hey everyone.. i'm no model professional, but i think i'm doing something wrong whenever i model an object. After modeling for a few hours, i opened up my outliner. I get these geometries that, i have no clue that i've created.
they're called polysurface# with a transform under it or
polytosubd#. usually they have a clear / white poly symbol next to them. when i click on them in the outliner, and view them in the viewport.. nothing shows up, beside the transform gizmo.



What are these? Am i modeling the wrong way? And do they serve a purpose, cause when i delete them.. there's no harm.


Just trying to understand maya a lil better, and i can't find anything in my fundamental books.

thanks,
strytus

First of all, it's important to understand nodes. Every physical object you create is composed of 2 nodes, the Shape Node and the Transform Node. The Shape node handles all the physical properties of the object, such as manipulating vertices, creating deformations, etc. The Transform node handles all the location aspects of the object, such as where it is in 3D space, rotation, scale, etc.

So, sometimes, when you affect objects with different actions, it creates new objects (such as when you combine objects together or convert to other geometry types) and some nodes get left behind.

To clean these quickly, go to File > Optimize Scene Size. This removes these unnecessary nodes. Note that this also gets rid of unused materials and textures and other things like that.

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-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

thank you so much. even though it's one of the thing you're first suppose to learn, i never tried to understand it. thanks again

sorry to take back this thread from the old days but i have a problem, after clicking on ''Optimize Scene'' i still get those transform in the outline, i try delete the history but they dont wanna go away :headbang:
if i delete them i dont see any change what can i do?

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"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's ok to have them. Every object has one. It's just when you have extra ones hanging around not associated with an object is when they can be removed.

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-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt