Split 2048 square plane into 16 exactly 512 planes?

# 1 10-05-2013 , 08:18 PM

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Split 2048 square plane into 16 exactly 512 planes?

So, I have an (modeled) plane that is 2048x2048 and I want it to magically be extracted into multiple 512 planes. The problem is, eyeballing it with the extract tool isn't going to cut it... Is there a way to do this with more precision? I'm assuming a script is in order, but that's out of my league entirely... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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# 2 10-05-2013 , 08:27 PM

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With history on go into the channel box for the plane and put 4 in the subdivision width and height.............dave

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# 3 10-05-2013 , 09:38 PM

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Ah, thank-you for the suggestion. It appears, however, that I have bounced this particular mesh around between too many programs. It no longer is recognized as a simple plane and I have no option to add subdivisions. Is there an alternative route? The program I use to process these meshes doesn't retain the necessary information for this approach.

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# 4 10-05-2013 , 10:15 PM

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By 2048, do you mean there are exactly 2048 faces in each dimension? Also, is it flat? Or is it more like a topographic data. If so, are the faces evenly distributed, such that if you look in the top view, it looks like a perfect grid?
I'm thinking that you could create cubes the correct size, intersect them with the plane and do perfect booleans.

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# 5 10-05-2013 , 11:19 PM

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Thanks for your help, It's basically like topo data, and the faces are evenly distributed. I looked into boolean intersection and subtraction, but am not getting anywhere, whenever I try a boolean operation both the cube and my mesh disappear. How might that work?

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# 6 10-05-2013 , 11:26 PM

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Hmm... booleans are tricky. On second thought, you might have to have both meshes closed, so a plane wouldn't work. You might still be able to use the cube as a guide to do extract with.

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# 7 10-05-2013 , 11:33 PM

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So, if I go Mesh->Fill Hole booleans work, but it of course fills in my mesh's topography which is no good... I'll try your idea of using the mesh as a guide, thanks again!

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# 8 11-05-2013 , 01:32 AM

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can you grab screen shot of the mesh as I am having trouble visualizing why this would be such an ordeal.

You have a single 2048x2048 plane (with no divisions in width or height) and you simply want to divide it evenly in each dimension by 16?

If it has divisions and has been manipulated in the y-axis then you are kind of screwed as you cannot evenly distributed the edges without changes the shape.

I need to see what you are trying to do to be able to help.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 9 11-05-2013 , 02:33 AM

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Yeah, I mislead you when I said plane, it started off as a plane that has now been sculpted via displacement with a heightmap to match topographical data, enhanced in mudbox, then polygon reduced. It is in quads which are evenly distributed on X and Z but not Y.

What I want to do is wind up with 16 512x512 meshes (with matching edge vertices) that compromise the entire surface of the larger mesh when aligned together (w/o gaps). This is for occlusion culling in a video game, so that the entire terrain doesn't need to be rendered at all times, but it requires precision fit pieces to work at scale.

I can't grab a screen at the moment, but will try when I get a chance. Thank you both for the help.

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# 10 11-05-2013 , 10:12 AM

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I don't think you will be able to do it with your mesh you need to transfere to a new mesh, try doing as I have done, create a plane the same size as your mesh I have 4 faces you will have 16 assigne a different shader to each face (this is so will can extract the part later) now increase the poly count to what you need then select the modelled part first hold down ctrl and select the plane next now go to mesh/transfere attribute and put in the settings I have, after you have done that delete the history of the new mesh. You can now select each face area by going to the shader and doing a duplicate or extract.........dave

Edit: Should share the same space when you do the transfere attributes

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Last edited by daverave; 11-05-2013 at 10:41 AM.

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# 11 11-05-2013 , 12:33 PM

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yeah I guess transferring the verts along the norm would preserve the apparent spacing from the top view Dave but there will be a change in the shape if the mesh is not dense enough.

I did a test and 16x16 spans on a 2048x2028 mesh ans there are some significant changes in the shape.

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 12 11-05-2013 , 01:34 PM

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Yes Rick there is a trade off you will need to up the mesh a bit but I do like the look of the projected mess it might be easier to UV.................dave

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# 13 11-05-2013 , 02:58 PM

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yeah I understand that Dave, I use vert projection. I was just pointing out that unless the resolution is high enough he was going to distort the shape as I mentioned in a previous post.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 14 11-05-2013 , 02:59 PM

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Wow you guys, thanks so much. It really looks like I need to find a different workflow for this, and I have an idea of how to go about it so that I don't have to worry about this problem in the first place by sculpting my data onto smaller contiguous planes from the get-go. Thanks again!

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Split 2048 square plane into 16 exactly 512 planes?

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