any way to do contiguous smoothing group + material ID selection in max ?

Joost

Does anyone know of a way to select all connected polys with the same material ID or smoothing group? Would be a pretty cool scripts I reckon. I'd attempt to script it myself but that's way beyond my limited scripting skills. Maybe one of the Maxscript wizards out there can have a go at it?

FelixL

Not sure why you'd need this. But you can select an element first (for continuity), hide unselected, then use select by SG, select your smoothing group, and voila.

Joost

Not quite what I mean. I would like something where it's like select by element mode but instead of selecting the entire element it would only select one contiguous Material ID or smoothing group depending on the setting. So if you have multiple groups of faces with the same smoothing group or material IDs it will only select the ones that are contiguous with your selected face(s)

I.e.

this



instead of this

FelixL

I see. It could be quite useful.
As a workaround, you can select by ID, hide unselected, select one face, then hit "grow" under edit poly. It will only grow the selected area on visible faces, not invisible ones.

I still don't see how you would need this so often that you require a hotkey/macro for it. Have you looked into selection sets? Also available through the ribbon UI.

You could also just detach it to an element or seperate it into a UV shell, select it through unwrap UVW and collapse it back to edit poly.

haiddasalami

macroscript selectFacesBySmoothingGroup category:"Polycount Tech Talk" ButtonText:"Tooltip Description for button" toolTip:"Insert Description Here"
(
	finalArray = #()

	fn getOutEdgesUsingFace oPoly baFace =
	(
	    if ( ((classOf oPoly) == Editable_Poly) and ((classOf baFace) == BitArray) ) then
	    (
	        if (baFace.isEmpty == true) then ( return #{} )

	        local baEdgeSet01 = polyOp.getEdgesUsingFace oPoly baFace
	        local baFaceSet01 = #{1..(polyOp.getNumFaces oPoly)} - baFace
	        local baEdgeSet02 = polyOp.getEdgesUsingFace oPoly baFaceSet01

	        return (baEdgeSet01 * baEdgeSet02)
	    )
	)

	fn getSmoothingGroupFaces sel faceArray smoothingGroups = (
		faceWalkMatches = #()
		edges = getOutEdgesUsingFace sel faceArray
		for edge in edges do 
		(
			faceListFromEdge = (polyop.getFacesUsingEdge sel #{edge}) - (finalArray as BitArray)
			for faceList in faceListFromEdge do 
			(
				faceSmoothGrp = polyOp.getFaceSmoothGroup sel faceList
				for smoothGroup in smoothingGroups do (
					if faceSmoothGrp == smoothGroup then 
					(
						appendIfUnique faceWalkMatches faceList 
					)
				)
			)
		)
		if faceWalkMatches.count > 0 then 
		(
			for faceMatch in faceWalkMatches do 
			(
				appendIfUnique finalArray faceMatch
			)
		)
		return #(finalArray,faceWalkMatches)
	)

	fn main sel faceSel smoothingGroups= 
	(			
		for face in faceSel do 
		(
			faceSelSmoothingGrp = polyOp.getFaceSmoothGroup selection[1] face
			appendIfUnique smoothingGroups faceSelSmoothingGrp
			appendIfUnique finalArray face
		)
		result = getSmoothingGroupFaces selection[1] faceSel smoothingGroups
		while result[2].count > 0 do
		(
			result = getSmoothingGroupFaces selection[1] (result[1] as BitArray) smoothingGroups
		)
		sel.EditablePoly.SetSelection #Face (result[1] as BitArray)
	)

	fn userCheck = 
	(
		sel = selection[1]
		result = #(False)
		if ((classOf sel) == Editable_Poly) then 
		(
			faceSel = polyop.getFaceSelection selection[1]
			if faceSel.isEmpty then 
			(
				messageBox "No Faces selected"
			)
			else 
			(
				result = #(True,faceSel)  
			)
		)
		if  ((classOf sel) == Editable_Mesh) then
		(
			userInput = queryBox ("This mesh is an Editable Mesh. Would you like to convert it to Editable Poly?") title:"Editable Mesh found!"
			if userInput then 
			(
				faceSel = getFaceSelection sel
				convertToPoly sel
				macros.run "Modifier Stack" "SubObject_4"
				faceSel = polyop.getFaceSelection selection[1]
				if faceSel.isEmpty then 
				(
					messageBox "No Faces selected"
				)
				else 
				(
					result = #(True,faceSel)  
				) 
			)
			if not userInput then 
			(
				messageBox "Script needs the object to be as an Editable Poly."
			)
		)
		return result
	)
	userCheckTest = userCheck()
	if userCheckTest[1] == True then 
	(
		smoothingGroups = #()
		sel = selection[1]
		faceSel = userCheckTest[2]
		main sel faceSel smoothingGroups
	)	
)

Lemme know if that works. Wrote this a while back for an artist. Needs to be an edit poly but can modify for edit mesh would just need to make other functions aware of that. Also had a walkthrough grow selection by smoothing group.

kary

haiddasalami wrote: »

Lemme know if that works. Wrote this a while back for an artist. Needs to be an edit poly but can modify for edit mesh would just need to make other functions aware of that. Also had a walkthrough grow selection by smoothing group.

And I'd be that artist. This works very well for my workflow. In combination w/ a hotkey for poly select by angle (5, 45, etc) it can get very fast to setup big areas for a Meshsmooth + by smoothing groups setup.

Joost

FelixL wrote: »

I see. It could be quite useful.
As a workaround, you can select by ID, hide unselected, select one face, then hit "grow" under edit poly. It will only grow the selected area on visible faces, not invisible ones.

I still don't see how you would need this so often that you require a hotkey/macro for it. Have you looked into selection sets? Also available through the ribbon UI.

You could also just detach it to an element or seperate it into a UV shell, select it through unwrap UVW and collapse it back to edit poly.

I'm doing a lot of mid poly stuff atm with loads of cut in panels that have different material IDS and I'm using support loops+ 1 smoothing group for the smoothing. Which results in a lot of geo and makes it a real pain to select stuff. I guess if you're doing conventional low/high poly work it's not that useful. That workaround works pretty well. Just a bit annoying when you have to do it several times.
Selection sets tend to disappear when you change the geo so I avoid using them.

@haiddasalami: Thanks a lot man! That's exactly what I was looking for, for smoothing groups. Works great so far.

FelixL

Works fine! Thanks, I might start using that.

monster

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2904948/MaxScript/Martinez_Macro_GrowByMaterialID.mcr

Here is my attempt to grow/expand by material ID. You can even select more than one face/matID to start.

Joost

Thanks monster, that works great!
Really appreciate it. Thanks guys!

Neox

msshtools has this function since i dunno 10 years ^^