Problem with components!! AHHH!

# 1 08-04-2009 , 03:16 PM

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Hi Guys!
Being a newbie at Maya I've encountered a problem i think i can't get out of! AHHH!!
To explain, i was simply modeling my mesh and i must have pressed a keyboard shortcut by mistake and what's happened is that all the components in my polygonal model have been duplicated on top of themselves! SO when i go to move a vert it moves one of them and there's still another one behind it! But it's done it to all the edges and faces too! I don't think i realized until the next day so i've ultimately saved the project and quit out of it and now can't undo the mistake!!

I've tried copying and pasting the model into another scene but it hasn't worked- it's the model itself!! I'm contemplating going to every single component in my model (which has alot of components) and merging it with the one beneath it but that would take days!!!

So if anyone has any ideas or can tell me what i did wrong so i don't make the same mistake again that would be great!

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# 2 08-04-2009 , 03:21 PM

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Have you tried going into the outliner and seeing what you can do from there? You may be able to select each duplicated object and delete them one by one.

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# 3 08-04-2009 , 03:54 PM

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Thanks for replying!
Can i select the verts, faces and edges of an object in the outliner though? Because it's just listing the object and not it's components- that's the weird thing, the duplicated components aren't another layer or object it's all in the one model (polycube1 in the outliner)!

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# 4 08-04-2009 , 04:19 PM

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Oh crap! That's not one I can answer if the whole scene is one object now, does it have a + next to it (ie:it's all grouped into one) if that's no help I'm afraid I'll have to hope that someone else can help you out then, it's a bit beyond my knowledge. It may help if you post a couple of screen shots for people to look at, maybe one of the scene and one with the outliner in it so people can get an idea of what you are dealing with. Sorry i can't be of any better help, good luck anyway!

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# 5 08-04-2009 , 04:27 PM

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I'm pretty new to maya myself, so I don't know if this will work, but it's an idea. Try selecting all of your vertices (duplicates and all) and then edit mesh > merge (I think, I'm not at home so can't double check) with a very low distance tolerance (can't remember how to set that either, but there must be an option).

Maybe someone with more experience can elaborate, but the principle itself might work. Hope it helps.

-stwert

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# 6 08-04-2009 , 05:10 PM

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Thanks guys!
Stwert you were right! I tried merging all the verts before but because the threshold slider was up my mesh resembled a somewhat bereaved porcupine! But i put it right down so all is gd!

Still don't know what i did but thanks alot!!!

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# 7 09-04-2009 , 02:57 PM

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you could also use the clean up tool - open up the options and you will see a ton of different options that deal with this sort of problem. stwert's idea might work, but clean up is usually a sure fire way of getting rid of (and finding) dodgy geometry. user added image

arran3D

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Last edited by arran; 09-04-2009 at 03:00 PM.

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# 8 09-04-2009 , 03:55 PM

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Thanks arran-yeah, all was well for a moment (with merging) then i discovered that there was still duplicate faces on top of each other! I did a little research after you posted the response and found out that i think i have what's called lamina faces (courtesy of 3dbuzz):

Lamina Faces are faces that share the same edges (and thus the same vertices) and they are quite difficult to spot without using Cleanup. You can think of Lamina Faces as unnecessary faces that sit right on top of each other. Objects with Lamina Faces will still render fine, but render time is likely to increase as the renderer will compute Lamina Faces twice. Any smooth operation will produce strange looking results and a SubD conversion will report a Nonmanifold error. Lamina faces usually occur when you merge vertices on faces that share the same space.

So i tried the cleanup like you said and checked lamina faces and everythings fine! There's still one or two faces left but i can deal with them!

I still don't know how i did this but if you were stuck like i was then use clean up-it's pretty good for lamina faces!

Cheers

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# 9 09-04-2009 , 04:06 PM

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it's possible that you selected all of the faces and did an extrude without actually extruding - that would give you lamina faces. have a good read through the clean up options in f1 - you can also use clean up to look for problem areas - which is really useful if you know somethings wrong but aren't sure what's wrong.

arran3D

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# 10 09-04-2009 , 04:20 PM

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Yeah, I wasn't sure if merging just the vertices would deal with the rest of the components. Good to know of a better solution, thanks arran.
So just to clarify, if you merge two sets vertices that share an edge, the edge will also be merged, but if sets of vertices that surround a face are merged, there will be a redundant face still? Is that the general idea?