Maya unclean meshes?

jimpaw · Jan 2011

Recently i have begun using Maya at work and there is alot of things that really bothering me with maya. My job is to build models of buildings and various propps.Generally when i do lowpoly stuff i use ordinary tools like: cut tools,snap vertz,delete faces,extrude,bridge and so on.

Almost everytime After a while Maya refuses the bridge edges, normal go wild and its just hazard to work without interuption all the time.

1. Why doesnt bridge edges weld everything correctly ? , alot of time the mesh becomes a mess.

2. is it any good way that can warn me when things start to go wrong ?
does anyone know any good poly plugins for free that speed things up. Also plugins that can easy detect errors in the mesh whould be really good.

3. is it any way i can copy selected faces ? , i can only copy objects with shift + d , but it doesnt work with faces.

thanks.

elementrix · Jan 2011

1. when you bridge mutliple edges it sometimes can go wrong in terms of alignment, if you go in the attribute editor, and look for the latest PolyBridgeEdge* you will see a Bridge Offset attribute, entering numbers in there will make it align correctly, you just have to find the right number:P

2. I don't use that many plugins so can't tell you, there is the cleanup tool which can highlight mistakes in your mesh. But overall I think it just has to do with some experience in maya to know what you should do.

3. If you select a face and go under Edit mesh, there is a duplicate face option.

PolyHertz · Jan 2011

By bridge making everything a 'mess' and 'errors in the mesh' I assume you mean the double edge problem. Select the mesh and run this to clear any double edges:

string $curSelObj[] = `ls -sl`;
PolySelectConvert 3; //verts
polySplitVertex; 
polyMergeVertex -d 0.0001;
select -cl;
selectMode -o;
select -r $curSelObj;

Autocon · Jan 2011

yeah took me forever to find a solution to the odd double edge/open border crap in Maya. had to write a very similar script to fix that problem.

one big issue i get is broken or dangling node ends in models. even if I turn history off i still get history items from things like smooth, cut, bridge and such created in node form on my object. these nodes almost always seem to get corrupted or broken and even when i delete my history i still have tons of these little dangling nodes all over the place. All this crap makes my file size explode. Especially since making a copy of the object brings along all the stupid broken nodes.

anyone ever run into this or know a fix for it? Here is a pick related. Some models can have a 100 plus broken nodes.

PolyHertz · Jan 2011

Autocon: Could you post an example file where the nodes remain after deleting history?

jimpaw · Jan 2011

elementrix wrote: »

1. when you bridge mutliple edges it sometimes can go wrong in terms of alignment, if you go in the attribute editor, and look for the latest PolyBridgeEdge* you will see a Bridge Offset attribute, entering numbers in there will make it align correctly, you just have to find the right number:P

2. I don't use that many plugins so can't tell you, there is the cleanup tool which can highlight mistakes in your mesh. But overall I think it just has to do with some experience in maya to know what you should do.

3. If you select a face and go under Edit mesh, there is a duplicate face option.

1. It says 0 there,i mean for real why whould anyone want to change that value to fuck up the snap if you choose a bridge ? ,that is really stupid. i just noticed at home that maya devide the bridge in 5 faces, i pull down the lever to 1 , but the next time i do a bridge on two edges that face gets splitted by five again, how can i change so that everytime i do a bridge it will just become one face ?

2. can this be true? ,is this all maya has to offer on this department ?

3. thanks man works god, is it possible to set this shortcut to shift + d aswell ?

Grimm_Wrecking · Jan 2011

Append to Polygon Tool is the safest way to go about bridging edges. Maya's bridge sucks, even the written bonus tool that fixes bridge by creating seperate geo is broken for me.
Poly append has only let me down when i eff up.

sure if you need to connect 500 edges it could be time consuming, but generally there are other work arounds for that. Its quick and easy for 10-20 edges.

with obj selected, shift + rmb and its directly to the right.

or in the actual menu

Polygon Menu-Set (f3) -> Edit Mesh -> Append to Polygon Tool (Its directly below bridge)

as far as copying faces with your faces selected

Polygon Menu-Set (f3) -> Edit Mesh -> Duplicate Face
(oh just noticed elemntrix solved this for you hah)

To set hotkeys go to
Windows -> Settings Preferences -> Hotkey Editor -:-> "category" Edit Mesh -> "command" duplicate face :: far right set your hotkey.

jimpaw · Jan 2011

Grimm_Wrecking wrote: »

Append to Polygon Tool is the safest way to go about bridging edges. Maya's bridge sucks, even the written bonus tool that fixes bridge by creating seperate geo is broken for me.
Poly append has only let me down when i eff up.

sure if you need to connect 500 edges it could be time consuming, but generally there are other work arounds for that. Its quick and easy for 10-20 edges.

with obj selected, shift + rmb and its directly to the right.

or in the actual menu

Polygon Menu-Set (f3) -> Edit Mesh -> Append to Polygon Tool (Its directly below bridge)

as far as copying faces with your faces selected

Polygon Menu-Set (f3) -> Edit Mesh -> Duplicate Face
(oh just noticed elemntrix solved this for you hah)

To set hotkeys go to
Windows -> Settings Preferences -> Hotkey Editor -:-> "category" Edit Mesh -> "command" duplicate face :: far right set your hotkey.

