Equivalent of LW Freeze?

[yog]

If you like the way it works in LW, you'll really like the way it works in XSI.

Select your object, then go to Model->Poly Mesh->Subdivision. Here you can choose the level of subdivision you would like to apply to the base object, but it also gives you other options, the main ones being "Hide/Unhide" and "Delete" in the Input Construction area.
If you don't select any of the options it will work like LW's old Metaform plug-in, where the original low poly cage is used to deform the new higher level mesh, "Hide/Unhide" keeps the relationship but hides the low poly original, and if you select "Delete" the result will be exactly like LW's Freeze option with the low poly original being deleted.

[Sil3]

Basically what u are doing in LW by freezing at level 1 is a Smooth on the normals (since no polys are added and the low rez cage gets smoothed to look like the Subd), use a Smooth operator on XSI to get the same results.

[mocaw]

I keep reading your post dragonfollower over and over, and can't decide if either yog or Sil3 have given you the response you need/wanted.

I guess if you're finished with your mesh then Sil3's version is all you need. I normaly freeze a subpatched mesh so that I can up the selectable/editable geometry- do the needed edits and additions, then refine the less detailed areas (such as using bandglue in LW or Dissolve and clean adj. vertices), and finally re-reapply the sup-patch to them. In this case I guess yog's response would be what you were looking for right?

Just checking to make sure I'm not missing out on something here...

[dragonfollower]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Once I get home from work I'll try what's been suggested.

The main reason I'm trying to do this is for playback speed on animations. When my character isn't sub-d'd (sorry I'm not sure what the right terminology is for it), he moves in realtime when playing an animation. But as soon as I hit "+" the playback speed will slow down. So the solution is to do all animation and playback when he isn't subdivided. But the unsubdivided geometry (cage?) is too different from the subdivided (level 1) geometry.

So in LW when I would have this problem, I would freeze the geometry when it was in subpatch mode and then my cage would more closely resemble the subdivided version, but would still play back in realtime and would still be a low resolution mesh.

Again, I hope this all makes sense. Let me know if any of it doesn't.

Thanks again for all the help!

-Brian

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