Introduction
Usage
Examples
History
Requirements
Installation

SelectPolygonsWithImproperEdge is a LightWave ® Modeler plugin to select the all polygons in the primary layer of currently edited object with improper edge i.e. shared just by a single polygon (which means that object is not closed properly) or more than two. The both cases might leads to later problems with sub-patch, real-time engines, object collision detection and others. Finding such polygons and edges and fixing them is the both time and money hungry procedure, and just wastes resources of your company. See screen-shots for details.

This tool could help you save the time spend on finding 'why sub-patched object does not look like I wanted, when not sub-patched is fine', especially with very large objects, which could have many such places.

Real-time game artists who need closed object to collision detection should also be happy with this new tool.

SelectPolygonsWithImproperEdge has no user-interface yet. It's recommended to add it to Modeler's user-interface as button or create keyboard short-cut for easier usage. It can be used only in polygon mode (it's inactive in the others), and preferably when there is no other polygons selected. After running it, if there are some broken polygons they will be found and selected (see below for examples).

Because of analize of the whole object with large amount of polygons can take a while (LightWave fameous cow object with 5502 polygons on the Athlon 2000 XP takes arround 5-6 seconds) it's highly recommended to use this tool together with SelectionPresetManager to save polygon selection preset and use it instead of running SelectPolygonsWithImproperEdge multiple times.

As you can see below, even the well known worldwide famemous objects, can be broken! Probably their authors had no SelectPolygonsWithImproperEdge...

Click on the image to see it at full resolution.

Changes made in the 1.0 (12-Oct-2004)

  • The first Windows release.

Minimum Windows Requirements

  • LightWave v6+
  • Pentium or better
  • Windows 32 bit

Recommended Windows Requirements

  • GeForce2 Titanium 32 MB or better
  • x86 compatible CPU 1.0 GHz or better

Installing the product

In order to install the program, please extract the archive to some location on your hard disk.

On Windows ®, the archive is in the ZIP format. You will need 3rd party software such as WinZIP, which you can download from http://www.winzip.com (it's not included in the package), or other compatible software to decompress the archive.

Windows XP ® has built-in ZIP support (simply right click on the archive�s icon, and choose �Extract all files...�).

On Macintosh ®, the archive is in the SIT format. You will need 3rd party software such as StuffIt, which you can download from http://www.stuffit.com (it's not included in the package), or compatible software to decompress the archive.

The LightWave ® plugin does not require files to be in specific locations, which is a very nice feature. But for easier file management it is recommended that the plugin files (i.e. those with .p extension) be copied to your LightWave ® plugins folder (f.e. LightWave\Plugins\).

Installing LightWave ® Modeler Plugins

Run the LightWave ® Modeler executable. Select pop-down menu Modeler > Utilities > Add Plugins..., then choose the folder containing the new plugins and select them. You should see a message from LightWave that the plugins have been added successfully. The changes will be saved to your configuration file when you quit the program.

Click on the image to see it at full resolution.

Uninstalling the product

Uninstalling LightWave ® Modeler Plugins

Run the LightWave ® Modeler executable. Select pop-down menu Modeler > Utilities > Edit Plugins..., then select the plugin files and press the Delete button. The changes will be saved to your configuration file when you quit the program. Now you can safely remove the files from your hard disk.

Click on the image to see it at full resolution.