Scene Crop?

leechdemon

I'm working with some data from a customer which contains a strip of road that is 25 Miles long. I'm working on the entire road in a single file, but when I export it I only want to look at a small section at a time; say a quarter mile. The file has multiple objects and props in it, otherwise I'd just ProBoolean-Intersect the chunk I want to export; when I try that with multiple objects, I just get the intersection of the result and the next object, and eventually I'm left with nothing. I tried to script doing a union of everything, then intersecting in the end, but it keeps giving me errors.

I basically want something like a Clipping Mask in Illustrator, only for geometry. Is there an easy way to do this?

Eric Chadwick

Export to what, from what? Sounds like you're in Max. Geographic data is often a triangle soup, not easy to boolean or deal with in an automated way.

You might be able to script a method of selecting a chunk of faces with a Volume Select, detaching to a new object, then moving the gizmo another X units, and repeating. Then maybe you could use Export Selected to isolate the chunks.

leechdemon

Sorry, I usually put "in max..." at the front of the question. forgot. From max, to FBX. Or anything, really, but FBX is where I'm going, currently.

I'm using Export Selected currently, but the entire road section is a single piece... basically, I've got the concrete, the jersey barrier, the grassy berms, the terrain... and the whole thing is 8 objects.

I'll play with Volume Select... a rough setup seems to be doing something useful. ProBoolean was just taking FOREVER, and was hugely buggy. This is much faster, maybe I can script something out of it. Thanks for the point!

leechdemon

Hey, I got it!

Undo On
(
modPanel.addModToSelection (VolumeSelect())
ThisSet = (Selection as Array)
Select ThisSet [1]
$.Vol__select.level = 2
$.Vol__Select.type = 1
$.Vol__Select.volume = 3
$.Vol__Select.node = $CropArea

select ThisSet
for obj in ThisSet do
(
converttopoly obj
DetachList = polyop.getfaceselection obj
polyop.detachFaces obj DetachList asNode: true name: ("CropArea_" + obj.name)
)
ThisSet = $CropArea_*
for obj in ThisSet do ConvertToMesh $
Select ThisSet
exportFile "C:\Documents and Settings\Jason\Desktop\\test.fbx" #noprompt selectedOnly:true
)
Max undo

Took some playing around with, but it works like a charm. Even got it to undo the changes once it was done, so it's non-destructive. Thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Excellent!