Optimising rocks on a seabed. Maya question.

zbrush_newbie

Hi All

I`ve created around 300 rocks randomly placed on a seabed using paint effects but I need to tidy them up ie delete hidden faces below the seabed.

Any suggestions for how to do this? as booleans wont work (as usual).

Thanks

Shanthosa

Can you give us some screenshots? More info at all? How are these rocks constructed and how is the seabed constructed?

zbrush_newbie

Actually, i`ve decided to use instancing of the rocks in the end to save memory and to create the lods. Going to take longer to place them but it`ll be more efficient that way.

Thanks

mdeforge

Why won't boolean work? Try making all the rocks part of the same object first (combine). Are you using Max or Maya?

Scruples

Maya booleans are terrible, they break 99% of the time. I would just merge them all into one object. Make sure said object is selected in object mode.
Then go to the top view turn on display>polygons>backface culling, go to faces mode, select everything using lasso, invert selection, now you should have the faces facing away selected, just hit delete and voila.
If there is too many faces selected and you are deleting faces you can still see you can shrink selection before deleting.