maya 6: extracting faces

rooster

this is doing my nut in: how do you extract just selected faces? I've got a bunch of combined sub-objects, and I want to extract one of them, but maya insists on seperating every single sub-object when I all I want is the one. I am currently duplicating the entire thing and deleting everything but the object I want, but it seems such a sloppy way to do it- I must be missing something?

pyromania

If you open the options box for the Extract tool, there is a checkbox at the top that says "Separate Extraced Faces". With that unchecked any faces you extract stay within the same multi-object.

rooster

I don't know if I described my problem very well- I want the selected faces detatched from the multi-object, but all other objects to remain part of the multi-object. Lets say I have 3 boxes and I combine them all, theyre now a multiobject right? what I want to do is seperate one, leaving the other two joined, but whichever way I try they get split back into 3 boxes.

rooster

am I just making the mistake of trying to use maya like max?
doesn't seem like an unreasonable operation to me.. if theres a combine single object there should be an uncombine surely?

scanning_factor

Yeah separate extracted faces does seem to run a blanket separate on everything, one of the great things about maya's tools is they're so freakin literal (great being used sarcastically). Even if you say duplicate and separate, it does the same thing and separates everything): There's kinda a hack you can use, given the three boxes example, if the two boxes you want to keep have a common vert, you can merge the vert, then when you run the separate it will keep the boxes together. Not ideal, but it works.

malcolm

Sorry dude, I don't think you can do what you want. As a work around you can duplicate the object select one of the faces of the "subobject" use the > key to grow your selection and then invert the selection and delete the unwanted.

MoP

malcolm: LOL, back when I was using Maya, I had to do that from time to time, and every time I did it, I thought "there must be a better way of doing this!"... I'm simultaneously surprised and unsurprised that there isn't...

Rooster: It's also fast if you set a hotkey to Select Shell, then you just click a couple of polys of the objects you don't want after you've made a duplicate, just hit that key, and boom, those entire elements are selected ready for deletion.

rooster

hehe oh well, seems like a totally obvious thing to want, and surely not very hard to program.. Cmon autodesk, get to work

Daz

Wait, maybe I've not fully understood, but can't you just make sure you have polygons>tool options>keep faces together ticked?

MoP

Daz: Does that make the selected faces into a new, separate object? From what I remember, it just breaks them off into a sub-element of the original object, which isn't what's needed here... if I'm reading it right.

Daz

Post deleted by Daz

MoP

Unnecessary spammish reply now, Daz, you scoundrel!

Daz

No wait, that's not it. I get what he needs now. Playing with it.

Jeff Parrott

There is a detatchSeparate mel script on highend3d. It might do what you want. It takes the selected faces and detaches it from that object.

Daz

lol MoP, sorry. It was SHIFT>p ;-p

Yeah I can't believe this but you're right. If you combine 3 cubes into one mesh, then use the extract faces command on any of it, it will have 'remembered' that that mesh used to be 3 cubes, and split those 3 cubes back up again into seperate meshes. Crazy. Can't see a workaround sorry. I would probably just duplicate it and delete what i don't need on the copy

Whargoul

It's a 30 second mel script. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow if I remember:

store selection
dup object
delete inverse selection on dupe
delete selection on original

done.

rooster

thanks for all the replies, I looked for the script jeffro mentioned and its exactly what I'm looking for. cheers! I've begun my collection of scripts that cover all of max's main tools

malcolm

Now if only there was a max script that could some how remove the stack. Oh snap!