[diamondgeezer]

Hokay, what I've got is a model with the hull in bits, and I want to unify them all in to a single object. Which button do I need? The help menu is about as helpful as a chimp with no arms or legs... TS 5.1 BTW, before anyone asks...

[Raptor]

Well, Object Union usally does the trick, though it can be a right pig abouts things at times....

It WILL remove any trianglation in the model, and I've heard that it could really mess models up so...

Can't really think of any other tool that would do the job, but good luck mate (me only got TS 3.2, so you are 1.9up on me )

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Glue as sibling would have them all become one object when you convert it to pof...

I think.

[Killfrenzy]

It will, unless there's a light in there.

Group all the 'hull' objects together as sibling, and then glue the other subobjects as child.

It should work.

Object union fubars everything.

[Taristin]

Or there are plugins that will seemlessly do stuff like that. But the best idea would be to take the hull, glue as sibling, convert to pof, convert pof to cob, and work with it as a whole solid model.

BTW: TS6 has this schweet UV mapper function that allows you to map each face like in Lith. Melikes.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Location: Preventing Cancer...

[diamondgeezer]

Well bugger me backwards and call me a bastard, I've not only discovered how to point edit, but the light of planar UV mapping has dawned upon me. Ye gods, this isn't as hard as I'd thought

[diamondgeezer]

OK, another question, cos this is really eating at me - just what's the deal with the weld vertex tool? I mean, as far as I can see all it does is make stuff disappear. I follow the Help file's instructions, and select the two verts I want to weld, but all they do is disappear and take their associated polys with them. What am I missing here? Are the two verts supposed to be in the same place or what? And if they are, how do I select them both?

[StratComm]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
OK, another question, cos this is really eating at me - just what's the deal with the weld vertex tool? I mean, as far as I can see all it does is make stuff disappear. I follow the Help file's instructions, and select the two verts I want to weld, but all they do is disappear and take their associated polys with them. What am I missing here? Are the two verts supposed to be in the same place or what? And if they are, how do I select them both?

They don't have to be at the same point, but I think that they should be connected by an edge.  If you're trying to merge two objects, vertex weld is not the way to go about it; you should be using add/remove faces.

[diamondgeezer]

Right, despite Strat's efforts I'm still none the wiser (), but I'm going to ignore the whole welding thing for now. But here's a question - I've got two polys which each have an edge occupying the same space. They're not pyhsically joined, the edges concerned are just congruent. Does it matter that in TS the seam is slightly flickery, or should I 'weld' them together somehow in to a single edge - and if so, how?

[karajorma]

They say a picture is worth a thousend words so here's 2,000 words worth BTW this isn't the solution to your problem DG. More of an explaination of what the weld tool ACTUALLY does



Pick an edge on your shape and press the weld button.



The two vertices at the ends of the edge will be welded together to form one vertex in the middle of the edge.

I did this cause I spent ages trying to join two vertices on seperate parts of the model using this tool too when I started. It does seem logical to assume that is what it does

[Rampage]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Hokay, what I've got is a model with the hull in bits, and I want to unify them all in to a single object. Which button do I need? The help menu is about as helpful as a chimp with no arms or legs... TS 5.1 BTW, before anyone asks...

:thepimp: When I converted the Fury from Hellbender to FS2, the vessel was in many segments, many of them aren't even solid.  So with the help of Mikhael, I unified the objects using LightWave into one complete ship, the GTF Autolycus (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,16363.0.html).

LightWave is more tolerant than trueSpace.  In trueSpace, one single geometry error can cause the program to crash.  In LightWave, you can debug the model without worrying about ruining your model or your computer.

[diamondgeezer]

I'm thinking I've got the hang of it now. My Chiggy fighter was suffering from some nasty clipping, so I cut it up in to small chunks (sometimes individual polys ) and then put it back together bit by bit, nudging each vertex in to place as I went. Quite a bit of work, but then that's what I get for using second-hand model

[StratComm]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Right, despite Strat's efforts I'm still none the wiser (), but I'm going to ignore the whole welding thing for now. But here's a question - I've got two polys which each have an edge occupying the same space. They're not pyhsically joined, the edges concerned are just congruent. Does it matter that in TS the seam is slightly flickery, or should I 'weld' them together somehow in to a single edge - and if so, how?

OK DG, here's what you've got going on... you currently have a small hole between the two edges. One thing that I have found that works, as far as fixing that is concerned, is that if it only exists in one small space you should be able to add a tiny face in between. When that face is created, then yon can weld the vertices and make it right. However, in practice this generally happens when you are making a composite, or trying to re-attach a part of yow ship that has been seperated, so you can't do it the same way.  If I still had TS I would make you some screens, but it is too hard to explain in words. You'd need the delete face, add edge, and add face tools, in conjunction with vertex weld, to do if right.

If you want to use this in FS, you have to fix that hole.

I hope this gets you somewhere.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Right, despite Strat's efforts I'm still none the wiser (), but I'm going to ignore the whole welding thing for now. But here's a question - I've got two polys which each have an edge occupying the same space. They're not pyhsically joined, the edges concerned are just congruent. Does it matter that in TS the seam is slightly flickery, or should I 'weld' them together somehow in to a single edge - and if so, how?

your situation is pretty common and very bad.
usually fs2 works with double verts, but the last PCS version tend to crash while converting, and this problem may cause some model instability (not to mention that it isn't very pro..). so it is always better to fix it.
how to fix this problem:
if verts are connected by an edge, just weld them
if verts are not converted you will have to add an edge:
-pick one of those verts and move it away
-use the add edge tool to connect them
-move to vert back to its original position (copy/paste coordinates of the other vert, or activate a selection tool: direct clicking on a vert will show its coordinates, selecting a vert with a lasso will not show its coordinates; this is an easy way to copy/paste parameters in truespace)
-weld the two verts

this situation usually happen with booleans or -very rare- with the add edge tool, when you think you connected a vert but instead a new vert is generated in same position, so be careful with those operations

[diamondgeezer]

It is done - clip-free Chig fighters for all! Saved myself 149 polys as well, which believe it or not were all useless crap hiding inside the mesh... so now I have a fighter with only 159 polys in the first LOD

Well, it doesn't show any problems in the tech room, any ways... I'm going to assume that it will work in game on the basis that assumption prevents **** ups...


[EDIT] Right well that's quite enough TS for one day. Time to go play CNC 95 instead