Renumbering Polygons

[riggermarcus]

Is there any way to renumber the vertices on a polygon based on another polygon with the same number of vertices?

Here is a little history on how I got in this fix... I want to take an already modeled polygonal head and break it up into sections so that for instance my eyelid blend targets do not have to include the rest of the head geo. My only problem is that when I merge the sections the polygonal numbering is completely different then the original head.

Has anyway tried to tackle this problem?

[campbell]

Just as a bumper ....im very interested in this also, though more in the context of being able to renumber per vertex (not neccessarily in reference to another model).

Im not certain, but im under the impression that blendShapes have an 'automatic' pruning that will disregard points that arent moving relative to the base shape ....and thus your efforts to reduce the amount of data the blendShape handles may not be necessary. I really dont know tho. You might be doing it for other reasons tho, like reducing the amount of data associated with target shapes that you're throwing around in the scene.

[riggermarcus]

The automatic pruning may be correct but I like keeping my blend targets around in the scene. With the level of detail I am working with and the number of targets the scene file can get quite large. One thing I thought of is to detach seperate the different regions. Make my targets and blendshapes and then merge as a final step. With history on every seems to update. The vertex numbering may not match but I think I can live with that.

I am also going to look into that mel script that recreates targets after they have been deleted.

[warpcat]

Based on MY experience, the answer is no. I've talked with AW about this, and they're answer as well is... no. After talking with "the programmers" it was thought that once could write a script of plugin that would match the worldspace position of verts and re-order the ID's to match, but... of coures... the two models would have to be the exact same shape. You can do it by hand, but it's like playing with one of those slide puzzels, the ones that look like a 3x3 grid with a piece missing? Basically, in your custom polygon display, turn on the "show item number" for vertices. Then using edge selection, start flipping edges. The ID's will flip around as well. This is suicide of course on anything more than 10 polys...

[el-diablo]

if you want to pull shapes out of the facial blends. all you have to do is deleted all of the polygons not needed. Then slide each shape slider up and the duplicate. Do this for every target shape and then go into the Hypergraph and delete the "deleteComonent" node. Finally, delete all of the polys that make up your head.

For stitching just polyCombine and mergeEdges before render time. You can save that procedure as a scipt. just keep in mind that mergeEdges can loose connection on far stretches. Append polygon tool would guarentee the to stay together(just have a little UV fix to do on the new polys).

A friend of mine has a script that will automatically dup out shapes from blends. It is very helpfull if you have deleted your targets and want to retrieve them. Names the all correctly and duplicates at any level in the hierarchy. mail me if you need it....el diablo

http://www.3dchopshop.comhttp://www.3dchopshop.com

[riggermarcus]

Thanks for the posts gentlemen. polyCombine it is. I wonder if other packages are a little more flexible with their polygonal numbering.

[joojaa]

Howabout using sets?

Most apps dont let you controll how they internaly use the polys since this would case humongous problems in the memory allocation department (and a fter you screw this your performance will never be the same aagain), you could howvever re buld the surface so that this gets a bit more predictable.

But there are other ways around this....

[campbell]

Poly rebuild? Keeps popping up. This couldnt be an analogue of nurbs rebuild functions, could it? Is this 'poly rebuilding' more-or-less a manual effort ? - plotting fresh geometry across your mesh, extracting curves and nurb tooling poly patches? Or is it something less manual? Passing it through a subD and extracting vertices or something? And the purpose for this? - to have cleaner vertex indexing?

bit confused.

Cheers,
C.

[joojaa]

No do script that reads the data and then re makes them in what ever order you want!

[el-diablo]

what you could do is build vertex number by UV space. Start off at 0X0 and number them fromleft to right going up. This might be able to be scripted. You would have to plan out your UV's extreme well to make sure you normals dont flip, no edges crash through the model, and no overlapping UV's....el diablo

http://www.3dchopshop.comhttp://www.3dchopshop.com

[joojaa]

Thats actually a pretty damn good idea!