backface culling?

[bigfatMELon]

go to: Display/Custom Polygon Display/

The popup at the bottom of the window is where you set Backface Culling. This can be set on a per selected object basis or for all objects in the scene based on the status of the two radio buttons at the top of the window.

jl

[Lunatique]

Wahahaha! I found the problem.

I already tried custom polygon display, and I tried backface culling, but all it did was hide the front of my model and only showed the interior shell. So, I thought the backface culling in Maya did something else--not what I wanted.

Turned out my normals are all reversed! :p

[-wT-]

This must be the fourth or fifth time I ask this, but I'll ask it yet again (As you bigfatMELon seem to know your stuff ;))

How could I turn on even better backface culling, that would only select stuff I directly see?
I.e. if I have a ball, the normal backface culling options work perfectly, as there aren't any faces with normals pointing towards the camera at the back of the ball... but try making another ball behind it, combine them and THEN try to select stuff in front of you when the camera is pointing towards the first ball and the second is behind the first... front faces of both ball's get selected, because the backface culling just thinks about normals :hmm:

I'm pretty sure this could be accomplished, as the Artisan selection tool does this, although it's propably alot different, but if you paint selection, only the thing you see get's selected, NEVER the stuff behind it no matter where the normals point at, that is what I'd like to have in normal selections too.


Thank you sooooooooooooo much if somebody could answer this!

[bigfatMELon]

but try making another ball behind it, combine them and THEN try to select stuff in front of you when the camera is pointing towards the first ball and the second is behind the first... front faces of both ball's get selected, because the backface culling just thinks about normals

I've just had this conversation with another person. who was confused about Backface Culling. The thing is that you have to understand how backface culling works (it's this way for all display engines). It looks at the vector from the polygon normal and detemines it's facing ration relative to the camera. If the object is facing towards the camera it gets drawn. If not, it is culled. That's all it ever does.

What you are describing are two different things. Backface culling and depth or occlusion culling. Not only are the backfaces not selectable, but neither are any faces that are being XY occluded.

One tool that does work this way in Maya (bit I think is very inconvenient to use) is the paint select tool. It must see the face center to select it so it offers some cheap depth culling type behavior.

The way I manage this issue when needed is to use my Clippers script with lets you drive the front and back clipping planes of the persp camera. This provides some very convenient, if only planar, depth culling. I generally use it when modeling or weighting mouth cavities or facial details.

The downside is that it doesn't offer any sort of true occlusion culling but the upside is that it does offer front plane clipping so you can go into a character's head from behind and sort of "peel away" the back of their skull.

Clippers is available on www.highend3d.com. It also offers quick switches for higher nurbs display qualities and sliders to drive the specularity and tranparency amount. Great for making better judgements or for when plain old, 50% xray mode isn't what you need.

-jl

[-wT-]

Great, thanks for the explanation. Too bad it's that hard to get this depth/occlusion culling, and the example you said, a head with mouth cavity, is just the situations I'm talking about. I guess I'll be using the paint selection tool more often when neccesary... if only changing the radius of the tool would be easier...
I'll give that script you mentioned a go too.

[bigfatMELon]

if only changing the radius of the tool would be easier

That should be pretty simple. Hold down the b key and LMB-drag. My complaint is just getting in and out of the tool. Too slow for me and I almost always have clippers up and running for other reasons so I've usually reached for that as a solution first 'cuz it's right there in my face. Well, that and because I wrote the damned thing. If I don't use it...

-jl

[-wT-]

Oh hey good point! I was just yesterday looking trough the hotkeys, and noticed that same button for changing the size of the brush, but forgot to try it, thanks for reminding me :)
But you're right, all Artisan tools tend to load some time, which usually destroys the fast workflow you can get with all the hotkeys and marking menus.

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