Identifying "transforms" vs. "meshes"

[bentneuron]

I have a script that reassigns shaders to faces on objects. Unfortunately it's getting hung up on transforms because it thinks that they're polygonal meshes. Is there any way to tell between the two? The command "objectType" returns "transform" for both polygonal meshes and transforms. The only command that I can find that remotely gets at the correct info is "ls -type mesh", but I'd hate to have to compare against another list...

Thoughts?

[macaronikazoo]

it depends exactly how you're working your script, but heres a few tips to help you.

if you have an arbitrary selection, then:

string $shapes[] = ls ("-type", "mesh", (listRelatives ("-c", (ls ("-sl")))));

if you have an array full of objects, and you want to filter out only mesh nodes, use this:

string $array[] = { "someObject", "anotherObject" };
string $onlyShapes[] = ls -type mesh $array;

those two examples should help you out, but if they don't work for exactly what you're doing, just ask for more detail.
cheers,

[gdc]

How are you calling objectType? It should not be returning the same thing for the transform and mesh...

Here is what I get.

objectType pTorus1;
// Result: transform //

objectType pTorusShape1;
// Result: mesh //

--g

[bentneuron]

Perhaps I'm confused on the difference, but often times there are "transforms" (e.g. "transform37") that are separate and different from objects with face counts, which are returned by "objectType" as "transform" (pTorus1).

The shape nodes are basically useless to me, since I'm trying to select actual faces in the mesh.

Thanks,
-bN

[gdc]

I think part of the problem is the way Maya "hides" the fact that most of time you are dealing with the shape node through the transform node.

In your example the only difference between transform37 and pTorus1 is one of them has a shape node as a child and the otherone doesn't.
If you are dealing with a bunch of transforms and need to know if they have any "faces" (which will actually be on the shape node), you need to first find out if the current transform has any shapes...

string $buffer[]=listRelatives -ni -c -shapes $CURRENTOBJ;
if(size($buffer))
{
// can select faces
}

Hope that makes sense!
--g

[bentneuron]

Thanks! I will give it a shot.

[jeffd]

I can't seem to find it now, but I recall once writing a proc for this. Basically I got all transforms, then loop through them. ANy transform with a shape (mesh) child was a transform/shape, anything else was thrown out.

--JeffD