Thanks alot man !,

1. i dont understand,what are the workarounds for bridge?

5. If i set dublicate face to ctrl + d ,doesnt that take away the copt object shortcut ?

jimpaw · Jan 2011

PolyHertz wrote: »
By bridge making everything a 'mess' and 'errors in the mesh' I assume you mean the double edge problem. Select the mesh and run this to clear any double edges:
string $curSelObj[] = `ls -sl`;
PolySelectConvert 3; //verts
polySplitVertex; 
polyMergeVertex -d 0.0001;
select -cl;
selectMode -o;
select -r $curSelObj;

Thanks alot polyherts,but i am just REALLY bad at scripting. i have used maya for 5 days now... is it possible to make a button in the shelf of that command ? , whould be really handy.

I have tryed to make buttons myself before but the script didnt work and now i cant take away the buttons from the shelf !, Also i dont understand why Maya doesnt say what the button is when you hover over it ? , i have created my own tab and draged some create basic objects there, but when the name wont pop up why ?.

PolyHertz · Jan 2011

Its actually very easy to make shelf buttons in Maya. Open the script editor (button on bottom right of UI), and in the window that pops up paste the code in the bottom area, then middle mouse drag it to your shelf. Alternatively to the left of the shelfs is a down pointing arrow, click+hold on that and go down to "shelf editor". In the Shelf Editor navigate to the shelf you want and then select the script under "Shelf Contents" or press the "New Item" button and modify it from there. When you're done press "Save All Shelves" and that's it.

haiddasalami · Jan 2011

Just to add to Polyhertz post, middle mouse button and drag to the trash can on the right to delete buttons. Control Shift click a command (example if you want insert edge loop, hold control shift and click on edge loop and quick way to start to build up your shelves) Once you get used to maya's interface you can start to use the space bar which is basically maya whole menu and faster imo.

elementrix · Jan 2011

1. It says 0 there,i mean for real why whould anyone want to change that value to fuck up the snap if you choose a bridge ? ,that is really stupid. i just noticed at home that maya devide the bridge in 5 faces, i pull down the lever to 1 , but the next time i do a bridge on two edges that face gets splitted by five again, how can i change so that everytime i do a bridge it will just become one face ?

Oh I thought you were talking about the Bridge offset. Here is a little image explaining what you can do:

Now I changed the values in the attribute editor like you did before, if you want to set default values for an operation go to Edit Mesh - bridge and then click the little box to the right of it, change the values there and hit Apply, then it will keep those settings for any other bridge you do but if you want to change some stuff in one single bridge you can go in the attribute editor and change the values there.

jimpaw · Jan 2011

Elementrix , Thanks alot !, that explained stuff really well. haiddasalami ,it worked great ! , thanks. Polyhertz, how can i get a popup with a description over the buttons that i move to a custom shelf tab ? , i get the icons there but it doesnt show what each icon does.

m4dcow · Jan 2011

To turn on tooltips
Open Window->Settings/Preferences->Preferences, look for the Interface : Help section and make sure Tooltips: is set to "Enable"

Also the status bar displays the same info as the button tooltips.

Problem you may run into is that custom buttons have a generic tooltip description like "User-defined MEL command". You can change these with the shelf editor.

jimpaw · Jan 2011

m4dcow wrote: »

To turn on tooltips
Open Window->Settings/Preferences->Preferences, look for the Interface : Help section and make sure Tooltips: is set to "Enable"

Also the status bar displays the same info as the button tooltips.

Problem you may run into is that custom buttons have a generic tooltip description like "User-defined MEL command". You can change these with the shelf editor.

thats exactly what it says soon as i move atool to a custom shelf.

m4dcow · Jan 2011

Open Window->Settings/Preferences->Shelf Editor, or click the little down arrow to the left of the shelf buttons to access the Shelf Editor.

In there you can change the tooltip text, icons, commands etc...

jimpaw · Jan 2011

m4dcow wrote: »

Open Window->Settings/Preferences->Shelf Editor, or click the little down arrow to the left of the shelf buttons to access the Shelf Editor.

In there you can change the tooltip text, icons, commands etc...

So Basicly everytime i copy a button that ships with maya to my own tab in the shelf i have to go in the manually and write the popup text thats already in maya?

m4dcow · Jan 2011

If you add the commands using ctrl + shift + click those are filled in properly.

You only get the generic tool tips if you add a script snippet to the shelf.

Maya unclean meshes?

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