Instances And Combine

[user_deleted]

I have a vehicle made up of some real objects and some instances.
I want to combine all of its geometry into one poly object.

When I do "combine", all the instanced objects disappear.
So I tried to select all the instances, duplicating them normally (copy) and then combining...
but I get the same result!

What am I doing wrong?

Instances suck!

[toast--2]

Instances are ugly business if you don't have Maya 2008. If you do convert the instances to objects, then combine.

If you don't have 2008 there's a script on Highend3D that'll try and do that for you. I don't remember the link but I saw it the other day.

[user_deleted]

I love how Maya goes...

Here's a function. It's shit but you won't know that until it's too late.

We'll update it someday, when you're in the middle of production and can't switch Maya versions.

I'll look for that script. Thanks!

[user_deleted]

Cleaning it all by hand now... fun stuff.

I officially declare instancing the worst feature to befall the human race since Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5's nested sequences.

[joojaa]

Bit of false information here im affraid. (guys learn this, dont look on the OGL screen for absolute information, 50% of everything i need to explain on this forum is not visible to you, so you must get a feel for what you dont see inorder to get things done. That and looking in the hypergraph)

You can combine many instances to one object in any version of maya. It is however a bit tricky since it involves a cleanup tool that mostly makes sense for 99% of the tools. No need to uninstance them first.

So this is what you end up doing:

Combine them one by one. But see once you combine ONE the rest will dissapear. Why? Well because the shape gets marked intermediate! *. Now that does NOT mean its no longer there ist just tidied away from your gui display. Because its marked computation only.

However, its still possible to do this! You will just have to work out the blindness.

Let us consider this scene:

CODE
file -f -new;
polyCube -w 1 -h 1 -d 1 -sx 1 -sy 1 -sz 1 -ax 0 1 0 -cuv 4 -ch 1;
instance;
move -r 2 0 0;
instance;
move -r 2 0 0;

//now combine and see things dissapear
polyUnite -ch 1 pCube3 pCube2;
//now unhide disssapearence
setAttr "pCube1|pCubeShape1.intermediateObject" 0;
//and combine again
polyUnite -ch 1  pCube1 polySurface1;

Now this is a bit tedious so its best to do something like this. Wich just automates the same logic as above.

CODE
//put this in your shelf and select all to be combined
{//select all items to mass combine
$items=ls -sl;
$comb=polyUnite -ch 1 $items[0] $items[1];
for ($i=2;$i<size($items);$i++){
  $shapes=ls -type mesh (listHistory("-lv", 1,"-f", 0,$comb));
  for ($it in $shapes)
    setAttr ($it+".intermediateObject") 0;
  $comb=polyUnite -ch 1 $items[$i] $comb;
}
}

QUOTE
Here's a function. It's shit but you won't know that until it's too late.

No this is very core functionality of maya, you use it to your benefit daily but when you dont account for its existence this is what happens.

*Its simply because your combine settings is set to do that, this is the desired behaviour otherwise after combine you'd allways have 3 objects, pre maya there used to be options for such things tough never for combine now they are mostly gone for other tools aswell. This is the sort of improvement you get by autodesk in light of helping people by making things simpler. Simpler seems to mean less options of discovery -> dumber software.