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View Full Version : Rebuilding an object from its polys and keeping textures where they were

govinda
03-14-2007, 06:36 PM
;) Long name for a short problem.

Say you've disconnected and then 'exploded segments' on a cube. Then you texture each face with an insignia using flat or cubic mapping. So you have six objects. Can you then reconnect the six faces in such a way that the textures stay where you put them? For the sake of the reality here (it's more than a thousand objects), it's not feasible to assign each object a polygon selection. That's the short analogue.

The long story is that I used mograph cloner to build something because of its brilliant precision in placing objects on an irregular spline shape. As a consequence, I have a thousand single-poly objects, which is something of a wasteful render hit and, worse, precludes me easily throwing a separate alpha-mapped texture tag with a material of dirt, diffusion and displace over the whole lot. That's two good reasons to connect all those polys into one object. Problem is, I lose my individual object texturing when I do it. :(

I can't escape the feeling that I'm missing something basic here. :rolleyes:
TIA, govinda
Per-Anders
03-14-2007, 07:09 PM
Use the "Connect Object" instead of the connect command to do this (i.e. put the cloner in the Connect Object). The only thing to remember is to use the Generate UVW Coordinates on the clones that don't use UVW projection as otherwise you'll get a global projection rather than an individial per clone projection.

BTW you can put AO on the whole object very easily, just use AO in the alpha channel of a material (with invert checked) and stick it on each of the clones now you cna control the lot with one effect, or even easier just use the Ambient Occlusion control in the render settings to apply to the whole scene.
govinda
03-14-2007, 07:56 PM
'You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Per Anders again.' :D

And about the 'Connect Object,' I have to say, whoah. I haven't been using it. It maintains the texturing even after a Current State. Nice trick!
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