How can I remove parts from a model?

lukon100

For example, suppose I have a model of a vehicle. I want to remove the seats and other things from the vehicle.

These parts I want to remove are items I can hide by turning the Opacity slider to zero in the Surfaces tab. But I want to know if there's a simple way to just remove these items instead of hiding them.

I suspect it is something that can be done in the Geometry Editor. But I don't know how.

I don't want to remove the items from the orginal model. I want to remove the items and save the scene as a version of the model that has no seats.

nonesuch00

 

a)

1) Click on what you want to delete to select it in the viewport.

2) After you have selected the item (sometimes it takes several attempts to get object selected) then in the Scene tab you should see the item you selected highlighted. If the item is a 'child part' of a root object (the main model for the item selected) when you will see also a folder stucture in the scene tab that is unfolded.

3) Anyway, the item selected in the viewport once it is selected also in the scene tab you will see an 'eye' icon to the left - just click on the eye icon so that it is close & item is invisible. Sometime other parts of an item that are subitems or parent items of the item you just hid need to be hid too. So just navigate the 'folder structure' of the model using the eye and click on the eyes you want to hide.

That is the easiest way.

b)

1) Use Opacity Slider in Surface Tab for some items. You already that one.

c)

1) Use Geometry Editor to select polygons and then hide polygons. This is the last resort but people often do those to hide hair poking through hats and skin poking through garments.

lukon100

Thanks for your help, nonesuch00. These are all good ways to hide parts of a model. Unfortunately, I do not want to merely hide these parts, but to delete them.

I want to do this so I can reduce the amount of useless geometry in my scene. This useless geometry slows my computer down significantly. I'm a person on very small budget who uses older hardware with significant limits.

harrykim

nonesuch00 said:

1) Use Geometry Editor to select polygons and then hide polygons. This is the last resort but people often do those to hide hair poking through hats and skin poking through garments.

 

The good news, ... next step would be to delete these hidden polygons. You will become asked if you are sure to do so, because it is ireversible for your current scene. Then you can save it as eg. as character preset and have it for later purposes. 

The bad news, ... to delete hidden polygons does not reduce the scene size.

Just in case you dont have it.  TechPowerUp GPU-Z is a free of charge program to check your scene size and a lot more. So, in case you do GPU rendering you have alway info when to stop adding elements, to stay within in the GPU capacity. Means to avoid that your system switch to CPU rendering, which is usually significant slower.

I´m very curious too, if there is a way, that "delete" means not only invisibility but reducing of scene size.

 

lukon100

Thanks for your help here, harrykim.

So, if the scene size does not reduce by deleting geometry in the geometry editor, this tells me that the geometry editor does not in fact delete the geometry, but instead just hides it and disconnects it from anything else in the scene, and does so permenantly.

I suppose the only true way to delete geometry is outside DS, as by exporting the model to Blender, deleting the geometry there, and then transferring the result back to DS.

 

BTW, I use CPU rendering because I don't have a GPU worth a damn.

nonesuch00

lukon100 said:

Thanks for your help here, harrykim.

So, if the scene size does not reduce by deleting geometry in the geometry editor, this tells me that the geometry editor does not in fact delete the geometry, but instead just hides it and disconnects it from anything else in the scene, and does so permenantly.

I suppose the only true way to delete geometry is outside DS, as by exporting the model to Blender, deleting the geometry there, and then transferring the result back to DS.

 

BTW, I use CPU rendering because I don't have a GPU worth a damn.

Well when you go to render & the scene is sent to the discrete video I'm pretty sure hidden geometry, and by that I, and it is generally meant, that geometry you can't see, not that you've manually hidden in some way, is culled and not sent if that's your motive in doing thst but you should ask DAZ Support directly about that.

lukon100

nonesuch00 said:

... geometry you can't see, not that you've manually hidden in some way, is culled and not sent if that's your motive in doing this ...

Actually, I'm not here concerned about my render times, yet.

My more immediate concern is over how all this invisible geometry slows my computer down so much that it takes up to 15 seconds to complete a simple pan or rotate in my viewport. It makes doing any work on the scene so very tedious.

harrykim

 

lukon100 said:

Actually, I'm not here concerned about my render times, yet.

My more immediate concern is over how all this invisible geometry slows my computer down so much that it takes up to 15 seconds to complete a simple pan or rotate in my viewport. It makes doing any work on the scene so very tedious.

But your viewport mode is not accidently set to "Nvidia Iray" 

 

nonesuch00

Well one thing you can do besides not setting your computer to use nVidia Preview Mode in your viewport is to go to the Scene Tab and there are little white check marks to the left of the eyes. Any model in your scene tab that you will not be moving, example - you bought the Habsburg set from HowieFarks or the Grass from ESHA, check the white checkmark and it turns to a white x. That means DAZ Studio will ignore that model when you put your mouse or navigate about the viewport. You can still move the model you X-ed by using the scene tab or by changing the X-ed model back to a checked model by clicking the tiny white X back to a tiny white checkmark.

lcc1967_7c51fed2f4

and check your video settings too. I had a similar issue where the viewport was so slow I couldn't even move the camera on my GTX980 and after some trials and errors, I found out the culprit : Per Pixel shading was enabled and for whatever reason made DS in panic mode even if that mode is supported by the card.