[Model Editing] Making sure everything not needed is gone - how ?

[Ardenian]

There is one thing about model editing that troubles me for a long time now.

If I would like to edit a model, for example remove a particular part, how can I make sure everything related to the particular part is gone ?

Example 1: Good old 'Remove Hero Glow'/ Removing part of a model

I open Mdlvis, search for the geoset for hero glow and delete it. I am not sure in this case what is attached to the hero glow, but would this delete action efficiently removes everything related to the hero glow ? How would I make sure everything related to it is gone ?

Example 2: Removing everything but one static thing, for example only keeping the head of a unit, no animations.

So, if I would like to extract a particular part of a model, I delete every geoset not needed, every material not needed, every geoset animation and every texture not needed.
What would I need to delete of the node ? If the extracted part is going to be used as a static decoration, like a jewel in a treasure chest, do I need to keep anything beside the geoset, the related material and the related texture ?
Could I just delete the complete node ?

 

[Hantoo]

There is one thing about model editing that troubles me for a long time now.

If I would like to edit a model, for example remove a particular part, how can I make sure everything related to the particular part is gone ?

Example 1: Good old 'Remove Hero Glow'/ Removing part of a model

I open Mdlvis, search for the geoset for hero glow and delete it. I am not sure in this case what is attached to the hero glow, but would this delete action efficiently removes everything related to the hero glow ? How would I make sure everything related to it is gone ?

Example 2: Removing everything but one static thing, for example only keeping the head of a unit, no animations.

So, if I would like to extract a particular part of a model, I delete every geoset not needed, every material not needed, every geoset animation and every texture not needed.
What would I need to delete of the node ? If the extracted part is going to be used as a static decoration, like a jewel in a treasure chest, do I need to keep anything beside the geoset, the related material and the related texture ?
Could I just delete the complete node ?

Ok this one is easy, You can just directly remove the Geoset you want from MDLVIS, it will safely remove the geoset animation for you too
(If you have duplicated geoset animation or Geoset animation with no geoset assign, it will crash a map)
And then, Go and remove the Material and Texture using Magos,
Material and texture, might be recycle for other geoset use, so you have to decide whether you want to remove them or not depending if other geosets need them.
The next thing is if you want it to be even cleaner, you can go to the Bone Tab to remove it's bone, for geoset like gutz, Hero Glow and Portrait Plane are ok if you remove em, because they are not parent of any bone, but try not to mess with the bone that has it "child" For Example UpperArm and LowerArm, you do not want to remove the upperarm even if you remove the geoset, as it will alter the animation.

Now, for The Head Chopping, What I do, Is Remove Everything other than the Head for that geoset (Only the Mesh) and export it as Geoset and Import to a Clean Model

Since exporting geoset only export the UV and the Vertex i think... Bones And Animation will be ignored in geoset so you take the Head and Put it in somewhere "Clean"
Just think of Geoset as A chunk of Mesh

 

[Ardenian]

And then, Go and remove the Material and Texture using Magos,

Will they be easy to identify ? Like having no geoset assigned ?

Thank you! It helped me a lot!

One off-topic question, how can I see in Magos what geoset is what ? is it possible to highlight a geoset somehow ?

 

[Hantoo]

Will they be easy to identify ? Like having no geoset assigned ?

Thank you! It helped me a lot!

One off-topic question, how can I see in Magos what geoset is what ? is it possible to highlight a geoset somehow ?

Ctrl Click the Part of the Mesh with Geoset animation And material Tab open and see the magic
Well, If you delete them with no warning (Like, You Have Geoset Assign to this Material or sumthin) then it has no Geoset assign to that Material

 

[Ardenian]

Ctrl Click the Part of the Mesh with Geoset animation And material Tab open and see the magic

I don't get it this time.

I have three geosets and two materials, for example. How can I highlight a geoset in the Model Editor so I know what geoset number belongs to it ?

 

[Hantoo]

I don't get it this time.

I have three geosets and two materials, for example. How can I highlight a geoset in the Model Editor so I know what geoset number belongs to it ?

Try and Ctrl-Click the Model itself, Click the Mesh with geoset Tab open
You ctrl Click the Part of Mesh, And it will select the Geoset Part For you (As well as the Material)

 

[Ardenian]

Well hellooo, that is great! Thank you very much!

 

[Deolrin]

I like to use Vertex Modifier by Oinkerwinkle to safely separate geosets and export them to be used as static decorations. He also has a tool called AnimRemove which gets rid of animations efficiently while removing all of their bone data. As for removing data pertaining to a certain geoset, that's pretty much just a process of elimination. Common data is Geoset Animations (you must remove those if you remove their respective geoset - that should be easy as the geoset animation in question will have no geoset attached to it), Materials (sometimes multiple geosets use the same material, so this is up to you to discover, however I do believe Magos warns you about removing a material that is still referenced by geosets), Textures (related to materials - if you remove a certain material and no other material uses that texture, the texture is safe to remove), Bones and Helpers (as Hayate said you will have to watch out not to remove bones which parent other bones as that might screw up your model - however, if you remove the entire arm or something it should be safe to remove all of the arm's bones, if you remove the Skeleton's secondary mesh (it uses a 2nd mesh for its death animation) you may remove all related bones etc, Texture Animations and Global Sequences (those are mostly related to materials and animations, and less to a certain geoset - texture animations are simply animated textures (the texture moves across the model) and Global Sequences are a simple keyframe ("333" for example) used in bones in order to repeat w/e movement they make from keyframe "0" to the keyframe mentioned in the global sequence - this can be used to create periodic movement, such as blinking or shaking, regardless of the actual animation being played. Those can be harder to identify, but they're also generally less important in the long run in terms of cluttering the model. Finally, after removing parts of a model you may wish to (Re)Calculate Extents in order to make sure the model's clickable areas change accordingly. This is best done after removing any big planes such as hero glows first, calculating extents in Magos, copying the values and pasting them onto your actual model, because additive planes tend to take up huge amounts of space and make your model's selection and clickability radius massive.

 

[Ardenian]

Thank you, you helped a lot, the tools are very useful, thanks for all the information, it is great to have a direct post to re-read information.