Is it possible to hide at the element level? I'm rigging a character that has lots of different elements in the same mesh so it's uber hard to skin paint.
I'd like to know the answer to this question too. The only way I've found possible is to use a multi/sub-object material, both standard materials, but one with the opacity set to 0. Then assign the transparent one to the occluding element. It allows you to see the geo beneath, but if you're trying to get selections it's still a pain!
Select your verts/faces or element and then, in the editable poly side panel, click 'Hide Selected.' To unhide, click 'Unhide All.' You can also 'Hide Unselected.' These options are found in the 'Edit Geometry' tab.
The 'Hide' command in the right-click options only apply to complete objects, but the hide options in the editable poly options will get you want you want.
What's annoying is that these are specific to the subobject type so if you "unhide all" in edges but you've previously hidden some polygons, those won't come back and such ... it's confusing at times.
I mostly get burned on vertices because I don't see all of them and I think it's a driver bug when, in reality, I forgot to unhide them the last time I was in this object!
I generally wouldn't recommend using this too much (it's not implemented very well) , splitting stuff into separate objects and hiding on an object level is generally easier. I only ever really use this when hiding something that really can't be split (not subobjects), like half of a car body.
Sure, it all comes down to preference and work flow. I generally use it when I want to select something behind a polygon that's in the way or something like that.
The way I used to do it was to take an element and move it 100 units up, work on it, and bring it back down when I was done. This time I'm skinining my character to a rig so I can't do that. The poly hidding is perfect for that.
I find the easiest way to avoid that problem Warren is talking about is to use Unhide All with element mode selected, and it will bring back each subobject type you hid previously.
This doesn't work on subobjects but for separate meshes I always us Alt+Q - isolate selected, it hides everything else except what you currently have selected. I almost never use the hide selection command.
Laurens, what are the problems you've experienced with hide/unhide subobject? I never run into any issues and hide/unhide a lot. Then again I've wrapped the functionality in my own scripts a long time ago, can't remember whether that was to get around problems though
Well what I mainly don't like is that it's impossible to tell that a mesh has hidden parts, especially because it also tends to affect the bounding box corners Max displays on selection.
You can even go so far to have a mesh that becomes completely invisible and thus unselectable, even though technically visible on an object level. Once you exit editing mode for that object, you could really lose track of it. Even if you don't hide the entire thing, you can still lose track of hidden parts, this can be especially bad if you get someone else's file where they've done this. There is no global-level control to unhide all submeshes, it has to be done on a per object level.
And I know, I know, don't be a noob and use it properly, I just firmly believe in a proper UX where you don't enable users to mess things up for themselves like this. And even pro-users can forget, you hide a sub-object, go do something else and leave it hidden, and by the time you come back you might have forgotten about it.
Then there's also some other issues like being able to hide just vertices, but not polygons, it's not synchronized in any way. That is just plain stupid and counter-intuitive.
That's why I prefer to only use it in cases where it's super-obvious, like hiding parts of a continuous object. That way at least there's a visual clue.
Anway, lots of text, I bet we could all write these kinds of rants about certain features, but it's just one of those things I never feel comfortable using unless very constrained. Hence I wouldn't recommend it. Kinda like using booleans or something
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The 'Hide' command in the right-click options only apply to complete objects, but the hide options in the editable poly options will get you want you want.
Thanks.
There should be a set of Hide/Unhide buttons under the Edit Geometry panel while in element mode.
ALT+H - Hide Selected
ALT+I - Hide Unselected
ALT+U - Unhide All
What's annoying is that these are specific to the subobject type so if you "unhide all" in edges but you've previously hidden some polygons, those won't come back and such ... it's confusing at times.
I mostly get burned on vertices because I don't see all of them and I think it's a driver bug when, in reality, I forgot to unhide them the last time I was in this object!
Well what I mainly don't like is that it's impossible to tell that a mesh has hidden parts, especially because it also tends to affect the bounding box corners Max displays on selection.
You can even go so far to have a mesh that becomes completely invisible and thus unselectable, even though technically visible on an object level. Once you exit editing mode for that object, you could really lose track of it. Even if you don't hide the entire thing, you can still lose track of hidden parts, this can be especially bad if you get someone else's file where they've done this. There is no global-level control to unhide all submeshes, it has to be done on a per object level.
And I know, I know, don't be a noob and use it properly, I just firmly believe in a proper UX where you don't enable users to mess things up for themselves like this. And even pro-users can forget, you hide a sub-object, go do something else and leave it hidden, and by the time you come back you might have forgotten about it.
Then there's also some other issues like being able to hide just vertices, but not polygons, it's not synchronized in any way. That is just plain stupid and counter-intuitive.
That's why I prefer to only use it in cases where it's super-obvious, like hiding parts of a continuous object. That way at least there's a visual clue.
Anway, lots of text, I bet we could all write these kinds of rants about certain features, but it's just one of those things I never feel comfortable using unless very constrained. Hence I wouldn't recommend it. Kinda like using booleans or something