Selection Set Manager

Power Surfacing’s Selection Set Manager provides a means to retain and name selection sets of vertices, edges and faces. Additionally, face visibility can be managed in the floating window as well.

The Selection Set Manager opens in a floating window (see image on left below)

In the floating window, you will see two tabs and an Add and Delete button. The SubD tab is where you can create, name and manage sub-object selections on the SubD. The Reference Mesh tab comes into play when you are preparing reference meshes for retopologizing with Power Surfacing RE. All selection sets start out in the SubD tab. When converting a SubD to a Reference mesh for the retopologizing process, SubD selection sets are transferred to the Reference Mesh tab.

Typically, selection sets are created when the sub-objects in question are difficult to access and/or are frequently used during the modelling process. An example is a handle that is shaped with the Bend tool. As the Bend must be undone before it can be re-calculated, it is handy having the selection available at the click of the mouse. To create a selection set, the process is as follows:

1. Open the Selection Manager through the Dialogs fly-out.

2. Select the vertices, edges or faces you wish to have quick access to.

3. Click Add.

4. Click on the name just added to modify it to a useful name.

To select the items in the named selection set, click the item in the list. See the two images below.

To hide the items click off the check box. Note that hiding edges and vertices will also hide any adjacent faces.

With RE

Selection Sets Selection sets provide multiple functions. They can be used to hide or show parts of the reference mesh to provide easier access to various parts of the reference mesh. They can be also be used to position retopo mesh edges with reference mesh features.

With constrained vertices, if the reference mesh has open edges, the vertices will automatically stop at the open edge when pulled toward it. When a portion of the reference mesh is hidden, the visible edge is treated as if it was an open edge. If the reference mesh can easily be divided into sections along its ‘hard’ edges, the retopo process can be streamlined to a great extent.

The procedure is as follows:

1.From the Power Surfacing RE tool bar, select Edit Reference Mesh if you are not already in that mode.

2.From the Power Surfacing tab, click the Advanced tools drop-down and choose Selection Set Manager.

Opening the Selection Set Manager

3. Select the faces on the mesh that define the hard edge (fully weighted) section.

Adding and renaming the new selection set

4. In the Selection Set Manager, click the Add button and then click on the new selection set, selection_0 and rename it selection_cap top.

The new selection set shows the icon for a face selection. The check box allows you to turn the selection off and on (hide/show). Clicking on the selection set name will select it in the viewport.

Selection Sets (continued)

Selecting an area bounded by hard edges

5. Create selection sets for the rest of the mesh, naming as you go.

Once you have every other set created, you can turn them off and select the remaining sections using Select by Element, .

With the selection sets defined, now is a good time to save the scene. Previously, you saved the oriented reference mesh as an obj. The obj file type does not support selection sets, so you will be saving this one as a .pmodel, Power Surfacing’s native format.

Creating the rest of the selection sets and hiding a few of them

6. From the Tools menu, Power Surfacing, Save, Save Scene, appending the name with SS for selection sets, if you wish.

The polygonal mesh converted to a reference mesh and its selection

Selection

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