on the chrome exaust it links to fifty other surfaces, headlight trim, roof lights trim etc. Is there a way to single out just one part so it can be hidden or surface changed seperately?

Thanks In Advance!

Richard Haseltine

You can do that with the Geometry Editor tool - try clicking on the part you ant, then hold down ctrl(Win)/cmd(Mac) and press * to select all connected - with luck that will select only the part you want, you can check the lists in the Tool Settings pane to see if any other groups or materials are selected (non-grey - sign next to them). Another option would be to click near an unattached end and use ctrl/cmd + to grow the selection until it started grabbing bits you didn't want, then back off a step (cmd/ctrl - or Undo). Once you have some or all of the part selected right-click>Geometry Assignment>Create Surface group from Selected (from memory) and name the new surface (e.g. ExhaustChrome). If necessary select more bits, right-click>Geometry Assignment>Assign select To>Surface>your new surface (again, from memory). You can then apply the base shader to the new surface, and either copy the settings from the existing surface or just manually adjust in the surfaces pane. Note that existing materials presets will ignore any new surfaces created this way.

anthony.luigi_05ebfcd7e7

Richard Haseltine said:

You can do that with the Geometry Editor tool - try clicking on the part you ant, then hold down ctrl(Win)/cmd(Mac) and press * to select all connected - with luck that will select only the part you want, you can check the lists in the Tool Settings pane to see if any other groups or materials are selected (non-grey - sign next to them). Another option would be to click near an unattached end and use ctrl/cmd + to grow the selection until it started grabbing bits you didn't want, then back off a step (cmd/ctrl - or Undo). Once you have some or all of the part selected right-click>Geometry Assignment>Create Surface group from Selected (from memory) and name the new surface (e.g. ExhaustChrome). If necessary select more bits, right-click>Geometry Assignment>Assign select To>Surface>your new surface (again, from memory). You can then apply the base shader to the new surface, and either copy the settings from the existing surface or just manually adjust in the surfaces pane. Note that existing materials presets will ignore any new surfaces created this way.

Thank You! I will try.

Rbug

Anthony what I did was extensive I ripped the entire truck to pieces and rebuilt it the way I wanted it to work, I kept the origional mapping in tact and well It worked out nicely. But it is time consuming and it takes some effort not to acidentily remove parts... I used to get lots of practice at my last job working with movie CGI models.....

anthony.luigi_05ebfcd7e7

Rich, Rbug,

I was able to hide the polygons using theGeometry Editor Tool as you suggested. It worked perfectly. The problem Im running into is being able to save my modified Bill Truck. Ive tried saving it as a scene subset, character, and as a whole scene. Whenever I load it back the parts i hid are showing up again. Is there a way to permenantly hid ethe polygons so when I load the truck or anything else it loads modified?

Thanks In Advance!

Richard Haseltine

Yes, hiddens tatus does not persist. You could make a new Selection Set and then hide that each time, or what i suggested was making a new material and setting that to invisible. A slightly more complex option would be to make a new group, then use the joint Editor to add a new bone to the figure and set the group as the bone's Selection Group (in the Tool settings pane with the joint Editor active) - then you could hide it with the eye in the Scene pane, or the Visible button in Parameters. materials or hidden bones would persist between sessions.

If you want to be able to load the standard version and the modified version in the same scene, or two differently modified versions, you need to use File>Save As>Support Assets>Figure/Prop Asset, where the names you enter for product and author will determine folder names in the /Data folder (I suggest using something like ModifiedDaz as the author name, so you remember this is a modified version of an asset and not soemthing you made from scratch).

anthony.luigi_05ebfcd7e7

Richard Haseltine said:

Yes, hiddens tatus does not persist. You could make a new Selection Set and then hide that each time, or what i suggested was making a new material and setting that to invisible. A slightly more complex option would be to make a new group, then use the joint Editor to add a new bone to the figure and set the group as the bone's Selection Group (in the Tool settings pane with the joint Editor active) - then you could hide it with the eye in the Scene pane, or the Visible button in Parameters. materials or hidden bones would persist between sessions.

If you want to be able to load the standard version and the modified version in the same scene, or two differently modified versions, you need to use File>Save As>Support Assets>Figure/Prop Asset, where the names you enter for product and author will determine folder names in the /Data folder (I suggest using something like ModifiedDaz as the author name, so you remember this is a modified version of an asset and not soemthing you made from scratch).

 

Thank you. That worked perfectly. Changing it to another surface and then hiding was what I was after.

Is there a way to selct a part of the truck like I did for hiding and be able to resize or move it? I know Im picking your brain, hope its not asking to much? You have helped out so much already!

Richard Haseltine

Yes, if you use a dForm to do the ransforming and edit its weight map (using the Geoemtry Editor and Node Weight paint brush tools and the options in the Tool settings pane) to control what is affected.

anthony.luigi_05ebfcd7e7

Richard Haseltine said:

Yes, if you use a dForm to do the ransforming and edit its weight map (using the Geoemtry Editor and Node Weight paint brush tools and the options in the Tool settings pane) to control what is affected.

I will give it a try. Thanks again!

 

Anthony