Imported OBJ "groups" become "sets" in MAYA

[mloomis]

Greetings.

The OBJ format allows the hierarchical grouping of geometry within a single file. This is specified using what the
OBJ format calls "groups". When importing OBJ models into MAYA, OBJ "groups" become MAYA "sets". The good news
is that the grouping information is preserved in the translation from OBJ to MAYA. The bad news is that, in MAYA,
I can see no way to separately animate the geometry of a "set" within an object because there are no separate
transform nodes attached to a set.

Although I searched this site for a MEL script or other information on how to do this, so far I'm coming up with
nothing. Ideally, I guess I would prefer to rebuild the original imported geometry containing the sets as a number
separate objects that are grouped under a single node. That way I could select and animate the individual child
nodes in the usual way. Does anyone have a clue how to do this?

Michael

[deke-kincaid]

To easily separate the model back into its original pieces, just select the model you imported and do a Edit Polygons > Separate. It will automatically make each set a separate piece.

[mloomis]

hey, Beaker.

Thanks for the reply; your response was very helpful. The "Separate" command does achieve what I asked for in my post,
but what I didn't mention is that there are typically about 1,000 sets in each object that I'm trying to separate.
It would be great if there was a way to preserve the names of the original sets in the separate pieces that are
generated. Otherwise, I get a thousand generically named nodes (like polysurf1, polysurf2, ... etc) and I can't tell
which is which. Might you happen to know a way to achieve this?

Again, thanks for your help.

Michael

[gmask]

You could store the names of the sets in your MEL script for seperating them and them rename them after seperation.

[mloomis]

gmask-

Thanks, but I don't have a MEL script to do this--just a single command. Unfortunately,
the polySeparate command doesn't have the options to do what I want. It separates everything allright,
but it names every node with the same basename plus a number. There's no way that I can see to get
"inside" the command to add the functionality I desire. When I have hundreds of separated nodes,
it would be nice to know which one came from which of the original sets.

Michael

[joojaa]

Ok load all set names into a list then separate if youre lucky the numbered names come in the exact same order then just rename each of them with a simple for-in loop.