Grouped Furnitures

[roarke]

Hello. Good Am to all.

I downloaded some furnitures from TurboSquid but I cannot edit the materials of the the furniture because it is grouped. Can anyone please help me with my dilemma?

For example the glass table, I cannot edit because it is fixed as a group oblect. i tried ungrouping it, but the "ungroup" command cannot be invoked.

 

Please help. thanks.

[mbr]

Select it, go to the MODIFY menu, go down to the sub object list, select ELEMENT (the one on the right), then you can select each piece of the furniture. Or, you can use the eyedropper to get the material of the object, then edit the Multi material (assume that is what it is).

 

You can also 'Detach' the ELEMENTs at the subobject level and they will become a separate object.

 

I only recently learned all this, so if someone knows what problems this can cause or a better way, I'd love to hear it.

 

I still don't understand why people model that way! It does make it very time consuming to change things. My personal experience, anyway

[roarke]

I'm sorry but it is still the same....

all i wanted is to ungroup the glasstop and the wood support object. any other suggestions? i tried exploding which caused "explosive" results.

 

thanks.

[foxlee]

If it is an editable mesh. Go to face subobject level and select all the faces of the glass top.

Then just go "detach". Do not change anything on the next question box just OK.You will now have two seperate objects.

[mbr]

It is necessary to group things, of course, but what I didn't/don't understand, is that much of furniture that I've purchased is one object, with a Multi Sub material. Imo, those are incredibly tedious to edit. I believe that is what he is referring to, not grouped objects that can easily be ungrouped or opened.

[William Alexander]

Did you try the assembly menu?

Did you Try the open command?. Once open you can edit the "elements / objects " individually.

 

Are you using Viz 4.0 or 3.0. Viz 3 has some of the grouping controls in different drop down menus.

 

I still don't understand why people model that way! It does make it very time consuming to change things. My personal experience, anyway

When working with complex scenes, I've found that moving objects like furniture works much easier being grouped. Plus I still have full functional editing control within two additional mouse clicks. Another example is a duplex development. Grouped all of the different buildings individually. Allowing easy changes for the different lot and topographic changes.

 

rgds

WDA

[William Alexander]

mbr,

 

I think you just answered the question. It's not grouped but collapsed or modeled to a mesh and multi-sub material. That was not obviously stated in the replies. I think roarke was under the impression that it was grouped and not a mesh. Semantics?

rgds

WDA

[roarke]

you are right Mr. MBR. You exactly got my point. So what do you usually do?

 

thanks.

[mbr]

WDA - yes, perhaps it's semantics, although I don't know how to 'collapse' multiple objects into one selectable objects (other than grouping, but that's still different objects).

Is this how they are modeled into one object - by making a bunch and 'collapsing' them (into one mesh?)?

My knowledge on the matter is admittedly limited, though, so I could easily misunderstand how it is done or why.

 

What to do?

 

1. Select object

2. MODIFY > 'click' on the sub object mode

3. select ELEMENT (all the way on the right)

4. select a piece of the object (it should highlight as individual objects now)

5. Apply material, uv coords, etc. as normal (this part I am not 100% sure of, but it seems to work fine)

6. IF you want to break it up into many pieces, like a chair cushion separate from the legs, right click on it and select DETACH

7. It should ask if you want it to be an OBJECT, and what to name it

8. Viola! It's now a separate object

 

OR

 

Just take the eye dropper from the Mat ed and get the material, then change which part you want changed.

 

I believe that's it. That's what I've been doing, and so far so good!

 

Cheers.

[roarke]

That's what I call a really step by step advice.

Thank you very mucho!

 

"I would have been shot if I had'nt shot the shot that would have been shot me"

[mbr]

No problem. I had to do it about 2000 times for my last project, so I became quite familiar with the process!

[Arnel]

My knowledge on the matter is admittedly limited, though, so I could easily misunderstand how it is done or why.

 

What to do?

 

1. Select object

2. MODIFY > 'click' on the sub object mode

3. select ELEMENT (all the way on the right)

4. select a piece of the object (it should highlight as individual objects now)

5. Apply material, uv coords, etc. as normal (this part I am not 100% sure of, but it seems to work fine)

6. IF you want to break it up into many pieces, like a chair cushion separate from the legs, right click on it and select DETACH

7. It should ask if you want it to be an OBJECT, and what to name it

8. Viola! It's now a separate object

 

OR

 

Just take the eye dropper from the Mat ed and get the material, then change which part you want changed.

 

I believe that's it. That's what I've been doing, and so far so good!

 

Cheers. [/QB]

Yeah that is the right process and to add a little bit more it is very important also to name the sub-object selection for ease of reselecting the sub-object elements unless you are going to detach the selection which you still have to name it anyway.

For the eyedropper procedure it is also right provided that materials have already been applied to the objects prior to converting to one whole mesh.

[Chad Warner]

Originally posted by mbr:

Is this how they are modeled into one object - by making a bunch and 'collapsing' them (into one mesh?)?

I'm not sitting in front of VIZ at the moment, but I believe to make one object out of several meshes works the same as you described detaching above; you choose sub-object element, and then the "attach" option should become available, then you simply pick the objects you want to attach to your mesh to make one "collapsed" mesh.

 

-Chad