Deleting a surface
 

Hi all, I have a basic question. Sorry if I am too lame to know the answer or if it's already answered.

Is it possible to delete a surface from the surface editor? For example, I have a model of a fish and select polygons in one fin and give them a surface name. When I go into Layout and start surfacing, I decide that I don't want that surface. Can I somehow remove that surface from the surface editor?

Hope someone can shed some light. Thanks in advance.

Elliott

As far as I know, the only way to clear a ghost surface is to reload the object or use object replace. Reloading the scene also works

Hi David.

Thanks for your answer. I still need to understand this better so please let me ask this in an example...

I completed the Fishy tute and selected the polygons of the dorsal fin on the model and gave them a surface (hit q, name, etc.). In layout I was playing around with surfacing and decided I would prefer using a weight map instead on that fin so I could control the colour bleed. So I re-selected the polys in modeler and made my weight map and blurred it.

So now I have the new weight map for the dorsal fin but I'm stuck with the old fin surface that I can't hide or delete. If I use my weight map on the fin, the old surface is always there and really screws up transparencies by showing through. Is there no way to totally remove this previously selected surface or block it from rendering?

Hope that made sense and sorry to bug you with this.

Thanks,
Elliott

I'm wondering if I correctly understand what is giving you trouble.

You can re-apply the old surface name to the fin by reselecting the polys and picking the previous surface name. So if you are using a surface named "body" and a surface named "fin", while in poloygon mode, press "w", pick the surface named "fin" from the Surf: dropdown list. Click the + button next to Surf: then assign the "body" surface by pressing "q" and picking "body" from the dropdown list.
Then you would apply your gradient to the "body" surface.

You can leave the fin surface if you like and apply the gradient, as well as other surface settings, to both the fin and body.

Hope this helps.:)

Thank you, this has worked. The problem was that even when I re-grouped the fin polys and applied the body surface, I still saw the surface named "fin" in the surface editor.

When I CLOSED LW and re-opened it, the fin surface was gone and only a body surface remained.

Thanks a lot because I have been stumped for a while on how to get rid of surfaces.

And thanks also for your great tutorials and please do more.

Elliott :p