Modifying figures

Mosk the Scribe

I need to modify a military vehicle - change it from 4 wheels to 6.

I thought I'd just go into the model room, select two wheels, duplicate them , stretch the vehicle and slide them in place (doesn't need to have much accuracy for what I'm doing) --

but I'm not able to duplicate those parts in the model room.

Tried Fenric's Duplicate Tree on the wheels and that does create a Duplicate in the hierarchy, but there's nothing there - no actual extra wheels.

Tried Fenric's Unlock Figure and then Tree Duplicate but still no luck.

Tried hiding vertices and exporting wheels - didn't work, and wasn't able to delete vertices.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Headwax

you cant do much to a rigged vertex model as far as deleting polys etc
I think Fenric’s Unlock Figure is mainly for adding new morphs etc
with the Tree Duplicate you are probably duplicating the bones but not the mesh.

but after using tree duplicate on your whole vehicle figure

you can just select the wheelsin the vertex room, then invert selection and add a new texture to that and then in the shader room give that texture an alpha of 100 percent (or is it zero percent :) )

or

you can just scale everything you selected down to a really small area that is hidden by the wheels

or

you might be able to hide all those selected polys by using the hide command - not sure if this works when you go back to the assembly room

or

select model in the instances list

then edit>convert (from memory could be something else like smooth etc its the last choice in the edit drop down menu ? )

this frees up the model so you can get rid of the skeleton

so detach the skeleton (from one of the drop down menus )

drag the model away from the skeleton in the instances list

rename it

delete the skeleton

go into the vertex room and delete everything that isnt your wheels

this is my choice for doing what you are after as I can grab other parts of the vehicle and use them as well, eg add an extra radar dish

the disadvantage of this is you lose your morphs, and sometimes it will crash your scene, so save first

Stezza

another way which you can play with is:

load your model

export it as an object

import the object

go into the model room and hack away... using select shading domains to select the parts you want like the wheels or just select part of the body like I did and copy then past then move and adjust to your liking ;-)

SileneUK

Stezza said:

another way which you can play with is:

load your model

export it as an object

import the object

go into the model room and hack away... using select shading domains to select the parts you want like the wheels or just select part of the body like I did and copy then past then move and adjust to your liking ;-)

Ooooh.... I have done this with existing objects...but never thought of doing it with figures before... have to try that. Thanks!

xx :) Silene

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks for all the replies. I'd tried exporting a model but only after hiding various vertices (not sure if I'd successfully deleted any) - and did not work well. WIll try exporting whole object and then see if I can take apart. For this particular episode I found a separate wheel and replaced all of the tires with that - but would like more flexibility modifying models in the future.

Thanks again.

3DAGE

HI Mosk :)

the problem is that "purchased models" are initially "protected" against the over exited user,. so the editing capability of those models is locked,.
You can Break that,. which can mess up the rigging and morphs,..
Or,...
Use Fenrics plugin to Unlock / Lock a figure, ....instead of busting it. :)

In the case of a vehicle,. it should actually come as an OBJ model,. which is then loaded into DS/Poser/Carrara and rigged,
Have a look in your Runtime / Geometries folder,. you'll probably be able to load the OBJ straight into Carrara,. and it won't have any rigging.

Since you're loading in the un-rigged OBJ model,. it's NOT protected,. so you can model this more easily.

Hope it helps :)