splitting a mesh

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/splitting a mesh

LAB[au] (Posted 2003) [#1]

I have a 3DS that I load with loadanimmesh. This mesh is composed of several separated objects (boxes). I would like to split this mesh so that all these boxes are saved a separated b3D files. I tried with countchildren and getchild but this doesn't seem to return any result. Any idea/help appreciated. Thanks

jfk EO-11110 (Posted 2003) [#2]

Try countsurfaces. Or try running the recursive Mesh Family Tree Display Source from the Code Archives.

LAB[au] (Posted 2003) [#3]

The 3DS is single surface, I would need something like a delimiter that tell "this box is separated from the others". Finally triangles form "groups", I need to find and to isolate these groups. Thanks anyway.

shawnus (Posted 2003) [#4]

you may need to build the model heirarchy in max (using links from parent to child) & then exporting the .3ds into blitz. see the 'robotic arm' tutorial. Cheers Shawnus

Neo Genesis10 (Posted 2003) [#5]

This topic confuses me. I have loaded in 3DS files without losing heirarchy. Most recently I recreated the infamous lobby scene. Using CountChildren and GetChild I was able to apply different entity types to the destructable areas for collision purposes. Since each child is actually an indivdual mesh, this should not be a problem.

shawnus (Posted 2003) [#6]

The 'robotic arm' tutorial is on Reda Borchart's (?) 'open dna' site, along with other useful blitz tutorials. Cheers Shawnus

LAB[au] (Posted 2003) [#7]

Well my problem wasn't to build model hierarchy. I had a 3ds mesh with a single surface. This mesh was composed of several blocks/cubes but all sharing the same surface! I wanted to split this mesh into separate elements/blocks. There was no child entity. So I wanted to split it by copying/manipulating vertices. But then I would need a delimiter, an info which would tell me when a new block/cube starts and ends. Then I found that the result would be a lot of mesh/surfaces, and that I would experience a massive slowdown. So I ended up not splitting it but rather manipulate and rebuilt the single mesh/surface on the vertices level to perform repositioning, scaling like I wanted. Off course I could have done everything in 3Dmax but it would have been to much work, the mesh had about 300 blocks/cubes! Clicking for hours is not my favorite passtime... Thanks to all, sorry if it was confusing.