I usually select the vertex, grow selection, then use Detach component in vertex mode to split all connections. Then select them again and use weld vertices with a low threshold. It should work, but then you have to redo your soft/hard edges and sew UV's.
Haha, yes...Max's smoothing groups are a pain in the butt. It should be a piece of cake for a building though. Ticking 'By Angle' in the Selection tab helps for selecting polys that are facing a similar direction, just select each wall and give them all a different smoothing group number.
Would your tessellation method happen to be set to Standard Fit instead of General? Are you selecting your curves in order from one side to the other? (selecting out of order will disrupt lofting) How does lofting behave with only two or three curves selected?
Clouds can sort of work, if you then select each brick and rotate/flip to get back some seams. Though it might be simpler to just select a few bricks (unconnected ones) and run clouds, then select another few and again, until you've had all.
In the polygon tab there should be Reduce > Merge > Unify? If not you can select one poly by clicking on it (that'll select both overlapping polygons) then hit the down arrow key to deselect the last selected polygon, leaving you with just one, which you can delete.
It's all the time, my idea was having the selection type to toggle between box/ lasso but whenever the mouse is over an object it will change to paint selection instead. Something like how modo works on it's selection. Max's default feels a little bit 'stiff' compare to modo :\
I guess you have double checked the meshes in Maya before export by selecting one vert and activating select connected? Once the mesh is imported you can select one tool, activate auto groups, hide one group and then delete hidden. That should work.
is it zbrush? my preference would be to do anything that requires a lot of transform manipulation and selections in a regular 3d program like blender or maya. You wouldnt need any special techniques to do it there other than just group feathers into layers so you can select them easy. If you set pivot point to the base of…